We live in a post Die With a Smile world. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ 2024 megahit has nearly 4bn streams on Spotify alone: the people crave traditionalist AM radio ballads. Enter Sienna Spiro, a young soul singer whose ultra-traditionalist sound is backed up by posh pedigree: her father, Glenn Spiro, is a famed Hatton Garden jeweller; her mother, Arabella, is a high society figure who reportedly mixed with royalty.
After breaking through on TikTok, Spiro first hit the UK singles chart in 2024 and has since had three US Hot 100 hits. Her much-anticipated debut album is merely competent pastiche, largely comprising Whitney-style piano ballads sung with a grittier and less agile voice. Spiro specialises in lyrical stubbornness: the image she paints of herself is that of a charming fighter, refusing to let an ex get away. Sometimes this really works: Die on This Hill is soaring and suffused with cathartic conviction. On We’re Not in Love and Great Expectation, it’s just exhausting.
Spiro’s other mode is full-band torch songs with intermittent signs of greatness. This Is My House, produced by soul revivalist Leon Michels, implies a totally different kind of album to Visitor, and is an unabashed highlight – save the unearned sample of civil rights legend Nikki Giovanni. But then there’s the deeply misguided He’s Not My Baby, I’m His: written about a relationship with a man “twice my age”, the vintage-styled track struggles under the weight of bad-taste lyrics: “No one feels quite as seen as when a child gets chosen.” That excess is a common theme across Visitor – a little more subtlety and Spiro’s “new Adele” tag might actually stick.
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