Following her widely praised debut album Bare, Rosie Carney returns with “dad” the first single off her new LP released in May 2022, i wanna feel happy. Born from the anxiety of pandemic-amplified social media pressures, i wanna feel happy explores Carney’s personal mental health struggles against the backdrop of navigating a musical career in 2022. 

In the three years since Bare, which NPR described as capturing “the weary grace of a survivor who’s located the source of her strength”, Carney has kept busy, raising her profile with select projects and collaborations, accumulating over 200 million streams along the way. Her 2020 EP i dreamed i was the night, was co-produced with Thomas Bartlett, known for his Oscar and Grammy-nominated work with Sufjan Stevens and Florence & The Machine. 

In spring 2021, Amazon’s; Modern Love approached Carney to write and record a song for season two of the hit series. The resulting single, “Perfect Perfect” was featured on the show and included on the soundtrack. Later in 2021, Carney worked directly with Sky TV to re-record her version of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” to fit an episode of A Discovery of Witches. Her songs have also been featured in documentaries such as Ireland’s award-winning KATIE and American network television including CBS’s This Is Us and CW’s Legacies. 

Carney was born in Hampshire, England and at 10 years old moved to Donegal on the northwest coast of Ireland. She was inspired by the rugged and picturesque landscapes of her new home and began writing music on piano. At 15 she left school in Donegal to showcase her work in New York and Los Angeles and was signed to a major label shortly thereafter. In 2016 she received widespread attention with a performance on Ireland’s leading live music TV series Other Voices. That same year she played London’s Bushstock, the first of many high-profile festival billings including Latitude in the U.K., Electric Picnic in Ireland, Seven Layers in Amsterdam and SXSW in Austin. 

Carney’s rise was almost derailed, as her later teen years were largely spent grappling with her mental health in the wake of personal trauma, an eating disorder and depression. Simultaneously, she struggled to assert herself creatively in a large commercial system, facing pressure to co-write and even change her name—before leaving the major label system altogether. Throughout it all, the one constant has been her songwriting, which is both cathartic and empowering.