About Roze

Roze McQueen is an unlikely singer songwriter who meets the world head-on. She is blessed or possibly cursed with being able to see to the heart of things. Wrapped within her soft haunting vocals are hard truths mirroring the convoluted path she took to get here.

 

Growing up in California Roze discovered early that she was severely dyslexic. As a young person with a devastating sense of personal failure and lack of self-worth, Roze believed the naysayers who repeatedly made clear that her inability to read music would keep her from the music world.

 

Crushed, she found salvation in her love of animals and in time went on to study the visual arts instead. With college behind her, Roze began traveling and after several months in Nepal, Roze headed north to Rishikesh. It was there, walking the same streets where the Beatles and other great musicians had been inspired some 50 years earlier, that Roze realized music was her path. She packed up, headed home and took the first baby steps to here. We are all the better for her journey.

 

 

Music

It's Time

Release Date 01/15/2021

It's Time is about the personal moment-to-moment struggle to make the right decision. Roze McQueen relates that it's her "do I bother song". “Do I get off my butt and do what I know is right or do I just let it slide”. In the memories of her childhood the way she saw the lights around her always seemed to represent the extremes of her experiences: birthday candles and Christmas lights to emergency lights or hospital corridors, watching car lights stream by a rain streaked windshield on a road trip or seeing a nighttime vista or her bedside lamp through her tears. Her ups and the downs, the joys and the sorrows of life were cast in the lights surrounding her. In all those moments it was the choices she made, the turns she took, that made her who she is today. For Roze McQueen, It's Time is about who we choose to be.

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Sage Mountain

03/12/2021

To Roze McQueen Sage Mountain is her safe space. Even if it exists only in her mind, it is a place she can always go. Roze believes everyone needs a Sage Mountain – an idyllic world to escape to in times of need. In her new single, entitled Sage Mountain, Roze sings of the crushing feeling of being trapped. Roze’s trap was always depression. Not sadness for a particular reason but a devastating despair she had to claw her way out of. To Roze, it doesn’t matter if your trap is poverty, an abusive relationship, mental illness, an addiction or if is a real trap like prison, the sex trade or a cage at the border, we all need that dream of escape. A refuge, a place to go when it feels like, there is no place to go. She invites you all to Sage Mountain. May you find the peace there that she does.

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I'm a Child

Release Date 12/18/2020

Making a decision today is more difficult and fraught with stress than ever before. When offered a multitude of different facts and realities, how do you know what is real? When you can no longer trust your own senses, whose judgment do you trust?

 

Roze McQueen’s battle with dyslexia led her to a profound understanding of the frustration and anger that can accompany having the information you need right in front of you, but not being able to trust it. The temptation, of course, is to blindly adhere to any information rather than flounder helplessly, not knowing. Out of this desperation to find the right path, I’m a Child was born.

 

Roze used the analogy of having a book, but not being able to know what it contains to underscore the challenge of these times. The difficulties she faced as a child were actually not much different than someone who can read, but is so flooded with disinformation, that they don’t know what the real facts are either.

 

I’m a Child speaks to the necessity of, however we do it, to muddle through the noise to find the truth. In that way we can make informed decisions about our lives and the issues that affect them.

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Brr

Release Date 11/20/2020

Within Brr lies a cry from a person trying desperately to move on from the loss of someone dear. To find joy in a world suddenly stripped of it. To move forward only to be sucked back again and again by shared memories. It can be a lifelong challenge to try to adjust to a life without that special someone - especially when that death was sudden, unexpected or unnecessary. Roze McQueen is able to intertwine the absolute joy of the memories with the wrenching heartbreak of the loss.

 

We live in a world beset by Covid-19, gun violence, suicide, drug overdoses and thoughtless drivers. A world where the people left behind often have to face the tragedy of their lives being ripped apart on their own. It is tough to face the death of a loved one, but it is exponentially worse when confronted by the reality that it didn’t have to happen. The fight between feeling angry, and sorrowful, between just wanting to forget and relishing the memories, can battle on for years. Brr is for those times.

 

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New section

Lost

Release date 02/12/2021

Roze McQueen is not the most social of people, nor the most confident. We’ve all felt that moment when you walk into a crowded room and felt totally alone. Lost is for those who feel they don’t fit in, will never belong, and are always outside looking in. More importantly it is for those where this has become their norm rather than the exception. Where feeling invisible and isolated on this increasingly busy, crowded planet has become their life. Covid-19 demands, economic hardship, and social injustice have all exacerbated the sense of isolation. Superficial social media friends are supplanting real buddies to hang with. Lost is really just a reminder that we need to look out for each other and not let anyone fall through the cracks, that we all matter and no one is invisible.

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Glass Eyes

Release Date 10/23/2020

On its face Glass Eyes is about the pain caused by the lies that permeate our lives, but Roze McQueen tells how this song was actually inspired by a cow.

 

Her child-self often viewed the world through the lens of a camera. One day she was shooting images of a crowded feedlot where one particular cow’s soft brown gaze followed her everywhere. When she viewed the pictures later, she realized she had not really seen that cow. Her child-self saw the massive bovine sea, but failed to see that one cow that appeared to be looking to her for a way out of that horrible place.

 

Of course, Roze’s adult-self later saw the foolishness of her reaction. Although she convinced herself that she was imposing her own feelings upon the cow, she never quite shook off the sting of somehow betraying that cow. That somehow, through the glass eye of her camera, she had in a sense lied to the cow. She was not there to save it.

 

Roze started to notice that the world was filled with the same callous disregard. Not just for cows, but for everyone. With an oblivious selfishness, Roze came to the conclusion that we often fail to really see those around us – what they need, how they feel – not out of meanness, but from a culture that values expediency and no longer has the time to value honesty. 

 

Our world has changed and lies have saturated it to the core. So whether though the glass eyes of our smart phones or TV’s or just the brazenly glassy stare of someone bold enough to lie to our face, it’s time to recognize the manipulation behind the lies. Glass Eyes is a call to see those around us for who they are and the facts for what they are.

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Videos

I'm a Child Film Festival Recognition

Flicks4Change 2021 Winner Best Animation 

Florana International 2021 Finalist

Lonely Wolf: London International 2021 Semi Finalist

London Eco 2020 Quarter Finalist

Kids First 2020 Official Selection

Nature Without Borders International 2021 Official Selection

Queens Underground International 2021 Official Selection

 

"I'm a Child lights a torch for Mother Earth and inspires activism... through this most colorful and charming animation I'm a Child has a real weight and power to it." - Adrian Perez, Lonely Wolf Film Festival 

 

New section

Brr Film Festival Recognition

Florana International 2021 Finalist

Lonely Wolf: London International 2021 Semi Finalist

Crystal Palace International 2021 Official Selection

First Glance Los Angeles 2021 Official Selection

Loyola University Feminist Fest 2021 Official Selection

Queens Underground International 2021 Official Selection 

 

"Brr turns the tables and delivers hope and light through it's vibrant colorful animation a uplifting anthem"                    - Adrian Perez, Lonely Wolf Film Festival

New section

Glass Eyes Film Festival Recognition

The Magikal Charm Experimental Film Festival 2021 Official Selection

Comments

"Wow, that VOICE. As archetypically ancient as it is wholly original and modern. It puts the 21st century ancestral #celtic shivers up the spine..." 

~Canning Circus Creative Hub   

 

"Sooo stoked to have worked on some tracks with Roze this summer. Out now everywhere. #popmusic that speaks to the human condition - #soulmusic that talks to the craaaayziness going on out there.... Talent this good needs to be heard far and wide from her LA home." 

~KJAMM Mastering

"Roze McQueen is a singer/songwriter committed to combining her passion for music, her love of the visual arts, her grasp of good storytelling with her determination as an activist whose weapon of choice is the power of melody woven around a sweet vocal and poignant lyric.." 

~King of Spins                                          

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