RØRY: Self-Forgiveness Revolution
As artists, there’s always a hope of development from project to project. No artist has had quite the journey and the positive road to recovering and self-acceptance as RØRY. The unapologetic approach to her debut album RESTORATION has been a huge, bold embrace of who she is as a person. “I felt that way in the writing and recording,” she agrees wholeheartedly. “This is this is more powerful and maybe a little bit more unhinged than I thought it was going to be. I felt my last two EPs, I was very much still trying to be something, whereas with this, I felt very embodied to tell the stories, I took a lot more risks.”
From her sold out shows, to playing at huge festivals, it feels like RØRY has just about started to embrace that maybe she is, genuinely, really good at this, and that her music is actually quite special.
“I do feel a lot more confident. I think if you’re going to start rapping [on a song] as a forty-year-old person, you need to have some kind of confidence or maybe insanity. Perhaps there, there’s a fine line between the two.” There’s a constant sense of good-humoured self-awareness with RØRY, but also the grace to be kind and fair with her experiences. “My first EP, I was crippled with self-doubt and self-hatred, and I remember trying to throw the whole thing away, and just couldn’t listen to it. I wasn’t proud of it, and it was really heavy to actually get it out – it blew my mind that people liked it. And then the second one, it was like, ‘oh, this is okay. I’m doing my best’, but I didn’t love it. But with the album, the self-hatred bit, it just never came. I’ve never listened and thought, ‘I hate this. I’m so embarrassed’. I’m just like, ‘no, I sign off on that – I’m happy.’ That’s grown in a way that I am really proud of and I never would have imagined going back to my first single. I could never have imagined being the type of artist that could write and sing and then perform these songs. That’s the beauty of artist development. And we don’t really have enough of these days from major labels. I guess I’ve kind of done it for myself, but you have to give yourself time, because you never know where you’re going to grow and what it’s going to look like. It certainly surprised me, so it would perhaps surprise some other people as well, which is very exciting.”
From the moment intro track If Pain Could Talk, What Would It Say jabs out, it’s clear that RØRY is finally starting to be comfortable flexing her skills. “It’s funny because it’s the album intro, but it’s one of my favourite songs,” she beams. “I think because it’s unexpected, I’ve never done anything like that before. I was just aiming to do something similar [to the intro’s of my EP’s] and it just came out. It happened really, really quickly with the producer. He was just playing guitar, and I was like, ‘make it a bit heavier’ and it just poured out. It’s bang on what I what I feel the album is about, which is allowing the darkest parts, the most hurt parts of you, not only to speak, but to validated and exist.”
There’s a lot of reflecting in RØRY’s music, but while this record as a whole tackled those darker parts of her past, there’s never any judgement on that younger person. The most joyful embodiment of that self-acceptance is without doubt SORRY I’M LATE. “So, on the last day we were meant to be finishing another song, I came in and was like, ‘we need to write something else. These nine songs are fucking heartbreaking, or, like insane. There’s nothing happy’. And it just came out,” RØRY recalls. “We wrote it in about an hour, which is always a good sign that you’ve hit something that just feels really good. It just felt like the perfect little cherry on top of all the other heaviness. It’s still heavy, it talks about my mum dying and addiction, but it’s in this light hearted way that says, ‘yeah, we’re going to show up anyway, even if we are a bit late, it’s all good’.”
RESTORATION as a whole is hard set on embracing the past, from personal to professional and all the messy areas between that. “A lot of this album comes from shameful places,” she goes on to explain about the feature of herself on the track Hold On. “I had numerous artist projects that I’ve done over the last two decades, but the main one was under my birth name Roxanne Emery, fifteen years ago. I released an album and then when that didn’t work out, I moved into selling my vocals, featuring on dance songs. You know, sell your vocal for five hundred quid so I could pay rent and buy alcohol and drugs, that was where my kind of artistry was at. I have all these songs that don’t reflect where I am today as an artist, and I felt embarrassed about it. And it was the desire to reclaim that with my old name. It feels like such a nice way to address something that has caused me some pain and some embarrassment, which is just to wear it out loud. That’s what I’m doing at the moment with the things that I hate most about myself. I’m just telling the world.”
What RØRY has managed to do with her music is to give a voice to the parts of ourselves that feel ugly and unlovable, and champion them as part of a multifaceted human being. “Yeah, 100% that’s the whole thread of the album, really, is you can have done the dumbest stuff ever, which I have done, but still build a beautiful life, still experience grace and forgiveness.”
“I remember feeling for so many years, the weight of all of the things I regretted and I hated about myself. Obviously, the normal stuff, there’s body image stuff, and there’s low self-esteem, but it’s also how I treated friends, ex partners; history with self harm, drug addiction, stealing. Just like the worst things people can do. I wore the weight of that for so long, even when I got sober, it was a sense that I always deserve to be punished. But actually, I’ve experienced total restoration. And I can look back on that version of me, and sometimes it’s still a little embarrassing, but I can look back with understanding, even compassion. I think that’s such an important lesson for so many people.”
The culmination of this inner peace RØRY has created for her self with her music as morphed into an outward space for people to embrace the parts of themselves they’d otherwise shy away from. Her shows have become a place people feel safe to cry and sing their hearts out in, with friends and strangers alike. “Oh, that makes me bit sad in the best way, and it feels so special to be performing live and to have everyone together and a sense of real community, through pain, through loss, through wanting to get better,” RØRY hold her hand to her face as she reflects on the way her shows come together. “But people are so vulnerable; They’re so authentic; They’re so real in the crowd. It’s so humbling and just wonderful to see. I think that’s what music is for. That’s what it’s been for me. And I did my first gig as RØRY, only just over two years ago. So, it’s gone really quick. And the reason it’s gone quick is people that come to shows and seem to enjoy being sad in a group environment. So, I’m very grateful for that.”
Going forwards as RESTORATION is set free into the world, there’s a sense of pride in what RØRY has achieved, and the doors she’s opening for herself and her community, through music. The road ahead might be tough, but it can also be wonderful if we accept ourselves and each other; things don’t have to be broken forever. They can be restored.
RESTORATION is out now via SADCØRE Records.
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