If modern dating is a job market, Taylah Rose is officially accepting applications. The Sydney singer-songwriter turns her chronically single status into sleek, self-assured R&B-pop on Boyfriend Material, the title track from her forthcoming debut EP.
Co-written with Australian producer and multi-instrumentalist EMEREE after their first Zoom conversation, the single pairs soulful drums and a killer bassline with the playful confidence of an Ariana Grande deep cut.
Backed by a tongue-in-cheek recruitment campaign and growing momentum following her live debut supporting Kita Alexander, Taylah joins FM for 10Q to talk songwriting, co-production, queer and straight dating parallels, and what actually qualifies someone as boyfriend material.
Boyfriend Material felt like a real step forward in letting myself be seen in the music. It feels much more like I’m saying exactly what I think and what I want.
Q1. Boyfriend Material started from a conversation about queer and straight dating. What made you realise the same frustrations were showing up across both experiences?
I think I realised pretty quickly that the frustrations were universal. I made the song with EMEREE, and it was actually our first session together. As an icebreaker, we dove straight into talking about our love lives and realised we were both just so fed up with men! EMEREE also mentioned that sometimes it’s not just men — although mostly, haha — and that she’d experienced the same thing in queer dating.
The dating pool can feel pretty unappealing right now, and it’s frustrating when you put yourself out there only to get these half-hearted attempts at connection. Like, I don’t want to give you my Snapchat — I want you to call me, talk to me on the phone, or ask me to meet you for coffee. How hard is it to try? Even though we were coming from different dating experiences, we were both met with the same lack of effort and intention.
Q2. The song draws a pretty clear line around the bare minimum: consistency, communication and actually showing up. Did writing it change what you personally consider non-negotiable in dating?
I think being chronically single for a while now has definitely made me more particular. You watch your friends’ relationships fail, or situationships fizzle out time and time again, and I think writing the song really reinforced things I’d already been feeling for a long time.
One of my biggest non-negotiables is that I don’t want someone who’s too afraid or emotionally unavailable to actually call it what it is. If we’re in a relationship, we’re in a relationship. We’re not just “hanging out” — we’re going on dates, and I’m your girlfriend.
I want someone who is thoughtful, present and kind, who genuinely wants to get to know me, meet my friends and take the risk of putting themselves out there. Beyond simply showing up, it’s about being vulnerable enough to make a real commitment, which definitely showed up in the song: “he’d not only make a choice, he’d make me a commitment, baby.”
Q3. You produced the original eight-bar loop before EMEREE developed the track further. What was already there in that first idea that made you feel the song had something?
I was messing around with these plucky guitar riffs that were a little reminiscent of Ariana Grande’s positions, and I loved the chord progression. The mood felt empowering and a little darker than Dibs, a sound that I definitely hadn’t explored before. Most of those chords stayed the same, but EMEREE transformed the production by replacing the guitar with the beat and bassline and adding an arpeggiated synth in the chorus that echoed those original plucks.
Q4. The Position Vacant: Boyfriend Material campaign turns dating into a mock recruitment process. How did the concept grow from one lyric into the wider visual world around the release?
The idea really came to life when I was thinking about the single artwork and visuals. I wanted to show up looking and acting more “boyfriend material” than any of the guys in the song could have, so the cover art has me in a sharp oversized jacket, corset and tie — a feminine take on masculinity. It gives the whole thing an empowered energy, like I take dating seriously, I mean business and I know exactly what I’m looking for. It felt like a strong contrast to the bare-minimum guys I’m calling out in the song.
Then the music video came together around “bare minimum shit should be retiring,” and I thought, it has to be an interview. If I’m looking for boyfriend material, why not actually interview the candidates? A first date is a pretty similar process in a lot of ways, so the recruitment idea naturally became the wider visual language for the release.
Q5. FM PRO TECH Q: As you become more involved in co-production, how are you learning to communicate the sounds, textures and vocal details you hear in your head to producers without losing the spontaneity of the original idea?
That’s definitely a skill I’m still developing. Sometimes I’ll come into a session with production ideas already prepared because it’s much easier to show someone what you mean, even if you end up replacing the sound later.
References are really useful too, as long as they’re a springboard rather than a blueprint. I might say, “I really love the arpeggiated synth plucks in Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun — could we bring something like that into this section?” Or I might reference the whispery vocal tone in Addison Rae’s Diet Pepsi and say that something like that could work with my voice, with stacked vocal layers and harmonies. It’s about communicating the feeling or texture without trying to recreate the exact record.
I also think it’s important to know what you want from the person you’re working with. Sometimes I want a producer to finish and elevate something I’ve already built, and other times I’m much less precious about the idea and want them to help shape it.
Q6. Boyfriend Material is also the title track from your debut EP. What does this song establish about the wider project that Dibs could not?
I look back at Dibs with really fond memories because I made it when I was fairly young. It was one of my first sessions in a proper recording studio and my first experience collaborating with such an established producer, Chelsea Warner. Dibs was really an exploration of what my sound could be.
I remember wanting to write something like Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso and challenging myself with that style of writing — I loved how the song plays with clever wordplay about a guy being obsessed with her, with these sweet but flirty double meanings. I wanted Dibs to have that same playful quality.
I still love Dibs sonically and would definitely explore that disco-pop sound again. But Boyfriend Material felt like a real step forward in letting myself be seen in the music. It feels much more like I’m saying exactly what I think and what I want, and that’s a big part of what the wider EP is about.
Q7. Your writing mixes humour with more vulnerable ideas around self-worth and relationships. How do you know when a lyric should make people laugh and when it needs to land more seriously?
I think the structure of the song can really help dictate those choices. In the verses, I like having a conversational tone where I’m telling the story, which gives me room to say sassy, slightly unhinged or brutally honest things in the same way I could when talking to my girlfriends.
“I’ve been spiralling” is something I could genuinely say to a friend, and then I played with that colloquial phrase by adding the imagery of “stalling for two weeks and now I’m idling.” I like starting with something natural and conversational, then finding a clever way to turn it into a lyric.
The pre-chorus is deliberately a little confused and funny — “Wait, wait, wait, are you just here to make out? What are you even doing here?” — but underneath that humour is the frustration of realising someone isn’t looking for the same thing you are.
Then the bridge is where I wanted the message to land more seriously. “If I could build a boy” is playful on the surface, but I’m actually listing some pretty serious non-negotiables around commitment. When I get to “he’d lock it down, and never ever ever risk it,” the humour drops away a little and you realise that underneath all the jokes, I’m being very serious about what I want.
Q8. You have been working between Australia and the US, including writing from Warner Chappell Music Publishing in Nashville. What has that international collaboration started to change in your songwriting?
The songwriting process in the US is quite different from what I’m used to at home. It’s much more collaborative, with people specialising in different parts of making a record. At home, I’m more used to an intimate setup with me and a producer, where we’re writing and producing the track at the same time.
In the US, there’s more of a feeling that a great song can be made by a team, with everyone bringing their own perspective. I’ve had to learn how to lead a session with a room full of talented musicians and songwriters — to give direction, speak up and take on everyone’s ideas while still making sure the song feels like me. That’s been a really valuable skill to develop.
It’s also influenced the kind of writing I’m drawn to. I’m really inspired by simple but clever, catchy lyrics that say something directly but still have a memorable turn of phrase. I’m especially drawn to the sharp, confident and universal writing of artists like Ava Max and Dua Lipa, so I think that’s naturally starting to come through in my own songwriting.
Q9. You’ll preview music from the EP at The Haunted Ball in Los Angeles this October. What are you learning about these songs once they leave the studio and have to work in front of a live audience?
I’m learning a lot. Performing with a live band, in-ear monitors, stage cues, lighting and choreography is a lot to take in, especially when you’re still figuring out how you want your live show to feel.
Because this is my first EP, I also have to remember that a lot of the audience won’t know the songs yet. It’s taught me how important it is to make the songs memorable even if someone is hearing them for the first time. I want people to leave thinking, “Who was that?” and wanting to go and listen to the music afterwards.
Q10. FM PRO TECH Q: The recruitment concept now stretches across the single, music video, Instagram and TikTok. How are you building those different formats into one recognisable campaign without making the content feel like repetitive promotion?
I’ve got a few different tricks up my sleeve. I was really inspired by Scott Helman’s “Mr Record Label” content and wanted to take a similar approach by using clips of celebrities like Sabrina Carpenter, RAYE and Selena Gomez talking about their dating non-negotiables or sharing their own frustrations with the dating pool, then cutting those moments together with Boyfriend Material. It’s a fun way of saying, “We’re all struggling with the search for boyfriend material,” without it feeling like an advert for the song.
I also have behind-the-scenes footage from the music video, which I like pairing with relatable captions and the mock interview skits for the Position Vacant: Boyfriend Material series. Each episode interviews a different candidate and reviews their increasingly appalling applications.
Although everything lives within the same Position Vacant world, each platform gets a slightly different version of the story. That way it feels like I’m expanding the universe around the song rather than posting the same content in ten different formats.
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