CiTR

Where love has guided her songwriting, music has followed Dey Rose across the globe from her birthplace in Baguio City, Pampanga in the Philippines, to Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada where she now lives. The Filipino-Canadian singer-songwriter is a multi-talented force of music who has explored both the creative side of music writing and performance, and the technical side of audio engineering and sound production. Her influences range from 1980s rock to soul, blues, and R&B.

As a child, her father introduced her to music and her uncle gave her piano lessons while her mother was abroad working as a nurse. She played the piano at church until she was drawn to playing guitar and writing songs. “Over time,” she said, “making music with my dad for fun became something that I am passionate about and something that I wanted to pursue.”

Growing up, she was heavily influenced by 1980s rock music and ballads, and reveals she was named after Axl Rose of Guns n Roses. “They are definitely one of my huge influences as well as Poison, Scorpions, The Cure, Bon Jovi, Dire Straits, Jewel, Dido, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, and many more.”

In 2006, when Rose’s mother, who had by then been working in Canada, was able to bring her together with her brother and father to Canada, she discovered jazz, soul, blues, R&B, country, and more genres. Among her later influences, Rose counts the voices of Billie Eilish, July Talk, Nina Simone, Etta James, and Ella Fitzgerald among many other powerful female vocalists. “I’ve been told that I sound like a combination of Lana Del Rey, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Lorde” she said, “with a bit of old soul and even a bit of Coritha, Sampaguita, and Lolita Carbon.”

Upon first moving to Canada, Dey Rose started writing songs as an outlet for the emotions she felt in her new home. “Being an immigrant and feeling like an alien in the new country, I was feeling a lot of emotions trying to adjust with my new life…. I started to write love songs being the teenager that I was who was beginning to discover the romantic world.”

Rose studied music theory and took opera voice lessons, as part of her post-secondary studies, eventually switching to the other side of music where she learned Audio Engineering, Music Production, and Live Sound Technician/Mixing. Today, she works full time as an audio engineer, focusing on live sound and A/V (audio/visual).

Her first brush with becoming a recording artist came in December, 2018, when a friend invited her to sing a song or two at an open mic event, which turned out to be the Wishcovery Season 2 audition. She was accepted into the next rounds in Los Angeles, California, and won as the USA/North America representative. She was sent to Manila to compete against seven other grand finalists in The Singer and the Song competition where each competitor had to perform an original, unreleased song that was written by a composer coach. Rose was paired with Ms. Odette Quesada, and performed the song “Nasa Yo” at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.