For singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Claire Rosinkranz, music has always been a garden — a place where roots intertwine with weeds, blooms emerge alongside decay, and cycles of growth and rest shape every new season. The platinum-certified artist’s sophomore album, ‘My Lover‘, reflects that philosophy, exploring vulnerability, resilience, and self-discovery through lush melodies and intimate storytelling.
Raised in a household steeped in music — her Icelandic father a classically trained composer and violinist who now produces her records, one grandmother an opera singer, the other a music educator, and her mother also a musician — Rosinkranz’s creativity was cultivated from birth. Classical music, ballet, and family collaborations shaped her ear, her instincts, and her love of expression, grounding her artistry in both precision and freedom.
Her rise to global recognition began in 2020 with the viral success of “Backyard Boy,” and the following years have been a period of deliberate growth and reflection. At 19, a serious health crisis forced her to pause and confront her own limits, an experience she later channels into the poignant track “Chronic.” Now, stepping into a new chapter, she’s preparing to bring ‘My Lover’ to the stage as a supporting act on Alex Warren’s tour across Europe, ready to share her songs in a live context where each performance can bloom in its own unique way.
In conversation with Schön!, she opens up about the inspiration behind her immersive visuals, the lessons of patience and growth from her own life and her health journey, and what it feels like to be budding again in both life and music.
Growing up in such a musical family, how did that environment shape your artistry and confidence in trusting your instincts?
Music has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My dad was always playing violin around the house, my mom played piano, one of my grandmas was an opera singer, and the other was involved in music too, so it all felt really natural. For a long time, I didn’t even think about music as a career because it was just everyday life. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t really think about it in that way. I was also dancing growing up, and being surrounded by classical music definitely shaped my ear and my desire to get into music.
I started singing really young, and then writing. That’s still my favourite part of the process. It feels so good to get my thoughts out, whether I’m journaling or writing a song. Being able to combine both is really special. I think people listen to music to feel understood, and it’s even more powerful when I can write my own songs and get to the heart of what I’m going through.
My dad started bringing me into the studio at a young age because I naturally gravitated toward writing. He’d have me write songs for things like commercials, and I had so much fun with it. Eventually, I wanted to start producing my own music too. He has a classical background — he was a violinist, conducted when he was younger, and later moved into film scoring and composing — so I was really lucky to have that environment. At one point, he even told my mom he wanted to dedicate a year to helping me with my music because he could tell how passionate I was. Now, years later, we’re still making music together.
What’s been really important is our dynamic — he’s always given me space to create whatever I want. He focuses so much on production that I don’t feel self-conscious about the lyrics or the meaning behind them. I can bring him something really personal, and he just responds to the music itself. I remember playing him a song I had just written, something pretty intimate, and I was a little unsure about sharing it. But he just listened and said, “That’s really cool.” That kind of response makes it so much easier to trust my instincts and keep creating.
Yeah, he’s probably just used to it at this point. I mean, the album is called ‘My Lover’. There are going to be vulnerable moments.
Exactly. He just loves the music so much that it doesn’t really matter. If he started micromanaging at all, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. We both care about the music enough to respect each other’s space.
You have ties to Iceland, right?
Yeah. My dad was born there and raised in Sweden, but we still have property there through my grandma, his mom, who was an opera singer. My grandpa — my dad’s dad — passed away when my dad was five, but he was the director of the first opera house in Iceland. That’s how my grandparents met, at the opera house, and it’s still around. We go there sometimes. He looks exactly like my grandpa, who I never met, and there’s a statue of him at the opera house. I’d love to build a studio out there someday. We still have so much family in Iceland. I’m technically half Icelandic, but my dad didn’t teach us the language growing up, he was worried we’d be misunderstood, so my sisters and I never learned it.
You mentioned a perfume store that you referenced when discussing ‘Bleeding Love’. Was it Fischersund?
Oh my gosh, yes! That’s the place. I love that you’ve been there. It’s very descriptive and sensory, and of course, you’re smelling everything too. The clip at the beginning of the song is from the woman who was guiding us through the experience. It was her interpretation of one of the poems that really resonated with me. All of the poems are immersive; they pull you into a world. I already loved where they took me, but the way she described it and her energy really stood out. I loved how she spoke about everything. I recorded it, and my dad recorded it too. We both immediately wanted to make something out of it.
I think it came pretty naturally because I genuinely connected to it. When you feel something strongly, writing becomes easy — it just flows. It’s much harder when you try to force it. At the beginning of the song, there’s that scene where she’s at a party, steps out onto a balcony, and she’s hot and flushed, smelling the earth and the air. It feels euphoric but also a little lonely. I’ve experienced moments like that, so it felt very real. When something makes you feel that way, it’s easy to write from it — it just comes out. That kind of immersive experience really inspired me.
Are visuals something you think about while songwriting, or is that something you come up with after the fact?
Both. I think a big part of writing the album came at some point — I don’t even know exactly when it got sparked in my mind — but the garden theme was something I always wanted once it appeared. It might have been a long time ago. I remember watching a ballet, and there were dancers in white — white pancake tutus, white leotards — and others in black, black tutus and leotards. They were dancing together, and it was clear that the white represented life and goodness, and the black represented darkness.
Watching it made me realize that when you have both, it can still be beautiful. Even darkness can be beautiful when there’s still life within it. You can’t just have light; darkness on its own isn’t beautiful, but when there’s contrast, when redemption or life is coming through it, it becomes meaningful. It shows that whatever happens in the darkness can still be part of something beautiful.
That idea parallels the garden. I always think about the life cycle of a plant or a flower. You plant it, it blooms, reaches its fullest form, then it wilts, dies, and returns to the ground. You can’t skip the grieving, the wilting, or the dying, but that’s not the end. It becomes nourishment for what comes next. There’s always new life. It’s like a dance — there’s this ebb and flow between life and death. The garden is always doing that. There’s growth, decay, blooming, watering, roots, and weeds. All of it exists together and works together, and it’s really beautiful.
When I was making the album, I was just present with what I was experiencing. I was going through normal life situations, and while they’re all different, the thing tying them together is me. I started thinking about what could parallel all of that, and the garden felt right. My life is a place where there’s growth and loss, blooming and decay, roots and weeds. Even the hardest experiences — things that felt awful in the moment — I had to be present with them and go through them. Now I feel like I’m living on the other side of that. The garden became this thread throughout the album. Any song can be part of it.
There’s a nice juxtaposition throughout the album. You have “My Lover”, which is a really beautiful track about love, but there are also songs about your chronic illness — something you were struggling with that prevented you from doing what you wanted to do. How did that experience teach you about growth not being linear? Plants and flowers don’t grow in a straight line either — they need different amounts of sunlight and water at different times. It’s an interesting way to look at it.
Even before I went through that crash, I remember thinking, “Every time you go through something hard, you end up being thankful for it.” Even if it really sucked in the moment, I’d come out the other side thinking, “I never want to go through that again, but I did learn a lot.” I didn’t regret the experience, even if I wouldn’t choose it again. I remember telling myself that the next time something hard happened, I’d try to hold onto that mindset.
I had never been through something as intense as that. It became a matter of life and death, and that’s a much harder place to say, “This is fine.” I didn’t know if I’d make it through, because it was my health. In a way, I experienced the fullness of what it feels like to almost die, and now I’m on the other side of it. During that time, I always say this: sometimes doing nothing is the most productive thing you can do. I wasn’t really “doing nothing” — my body was working hard to keep me alive — but externally, I was still. And I think we’re so quick to label that as lazy or unproductive.
I had so much time to heal, and eventually to think. I had space to reflect, to listen to myself, to be gentle with myself. There’s so much we can learn in stillness, but we rarely allow it. It sounds extreme to say, “Do nothing for a week,” but most people feel like they couldn’t do that. Still, there’s so much our bodies and our inner selves want to teach us, and we don’t give ourselves the space to hear it. We’re always telling ourselves we have to be doing something to be productive. I’ve realized that’s not really true. Even when I was younger, I’d spend time just sitting and reflecting — climbing a tree, being completely unstimulated — and I learned so much in those moments. I felt the most connected to myself. That’s something I’m trying to get back to in my music — reconnecting with that childlike state. There’s so much wonder there, and when you’re in that place, you don’t feel like you have to go out and chase everything. It feels like everything you need is already right there.
I love that idea of childlike wonder. It’s something I hear a lot when I interview actors. They talk about how acting used to feel like play. It wasn’t tied to self-worth or success. It was just something you did to get out of your head and just be.
I think about that a lot. When I made “Backyard Boy,” which became my first big success, I was in a completely different mindset than I’ve been in at other points in the industry. At that time, I just loved it. I knew it was what I wanted to do forever because I loved it so much. I didn’t have an audience or validation motivating me, but I was the most motivated I’ve ever been. It felt like what I was made to do — to just create. As you go through the industry, you start to notice shifts. Sometimes things are going really well, and other times people feel more distant. When you experience success, it becomes easy to let your motivation come from your audience or external validation.
But I realized I was at my best when I wasn’t fueled by any of that. I was just still, doing what I loved, giving myself space to be bored, to be a kid. I feel like I’m getting back to that place now, and that’s been a really meaningful journey.
I wanted to ask about writing “Chronic.” You mentioned you weren’t making much music while you were really ill. Was writing that song part of processing the experience later on?
I definitely couldn’t write when I was really sick. I wasn’t doing anything, but I still deal with it. Chronic illness is ongoing, and I’m still trying to understand what’s going on with my body. There are times when I feel remnants of that intense crash — episodes where I feel really fatigued or experience similar symptoms, just on a smaller scale. It might only last a day, but it’s still intense. And it can feel discouraging when you think you’re doing better, and then it comes back. It feels relentless. I remember being in one of those moments — really fatigued and frustrated — and thinking, “I need to finish something.” It’s such a hard feeling to explain. You can say you’re tired, but it’s not that kind of tired.
Yeah, it’s not like, “just sleep more.”
Exactly. It’s so heavy. When your body feels that way, you don’t even have the energy to work toward getting better. I sat down at the piano and thought, “I need to feel understood,” and I started writing. That song really does make me feel understood. When I listen to it, I think, “Yeah, that’s what it feels like.” When I’ve shared it with friends who also have chronic illness, it’s resonated with them too. That makes me feel like I did a good job. Being able to articulate emotions is really powerful, and it’s also really hard. I think that’s why music helps so much because feelings can’t always be expressed through words alone. Having melody and sound alongside the lyrics lets you get closer to what you’re actually feeling.
You haven’t toured this album yet, but are there any songs you think will take on a new meaning or life when performed live? Playing in front of a different audience every night — who all interpret the songs in their own way — can really change things. Are there any tracks you feel will evolve like that?
I played a couple on the Maroon 5 tour, and it was interesting to see how they translated live. I feel like “Chronic” actually connected the most. Those kinds of songs are really fun live because they don’t have to stick exactly to the record. The musicians can play with them, and it feels like we can move with the music instead of staying in a fixed version of it. There’s something really powerful about that one.
I’m also excited to play “My Lover.” I haven’t performed it yet, but it’s a song I really want to sing on stage. In some ways, I feel like we could have produced it more or added more to it, but I think the live performance will bring out everything it’s meant to be. It’ll feel complete in that setting.
And lastly, talking about the garden cycle — what part of that cycle do you feel like you’re in right now?
I feel like I’m budding again. My cycles change a lot — sometimes quickly, sometimes it feels like a long process. Right now, I feel like a small sprout. It feels like a new chapter, a new season in my life. I can tell I’m in a learning phase again. Certain thoughts keep coming back, and I find myself questioning things — what I believe, how I think, how I see things. There’s a lot of reflection happening. It feels like I’m just starting to push through the soil again, slowly growing into whatever comes next.
‘My Lover’ is out now.
photography. Kaitlin Edwards
interview. Kelsey Barnes
