By Katie Asha, Third Year, English
Ruby Roberts' music is a cocktail of melancholic dance sounds. The giddy nostalgia of Wolf Alice, theatricality of Kate Bush, and femininity of Lana Del Rey are all top-middle and base notes within her work – along with something that is uniquely hers.
She graduated from the University of Bath just last summer after balancing university, a hospitality job, and her music career all at once: a jack of all trades who now thankfully has the option to solely pursue music.
She has just finished two consecutive tours, is playing at Reading & Leeds Festival this summer, supporting Christina Aguilera on the pop icon’s only 2026 gracing of a UK stage, and in the middle of it all is currently working on a new EP set to be released soon.
Ruby answers in the middle of making the cover art for her next single, ‘Bad Girl July’. She is on one of her few days off in the middle of her hectic touring schedule (at the time of the interview, she had finished a Europe tour with Erin LeCount two days prior, and was commencing her own headline tour in two days).
In the gaps between live performance, she is working on her music in a different way: its visual representation and marketing. While making her cover art, she talks about how music and art have always had a strong relationship to her, and that marrying her music to visuals is something that happens naturally, rather than something forced: ‘I’m super visual while writing – music will always conjure up its own cinematic universe for me. Mostly I picture scenes; characters, movie scenes, places, colours, when I’m writing. They both happen at once, rather than one after the other.’
She goes on to talk about her thoughts on making music videos. Her most recent music video was for ‘I’d Do Anything’, a melancholic dance-pop song with Wolf Alice-adjacent vocals: for the music video, Ruby explains that ‘I always knew I wanted my friends to star in it and for it to have that nighttime and hedonistic feel. I loved the way it turned out – I’m so excited to make more music videos in future. I think of my songs as short films.’
‘The next song I’m releasing is called “Bad Girl July”, which is what I’m doing the artwork for today. I’ve already pictured the music video for that one; it’s gonna be very Quentin Tarantino, the female main strutting down the street in all black, there’s gonna be dogs in it; and then there’s gonna be this other character, a really whimsical ethereal girl in a field. It’s just exactly how the song feels to me.’
When asked about her relationship to making content for social media, she says that ‘I actually really enjoy taking on the challenge of marketing on social media, of figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I did music business at uni actually – I’m super interested in music marketing and music business.’ Clearly, her internet presence is working – her song ‘Trampoline’ went semi-viral seemingly overnight, with Ruby describing the experience of gaining so much rapid online attention as ‘bizarre’.
‘The songs I wrote for my first EP were more for my younger self, which I think is reflected in the music as well as the artwork.’ The coloured pencil illustrations used for the covert art, mystical imagery, and fantastical lyrics of Somersault Queen definitely reflect the sense of a home-grown and creative adolescence.
Her new music, however, is moving into a more mature landscape, both visually and sonically. ‘I think now that I’ve got [my first EP] out, I’ve felt more evolved to move on to a slightly older and more mature style.’
Another thing that’s changed lately for Ruby is the sudden and huge presence of touring. The singer talks about how her relationship to live performance has changed, explaining that ‘I did my first ever live performance a year ago to an empty room in Norwich, and I was so unbelievably nervous – I was dreading it for weeks, I had such bad stage fright. When I supported Nieve Ella in Nottingham, it was such a big step-up: again, I was really nervous for it. Now, I feel like I don’t get nervous, at least to the same physical extent – I feel like I actually really look forward to performing, and that it’s probably one of my favourite parts.’
The thing that has made live performing enjoyable for her is the sense of support and community from the crowd: ‘I feel like when you’re watching an artist perform on stage you don’t feel like they see or notice you, but at least in my experience I really do look at everyone’s faces, everyone singing along to the words, and I really lean on the support from the crowd.’
‘I was super nervous for the first show supporting Erin LeCount, but as it went on I became much more comfortable with the crowd. I also found watching Erin perform really inspiring: I love the way she moves around the stage and interacts with the crowd, and explains the meaning behind her songs. It made me genuinely excited for my headline tour.’
What can we expect from Ruby next? ‘I would love to incorporate some dance and movement into the shows. Also set design! I want to make the shows a little universe of themselves, an experience.’
With her headline tour recently finished, she is approaching playing at Reading & Leeds this summer, another significant step-up for crowd size. ‘It hasn’t hit me yet,’ she says, ‘I can’t wait to decide what I’m gonna wear, decide the choreography. I think I’m just quite used to the chaos of it – when you’re a support act, you don't have a tour bus or anything; supporting Erin [LeCount], it was just me, my day-to-day manager and my guitarist, trekking around the country via train with all of our bags.’
When asked what success at this point would mean to her, she references physical media: ‘Holding tangible forms of my music like vinyls and CDs is an amazing feeling. When I take a step back and look at all of it, it’s amazing to see how I’ve come so far in the past year. For the past few years I’ve been studying at Uni, working a hospitality job, and also balancing a music career on top of it: now I’ve been able to start solely focusing on my music, and that's a really good feeling. So I guess having music as the main thing in my life definitely feels like success to me right now.’
Ruby Roberts is someone to watch and likely won’t be hard to find this year. She has been running around the country with a guitar for the past few weeks, but during one of her precious few days off between back-to-back tours, she sat on a video call to me from her childhood bedroom, making the cover art for her upcoming single and chatting about her thoughts on making music.
Featured image: Epigram Music / Katie AshaWill you be catching Ruby at a show this year?
