Sydney Rose has announced her new EP It Was My First Time, arriving on 16 October, alongside its very personal title track, My First Time.
And this one takes her all the way back to high school.
My First Time is about falling in love with a close friend, being led on and eventually having to deal with the heartbreak that followed. Rather than dressing any of it up, Sydney goes straight back to how confusing that experience actually felt.
“You were my friend and you hurt me,” she sings, before asking the question that sits at the heart of the song: “How could you not know what you were doing?”
Acoustic guitar gives those lyrics plenty of room before strings and piano gradually build around Sydney’s vocal, while the accompanying video takes the story behind the song and puts it on screen.
My First Time will sit alongside Plans, Proof, Track Team and him on the five-track It Was My First Time EP.
We’ve already heard Track Team, which arrived over the summer and has since passed one million streams, but the new project follows a much bigger couple of years for Sydney.
After unexpectedly being released by her previous label in 2024, she returned to releasing music independently with the voice notes EP. Then came We Hug Now.
Written at the piano, the song took off on TikTok before spreading far beyond it, eventually earning Sydney her first RIAA Gold certification and approaching 250 million global streams.
More importantly, it gave a lot more people a reason to discover the music she’d already been making for years.
Sydney grew up just outside Atlanta and started playing ukulele, piano and guitar before building an audience online. Her cover of Sleeping At Last’s Turning Page became an early breakthrough, eventually passing 67 million Spotify streams and leading to her first record deal at 18.
Her own releases followed with 2022’s You Never Met Me EP and debut album One Sided, before I Know What I Want arrived last year as her first EP with Mercury Records.
That period also took Sydney onto the BST Hyde Park stage alongside Noah Kahan, Gracie Abrams and FINNEAS, followed by a sold-out headline tour across Europe and the US and, more recently, her first Australian headline dates.
She’s currently back on the road in North America supporting Mon Rovîa, with the run continuing until 13 October – just three days before It Was My First Time arrives.
It Was My First Time tracklist
- Plans
- My First Time
- Proof
- Track Team
- him
My First Time is out now, with It Was My First Time following on 16 October.
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