'I felt like I wasn't able to assert my voice and vision'

Oscar-nominated singer Celeste talks to Roisin O'Connor about feeling compelled to speak up, the demands of the music industry, and 'coming back to exist as herself, again'

- Roisin O'Connor

As an artist with one of the most distinctive voices in British soul music, Celeste is still struggling to make herself heard.

The release of her second album, the tremendous Woman of Faces, should be cause for celebration. Yet in the weeks ahead of its release - and before this interview took place - the Mercury Prize-shortlisted singer accused her record label of showing “very little support” for the new project. She wrote in posts shared to social media that she felt she was being met with “a set of consequences for essentially not doing as I was told”.

“There was definitely a point where I was like, ‘I have to talk about what’s happened,” the 31-year-old tells me. “Especially when you're a singer, there’s something really important about the throat chakra being opened.”

She cites Dr Gabor Mate, who has explored the connection between chronic stress symptoms among women who account for 80 per cent of autoimmune disease cases and a culture that tells them to be agreeable, compliant and, most crucially, quiet. “When I went into certain situations in the studio, I felt like I wasn't really able to assert my own voice and my own vision,” Celeste says. She saw a video recently of another female artist expressing herself freely in the studio: “And I was thinking, I didn’t really get that moment.”

Even without listening to her excellent 2021 debut, Not Your Muse, many will have heard her smoky vibrato on songs such as her 2019 breakthrough “Strange”, which helped her land the Brit Rising Star Award. The following year, her song “A Little Love” featured in the John Lewis Christmas advert, while her soaring anthem “Stop This Flame” was used relentlessly by Sky Sports for its Premier League coverage. “Hear My Voice”, from the soundtrack of Aaron Sorkin’s film