I GOT TO A POINT WHERE I JUST BURST.I NEEDED TO FREE MYSELF'

Her sweet soul sound won Celeste instant acclaim and a Brit award. But then came heartbreak, depression- and now a raw new album that's putting her back in the spotlight

- LISA WRIGHT

If you'd switched on BBC iPlayer midway through Glastonbury's sleepy early Sunday afternoon session in June, you'd have been forgiven for double-checking the listings. Pacing the Pyramid Stage with a vigilante black eye make-up smeared across her face, dressed in a feathered leather ensemble like Black Swan gone punk, and singing an incantational sort of Doors-esque psych rock, the woman at the centre stuck out like a barbed sore thumb amid a day of family-friendly fun; Nile Rodgers's disco hits and Rod Stewart's tight trousers. "For those of you who are wondering what's happened, the crazy part is over," laughed Celeste at the section's climax, "and now it's time for me to do a nice song." Suffice to say, this off-piste interlude - recent Death In Vegas-sampling single Everyday; the frustrated howl of new album track Could Be a Machine, plus a couple of hugely exciting new cuts from a forthcoming project - was far from what the world had been taught to expect from the 31-year-old singer.

When she was introduced at the turn of the decade via a quick succession of early accolades - the Brits 2020 Rising Star award and a BBC Sound of 2020 poll win a month later - it was firmly with "nice" in mind: a nice lady in a nice dress, singing nice songs and certainly not ruffling any feathers (leather or otherwise).

Her connection to what she was putting out varied. Strange, an intensely fragile jazz meditation on the fleeting nature of relationships, might have immediately marked her out as a room-silencing voice with a rare ability to cut to the raw heart of the matter, but soon she was helming more obviously radio-friendly fare.

Second single Stop This Flame wound up on the Fifa 21 soundtrack, its belting chorus ubiquitous across victorious montages of Sky Sports coverage for years after. By the end of the rollout for 2021 debut album Not Your Muse, the singer - born Celeste Waite - was left trying to work out where she stood amongst it all.