Maggie Rose Wants to ‘Change the Whole Thing’ With New Album, Documentary

Maggie Rose has never been one to conform to standards, in life or in her music. The 30-year-old just released a new album, Change the Whole Thing, along with a documentary detailing the making of the project.

For some, it would be an arduous undertaking. For Rose, it was the best way for her to convey the journey she’s been on since releasing her freshman Cut to Impress was released in 2013.

“The documentary actually came much later,” Rose told PopCulture.com. “We started this project back in July of 2017 and we recorded it in a way that a lot of albums today are not typically recorded, which was completely live with me and a 13-piece family band. They were a bunch of my friends. What you hear on the record is that take, from start to finish. I didn’t want to comp a bunch of different takes together or autotune or do a bunch of post-production. I wanted that live energy to come across in the audio as well.”

Rose took her time recording Change the Whole Thing, unaware at the beginning of the story what was unfolding.

“We recorded everything incrementally and, over a year ago, when we started, I didn’t have some big, grand plan of making the whole album this way, and we’re going to do a documentary and all these ambitions that we ended up realizing,” Rose revealed. “But it was very apparent to me in that first session, when I was looking across the room with all of my friends and people I’ve been making music with for years, that this is how we wanted to make it. The magic was captured and it was so apparent that three months later we recorded six more songs, and basically three months after that we recorded three more, and we completed this album.”

Renowned videographer Jeff Johnson, who was capturing Rose recording all of the songs for Change the Whole Thing, first approached Rose with the idea of releasing a documentary. The title came from a track on the record – an optimistic look from Rose at not hiding from problems, big and small, in the world.

“I think it’s both about just the state of the world and how we can feel when we’re staring down a problem that seems so massive that we can’t even begin to address it, but if you just kind of chip away then I think you’re already working towards a solution,” Rose explained. “But it also was descriptive of my journey in Nashville. I’ve been here for over a decade and I’ve had a lot of different currents move me, one way or the other, as an artist. To me, this was my first time that I was able to change the whole direction of how I was going to make music and what motivated me to do that, and the title felt very appropriate.”

As a female artist, Rose has felt the challenges of being a woman in the country music industry. Although initially disheartening, the Maryland native found a freedom in the adversity that ultimately made her better in every way.

“I think that it was the height of the struggle for me probably two years ago, or maybe even longer than that,” Rose recalled. “I’ve been an independent artist for almost four years. There was a break at some point with me and the industry, and the way that I felt like I had to make music and the way that I was expected to deliver music to radio and everything. But that struggle has now put me in a direction that I’m so grateful that I’ve been faced to, that I think it was in spite of that struggle that I’m now making the music I am.

“There’s a lot of artists, and women in particular, in Nashville who I think are starting to set themselves apart,” she added, “because of the analytics and the fact that we are still slighted in our representation of music here in Nashville.”

Change the Whole Thing became not only the theme of Rose’s latest record, but also a manifesto of sorts for her future in the music industry.

“There was another title that I had tossed around because of the studio at Starstruck Studios, it was called The Gallery,” Rose recounted. “So we played with this idea of calling it In The Gallery or From The Gallery, because the way we recorded it was so important to how this album sounds. But I think that just the story that was starting to surround this album and everything, Change the Whole Thing became the clear choice.

“I was focusing more on the bigger story, and not just the way that we did it live, but the fact that we decided to make this because no one was telling us to and because we had love for the music and love for each other,” she continued. “Change the Whole Thing just felt a little bit more all-encompassing of what the project was about.”

Ultimately, Rose hopes Change the Whole Thing becomes a bridge between her live shows and her recorded music.

“My goal is to preserve the fans that I’ve made over the years and break into a new audience,” Rose shared. “I think it’s just to demonstrate what we could do live. I think that that’s kind of a cool, impressive thing. People would come to a lot of live shows that I’ve been doing over the years and they’d say things that they meant as compliments, but they’d say, ‘I love everything that’s on iTunes and Spotify and what not, but I always want to come to your live shows because there’s something at these shows that is compelling.’ So I was trying to address that disconnect between what my previous recordings had sounded like and what these people were drawn to, to come to see at the live shows. And I think we captured the magic.

“There’s certain things I will just never repeat from here on out in every future project I make, because there’s this human element that’s so present when you listen to this,” she concludes. “I kind of want to just bring people back to the basics. Every song is treated the way that it deserves and I’m not trying to follow some production and toe the line.”

Purchase Change the Whole Thing at MaggieRoseMusic.com.

Photo Credit: Getty images/Theo Wargo