Liz Rose is an extremely talented songwriter that is beloved by many people in Nashville. Last issue’s main feature Lori McKenna had nothing but sweet things to say about her, citing her ability to spill out lyrics faster than she could even write them down. Rose’s list of accomplishments range from owning her own publishing company with a roster of eight writers, a Grammy for Best Country Song (shared with Taylor Swift for “White Horse”), and cuts on albums for the likes of Little Big Town and others.
The Texas born writer got her start in the industry almost by accident. She moved to Nashville with an ex-husband who worked for labels in town, and “just met some people and started working.” Her working in the industry led her to the field of publishing and then into co-writing songs. When it comes to co-writing, her process mainly focuses on lyrics, as she doesn’t know how to play an instrument. “As soon as somebody starts playing something, words just come out,” she said. “A lot of times it’s good to get people talking, to get a story and know what you’re talking about. A lot of times if I can get somebody talking, I’ll spend thirty minutes writing down whatever they’re saying and get the high points and put the song together like that.”
One of her first writing partners was a young teenager with blonde curly hair and a goal of making it as a country artist. Taylor Swift had her own ideas and Rose helped her with many of the songs for her first two albums. “Taylor had all her words,” Rose said. “She would just start playing and rambling and talking and I would just help her put it together and make sense of it.” The partnership led to accomplishments like Grammys and country awards, no doubt a great feat in the industry.
Rose & Swift accepting the Grammy for Best Country Song for "White Horse" in 2010.
Once the world knew of Rose’s relationship with Swift, the phone was ringing off the hook from parents wanting to get a writing session for their daughters. “All the time. I got inundated with thirteen year olds for awhile, and still do. I still get people calling in, ‘I’ve got a fifteen year old daughter.’ I’ve always told them there’s no fairy dust here. There’s no magic here. Those are Taylor’s songs. I helped her get them out. I helped her write them. I just supported that and didn’t try to change her. I didn’t write sixteen year old songs. Taylor wrote those songs, and I helped her get out what she wanted to say.”
In her new home of songwriting, Rose took on another task: creating her own publishing company. Liz Rose Music has a roster of eight writers including Emily Shackleton, Chuck Wicks, and others, and was started out of “self preservation.” When it came time for her to look for a new deal, the ones she was being offered from other companies didn’t quite fit. “So I got my son, and we started a company together. From there we started just going to pitch my stuff, and then we signed Emily and the next thing you know we have eight writers. But it was never a grand master plan.”
In addition to co-writing with writers on her own roster, Rose also has a great bond with other writers in the genre. McKenna, who is based out of Massachusetts but stays with Rose on her trips to Nashville, and Hillary Lindsey, whose writing credits range from Lady Antebellum and Carrie Underwood to Miley Cyrus and the cast of Nashville, are two frequent co-writers. The three of them call themselves the “Love Junkies,” and some recent collaborations ended up on Little Big Town’s latest album, Painkiller. Many fans and critics have picked out “Girl Crush” as a favorite on the album, and it’s a song that Rose wasn’t thrilled about writing at first. “We got up one morning and were making coffee and Lori says ‘I’ve got an idea for today! I’ve got this idea for a song. Girl crush!’ and I just kind of went ‘No, we’re not writing ‘girl crush,’’” Rose said. “‘Yeah, it will be really cool!’ [McKenna replied.]” Once Lindsey heard the idea and got excited about it, Rose joined in. “Hillary just started playing and singing the chorus, and it fell out. It was really fun, having to be careful and walk the line of making sure it was clear what it was about.”
Rose was one of the (many) featured writers at the Girls of Fall event a few weeks ago at the Sutler - you can check out the review of that in the Industry section! Though Rose doesn’t see the event changing the state of the music industry or amount of females on the charts, she’s happy with how the event portrays the community of writers in Nashville. “The girls do it for other girls. It’s a great night of mentorship. You look at all those girls that showed up - what a great night of mentorship for them. So to me that’s what’s important about it. The comradery, the mentorship, and just the night of girls that are trying to do it, that are in school or just come to town or been here for five years - for them to stand there and watch how we all put our arms around each other and support each other, that’s what’s important.”
The night featured a great lineup of talented writers - all of whom know their own style and what makes them unique. That’s what Rose says will help female artists in the long run.
“Girls are coming back,” she said. “They have to be those girls that know who they are. Like RaeLynn. Like Maddie & Tae. These females that know who they are. The problem was we got a lot of females that wanted to be Taylor [Swift], and there’s only one Taylor. They haven’t given a chance to a lot of females that could be stars because they’re so caught up in the boy thing, and the boy thing is so easy and it always has been. It’s good, it’s just time to let some females [back in]. I think that’s all about songs.” Artists like Kacey Musgraves have proven that being yourself and working hard can really get you far. “[Kacey] knows who she is, and that makes a difference. We get so caught up in radio. The labels they talk about radio and selling records, but for an artist it is about radio and selling records, but it’s also about a fanbase. And Kacey has proven that you can win awards with a fanbase. You just get out there and get on a bus and go to work.”
At the end of the day she’s optimistic about women getting back on the country charts, saying “I just think it’s just really easier for guys right now. I think that’s what the public wants, I think that’s what people want. I think that we’ll look up in the next year and have another crop like the Dixie Chicks and when Reba and Martina [were so big]. I think it’s just a phase.”
When it comes to female songwriters, she said it’s also getting better. “It is this year. It finally is. We watched it build for the last three years back up. Two years ago, three years ago there was only one female that got on the BMI stage - one or two. It’s getting better. We said it three years ago, we need the girls back on the stage. It’s happening, and it’s because [they just] stepped up their game.”
Besides performing at these writers rounds around town every so often (something she doesn’t particularly enjoy - “Once I get started it’s fun. It’s the stress of actually doing it once I say I’m going to do it [that’s the worst].”), Rose has taken on a couple other projects. She is currently in the process of recording her own album, and said “It’s going good! I’ve done three songs and sang vocals on two of them. When I got the vocal [comp] back I said ‘I don’t hate it!’ [laughs]. To me that’s more than I could have ever dreamed, so it’s fun because I wrote them and tried not to get too close to them when I wrote them, but when you hear the music going down and do a vocal that you really want people to hear, they really hit me differently.” Despite the fact she was pleasantly surprised, she doesn’t have any plans to do anything with the album as of now, saying she’s just doing it to say she did.
Castilleja is located in Edgehill Village in Nashville, TN.
As if owning her own company and creating an album weren’t enough
to keep her busy, Rose recently opened a shop in Edgehill village
in Nashville called Castilleja. The shop was always a dream of her’s, something that she saw Nashville was lacking and could really use. “I grew up in the dime store business, I grew up working in them. I like to shop. I like to buy things. I like to go into stores and if I see something I love I don’t go ‘where’s this going to go in my house?’ I go ‘I gotta have that, and I’ll figure it out later.’ That grows into people coming into my house and going ‘oh, I love that!’ and [I say,] ‘oh you want it?’” Her creativity and inspiration from stores in Texas blossomed into Castilleja, which she runs with the help of her daughter - another family business.
Despite the multitude of projects and accomplishments in the music business, it’s easy to tell that Rose is perhaps most proud of her family. When asked about her biggest accomplishment she said, “Being able to feed my kids doing this. Supporting my kids. I mean of course you’d say your Grammy, and that’s awesome - it is really, really awesome - but to look up and say that I was able to some how by a miracle support my kids and still be able to make a living doing this is probably a pretty big one for me.”
This article originally appeared in the second issue of Songbird magazine.