London singer/songwriter Rose Betts ignites with innocence, optimism, urgency, and hope in her new single “Rocket,” a charming song whose message feels both dire and soothing in these turbulent times.
Stream: “Rocket” – Rose Betts
Maybe you listen to Rose Betts’ new single and you feel a childlike innocence; perhaps you feel a sense of hope; or you might, in fact, feel a raw urgency or even anger about the treatment of our planet Earth and the need to do better for future generations. The beauty about music is that we don’t have to choose: We can hear all these things, and more. London singer/songwriter Rose Betts ignites with innocence, optimism, urgency, and hope in her new single “Rocket,” a charming song whose message feels both dire and soothing in these turbulent times.
Don’t we all kind of what to fly away right now?
I’m gonna buy me a brand new rocket
I’m gonna put all my best friends on it
We’re gonna find us a brand new place
Plant lots of roses and drink champagne
Oh I’m gonna buy me a brand new rocket
I’m gonna put all my best friends on it
We might be gone for a year or ten
I swear I’ll be back but I don’t know when
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Rocket,” Rose Betts’ catchy new single (out now). A Celtic “pop-fused” singer/songwriter hailing from London, Betts has long utilized her voice to evoke deep emotions in her listeners: 2016’s debut single “Orange Trees” is a hauntingly poetic, aching outpouring of longing and love that showcases the artist’s immense talent from the very start. Betts self-released her debut EP The Stars Look Down later that same year, and more recently contributed to multi-platinum artist Bazzi’s single, “Young and Alive.”
Four years after her first introduction, Rose Betts is still captivating audiences with her vocal prowess and lyrical sway.
“Rocket,” her first release with The Heavy Group, carries with it a seeming simplicity that one might expect to find on a children’s television show like Sesame Street – and yet, this song has so much to offer if we open our ears and listen. It is as much a wake-up call to bystanders and those who stay silent on “political” topics like climate change or abortion, as it is a message of pain from the future generation to those who came before.
So make up your mind, make up your mind
Are you coming with us or are you staying behind?
Make up your mind, make up your mind
Are you coming with us or are you staying behind?
“‘Rocket’ is one of those songs that just fell into my lap fully formed,” Betts tells Atwood Magazine. “I was living in London in an old brewery in Shoreditch. It was an awful place — cold, dark, bars on my window and rats running from the basement to the kitchen, sometimes under my bed. I wrote so many songs during that time, and this one completely illustrates how much I wanted to get out of that place, though when I wrote it I felt like a bit of a throwaway. I sent it to my dad with some flippant comment and moved on. It was only after his and a few others’ responses that I started to see the song in a different light.”
She says of the song, “Its childlike optimism and simplicity touched on something for them, and their reactions made me take it more seriously. I wrote the bridge and it all just came together. It’s like the song knew what it was before I did. For the video, I wanted to stay true to the childlike core of the song. so I holed up at my parents’ house in the country for a weekend (to escape the rats) and made a stop-motion video using paper, scissors and my brother’s cracked iPhone. Limitation is one of the finest tools for making art and, with no budget and no small amount of help from my endlessly supportive family, I think this video, modest as it is, is a testament to that.”
Limitation is one of the finest tools for making art and, with no budget and no small amount of help from my endlessly supportive family, I think this video, modest as it is, is a testament to that.
I’m gonna buy me a brand new rocket
I’m gonna put all my best friends on it
We’ll make a game from the passing stars
Give them all names after english cars
Oh I’m gonna buy me a brand new rocket
I’m gonna fill it with lots of chocolate
Moulds we got made of our favourite pets
I’ll eat the ears and you’ll eat the rest
So make up your mind, make up your mind
Are you coming with us or are you staying behind
Make up your mind, make up your mind
Are you coming with us or are you staying behind
“This is a song which can be heard several ways and I like that about it,” Betts says of her new song. In truth, “Rocket” is the kind of track in which people hear what they want to hear: It’s rich in emotion, with the idea that something is wrong and needs to be fixed bumping up against a familiar urge to leave our woes behind and go play with our friends and loved ones. There’s this constant duality to life, where we must balance ideas like poverty and homelessness against our own self-interest, happiness, and sanity. It’s as much ethics as it is survival, but in “Rocket” it’s presented in a simple, easily digestible way that allows us to feel all the stress, without getting too tangled in the individual problems themselves.
All we know is that we will be complicit if we do nothing – hence that underlying urgency to act, to do, to help, and to improve in some form or fashion. Altruism and escapism blend with social and environmental justice; we’re not allowed to turn a blind eye to the outside world, despite that innately human desire to let it be.
For Betts, “Rocket” is “a story about us, about the Earth, about greed and about escape.”
“It’s also simply about going on an adventure with your best mates and then, when the excitement fades, remembering where you came from. It turns out to be a bit of a prescient song because people all over the world are worrying about our planet and suddenly living within limitations during this time of social distancing. This song can inspire both daydreams of escape and reflections on our global impact. It’s an opportunity to remember that the earth is the only home we’ve ever had.”
Got a message in a laser beam
Said earth is dying ‘cause
The bees have disappeared and all
The food is very nearly gone
And if we wouldn’t mind turning back
To the only home we’ve ever had
Before it gets too late
And there is nothing to save
It’s an opportunity to remember that the earth is the only home we’ve ever had.
That beautiful opportunity to experience two sides of the same coin at once makes “Rocket” as timely as it is immediate in impact: Though like, the song can feel heavy with the weight of the world hanging down – and yet, there’s absolutely no denying the music’s shining, jovial charisma. How do we manage these opposites happening to us at once?
We let it be, and listen.
Rose Betts’ “Rocket” will take you wherever you need to go. Join her on the song’s visual journey and feel “what it’s like to be alive, to love, to lose, to fail and to fly,” exclusively on Atwood Magazine!
So make up your mind, make up your mind
Are you coming with us or are you staying behind
Make up your mind, make up your mind
Are you coming with us or are you staying behind
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Stream: “Rocket” – Rose Betts
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