NME’s latest star of The Cover, Rose Gray, has created an exclusive playlist to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The rising pop star is on this week’s (December 8) edition of The Cover, a manifestation of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read Rose Gray’s profile here, written by Lucy Ford and featuring photography by Lo Harley.
Alongside her The Cover story, Gray has curated an exclusive playlist, titled ‘UK Gems’. The selection includes cuts from British acts, including Texas, Underworld, Opus III, Imogen Heap and Sneaker Pimps, among others. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
At the beginning of 2025, Rose Gray only had three shows booked in her diary. But, after the release of her debut album, ‘Louder, Please’ – a glittering gem of dance-pop euphoria – things picked up speed, and fast. “I’ve now done 79 shows,” she tells NME over Zoom from a hotel room in Mexico City. “It has all unfolded quite quickly.”
Gray’s rise has continued throughout the year – just last week, she was named to the 2026 BRITs Critics’ Choice shortlist, and ‘Louder, Please’ to NME’s list of the best albums of 2025. A deluxe edition of ‘Louder, Please’, meanwhile, dropped in October, giving the record a new lease of life. “Already having ‘Louder, Please’ [means] I didn’t feel that much pressure – It was just very fun,” she says. “There was a lot of experimenting. Some of the songs on the deluxe are really alternative and weird, and it’s fun to explore that part of my artistry.”
Her mammoth 12 months are the culmination of years of hard work and yearning for times like these. “For years, people would always say to me, ‘Why are you not bigger?’ Nobody should ever say that to anybody,” she says, laughing now, though it obviously hit a sore spot at the time. “It sounds very airy fairy, but last year I did a retreat, and I practised this detachment to the idea of success, because I’d spent so long wanting it. I don’t know if it was all just perfect timing, but the moment I did that, I actually started receiving so much more.”
Read Rose Gray’s full Cover story here and find out who else has been on The Cover here.