ROSÉ covered The Killers’ “Read My Mind” during a four-song set at the LACMA Art+Film Gala in Los Angeles on November 7. She introduced the Sam’s Town track as one of her favourite songs to cover and invited the audience to sing along. The performance sat alongside “New Trick,” “Number One Girl” and “APT.” in a set that drew on her solo catalogue.
Before she started singing “Read My Mind,” ROSÉ told the room it was one of her favourite songs to cover. She invited anyone who knew it to sing along. The invitation set the tone for the performance at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art+Film Gala on November 7. For a few minutes, a room gathered to honour a painter and a filmmaker could take its cue from the chorus of a Killers song.
The choice took her back to Sam’s Town, the 2006 album on which The Killers released the original. Its melody makes it easy to recognise even when another singer takes over, and it gives a performer space to decide how much weight to place on each line. In clips from the gala, ROSÉ keeps the melody in focus, drawing out some of the phrases and leaving the room time to follow her into the refrain.
The context made that opening invitation especially apt. A gala audience has gathered for several reasons at once, and many of its guests are there for the people being honoured. Naming a favourite song before singing it gave the audience a way into the performance. Those who recognised the track could participate. Others could hear the shape of the melody as she worked through the verses.
“Read My Mind” came from a different corner of the programme than the other three songs. “New Trick,” released in September, represented more recent material. “Number One Girl” and “APT.” gave ROSÉ room for different kinds of delivery within a short appearance. “Number One Girl” moves through a vulnerable solo vocal, while “APT.” has an emphatic, communal hook. The Killers cover gave the set a familiar refrain from outside her own recordings.
The four-song format made those choices visible. Each track took up a substantial part of the available time. By giving one of those places to a cover, ROSÉ used the appearance to share a song she likes as well as songs audiences already associate with her. That balance is one reason the clip of “Read My Mind” makes sense on its own and as part of the wider set.
The gala, now in its 15th edition, honoured the artist Vija Celmins and the filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. LACMA trustee Eva Chow and actor Leonardo DiCaprio co-chaired the event. The museum had announced ROSÉ as the musical guest in October, with Gucci continuing as presenting sponsor. The November appearance brought the performer into a programme that also serves as a fundraiser for the museum.
The setting gave the cover a different scale from the shows at which many listeners have encountered the song. “Read My Mind” belongs to an album that reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and The Killers have played it for audiences who know its refrain well. At LACMA, the guest of a museum brought it into a set with songs from her own career. Its recognition value carried over even as the surroundings and the voice changed.
The appearance came with a strong visual component, too, as is common at an event that brings together film, art and fashion. Nicole Kidman and Timothée Chalamet were among the attendees. Those names give a sense of the room, but the musical moment depended on a smaller exchange: a singer identifying a song she likes and asking the people who knew it to join her.
The performance was presented live during the gala. No studio version of the cover was announced, and there was no announcement of a joint release with The Killers. The video clips that circulated after the event document an interpretation made for that audience. The delivery heard there belongs to a short set, with the other three songs around it giving a fuller sense of the performance.
For ROSÉ, choosing a song outside her catalogue offered a way to show what she responds to as a listener. The melody and the movement into the chorus gave her plenty to work with. The clips retain the scale of that decision: one song brought into a four-song appearance, prefaced with a few words about why she likes to sing it.
The gala went on to the other songs and the evening’s wider programme. “Read My Mind” had already made its own connection through the invitation at the beginning. A song written for The Killers’ second album, 20 years earlier, had found an audience in a Los Angeles museum, with a singer who knew the words well enough to ask the room to take them up with her.
