Lily Rose Gets Candid About Her First Full-Length Album, ‘I Know What I Want’

Lily Rose’s first full-length record is finally here, and its title, I Know What I Want, couldn’t be more fitting. While the song itself reflects on someone knowing what they don’t want in a partner, Rose uses it to make a bigger statement – one that represents the creative freedom she’s found making this record independently.

The talented singer/songwriter is happily married to her wife, Daira, but that doesn’t mean she’s immune to the effects of falling for the wrong person. She tackles this universal experience in the track which she chose for the title as a way to represent all the changes that she’s experienced in her career over the past five years. This record is Rose’s chance to show her listeners that she knows what she wants for her music and now she finally has the freedom to bring that vision to life. 

“I’ve kind of been on the scene for almost five years now and we’ve never put out a full length album and I’ve gone through a lot of different changes when it comes to my team and where I’m at…The theme that stood out to me of where I feel like I’m at right now is I just have creative control over everything again, and I know exactly what I want in my career,” she explained to Country Now. “Luckily, I had a song that had that title. Even though the song means something else, the title means something a little different to me. So it just feels like that’s kind of where I’m at right now is having control again and knowing exactly what I want.”

The process to making this album looked different compared to 2021’s Stronger Than I Am EP. Now as an independent artist, Lily Rose chose to assemble 13 tracks, with some written as long as five years ago and others penned just within the last year. For her, one of the greatest benefits of creating as an independent artist has been having “less cooks in the kitchen.”

“It’s really up to just my producer, Paul Giovanni, and me of what is going to make the album and what isn’t. And that’s the process we used was what are just 13 unanimous songs that were just yeses? And it’s been really cool on that front,” she pointed out.

Their ultimate goal was to find songs that are unmistakable Lily Rose, so much so that no other artist would be able to cut it. When she finally got back all the final mixes and masters, the Georgia native admits it was “pretty overwhelming,” but in the best way knowing that she was one step closer to putting out it out to the world.

“When I was with a label or when I wasn’t with a label, the one thing about me is I’m never going to cut and put out a song that I don’t love and see myself in. So every single song I’ve ever released, whether it was before ‘Villain,’ after ‘Villain,’ anything, I adore with all my Heart. But I think with these 13 songs, there’s really a huge spectrum of me on there…I hope fans can just see I’m not one lane.”

Lily is responsible for co-writing all but two songs on the project – “Drinkin Bout” and “Let Ya Know When I Get There.” Once again, she leaned into her mission of choosing songs she could truly see herself in, and the moment she heard these two stories, she knew they were hers to record.

“I just can’t imagine anyone else singing the song. This is for me. And ‘Drinkin’ Bad’ is actually the coolest story. We were in the studio and we had three out of the four songs chosen of what we were going to cut, and that song got pitched to me while I was in the studio and we figured it out at lunch, how we would change it, how we would change the key, all of that, where we would sing it.,” she recalled. “We cut it two hours after we got pitched. So yeah, both of those songs mean the world to me. ‘Let You Know When I Get There,’ it feels like my own and I can’t wait to be able to start playing ‘Drinkin’ Bout’ too. It’ll be great.”

Another key to making the album feel so authentic was opening up and sharing more of her heart than ever before. The perfect example of this is the final track on the project, “Slow Me Down,” which features a heartfelt story dedicated to Lily’s wife. She admitted that writing a deep and meaningful love song can be difficult, even for someone who is head over heels for their partner, but she was able to accomplish that with this particular song making it one of her favorites on the project.

“When you hear ‘Slow Me Down,’ you might not even listen to the lyrics first because it is kind of an abrupt song. We quite literally slow down the chorus into a whole other time signature and BPM. So I think her first reaction was like, this is so sweet, but this is such a weird song,” Rose said of Daira’s reaction to the song. “We wanted to do something weird. And then I think when she listened to it more and more, the lyrics connected a little bit, but it’s a very different thing and I hope people like it.”

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Across these songs, Lily Rose also proves that she doesn’t follow one lane sonically. Of course, she stays true to her roots, letting country serve as the foundation of her music, but she also pulls from other genres including hip hop and rock while also letting her vocals shine more than ever before.

“I try to show off the pipes a little bit more, and yeah, I hope that they just start to get to know me even more than they already do with some of these songs,” she shared.

Equal parts vulnerable and bold, I Know What I Want proves that Lily Rose is an artist that’s fully in control of her sound and her story. As a result, she solidifies her identity as one of country’s most exciting voices.

Lily Rose is currently in the midst of her I Know What I Want headline tour and while she’s already been testing out a few of her new songs live, there’s still plenty more to be shared following the album’s official release.