In the video accompanying Nilüfer Yanya’s recent single Like I Say, the British postpunk singer plays a reluctant bride who turns tail at the altar and runs for the hills. A woman in white legging it through a misty churchyard makes for an arresting image, but it also alludes to Yanya’s complicated feelings about the music business. She turns 30 next year. Does she want to make a til-death-do-us-part pledge to an industry that remains obsessed with youth and has a weird attitude towards women who dare to age?
“When I was younger I was definitely ‘young’. Now I’m starting to feel a little bit unwelcome,” she says over Zoom from her home in London as she counts down to the release next week of her third album, My Method Actor.
“I can still get away with being young. But am I young? I don’t know. Is this still for me? You realise you’re not going to keep doing things in the same fashion. You have to do it the way you want to do it – for real reasons. It can’t just be because you want to be cool. That’s not valid any more when you get to 30.”
Women pop stars are under considerably more pressure to stay youthful than their male equivalents. People are forever commenting on Taylor Swift’s appearance. But who cares what Ed Sheeran is wearing? “The world is a bit harsher on women anyway,” Yanya says. “It’s an industry where you’re encouraged to be the face of your own brand so much. People are really harsh towards female or female-presenting artists. Especially the big pop ones.”
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Yanya doesn’t blame megastar names for playing the game and thinking about their image. She would not wish to swap places with them for anything, however. “They want to do their thing and be successful. And that’s fine. But why do we place all these ideals on to them? Why do we think they’re going to be role models for everybody just because they’re women? It doesn’t make sense.”
She unpacks these subjects on My Method Actor. It’s a dazzling blend of Radiohead-style art rock, confessional songwriting and shape-shifting pop – all tethered by Yanya’s expressive singing style and visceral lyrics. It finds her taking stock of what she has achieved in her 20s and questioning her drive to carry on (“I run away / ‘Cause I’m on precious time,” she sings on Like I Say). It is an album that ultimately orbits a key question: might there be an alternative to devoting her life to music?
These feelings have crept up on Yanya. In her early 20s she was intent on conquering the world. “I was very driven. ‘If I don’t do this now, when am I going to do it?’ I was picking up on the not-so-subtle pressures that you feel – that you have to be young to do music. You are definitely aware of this, ‘Oh well ... I’d better get going.’”
Women in music are judged by different standards from men, she says. Look at the return of Oasis’s Liam and Noel Gallagher, a duo of craggy blokes in their 50s who have visibly lived their lives in the fast lane. Were it two women their age, they would have received a different reception, Yanya believes. People would remark on their appearance and dress sense – the wrinkles and worry lines accrued since youth. Women artists “probably wouldn’t bother coming back. Because what’s the point?”
None of which is to suggest that Yanya’s career has been a struggle or that she feels underappreciated. Her 2019 debut, Miss Universe, was co-produced by the St Vincent wingman John Congleton and shortlisted as an album of the year by Pitchfork, which compared her to Sade and Pavement. The raves continued with her second LP, Painless, in 2022, when the NME extolled Yanya’s “soaring ... grunge-inflected sound” and Uproxx named it one of the year’s best indie LPs.
Yet in addition to these supportive voices there have been suggestions that she could do even better by pursuing a poppier sound. Early on she was invited to join a girl band put together by a management company and to be produced by One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson. The project would be modelled on the California all-sister trio Haim, and Yanya would be the lead singer. She took a meeting but decided it wasn’t for her. That the project subsequently fell apart did not shock her.
Efforts to mould her into a pop star didn’t end there. Yanya’s new album is released by the independent electronic label Ninja Tune, which has given her complete creative freedom. But there has also been advice from other quarters to the effect that she could achieve a higher profile by smoothing the jagged edges off her sound.
“You do speak to a major label or a big opportunity seems to uncover itself in that kind of way,” she says of the pressure to go pop. “I’ve always known I’m not going to be that kind of artist. I don’t have the capacity or desire to do that. Obviously you want more people to hear your music. The people I admire and look up to aren’t necessarily those kind of [mainstream] artists. The kind of music I make, I don’t think it would ever necessarily be a huge mainstream success.”
That isn’t to say Yanya would be horrified if My Method Actor were to become a top-10 hit or receive a Mercury Prize nomination. “It is a good thing if it happens. It’s not the most sustainable thing for me. I’d rather be able to make the choices I want to make.”
What she wouldn’t want to have to do is obsess about her image – and even put that ahead of her music. The Irish Times mentions Charli XCX, whose excellent Brat album has been overshadowed by the hype about a “Brat summer”. Even the biggest Charli XCX fan would have to admit that the mystique has eclipsed the music – arguably to its detriment. Yanya agrees that, at a certain level of stardom, your persona matters more than your songs.
“You have to put that [image] first, in a way. If people know your image more than your music, you have to spend a lot of time focusing on that side of it so much more. You have to think about everything so much more. You can’t leave things up to chance – every look, every image, every photo of you is curated. That’s cool. That’s an art form in itself. I don’t think it’s my art form.”
Yanya’s mother is of Barbadian-Irish heritage. (The singer’s grandmother is from Dún Laoghaire.) Her father is from Turkey, and she has, of course, noted the upswing in anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK this summer. But it isn’t as if it parachuted out of the clear blue sky. Her father has always experienced a low-level hostility in Britain towards perceived “outsiders”.
“A few weeks ago we had riots. We were talking about this, and he said he always feels like a standout to everybody anyway. Maybe not so much in London. But travelling around the UK, he feels he sticks out, and you are a bit of a target. You never really feel completely safe.”
[ Nilüfer Yanya: ‘There is still a double standard. There’s still not equality’Opens in new window ]
Nobody would claim the riots had a positive side. On the other hand, they at least confirmed beyond doubt that racism is ongoing and widespread – and that anti-migrant toxicity has seeped out of social media into the real world. When “those things like riots happen, it’s obviously disheartening to see. [But] it’s true, isn’t it? These people think these things. At least you can’t hide it when it happens. You have to confront it. You have to talk about it. People don’t feel safe, coming from other countries. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve lived here.”
My Method Actor is surely Yanya’s finest album yet. But no matter how well it performs, she is happy to look beyond music and intends to spend her 30s exploring new creative avenues alongside songwriting. The new LP “is not going to be something that will change my life in a dramatic way. The big lifestyle change they try to sell you through music ... I’m realising that probably might never happen. That’s fine. How can I make it still fun for me? How can I enjoy doing these things anyway, even if I know I might never achieve that kind of success from it?”
These are big questions. But fans can rest assured that, whatever answer Yanya comes up with, she’ll remain an artist to watch and a songwriter full of surprises.
My Method Actor is released on Ninja Tune on Friday, September 13th
