With a Top 10 debut album and sold-out headline tour on the way, life is “awesome” for RØRY. But before success came failure, addiction, debt, loss. In her Kerrang! cover debut, the UK’s most inspiring breakout rock star takes us through the ups and downs of one of the most beautifully triumphant tales in music…
About a fortnight ago, while filming the music video for recent single Wolves, RØRY – real name Roxanne Emery, or “just Rox” as they prefer – was cooly staring down a giant Siberian husky in the woods of Hemel Hempstead. Today, they’ve been given the runaround by tiny six-month-old puppy Rocket, who’s gamely trying to tear the singer’s shoes apart. Catching up with Kerrang! in the cosy environs of their home in Orpington offers a neat contrast, and one that ties in with Rox's story nicely. From the wild bacchanalia of the past to the relative domestic bliss of the present, she knows a thing or two about what it is to become tamed.
“Every element of my life has done a 180-degree turn in the last five-and-a-half, six years,” Rox – whose pronouns are she/they – reflects. “It’s very weird to have fully lived through that and know the extent of what it means to be able to hope again; to be able to get to places that you never thought you would; to maybe not want to fucking off yourself anymore!”
Though she says that laughing, it’s no joke or exaggeration. Rox literally made a “very chill silent pact” with herself a few years ago, deciding that when their dad was no longer around to be hurt by it, they would end their suffering and take their own life.
That was before sobriety. That was before therapy or their ADHD diagnosis. That was before RØRY and RESTORATION, the debut album that chronicles their life’s journey through serial trauma and recovery. On February 7, the indie production, released on their own label Sadcøre, landed on the UK’s Official Albums Chart at Number 10, mixing in the company of major label-backed pop behemoths almost half their age, including Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish. Partner Rich made Rox celebrate the achievement with a relaxing night in a swish hotel, complete with slap-up meal and the full spa treatment. But after chasing that kind of validation and such markers of success for so long, when it finally came the reaction was oddly muted.
“Honestly? It felt like nothing,” she reveals. “Not in a bad way. Top 10 is just a cool cherry on top of the whole thing.”
The real victory is in the celebration of ordinary everydayness. It’s in things that really matter when you lay your head down on the pillow at night. Rox’s story might follow a classic underdog arc, but the spoils aren’t shiny discs or sold-out shows. It’s not linear, simple or sanitised, either. Some of it’s downright brutal, in fact. But it’s a story of survival and sticking around to tell the tale.
“I’m winning because I've got my partner, my step kids, my doggy, I've got my mental health and I’m not in debt anymore,” they assert. “A Top 10 record pales in comparison. Winning to me is at home, loving and being loved. You can’t beat that, really.”
There are countless horror stories Rox could tell you about their past, should you be so inclined to want to know the dirt and just how far down the spiral she went. Their old personal page on Instagram – still live for posterity – offers a hint at some of those struggles, charting cycles of partying, attempts to dry out and the endlessly grimy rinse and repeat of addiction.
“I always thought I was the life and soul of the party,” they share. “First to the bar, last to leave – masking loneliness and crippling social anxiety, of course. Looking back, I was an alcoholic. I had a problem. But at the time, I had no idea.”
One night in Amsterdam, though, represented their rock bottom. It was the last of many such low points which probably should have been catalysts for change.
“I got shitfaced, did a ton of drugs, fell absolutely off the wagon and cheated on my partner,” she recalls. “I didn’t show up to work, spent money that I didn't have and blew up my whole life in one night. I sabotaged everything. It was the worst night of my life.”
The next day Rox walked into their first recovery meeting. That was September 14, 2018, and she’s never looked back since. But what followed was the real work.
“I didn’t have my number one coping mechanism anymore,” they explain. “When you take alcohol away from someone who’d been drinking heavily since they were 16, all the reasons why I drank came up in a very overwhelming way. I became very mentally unwell: anxiety, self-hatred, paranoia, obsessive thinking, weird rage attacks. I had convinced myself that my friend was plotting to kill me.”
This was a sign that she couldn’t do it alone, seeking professional help to support for the first time. In 2019, they started trauma counselling, exploring everything from EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) to breathing techniques and talk therapy. Rox credits their first therapist with saving their life, but after going “pretty deep” there came a stagnation due to decades of unprocessed pain. Over the past six months they’ve been engaging in psychoanalytic therapy, trying to get to the nub of those issues, but only recently feeling comfortable enough to really let their guard down.
“I’m really good with who I am today. Like, I’ve found a place of, ‘I’m actually okay, life is pretty cool!’ But who I used to be? That’s still quite tough. It’s like I’m allergic to that person who was going out, cheating on people, stealing money for drugs from friends, and driving my car drunk. I’m like, ‘That can’t be me!’ but it was, and it isn’t okay.
“Thank God I never hurt anybody else in that situation,” she adds with obvious relief and gratitude mixed in with the guilt. “But to look back and reconcile that with the person I am today is really, really, really hard. I think it’s important work, though.”
“Looking back at who I was is really, really, really hard. I think it’s important work, though”
Part of that ongoing work is laid out in full view for all the world to see on RESTORATION. It’s in the anguished performances and the unflinching lyrics of One Drink Away and SORRY I’M LATE. It’ll continue every night when RØRY hits stages for the emotionally charged sold-out headline shows around the UK in March. How she got here from where she was is remarkable. What put her there in the first place is the big question.
Though undoubtedly a major factor, it’s overly simplistic to attribute all of everything to their mum passing away after a four-year cancer battle when Rox was just 22. To the outside world, they had everything anyone could ever want in life before. Scratch the surface, however, and the truth belies a much darker reality.
“If I go back to childhood, the house I grew up in looked like the perfect family home,” they admit. “I had a mum, a dad, a brother and I was a gifted child. But behind closed doors, my family was torn apart by my dad’s infidelity, from before I was born to up until my mum died. Essentially, I was living in a house of lies, deceit, avoidance, repression of anger, repression of boundaries, and forgiveness to the point of self-destruction.
“As a teenager I became a ‘problem child’: shoplifting, drinking, running out to meet boys and girls, and all that jazz. I read an amazing phrase recently: ‘You’re not the problem child, you’re the child communicating the problem.’
“I became, in a strange way, a sort of mini-version of my dad,” she continues. “Even though my dad had been and still is the person who hurt me the most, historically, he has always been my hero. I think so much of my behaviour was [the result of] growing up in a very emotionally disconnected house.
“It’s almost like I had two options, and I’ve lived them both. I’ve lived my dad’s version, which is: no emotion, shag whatever you want, drink it away and be a bully. That was in my 20s when I wasn’t a very nice person. When I sanitise myself, I’ll be like my mum: forgiving, angel on Earth, seeing the good in everyone. But then you get walked over and abused and that doesn’t work out well. The story of my life has been trying to find out, ‘Well, who the hell am I? Where do I fit in?’”
Finding their place in the world has proved quite the journey. Mirroring their attempts to get sober, this isn’t Rox’s first try at making a name and a life for themselves in music. For someone who turned 40 in October, it’s no surprise to learn that they have a recording history almost as confusing and as chequered as their personal life. She chalks RØRY up as their fourth go in earnest, though it’s the first time she feels she’s really put her heart and soul into things.
“I had a few attempts at music in my 20s and 30s, but they were never whole-hearted, whole-bodied attempts, due to self-protection and shame,” they confess.
If you look online, you’ll find countless traces of those past musical endeavours, ranging in style from solo folk-pop to electronic dance music and beats-first tracks featuring their guest vocals.
“I was selling my voice to DJs for £500 to pay rent or buy coke,” they explain. “It wasn’t my art. My birth name is on Spotify with a hundred songs that feel like a cheap imitation of who I want to be. So, for RESTORATION, I was like, ‘I need to go fucking head-first into the shame, baby!’ Shame is a killer; of people, of dreams and of happiness in general. Feeling self-loathing or deeply embarrassed of oneself will hold you back. It held me back for many, many years.”
The result of addressing their own latent shame plays out on the song hold on, a track which seeks to bridge that chasm between who she was and who she is, featuring a clever collaboration between RØRY and Roxanne.
“That felt really good,” they say beaming. “It was like I no longer had to be ashamed.”
It’s hard not to draw parallels with this spiritual act of musical peace-making and the healing work being done to find a place of acceptance for the misdemeanours of their troubled personal past.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do music again had I not done a lot of the real-life restoration stuff. I had to go through that first,” she admits. “I used to think that I was too old, I’d missed out and I hated myself for that. I felt like a failure. There’s part of me that’s like, ‘Oh, it’s cool to do music at 40 because music is really ageist.’ It was a real, like, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world!’ situation. I hope other old people – old-ish? Mature? Wise-ish? – go, ‘Well, if they can do it, maybe I can too.’ Because I was one of life’s absolute wrecks for a really long time.”
“I used to think that I was too old, I’d missed out and I hated myself for that. I felt like a failure”
In reality, they’re already seeing that spirit inspiring members of The 37 Club – the name given to their fanbase – to follow suit, with regular messages flooding in, detailing how RØRY’s success has pushed people to go back to university or start the businesses they always wanted to, later in life.
“I was like, ‘Can I build a community that's the opposite [of dying young] where we think it’s cool-as-fuck, rock’n’roll and badass to get better, go to therapy and to survive?’” Rox says. “Now that community has grown to be really big and it’s the reason why gigs sell out. It’s the reason why the album did well and it’s really fucking amazing.
“We have a Facebook group – I think it’s at about 8,000 members now – where people post about their sobriety and about how they relate to the music,” she adds. “They meet up at gigs if they’ve got anxiety, and you really see the fruits of planting your tree on the other side of celebrating what isn’t normally celebrated. I love that. It makes me so proud to see that coming together.”
Storming the charts at the age of 40 isn’t something that happens every day. Stories of self-loathing and suicidal ideation don’t usually end well either. But Rox is working on it, and they’ve already beaten the odds a few times at least. That doesn’t mean this is a happy ending – that would be too trite, too easy, too much like a fairytale. There is hope, though.
“Life is so awesome right now,” she promises. “I love every aspect of my life other than I've got a dead mum, and I'm not speaking to my dad or my brother. That's really, really hard. I have moments. Like when I turned 40, it was brutal. When I go on tour or I play [the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London], I won’t have my mum or dad there. So, I carry it with me and it's really heavy.
“Historically, it’s left me very depressed, sad and grieving,” Rox sighs. “But I’m trying to walk towards the family that I do have. There’s so much joy left to be had in the world and maybe I wouldn’t appreciate it had I not been through some of these hardships. I’ll always have negative, intrusive thoughts about work and personal life. I just try not to follow them these days.”
RESTORATION is out now. Catch RØRY on tour across the UK this March – get your tickets now.
If you’re struggling with your own mental health, don’t suffer in silence. Talk to someone you can trust – a friend, a family member, a teacher, a doctor or a counsellor. Find more information on how to look after your mental health at the Mental Health's Foundation.
And if you need help immediately, we recommend these organisations:
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