RaeRae’s verdict: A Formula 1 soundtrack asked ROSÉ for speed and got emotional brake failure. “Messy” is a power ballad about treating chaos as proof of love, which is exactly the kind of terrible idea her voice can make sound reasonable for three minutes. She walks down a closed Las Vegas Strip while Brad Pitt’s fictional driver creates problems in another frame. The cars are fast. ROSÉ is the actual collision.

Release File

• Artist: ROSÉ
• Song: “Messy”
• Released: May 8, 2025
• Soundtrack: F1 The Album, track five
• Film: F1 The Movie, directed by Joseph Kosinski
• Writers: ROSÉ, Cleo Tighe, Delacey, Peter Rycroft, and Matthew James Burns
• Producers: Lostboy and Burns
• MV director: Colin Tilley
• MV editor: Vinnie Hobbs
• Colorist: Matt Osborne

The Soundtrack Showed Her the Scene First

Director Joseph Kosinski told the Associated Press that some artists were brought in and shown specific film scenes, including ROSÉ, who then created for what she saw. That makes “Messy” a commissioned storytelling response rather than a spare song with race footage attached later.

F1 The Movie follows veteran driver Sonny Hayes, played by Brad Pitt, returning to help a struggling fictional team and its younger driver Joshua Pearce, played by Damson Idris. The film also gives Sonny a romantic connection with technical director Kate McKenna, played by Kerry Condon.

“Messy” occupies the relationship wreckage around all that speed. The song does not describe tires, engines, or a podium. It describes people who keep reaching after the warning lights come on.

Chaos Becomes Her Evidence for Love

The narrator wants complication, obsession, shouting, second chances, and hearts left on the floor. If the relationship becomes completely undone, she will accept the damage as proof that it was real.

This is emotionally reckless and lyrically coherent. ROSÉ has repeatedly been drawn to love songs where pain is not an unfortunate side effect but the measurement system. Her album rosie documented jealousy, attachment, and relationships that survive in the mind after they fail in practice.

“Messy” compresses that tendency into a soundtrack-sized thesis: clean love might be safe, but disaster feels alive.

Lostboy and Burns Build a Ballad With an Engine Under It

Lostboy and Burns begin with atmospheric keys and a restrained pulse, then add drums, low-end pressure, and widening synth layers as the chorus opens. The song remains a pop ballad, but the production has forward movement suitable for a film built around velocity.

The arrangement does not imitate engine noise or paste a racing sample over the intro. Good. The connection to the film lives in acceleration and emotional stakes rather than sound-effect cosplay.

Each chorus feels larger, while the bridge pulls the relationship back toward the door. The final return arrives like somebody deciding to make the same mistake at a higher speed.

ROSÉ’s Voice Sounds Best When It Is Losing an Argument

Her tone carries a natural scrape that makes desperation audible before the lyric names it. In the quieter verses, she sounds close enough to be confessing. In the chorus, the vowel shapes stretch until obsession becomes physical strain.

She does not sing the song as a victim asking for rescue. She is the person requesting the mess. That choice makes the performance more uncomfortable and more specific.

The best moments occur where control thins but does not vanish. A perfectly clean belt would contradict the title. ROSÉ lets breath and grain remain in the frame.

The Chorus Is Huge Because the Thought Is Small

“If it’s messy, then you know it’s really love” is a simple and dangerous equation. The song repeats it until scale starts masquerading as truth.

That is how obsession works. One belief circles until the person inside it stops checking whether it makes sense. The production grows around the sentence, but the emotional trap remains narrow.

A lesser singer would turn the chorus into a generic empowerment yell. ROSÉ keeps the contradiction visible. She sounds thrilled and doomed at the same time.

Las Vegas Is the Correct City for Bad Judgment

Colin Tilley’s video places ROSÉ in casinos, a nightclub, high-rise spaces, and the Las Vegas Strip. A section of Las Vegas Boulevard was temporarily closed so she could walk through the city as if every light had been left on for her mistake.

She drinks a martini, sits above what appears to be a pile of diamonds at Omnia, leans over the city, and occupies polished rooms without looking settled in any of them. Luxury becomes another surface the relationship cannot stabilize.

Vegas sells impulse as architecture. It is where people make permanent decisions under temporary lighting. The song belongs there.

The Strip Shutdown Gives Loneliness a Ridiculous Budget

An empty Las Vegas road is an expensive visual contradiction. The city designed for crowds becomes private, leaving ROSÉ alone inside a landscape built to overstimulate.

The scale turns personal obsession into public spectacle. She is one person singing about one destructive attachment, but the frame gives her miles of neon.

This is exactly what a major soundtrack single should purchase. If a film studio is going to borrow a global star’s audience, at least close the street.

Film Footage and Music Video Keep Interrupting Each Other

Vinnie Hobbs edits ROSÉ’s Vegas material with previously unseen footage featuring Pitt, Condon, Idris, and the fictional APXGP team. Racing, romance, and emotional distance enter as fragments rather than a complete trailer.

The film clips give the lyric characters without forcing ROSÉ to act as Kate McKenna. Her performance remains separate, like an emotional narrator watching the fictional relationship make choices she recognizes.

Some soundtrack videos become promotional interruptions every time the movie appears. “Messy” works because both visual worlds share polished danger and people moving too quickly to admit what hurts.

Matt Osborne Keeps Two Productions in One Night

Colorist Matt Osborne helps match music-video material shot on the Strip with feature-film footage produced under different conditions. Deep blacks, warm skin, hard highlights, and neon color give both sources a common emotional night.

The work is technical but visible in the flow. The audience can move from ROSÉ under casino light to Brad Pitt on the track without feeling that an advertisement crashed the video.

That cohesion matters because the edit has to serve two clients: the song and the movie. Neither fully swallows the other.

The Ballad Is the Soundtrack’s Useful Wrong Turn

F1 The Album collects electronic music, hip-hop, pop, country, Afrobeat, and rock-adjacent material from a deliberately global lineup. Much of it is designed for race energy, nightlife, or triumph.

“Messy” supplies emotional weight and a slower pulse. On the tracklist, it risks feeling like the only person crying in a paddock party. Inside the film’s romantic storyline, that difference becomes the reason it exists.

A soundtrack needs more than seventeen ways to press the accelerator. Someone has to explain why the driver keeps returning after the crash.

This Is ROSÉ’s First Film Song and It Sounds Like Her

“Messy” was ROSÉ’s first original song for a film. The assignment did not require her to abandon the confessional pop identity established on rosie.

She co-wrote the track, and the central idea sits comfortably beside her solo catalog. That continuity prevents the soundtrack placement from feeling like a celebrity name rented for global reach.

Hollywood gave her a scene. She returned one of her own bad relationships, dressed for Vegas.

What Worked

• The song was written in response to film material rather than attached blindly.
• ROSÉ co-writes inside her established emotional vocabulary.
• Lostboy and Burns give the ballad acceleration without racing sound effects.
• The closed Las Vegas Strip provides scale worthy of a major soundtrack single.
• The edit joins ROSÉ’s world and the film without reducing either to a trailer.

What Needed a Dirtier Edge

The production remains very polished for a song called “Messy.” A harsher guitar, broken vocal layer, or final chorus with less controlled percussion could have allowed the recording itself to become damaged.

The lyric also treats chaos as a universal sign of love without naming one specific incident. One concrete fight would have made the obsession harder to romanticize and easier to believe.

RaeRae’s Final Verdict

“Messy” gives F1 The Movie the emotional crash its cars cannot explain. ROSÉ turns bad judgment into a stadium chorus, while Colin Tilley shuts down Las Vegas so one woman can walk through her own warning signs. The film footage brings speed. Her voice brings the reason people refuse to brake.

The relationship is a wreck. The soundtrack knew whom to call.

Sources

• ROSÉ official music video and lyricsDaily+55KTotal views80.5M
• Associated Press interview on the soundtrack and scene-based creation
• Shazam official release file
• MusicBrainz official single and soundtrack relationship
• Company 3 production credit for Colin Tilley and Matt Osborne
• Soompi Korean release and first-film-song report