All Deception Crumbles”: Firerose Turns Survival Into “Phoenix”
“All deception crumbles / Under the weight of truth in time.” Among the words in Firerose’s new single “Phoenix,” that lyric remains especially close to the singer-songwriter. She describes singing it as a visceral experience, a recurring confrontation with the distance between what can appear overwhelmingly powerful in a moment and what ultimately survives it.
“Lies can be very loud and overwhelming, especially when they’re being told with a huge machine behind them,” Firerose says. “But I do profoundly believe that ultimately, truth just is, and it always outlasts.” That conviction supplies one of the foundations of “Phoenix,” a song created during a period when its author had yet to experience the freedom she was writing about.
Firerose wrote the track during one of the most difficult chapters of her life, envisioning what it might feel like to eventually emerge from it. The title’s image of rebirth is carried through the central refrain, “I will rise / Out of these flames.” Firerose conceived the song with survivors in mind, particularly people who have experienced abuse, while framing its message broadly enough to encompass different forms of trauma.
The distinction between aspiration and hindsight matters. “Phoenix” was written before the singer had fully reached the other side of the experience it addresses. The confidence of the refrain therefore originated as an act of imagination, projecting forward toward a future that remained uncertain. Its arrival now allows the song to occupy both moments at once.
Director Chris Applebaum takes a similarly direct approach in the accompanying official video. Black-gloved hands surround Firerose in close quarters, violating her personal space in sequences designed to evoke oppression. Those scenes give way to open air and warm sunlight, where the physical restriction disappears.
Photo credit: Chris Applebaum
Applebaum describes the video as a confrontation between darkness and light, despair and hope, destruction and rebirth. The director supplied the gloved hands himself, placing him physically inside the metaphor he devised. Firerose and Applebaum later worked together as editors on the finished video.
Their partnership began when Applebaum encountered Firerose’s music and public discussions of her experiences, then contacted her on Instagram. After hearing “Phoenix” for the first time while driving down the 101, he says images for the video arrived almost fully formed. It was a particularly immediate response from a director whose body of work includes some of the most recognizable mainstream music videos of the past three decades.
Applebaum’s credits range from Rihanna’s MTV Video of the Year-winning “Umbrella” to Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.,” Demi Lovato’s “Heart Attack,” Selena Gomez & The Scene’s “Who Says,” Britney Spears’ “Overprotected” and Semisonic’s “Closing Time.” Firerose had grown up watching his work, making their eventual friendship and collaboration an unexpected part of her own creative renewal.
That renewal will continue beyond “Phoenix.” The song is the first single from a forthcoming Firerose album currently expected in early 2027. It arrives alongside her ongoing survivor advocacy and her No One Asked Her podcast, where discussions of healing, faith, culture and reclaiming one’s voice have provided a parallel outlet. “Phoenix” brings those threads into the recording studio, allowing one carefully chosen line about truth to carry the weight of a much larger story.
