Maggie Rose is a Nashville-based songwriter and powerhouse country, blues, R&B, and rock singer. In 2013, after issuing an EP under her birthname
Margaret Durante two years prior, she adopted the
Maggie Rose moniker and released her Billboard-charting debut album,
Cut to Impress. She began transitioning away from her country roots on 2018's more rock-oriented
Change the Whole Thing (2018), and again on 2021's soul, pop, folk, funk, and R&B-forward Have a Seat.
Cut from the same cloth as fiery crooners
Jana Kramer,
Miranda Lambert, and
Carrie Underwood, country singer
Maggie Rose was born
Margaret Rose Durante in 1988 in Potomac, Maryland. She took to the stage at the age of 16, performing frequently with the B Street Band, a
Bruce Springsteen cover group, before heading off to Clemson University. She left school in her sophomore year to focus on music, eventually relocating to Nashville, Tennessee on the advice of industry icon
Tommy Mottola.
Mottola helped her ink a deal with Universal Republic, which released her debut single, a 2009 cover of
Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody." She left the label the following year and signed with Emrose Records, releasing a pair of singles and an EP under her birth name before assuming the moniker
Maggie Rose for the 2012 single "I Ain't Your Mama." A debut fell-length album,
Cut to Impress, produced by
Blake Chancey,
Stephony Smith, and
James Stroud, appeared from RPM Records in the spring of 2013. The following year, she received an Emmy Award for "Get Ya Game On," a track she wrote for Comcast SportsNet's coverage of the Baltimore Ravens and a handful of other football teams.
Although she'd become identified with country music,
Rose refused to box herself in and branched out into production and collaborations with a wide range of other artists. She launched an ambitious new project in the summer of 2015, debuting a new original song in whatever style she pleased every Tuesday from her website. The project was a success with fans, revitalizing her career and resulting in the release of the 2016 double-EP The Variety Show, Vol. 1.
Rose issued the single "Body on Fire" in early 2017 in anticipation of the release of her Dreams > Dollars EP, which arrived in May of that year. 2018 saw the arrival of her acclaimed sophomore long-player
Change the Whole Thing. Recorded live in the studio with no overdubs, the powerful set added elements of soul, roots, blues, country, and gospel to her already robust country-pop sound.
Rose headed to the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with producer
Ben Tanner of
Alabama Shakes to record her third full-length effort, 2021's Have a Seat. ~ James Christopher Monger