Alessi Rose’s “First Original Thought” Video Is The Ultimate Madonna Tribute

In Elite Daily’s series Early Influences, musicians reflect on the songs and albums that left a lasting impression on them in their formative years. Here, singer Alessi Rose talks about how Madonna inspired her latest single, and her deep love of Kate Bush and Lorde.

Alessi Rose is hung up on Madonna. The 22-year-old singer’s new music video “First Original Thought” is dedicated to her longtime love for her favorite pop star. You’d have to be a Madonna superfan to clock all the references Rose has hidden in the disco-tinged track — but thankfully, if you’re not the most well-versed in Madge lore, Rose is willing to point out the Easter eggs for you.

Rose grew up in Derby, England, idolizing Madonna from her youth. She became a pop star in her own right in 2024 after releasing her first EP Rumination as Ritual, and hasn’t slowed down since. Rose recently toured with Dua Lipa, and is currently on the road with Tate McRae for the Miss Possessive Tour. In the midst of her live shows, she’s preparing to release a deluxe version of her 2025 EP Voyeur on Nov. 7. “First Original Thought” is the first taste of what Rose describes as this “super dramatic, theatrical” addendum to the EP.

When Rose wrote “First Original Thought” about five months before its Sept. 26 release, she was completely enveloped in the world of Madonna. “I was solely listening to older music at that time, the music I grew up with,” she says. She was basically “shut off” from any currently trending music when crafting her single’s retro pop sound. “I've always been a Madonna stan, and I really wanted something that feels like you’re in a New York club in the '80s, and people just have their hands in the air.”

She then crafted the song’s video to be the ultimate tribute to Madonna. It’s a full-circle moment for Rose, who has shared home videos of herself as a child dancing to the 2005 disco bop “Hung Up.” “There are a lot of Easter eggs of old Madonna choreography in there. There's the ‘Hung Up’ wall choreo, and there's some moves taken from her VMAs ‘Vogue’ performance where she’s dressed as Marie Antoinette,” Rose says. “We have the ‘boy toy’ belt hidden in someone's bag.”

While the “Material Girl” singer may be the core inspiration for the video, she isn’t the only iconic hitmaker who has inspired Rose throughout her music career. Below, the pop star details discovering Madonna, falling in love with Kate Bush lyrics, and the personal connection she feels with Lorde.

Madonna

Rose can hardly recall a time when Madonna wasn’t a presence in her life. “I have an uncle who was and still is the biggest Madonna superfan. He's been to every single tour, has all the merch,” Rose says. “My mom and him are super close and really bonded over that when I was a kid. So I was just brought into it.”

As Rose grew in adolescence, she gained a particular affinity for Madonna’s ‘80s singles. “I loved the ‘Borderline’ video. That's always a big favorite. But I the one I was super into was ‘Into the Groove,’” Rose says. “When someone put that on, I was gone. And still to this day, if ‘Into The Groove’ comes on, I'm losing it.”

Now as a pop star in her own right, Rose has a deep respect for Madonna’s “commanding visual identity,” and draws inspiration from her “don’t-give-a-f*ck personality.” “I always think about if Madonna was coming up today, how she would've been,” Rose says. “She's definitely someone who keeps me going when sh*t gets tough.”

Kate Bush

Rose also became a young Kate Bush fan thanks to her family, crediting the enigmatic English songstress with first inspiring her to sing. “My parents would play a song in the car when I was young and be like, ‘Go ahead, sing this.’ My mom did that with ‘This Woman’s Work’ but I didn’t know the words,” Rose recalls. “I finally sang it one day when I was 7 or 8, and I cried. I didn’t even know why. Like, I’m a child; what have I experienced that makes me feel so deeply about ‘This Woman’s Work’? It was just the purest form of music — Kate Bush brings it out of you before you can even understand it.”

While Rose has been a tried-and-true fan of Bush since her childhood, many other members of her generation have only recently discovered her when “Running Up That Hill” went viral in 2022 after being used as a key plot point in Stranger Things. Rose only feels positively about the unexpected mainstream success for her hero.

“I was so here for that. Because she’s an icon, but she's not someone who's consistently touring. So I was just glad that she got immortalized somewhere where the younger generations got familiar with her,” Rose says. “And I can’t be mad, because I watched the series, and when that song came on and I was like, ‘Oh, they've done it well. They've done it really well.’”

Lorde

It was Rose’s own personal connection to Lorde’s music that made her a superfan. She’s credited the singer’s 2013 anthem “Ribs” as the song that made her want to start writing her own music. Rose first heard the song in secondary school, and immediately related to the idea of a small-town girl with big dreams.

“I am from a very small town in Derby and always grew up romanticizing a life in a big city. I was so obsessed with LA, but it was a world away,” Rose says. “I grew up watching TV shows where people are having crazy parties with all their friends, and my life was just not like that. Our parties were just sitting in someone's living room with a red cup and not talking. So that song really hit me. It has this deep, nostalgic sadness that makes you want to run away and hide. I really felt for Lorde.”

Though Pure Heroine holds a special place in Rose’s heart, her all-time favorite Lorde album is Melodrama. But Lorde’s 2025 release Virgin has also been growing on her quickly. “My favorite track is ‘Favorite Daughter.’ When that came out, I was like, this is it,” Rose says. “Growing up with her and then hearing that song, it's so admirable that she's made a topic that is actually kind of niche into this hit that everyone's somehow applying to themselves. She’s genius.”