Rosealia

Album: Deluxe (1995)
Charted: 71
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Songfacts®:

  • A track from the debut Better Than Ezra album Deluxe, "Rosealia" tells the story of a woman who finds herself in an abusive relationship, with the singer empathizing with her plight and warning her, "His kind of love is going to kill you."

    In our interview with lead singer Kevin Griffin, wrote the song, he explained: "The person I had in mind was this very good friend of mine, Cece Hutchinson, who was this really cool artist I knew in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I always kind of pictured her as the heroine in the story."

    Griffin often creates stories based on a seed of truth, which is what he did here. "I like putting people in situations where some type of drama is going on," he said. "In this case, someone who's in a verbally and physically abusive relationship."
  • The title character in this song came from Rosalea Murphy, who ran a popular restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico called The Pink Adobe until her death in 2000.
  • The line, "Put on your mask, wearing your cape," was inspired by the Zozobra festival in Santa Fe, where revelers put on costumes and burn an effigy that represents anguish and gloom. It is part of the Fiestas de Santa Fe celebration in the city. (We know what you're thinking, and yes, it's a lot like Burning Man. But Zozobra was around first, dating back to the 1920s.)

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