Role Model

Tucker Pillsbury records as ROLE MODEL, a singer and songwriter whose understated vocals and relaxed, frequently acoustic-leaning pop approach mask an ongoing engagement with layered emotional themes. Less than twelve months after issuing his opening EP on his own, he secured a contract with Interscope via Benny Blanco’s Mad Love imprint. That association has so far produced the EPs Oh, How Perfect (2019) and Our Little Angel (2020) plus the romantically focused debut album Rx (2022). Following two independent singles, he returned with the full-length Kansas Anymore in 2024.

While attending college with ambitions to direct films, the Portland, Maine native found he could create music independently using modest equipment. After releasing a pair of mixtapes that left him uncertain about a future as a rapper, he began to sing, embraced the shift, and redirected his focus toward songwriting. He launched ROLE MODEL in 2017 with the four-track EP Arizona in the Summer, overseen by local collaborator Owen Ardell. The following year he joined the Mad Love roster. A series of singles, among them the languid “Minimal,” paved the way for Oh, How Perfect and Our Little Angel, released in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Across those six-song projects Pillsbury sharpened his craft and expanded his sonic palette alongside producers Benjamin Miller and Happy Perez, Andrew Luce and Todd Pritchard, and Spencer Stewart and Stint. He later teamed again with Stewart to shape his first proper album, introduced in July 2021 by the single “forever&more.” Rx appeared on Interscope in 2022 and was followed by the standalone tracks “Cross Your Mind” and 2023’s “A Little More Time.” The buoyant lead single “Deeply Still in Love” from his next album reached the Top 40 in New Zealand, and Kansas Anymore arrived in mid-2024.