Imagine growing up in a small village in Armenia, moving to Wisconsin for a year and then moving back to Armenia. That’d be kind of disorienting, right? That’s what inspired Rosa Linn‘s breakout hit “Snap” — but she says people all over the world are telling her they can relate to it as well.
“I was 19 and I came back from the U.S. I was an exchange student for one year, and June 22nd was the day of my flight back to Armenia and it was mentally very hard to readjust,” Rosa tells ABC Audio, explaining why she wrote the lyric “Since June 22/My heart’s been on fire.”
“I was heartbroken. I was confused,” she says of leaving behind all the friends she’d made in the U.S. But also, she notes, “From 2019 [on], we started facing a lot of craziness in the world, too. So it kind of all led me to being at this snapping point, y’know?”
After Rosa sang “Snap” while representing Armenia in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the song went viral on TikTok and is now a big hit. She’s the third Eurovision artist in as many years to score a U.S. hit, following Duncan Laurence‘s “Arcade” and Maneskin‘s “Beggin’.” She credits it to TikTok, plus Eurovision upping its game by finally starting to showcase “good pop songs” — the kind that everyone can connect to.
“I got a lot of messages from people all over the world saying, ‘Thank you, the song came right in time for me because I’m going through…the same thing that you were going through,'” Rosa tells ABC Audio.
“Some people are telling me sad stories. Some people are telling me happy stories,” she notes, adding, “It’s amazing to see people connected to it from different angles.”
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