Anne-Marie
Age 24 Home London Biggest YouTube hit Karate For fans of Jessie Ware, Aaliyah
Anne-Marie is appearing on the X Factor in three hours, with her touring buddies Rudimental, for a performance of Lay It All On Me, their team-up with Ed Sheeran. Nervous? Have a word! “Nah,” she says. “It’s only backing vocals, anyway.” A centre-stage solo spot in 2016 wouldn’t faze her either. The three-times karate world champion (in the shotokan discipline) and former child star (alongside Jessie J in the West End musical Whistle Down the Wind) fears nothing and no one.
Her intricate R&B – imagine a cockney Aaliyah – is at odds with her no-nonsense character. She may have been working with electronic, experimental wunderkind Two Inch Punch, but tracks such as Gemini and Boy are sublimely commercial, high-end pop. “Beyoncé, Sia – I’m coming for you,” she warns. The market may be crowded, but she has a solution. “Anyone who gets in my way, I’ll fuck ’em up.”
And what about her label? “Basically, they want to make me the biggest thing in the history of life. So they better do their job right,” she says.
Is she the “new” anyone? “The new Rihanna,” she ventures, then has a brainwave. “I could just beat her up. That’s my solution to everything.”
Dua Lipa
Age 20 Home Pristina, Kosovo Biggest YouTube hit Be the One For fans of Lana Del Rey, Rihanna
She might live in London (via Kosovo), but singer-songwriter Dua (“love” in Albanian) Lipa is a more cosmopolitan proposition than a girl-next-door type such as Jess Glynne. She has already worked in studios in Berlin, LA, Stockholm, New York and Toronto, and could be from any of those cities. And the producers she has worked with – Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey, FKA twigs), Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow, Charli XCX) – suggest all sorts of possible futures for the former Sylvia Young Theatre School student, nightclub hostess and model. Be The One – co-written by Lucy Taylor, AKA Pawws, and with electronic producer Nick Gale AKA Digital Farm Animals at the controls – is fabulous, with a smoky vocal redolent of a younger, poppier Lana (LDR associate Nicole Nodland directed the video), giving it some of the latter’s lived-in quality.
“I write about the dramas I saw every night [as a hostess], the dark side of nightlife,” Lipa says. “It’s a good time to be making music that is seductive and sweet but doesn’t sugar-coat it. There are so many great new girls, and we’re able to tell the truth now about what being a teenager is really like. Before, everyone was singing about how amazing it all was. We’re bringing a bit more realness.”
Frances
Age 22 Home Newbury, Berkshire Biggest YouTube hit Grow For fans of Adele, Sam Smith
Frances is a composer of florid piano ballads and is the one act who is most likely to appeal to the Tesco demographic – she was shortlisted for the Brits critics’ choice award, losing out to Jack Garratt. She graduated from the Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts, whose notable alumni include Sandi Thom, the Wombats and Stealing Sheep. “I don’t look like the typical pop star,” she says, but she could still prove to be the next mass-market household name.
She is not beyond being co-opted by a cooler contingent: she shares management with Disclosure and has recently collaborated with Howard Lawrence, one half of the dance act sibling duo. For now, though, she’s playing down her chances. “People can’t connect to a band the way that they can to a solo artist,” she asserts, on the phone from Washington, midway through a US tour supporting James Bay.
She believes that competition is healthy (“It’s good to have female comrades”) and says that when she was growing up, the intimate, conversational songwriting of Carole King turned her head. Her ambition is to pen an It’s Too Late. Does she think that anyone has come close to doing that recently? “Adele on Someone Like You,” she decides. And could she be the new Adele? “I think everyone would hope for that level of success,” she answers, diplomatically. “The main thing we all want is for me to write music that I believe in. I play proper, traditional songs that come from the heart. I don’t want to decorate them with too many frills. I just want to sing songs that people connect with.”
Alessia Cara
Age 19 Home Brampton, Ontario Biggest YouTube hit Here For fans of Amy Winehouse, Christina Aguilera
Alessia Cara is the biggest of the hyped female acts for 2016, and her star has already risen in the US, where her debut album Know-It-All reached No 9. “It’s crazy,” she says of her newfound fame. “I don’t like to think about it too much because it makes me paranoid.” Paranoia, haters, dope and more are all dealt with on her magnificent, moody, Isaac Hayes-sampling breakout track, Here, about being the teen outsider – the “antisocial pessimist” – at a party. Titles on her album include Overdose, Wild Things and Outlaws, suggesting she’s cultivating an outsider image.
Is she the dark, troubled Ariana, as opposed to the sunnier Ariana Grande? “Ha, no!” she laughs, not sounding dark at all. “I’m just growing up. But it’s an interesting observation. Rebellion is part of my life. I’m really stubborn, I like to question things and do the opposite of what people say.” She has watched her predecessors, from Britney to Amy, crash and burn and doesn’t intend to make the same mistakes. “Now I’ve got a taste of the music industry, I know how they feel – it’s stressful and you don’t know who to trust. I watched the Amy Winehouse film – twice – and I relate to it but I also learn from it. Her downfall is a cautionary tale for me to not go down that path.”
A more positive role model, perhaps, is Taylor Swift, who recently invited Cara onstage in Florida to sing Here. “It was unbelievable,” she says. Did Swift have any words of advice? “She said she really believes I can be a role model, which is so sweet because she’s been that for so many years for people like me.”
Kacy Hill
Age 21 Home Phoenix, Arizona Biggest YouTube hit Experience For fans of James Blake, Zola Jesus
Kacy Hill is wandering the streets of her adopted home of LA, walking her pug and eating raspberries, without a care in the world. You wouldn’t think she had just had a co-sign from arguably the most influential music-maker on the planet. “Kanye is really happy with it,” she says of her latest record. Of her new label boss at G.O.O.D. Music, she adds: “He came to the EP release party and was really surprised by how much I’ve been able to create a cohesive sound and an image that goes along with it.”
As a former model, face of American Apparel and backup dancer for Kanye during his Yeezus Tour, it’s no wonder Hill has a strong visual identity to match her music, in which ethereal-goth vocals meet blubstep sonics. So how hands-on is Kanye? “He’ll be involved when we need him but I’m very much my own entity,” she says. “Most of what you see and hear is me. It’s not Kanye-controlled or regulated.”
Hill grew up shy, embarrassed to be special. She finds it “cringey” when people tell her they like what she does. Surely having Kanye must improve her confidence? “It does,” she sighs. “Sometimes you need the reinforcement that what you’re doing is decent. A part of me still thinks people are lying when they say: ‘I really like this!’ I’m like, ‘Really? Are you just trying to be nice?’”
Liz
Age 28 Home Los Angeles Biggest YouTube hit When I Rule the World For fans of Britney, Sophie
Liz is the missing link between 90s R&B-tinged teen pop of the Britney/Xtina variety, and the hyperpop of the PC Music stable. She is working with PC producers Sophie and Lido, and is signed to Diplo’s Mad Decent imprint. When I Rule the World has the manic, fast-cut cuteness of Sophie’s Lemonade and offers a sort of “inverted commas” pop, whereas on other numbers, such as Hush, she plays it exquisitely straight. “Pop music when I was growing up was very non-ironic and still is,” she says. “I have such an appreciation for the way those records were made, but I also really love finding up-and-coming producers setting trends on the underground.”
Liz was 12 when Britney was in her pomp. “It was a very influential time in terms of culture, fashion and music,” she considers. “That’s why it’ll be fun to bring it back but in a new, fresh way. I’m not a PC artist but I love their left-of-centre aesthetic.” She says that in her music she explores “the idea of innocence, like in that Britney song, I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.” How about When I Rule the World? “That was me channelling my inner devil child.”
Does Britney know about her? “I heard she wanted When I Rule,” she says, amazed. “I had to fight to get it back. But I would love to write a song for her. I walked by her at the Teen Choice Awards in LA and froze. She taught me how to be a pop star.”
Kehlani
Age 20 Home Oakland, California Biggest YouTube hit The Way feat Chance the Rapper For fans of Tinashe, Jhené Aiko
She survived America’s Got Talent, as a part of the group PopLyfe. She also survived her childhood – her dad died shortly after she was born and her mother was a drug addict wanted by the police. Unsurprisingly, Kehlani’s backstory impacted on her music. “It shaped everything,” she says of her two mixtapes, 2014’s Cloud 19 and 2015’s You Should Be Here. “I didn’t have a silver spoon, I wasn’t born in a mansion. Of course it fuelled me. I wanted everything I didn’t have. That inspires me every day.”
Mixtape, as is often the case, doesn’t quite do justice to You Should Be Here and its polished R&B, with its fully formed songs and full-throated singing. It doesn’t have alt-R&B’s murk – she has as much in common with Kelly Rowland as she does Kelela. “I’m underground,” she suggests, “but I want to be mainstream.”
What about the competition? “I don’t see them as competition,” she argues, “because we’re all clearly coexisting. Alessia [Cara] and I are friends. We might not release our albums on the same day but that would be out of mutual respect – you get your day to shine and I’ll get mine. We’re not going to battle it out.”
Brooke Candy
Age 26 Home Oxnard, California Biggest YouTube hit Opulence For fans of Sia, Taylor Swift
The self-styled “Freaky Prince$$” – who has featured on Grimes and Charli XCX tracks and supported Azealia Banks – has enjoyed notoriety for her garish rap-pop. On I Wanna Fuck Right Now, she raised sexual confidence to the level of art concept. These days, Candy – the latest muse of Lady Gaga collaborator Nicola Formichetti and a protege of Sia – has toned things down. Given she is the daughter of the CEO of Hustler magazine and was chucked out of home when her parents found out she was gay, subsequently becoming a stripper, she had probably exhausted the outrageous route. “Working with Sia is a dream,” she says of her soaring, epic pop. “She’s helped me to broaden my horizon and allowed me to find a happy medium between mass market and a more alternative art community.”
What effect did her dad’s job have? “It caused me to develop a curiosity for all things ‘taboo’,” she replies. “It normalised most things society deems inappropriate, sinful, dirty. I now understand how powerful sexuality and the forbidden truly are.”
She once nailed her aesthetic as “White-Trash-West-Virginia Chloë Sevigny in Gummo with Liberace-Excess-Bedazzled Jumpsuits”. Does that still hold? “Forever,” she says.
Tink
Age 20 Home Calumet City, Illinois Biggest YouTube hit Million For fans of Cassie, Da Brat
Kehlani has been described as “mindie” – a major artist with an indie bent – but it also applies to Tink (Trinity Home to her gospel singer mum), who has worked with Sleigh Bells and How To Dress Well. Tink, who has issued six excellent mixtapes since 2012, is an exciting triple threat – a songwriter, rapper and singer – capable of flitting between snarky raps and sumptuous, spacey slow jams, like Da Brat and Cassie in one body. And now, as though to confirm her credentials as a softly cooing R&B vocalist par excellence, singing atop quirkily exotic beats, she has become Timbaland’s protege – he claimed Aaliyah told him Tink is “the one” in a dream. “Growing up, I actually had no idea how important a producer was. I was just into the artist. But I always knew who Timbo was,” she glows. Is he using her to roadtest his most out-there beats, as he did with Aaliyah? “Every beat Timbo makes is an experiment to me. Honestly, there isn’t one beat he’s played that’s had an average sound.”
She describes herself as “an advocate for the girls – I make music that puts the guys in check. It’s about priorities: getting paid, staying focused, self-worth.” As for the singer-rapper dichotomy, she believes: “No one does what I do. Outside of Drake, I haven’t heard any artist make sensitive love songs and spit bars. It’s a blessing and a curse. Sometimes I can’t decide which direction to go. But still, it’s what makes me special.”
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