Baby Rose: Yearnalism review – gloriously cinematic soul from the edge of emotional collapse
(Secretly Canadian) The US songwriter paints an impressively wide variety of shades on her third album, from vintage R&B to melodic soft-rock and balladry worthy
(Secretly Canadian) The US songwriter paints an impressively wide variety of shades on her third album, from vintage R&B to melodic soft-rock and balladry worthy of Nina Simone Jasmine Rose Wilson doesn’t love lightly. On her third album as Baby Rose, the US soul singer uses her fraying contralto to communicate the peaks and troughs of relationships as if on the brink of emotional collapse.
On the slow-moving The Reason, Rose is fully aware she’s “gone off the deep end”, while on the vintage R&B of But, Nvm, she tries her best to convince herself everything’s fine while fleeing the scene. “Waiting on a train,” she sings, “to take me somewhere you won’t call my name.” Such cinematic overtures aren’t accidental: Rose contributed music to, and briefly appeared in, 2025’s romantic comedy-drama Materialists.
On the melodically rich soft-rock of Better, which shares the breezy lightness of Olivia Dean’s recent album and would have killed on a Bridget Jones soundtrack, Rose paints a precise portrait of a kitchen-based standoff she eventually wins. Sunday, meanwhile, starts off as a scratchy, Nina-Simone-esque ballad before a string section and guitar turns a musical vignette into an epic.
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