Nilüfer Yanya Is Stealing the Scene With Her Next Act

The London-based alt-rocker finds solace in moving forward and experimenting with new sounds on new album, My Method Actor.

by Ben Boddez

Photos by Molly Daniel

Published on October 8, 2024

Nilüfer Yanya thinks a lot about time and transitions – but not so much in a nostalgic way; more like in the sense of constantly moving forward. Just like how many have described the London-based songwriter’s raw and unpolished style of plucked guitar playing as restless, she finds the most happiness in leaving the past in the past, always moving forward to something new — something she hadn’t attempted before.

When she speaks about a new track, “Binding,” that’s become one of her all-time favourites, she says “It’s quite annoying when you really like something and you see potential in it, but the idea is not, like, instant.” However, just like the extra time she took to perfect the track, fine-tuning a vocal line that she felt could measure up to the beauty of a guitar riff provided by producer Wilma Archer (Sudan Archives, MF DOOM, Celeste), Yanya’s been trying to look back at her work and draw a couple more connections lately.

In conversation, Yanya is reserved and contemplative, taking extended pauses to think about how best to explain herself. Meeting her, it makes sense that she’ll tell you she doesn’t identify as a performer, slightly reluctant to get on stage. After all, she grew up in a family full of visual artists – painters, photographers, textile designers – those creatives that simply put their art into the world, standing back on the sidelines while people admire it. Yanya says she never even conceived of a career path outside of the arts.

Still, music courses through her heritage as well. Her uncle is a musician, and her mother gave her the name Nilüfer in honour of a Turkish pop star of the same name. While she always had a heavy helping of support entering the artistic field, and her sister Molly still collaborates with her on the visual end, she also had a hand from someone outside her family tree – as luck would have it, her music teacher in school happened to be The Invisible’s Dave Okumu, who has also worked as a performer and producer with Jessie Ware, St. Vincent and Amy Winehouse and mentored her when she picked up the guitar at age 12.

Despite her creative family, and the name of her latest project, My Method Actor, you won’t catch Yanya trying her hand at acting. The title came from an offhand lyric that simply “sounded cool” and stuck, leading Yanya to research method acting and discover more similarities than she expected with her own feelings about performing.

“I found it interesting, the parallel between putting everything of yourself out there, plus trying to step into someone else’s shoes,” she says. “The brain analysis that you have to do, and the deep thinking and excavating, that’s kind of similar to music, writing, and being on stage. I just see performing as a thing that happens because you have to show people your music; I wouldn’t choose to be somebody on stage if it wasn’t part of music. It’s a weird conundrum – how have I made this my life, where I have to be on stage and perform all the time when I don’t even like standing up in front of people?”

In her earlier years, Yanya made a critical choice that allowed her to protect that peace as much as possible. It would be tough to imagine Yanya on a stadium tour, but after turning heads with some SoundCloud tunes in 2014, she was recruited by former OneDirection star Louis Tomlinson about joining a girl group that never officially formulated. She turned it down, later speaking out about the insincerity of these manufactured projects, and now creates by locking herself away with Archer without any other outside influence.

The transition on the 29-year-old Yanya’s mind this time was a major one: approaching the end of her third decade on Earth. She described the lyrical content of single “Like I Say (I runaway)” as being about “time never stopping, not knowing when to hold on to things and when to let them go, or when to make a run for it,” and the rest of the project is coloured by abstract musings on new developments of adulthood.

“I don’t know if it’s because of the COVID years, or if it just flies by anyways, but my 20s just happened,” she says. “It’s weird because so much of our identity is based around being a young person, and then you realize ‘Oh my god, this isn’t my idea of a young person anymore, but I still feel kind of the same on the inside.’ And then you realize ‘Oh my god, this is what my parents say about being still young on the inside!’” At the prospect of becoming like her parents, Yanya unleashes a silent scream.

Yanya’s biggest influences growing up were Lianne La Havas and Amy Winehouse on guitar, as well as diving into bands like The Strokes and Pixies, whose “Hey” was a frequent cover at her live shows. She’s given interviews where she calls these influences a product of their time, wanting to make something groundbreaking instead of getting caught up in imitation when she creates for herself. As she ages, though, a little more wistfulness has been creeping back in.

“It’s nice to go back sometimes and go ‘What is it that got me so excited? What is it that I really loved, that I wanted to keep listening to it?’ I kind of miss that real, in-awe kind of feeling, and it’s not coming from anything intellectual or clever,” she says. “You’re just impressed by it, and you can’t really work out the magic, you just think it’s so cool. I miss that feeling.”

There’s an older interview where Yanya says that her favourite music is music that “sounds like music.” The natural, raw talent on display on a Yanya project, whether it’s her lived-in guitar playing, the layers of production quirks, or her distinctive, unique vocal tone, fit the bill in this way. Yanya’s music, just like that of her influences, hits home because it feels like tapping into the brainwaves of a truly singular mind.

Despite the critical acclaim that’s followed her throughout her career, Yanya actually doesn’t think too much about her debut, Miss Universe, anymore – she’s even called it “messy” on more than one occasion. Her sophomore project, Painless, attracted even more praise, but even with her mindset of moving forward, she’s not ready to completely disregard that one just yet. Instead, she sees it as more of a stepping stone, addressing how she stacked together her “three core things” of vocals, percussion and guitar in a similar way.

“It’s weird because so much of our identity is based around being a young person, and then you realize ‘Oh my god, this isn’t my idea of a young person anymore.’”

“I do have some of those feelings about Painless; it just feels like you’ve done it, in a way,” she says. “But then there are also so many things about Painless that link to this album, so I don’t feel like I’m hiding from it or anything. Now I can see that one was kind of like a blueprint for this one. I feel like they actually sit together quite nicely, whereas the first record was still me exploring different things, more of an experiment.”

Since Yanya is someone that can be somewhat critical of her own work, you likely won’t catch her reading this article – even if she was assured that it would be nothing but positivity. She’s always made a point to avoid any writing about her, even wondering why anyone would be interested in any forms of written analysis about music when the work could simply speak for itself.

“Sometimes it feels a bit harsh. There are some things I’ve really loved and people write a bad review about it, or if something is really good, somebody wants to write a critique which kind of takes it apart, all the reasons why it’s not good. I find that is so not the reason why I’m interested in music,” she says. “Music snobbery culture is so … I understand there’s a need and I get it, but also, do we have to? Normal people decide whether a song’s good or not, regardless of reviews and critiques. It’s just a weird thing, but I am grateful for the nice reviews, definitely.”

That attitude towards music is just part of what led Yanya to set up the non-profit organization Artists in Transit alongside her sister, which sets up art and music workshops for children in refugee camps around the world in order to make creativity a little more accessible. Yanya often goes on the trips herself – no “music snobbery” to be found here, just a genuine love.

In preparation for My Method Actor, Yanya found balance from her early-career mentality in one more critical way. She’s often spoken about struggling with starting the so-called “album cycle,” not wanting to fall into a routine of doing things the same way. Like getting on stage, she’s accepted it a little more, but she knows to take a step back when she needs to.

“I’m like ‘I get it, this is what people do, this is how you can live and keep going,’” she says. “The nice thing is I can finally, when I’m writing an album, not be touring and doing all those other things, because it’s so hard to focus. It was just as hard, like ‘No, there’s not enough time!’ but I think it made it more focused. The whole cycle thing is still present, but now I’m more aware of it than ever.”

With that kind of awareness of what makes herself tick, the accolades should keep coming.