Nilüfer Yanya has released ‘Cold Heart’, her first new track since the breakthrough success of My Method Actor last year.
With touring briefly on hold, Nilüfer headed back into the studio with longtime collaborator Wilma Archer, pulling at unfinished threads to see what stuck.
‘Cold Heart’ leans into its synths and wide-open arrangements, and offers a real glimpse of a songwriter unconcerned with boundaries and labels. It’s more than refreshing.
“This one turned out pretty different to how I imagined it,” she said. “The initial melody felt spacious, like there’s room for anything to happen. It felt like a kind of experiment.”
Her debut album, Miss Universe (2019), was met with critical acclaim for its transcendence of genre. It was followed three years later by Painless, which continued to explore themes of emotional upheaval and uncertainties around identity. My Method Actor last year confirmed yet another evolution of her sound.
Nilüfer’s musical odyssey began in Chelsea, London, where she was raised by visual artists parents. Her mum’s of Irish and Barbadian descent and her dad’s Turkish. Reared on a diet of Turkish pop and classical music, she gravitated towards guitar rock in her early teens, learning the instrument at the age of 12.
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