Potential

Album: 5 Songs For Healing (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • ROSIE became a TikTok sensation when her breakup tune "Never The 1" went viral on the social media platform in 2020. While her heartache made for good music, the pop singer's run of bad luck in relationships made her question herself, which became a talking point during a therapy session. Her therapist explained the problem: She was falling in love with someone's potential instead of who they actually were - a revelation that inspired another breakup song: "Potential."

    "Big brain blow-up moment, and big healing moment because from that moment on, whenever I've met someone, whether it's platonically, romantically, career-wise, no matter what it is, I ask, 'What do I see in them and is it who they are now or is it who I hope they'll become?'" ROSIE told the Songfacts Podcast in 2023. "Because that's not fair to them if that's what I see in them. That's not fair to me, that's not fair to anyone involved. That's how I got that line, 'When I fell, I thought you were special, but I fell for your potential.'"
  • ROSIE doesn't entirely place the blame on her ex in the song and realizes her own expectations contributed to the split. "In a weird way, it's me taking accountability," she explained. "It's like, 'I thought you were special. I fell for your potential.' That's another really big part of healing - it's not pointing a finger and not blaming."
  • This is a single from ROSIE's second EP, 5 Songs For Healing. Her first EP, 20mg Of Happiness, found her working through the five stages of grief in the aftermath of a bad breakup. While she was creating her next EP, she stood at the end of the road to recovery and wondered what she was supposed to do next. The songs pointed her in the right direction.

    "It started to become so clear that every single one of these songs was about my healing journey," she told Songfacts. "Then it became even clearer to me that because the whole world went through all these losses [amid the pandemic], we're all on a healing journey."

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