Miss Universe
Though she’d been writing songs in her head since she was six, and on the guitar since she was 12, it took a long time for Nilüfer Yanya to work up the courage to show anyone her music. “I knew I wanted to sing, but the idea of actually having to do it was really horrifying,” says the 23-year-old. When she was finally persuaded to do so, by a music teacher in West London where she grew up, she says “it was horrible. I loved it”. At 18, Nilüfer – who is of Turkish-Irish-Bajan heritage – uploaded a few demos to SoundCloud. Though she’s preternaturally shy, her music – which uniquely blends elements of soul and jazz into intimate pop songs with electronic flourishes and a newly expressed grungy guitar sound – isn’t. And it didn’t take long for it to catch people’s attention. She signed with independent New York label ATO, following three EPs on esteemed london indie label Blue Flowers, and earned a place on the BBC Sound of 2018 longlist. She also supported the likes of The xx, Interpol, Broken Social Scene and Mitski on tour. Now, Nilüfer is ready to release her debut album, Miss Universe. Though she recorded much of it in the same remote Cornwall studio she used to jam in as a much younger person, it is bigger and more ambitious than anything she has done before. ‘Angels’, with its muted, harmonic riffs, channels ideas “of paranoid thoughts and anxiety” – a theme that runs through the album, not least in its conceptual spoken word interludes which emanate from a fictional health management company WWAY HEALTH TM. “You sign up, and you pay a fee,” explains Nilüfer of the automated messages, which are littered through the album and are narrated by the titular Miss Universe. “They sort out all of your dietary requirements, and then they move onto medication, and then maybe you can get a better organ or something… and then suddenly it starts to get a bit weird. You're giving them more of you and to what end?”
The rapturous debut from the British singer-songwriter takes adventurous pop-rock crucibles to new heights with her illusory songwriting and stunning voice.
The London songwriter leans into imperfections to build something beautiful
Nilufer Yanya's debut album has been a long time in the making, but the musical chameleon proves it was worth the wait.
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Yanya justifies the hype on her debut album, while Lucy Rose's fourth studio record shows the English singer-songwriter at her bravest
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Despite its 17-song length, it's hard to imagine Nilüfer Yanya's vision without each one of these tracks; Miss Universe hangs together effortlessly.
Miss Universe, Yanya's full-length debut, is comprised of songs that find her exploring different avenues of introspection, open-ended questioning, control and paranoia.
Nilüfer Yanya's debut album Miss Universe begins with a phone message from the titular character, a fictional health counselor who periodically pops in to recite some postmodern mental-health non-sequiturs, voiced by Yanya herself.
London artist Nilüfer Yanya's debut album is full of intrigue and playfulness, a careful but bolshie response to any pressures of expectation.
Full of 21st-century disquiet, the singer-songwriter uses skits and skewed alt-rock to take aim at the spurious ‘wellness’ industry
Throughout the album, Yanya uses circularity and ambiguity to her advantage.
Debut from 23-year-old west Londoner is a solid introduction with plenty of ideas