When Sydney Rose describes her new single “The Holiday,” she laughs at how misleading the title sounds. I tell her it’s not the cheery seasonal track I expected. “You decided to hurt my feelings.” “I know,” she says with a grin. “It’s funny, I wrote it around this time last year… it’s really about the terrible anxiety of going home for the holidays and seeing people you grew up with.”
The Nashville-based songwriter, whose gentle vocal delivery has become a signature, wrote the song last year and quietly uploaded it to SoundCloud for her fans. Now, with a full studio release arriving November 14, just three days before she kicks off her sold-out U.S. headline run, the track is ready for a proper spotlight.
“Because I wrote it so long ago… it was written when I wrote all these songs for the I Know What I Want EP. And all the topics overlap. And all of the new stuff that I’m writing is going in a different direction. So I still feel like I’m very much in this era right now.”
It’s a raw take on a season usually wrapped in cheer, and it perfectly fits the world she built on her EP I Know What I Want. Written during the same creative stretch, the new single still feels like part of that era.
A year that keeps growing
Sydney Rose’s year reads like a sprint through milestones: a viral hit, a European tour, an appearance alongside Noah Kahan and Gracie Abrams at London’s BST Hyde Park, and a U.S. headline tour that sold out within days. The New York stop, which opens the run, already feels symbolic for her.
“I grew up with so much anxiety, but weirdly, when I’m in New York, I don’t feel anxious,” she says. “My family’s coming, my team’s coming. It’s going to be the best way to start the tour. There are even venues on this tour where I’ve opened for other artists, and now I get to play my own show there. It’s surreal.”
That confidence didn’t arrive overnight. Sydney Rose has spent years refining a sound that Billboard called “elegant” and Atwood Magazine described as “intimate but instantly accessible.” Her breakout single, “We Hug Now,” didn’t just introduce her to the mainstream. It exploded. The song climbed into the Top 3 of Spotify’s Viral 50 chart, reached the Billboard Emerging Artists ranking, and racked up more than 180 million streams. On November 14, it became officially RIAA Gold.
“I wrote that song trying to be as honest and vulnerable as I could,” she says. “It came from feeling completely alone, and then suddenly there were thousands of people saying they’d been through the same thing. It built this community… that’s what made it blow up. It felt like I was just delved into this amazing community of people who just were going through similar stuff.”
The internet as community
The song’s viral moment on TikTok still amazes her. “When people started making edits to my song. Arcane edits, TV shows, movie clips. I was freaking out,” she says, laughing. “I make edits like that of my favorite shows to other songs, so seeing it happen with my music was wild.”
For an artist whose catalog thrives on quiet honesty, social media could have felt like a noisy mismatch. Instead, she turned it into an extension of her songwriting. “It’s so easy to feel alone when my entire life is just me and my phone,” she admits. “But reading those comments, the ones where someone says, ‘This song carried me through a breakup.’ That’s what keeps me going.”
Collaboration and growth
“I’ve always wanted to collaborate with another female artist. I wrote the song and was trying to figure out who’s music resonated with this song. Me and Delaney have been friends on TikTok for so long, and I loved her music for so long. It ended up working perfectly.”
The new tour will feature that collaboration, usually performed solo, though she teases a potential on-stage reunion if schedules align. “If she’s in town, you better believe I’ll ask her,” she grins.
From Heartstopper to Hyde Park
Sydney Rose’s music often feels cinematic, the kind of thing you could imagine soundtracking a Heartstopper montage or an end-of-episode heartbreak. “My dream has always been to have a song on Heartstopper or Arcane,” she says, smiling. “Or honestly, anywhere someone thinks it fits.”
That dream-to-reality crossover hit this summer when she stepped onto the BST Hyde Park stage in London, a lineup straight out of a coming-of-age soundtrack with Noah Kahan, Gracie Abrams, and Gigi Perez. “It was probably the best day of my life,” she says. “I’ve looked up to those artists for so long, and to play beside them, it was insane.”
Dreaming forward
When she talks about fan support, she doesn’t focus on streaming numbers or chart positions. “Obviously, buying merch and showing up to shows helps,” she says, “but the most fulfilling thing is the engagement. The messages from random people saying, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’. That kind of connection means everything.”
When asked about a dream collaboration, she laughs before answering. “I’m the biggest Twenty One Pilots fan ever. I’d give my left arm to open for them. But more realistically? Gregory Alan Isakov, Phoebe Bridgers if she tours again, either of those would be a dream.” And her dream venue? Not the expected Red Rocks. “King’s First Amphitheater in Georgia,” she says without hesitation. “That’s where I saw most of my favorite artists growing up. Amphitheaters just feel like home.” As “The Holiday” arrives, it’s clear Sydney Rose’s music has become a safe place for listeners who crave honesty in a curated world.
Follow Sydney Rose: Website | Instagram | TikTok | Spotify | YouTube
Leave a Reply