Florence Rose explores feral femininity on debut album ‘My Lust Is My Religion’

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A multi-disciplinary visionary, creator and all-around It Girl, Florence Rose is an artist in the purest form. After releasing her debut full-length album My Lust Is My Religion in November 2024, fans are able to see a different side of Rose’s creativity as she expands upon her already captivating artistic expression.

Based in London, Rose is an accomplished creative, making her musical debut when she released “I Am Your Daughter,” the first single to be released ahead of her album, in 2023. As well as writing and directing films, Rose has also established herself as a highly successful model, starring in campaigns from Gucci Beauty, Stella McCartney and Marc Jacobs Fragrance.

Similar to her other artistic endeavors, Rose’s debut album My Lust Is My Religion is haunting, ethereal and beautiful. Dancing along the edge of devotion and obsession, Rose’s album exemplifies themes of love and femininity with a dark and dreamy artistry. Her body of work is cinematic in storytelling, and crafts a unique world for listeners to find primal catharsis. Incorporating religious imagery to heighten the album’s exploration of lust, love and relationships, Rose also conveys the idea of wild femininity, using vulnerable and bold lyrics to wade through the waters of fantasy, nature and feminine rage.

Over the years, Rose has gathered a devoted following with who her art resonates, and every aspect of Rose’s artistic expression is intentional and world-building. Despite it being her first record, there’s no doubt that My Lust Is My Religion serves as a definitive and enthralling body of work from Rose.

I’m super excited to talk with you about the album! It was your debut album as a musician, congrats on that. I feel like a debut project is such a huge deal; what was on your mind as you were putting the album together?
It wasn’t really going to be a full album for a while. And then I made so many songs — like 15 songs — that I wanted to put on, and then I was kind of like, maybe I should just make an album. That’s literally how it happened. And it became such a world that all these songs were set into. I can’t imagine them being in anything else.

With the visuals and the sound of the album, it’s like you created this universe within the album itself. It came out in November, but looking back on it is there any song or a lyric that stands out to you now that you’ve been able to sit with the album for a while?
I like my first single [“I Am Your Daughter”] the most. I wanted to put that one out first because it was kind of like the whole project stemmed from that song anyway. I just feel like the whole vibe of that song is what I wanted the entire album to encapsulate.

And it’s the opener of the album as well. I think it is a really great starter to introduce the album. You just said you created this world on the album, and all your careers that you do, whether its modeling, songwriting or filmmaking, are all so visual-heavy. Who or what inspires you the most when it comes to your visuals or aesthetics?
It’s definitely films. All the films from the ‘70s, ‘80s, sometimes ‘60s. Definitely mythology, witches, forests and old fairy tales. I’ve always been obsessed with that stuff. Even when I was in University just doing filmmaking I was always looking at fairy tales as a starting point and reciting them, in a sense. But yeah, very much film.

Are there any specific fairy tales, stories or movies that influenced the album?
It was kind of also influenced by my film research. I made a short film like three years ago and it’s based around surrealism through the lens of an unlikable, angry, very much “out there” kind of woman. This whole thing of female rage became such a thing online during that time. Those buzz words are annoying now, but it was such a thing when I was making this film. And Sinead O’Connor and Björk, when they scream, I was just so obsessed with that. Just violent girls. In my music video [for “I Am Your Daughter”] I had an axe. I wanted to show love and passion as strong as anger and violence, how they can intertwine.

The album talks about feminine rage, but it also incorporates religious imagery and themes that coincide with love and lust and things like that. Pop music has often used religious imagery to convey these kinds of messages, but what drew you to this concept of religion and lust for this album?
I think it’s something so strong that people can get so obsessed with. I was quite into this idea of looking at people that become so obsessed with religion in hopes that it would save them. “I Am Your Daughter” is kind of about spiritual psychosis and really believing that God is going to heal you or is going to save you. I just think it can be such an intense presence or feeling and one of the strongest things that you can feel as a human, but it’s not tangible. At the time I was writing it, I was around someone who was very much heavily religious. And it was just interesting to me. Fascinating.

I feel like religion or that idea of devotion and love go together so well because they carry the same ideas. You can love somebody and can worship them the same that you worship a deity or a God. I’m interested in your thoughts on whether you think this is a bad thing or a good thing? Being so devoted to something.
It’s hard because I feel like it can be a really good thing for some people, but it’s a fine line where I think it can go too far and that’s where that spiritual obsession to the point where people are developing spiritual psychosis is when it gets bad, but they don’t even know that they’re bad. But you can see it from the outside. It’s complicated. I think it can be really good for some people, having something to believe in and give hope. 

Very well said. You’ve also mentioned that the album was inspired by the wild woman archetype, and I had read that you were inspired by the book “Women Who Run with the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. While making this album, why did this concept resonate with you, and what did you learn about yourself or your femininity?
It was really hard to make this album. It was the first time I’d really properly made music with anybody else, and it was really intense and I think I felt really intense over that time when I was making it over two years and there were parts that I really wanted to escape from that I really was not enjoying and I just kept really wanting to go to nature when things weren’t feeling like right. And I remember a friend told me about that book, “Woman Who Run with the Wolves,” and it was like my bible. I was like, this is what I was supposed to be doing. And I guess it definitely influenced some of the tracks I made later.

Switching gears a little bit, you have all these different careers that you do, whether it’s filmmaking, modeling or music. Is it hard to pursue so many creative outlets at one time? How do you kind of balance all of these things?
It is kind of hard because I feel like I can’t give everything to one thing, so I feel like I get kind of stretched thin or things don’t get really completed. But I also kind of need to be like that, because I jump from projects all the time and I like to have multiple things going on, especially with modelling. It’s not really particularly creative unless I’m coming up with the concept myself, and there’s so much waiting around that you have to have something else. But like, say, with film making, I’m not so much doing that because I’m focusing on trying to make my own music from scratch completely by myself now, which is very time consuming. I miss making films, but — I was talking about this with my friend — life is so long, and I can make a film when I know more about life. I think it will come to me when I’m ready.

That’s very reassuring to hear actually. For people who want to pursue so many different creative things, sometimes it’s overwhelming and you feel like you have to be doing something in every outlet all the time. With how you pursue your different careers, do they ever overlap with the way you pursue them, or do you try to keep them all separate?
I feel like they overlap occasionally. When it comes to me being in the performance element of music, I feel so comfortable with it because of performing in terms of modelling video shoots for a lot of my adult life. And then when it comes to anything creative where I’m not working with a team, where I’m starting to write a song or planning a shoot, it’s always so instrumental. It’s always just me in my bed and doing a little bit of research, seeing what comes through my brain mostly. So I kind of approach those things similarly and then I will reach out to outside sources to help me actually complete it.

I read that music has always been a love of yours for a long time, but between modeling, music and film which one kind of came first for you?
I really fell into music only nearly three years ago now. But with film, it was like a slow growth through art school, learning what my medium was and realizing that I really liked filming and digital stuff a bit more than I liked physical art making. And then I really fell into music because I met this producer who wanted someone just to sing on a track. I was like, yeah I’ll do anything. I was in a period of saying yes to everything. And then it just carried on where we made basically the majority of those songs on the album actually. 

The album just came out a couple months ago, so maybe you’re not thinking about future music or anything, but what else do you have coming up in terms of future projects or plans? even outside of music?
Well, I just started working on my next musical endeavor. I don’t know what it will be completely yet, but it’s a different sound. It’s a lot more stripped back and I’m just doing everything myself and with my friends. It feels just so nice. Mostly I’m kind of working on doing events at the moment, so I’ll be playing quite a few shows coming up. I’m going to try doing things that are fancier. I’m doing them themed around different parts of the year, so I want to do a spring equinox one. Just make it really intimate and folky and really beautiful. I’ve got a Valentine’s one coming up, which will be a bit more fancy and romantic.

Regarding the album, what do you hope listeners can gain the most? What do you most want them to learn from listening to the album?
I hope that it gets people in touch with a feminine side of themselves. Who you are and like a very natural part of themselves. It’s my first project so it’s hard to know if that was successful, but no matter what I hope that people can listen to it and know that it’s okay to put things out there that aren’t perfect and that are a work in progress, because the story develops throughout. I mean, I had three songs and I built the rest around those three songs. And I feel like I am my hardest critic, probably, but I can hear that there’s so much difference in the album and I’m like, it’s okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I hope people can hear and maybe enjoy the fact that it’s a bit scrappy. 

Keep up with Florence Rose: Instagram // TikTok // Spotify // YouTube // Bandcamp

Justice Petersen
Justice Petersen
Justice Petersen is a music journalist, music PR writer, and freelance reporter. As the editorial coordinator for Melodic Magazine, Justice regularly contributes artist interviews, On Your Radar features, and news articles for Melodic and is a regular contributor to Melodic Magazine's quarterly print issues. She also writes for several other online magazine publications, including New Noise Magazine and Ghost Cult Magazine, and her work has been featured in Illinois Entertainer, the Chicago Reader, and Sunstroke Magazine, to name a few. Her favorite band is Metallica and her go-to coffee order is an iced vanilla oat milk latte with strawberry cold foam on top.

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