FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Tyla

FEATURE:

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti for British Vogue

Tyla

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I have featured Tyla…

on a few occasions on my blog. I included her in my Spotlight feature in 2023. Her debut album, TYLA +, was released last year. I hear that a second studio album is not too far away. Because of that, it is a perfect time to come back to the brilliance of Tyla. The South African artist released her second E.P., WWP, back in July. It has been a busy time for someone who has some dates in Asia ahead. She is playing at the Ariake Arena in Koto City, Japan on Tuesday (11th November). Her new single, CHANEL, is among her best. I want to come to some recent interviews with Tyla. For those who do not know about her brilliance. In August, Variety spoke with a global artist who discussed her upcoming second album. Why she is rejecting the Pop machine:

“Since the release of her critically revered self-titled debut album last year — and the global success of “Water,” the smash single that started it all — Tyla has been fixated on how to follow it.

It’s no small challenge. The song, built on a foundation of amapiano — a subgenre of South African house music — but infused with pop and R&B melodies and accented by elements of Afrobeats, was unlike anything else on pop radio at the time. Despite the recent success of many African artists, “Water” has a directness that made it a breakthrough song for the diaspora.

It became a near-instant hit after Tyla and her choreographer, Litchi, posted videos of the singer doing a Bacardi-inspired dance on TikTok in August 2023. In it, she glides across the floor while pouring water over her swaying hips and singing, “Make me sweat, make me hotter, make me lose my breath, make me water.” The move went viral, and Tyla did too — everything from her dancing to her look.

Born on Jan. 30, 2002, as the second-youngest of the four siblings, Tyla Laura Seethal grew up in a loud, lively, music-filled household. Her father would sing to wake the kids up before school, and on Sundays he’d blast everything from country to R&B radio while cleaning the house. Her mother had multiple occupations, from candle-making to real estate and even acting in commercials.

Tyla signed with Epic Records in 2021 after a bidding war that saw Epic chief Sylvia Rhone posting billboards in Johannesburg featuring the singer’s image with the message “Epic Records, love Sylvia Rhone.” It was the only way to secure the singer’s attention despite travel restrictions tied to the pandemic.

It was a lot for a 19-year-old to absorb. “When I got signed, a lot of opinions came in,” she recalls, “and it was a very overwhelming experience.” She tried a number of different musical styles over the course of many songwriting sessions and content-creation workshops, some of which tried to steer her into a bubblegum-pop direction. Those songs “didn’t feel like me at all,” she says, remembering one session where the songs pitched to her “were the most generic compositions you could ever think of.”

Adding to the pressure were cultural mores whereby women are in submissive roles — “You stay out of men’s conversations, the men eat first,” she says — making it even more challenging for a young woman to take charge. “I remember being in my hotel room and my managers were calling me, ‘Come down, we need to cut the song,’” she recalls. “I was crying and thinking, ‘This is not what I want. I didn’t get signed to do this,’” she says of the push to record songs that didn’t reflect her vision. “They had to [coax] me out of that room. “But,” she continues with a deep sigh. “I think through doing that, I realized how much more I love African music. It made me more persistent in keeping my ideas.” So she cut out the noise and honed in on the sounds she felt in her heart.

When it came to crafting the thematic material of her new album, Tyla had more than a few life lessons to bring. “I had to grow up fast, especially for someone coming from a strict family,” she notes. “It was a constant challenge to learn.”

One of those challenges related to her ethnic identity. Her background — a combination of Zulu, Irish and Mauritian-Indian heritage — became an unexpected point of controversy as her fame surged, fueled in part by the resurfacing of a 2020 TikTok in which she refers to herself as a “Coloured South African.” In a June 2024 interview, Charlamagne Tha God asked her to explain the “debates that they be having about your identity,” and she declined to answer, furthering the drama.

But although the term “Colored” can be triggering for Black Americans, a painful reminder of the country’s ongoing racist history, in South Africa, the term is more nuanced, often used to reflect a mixed-race heritage. In a statement posted online, just hours after the Charlamagne interview, Tyla said, “I don’t expect to be identified as Coloured outside of [South Africa] by anyone not comfortable doing so because I understand the weight of that word outside [of South Africa]. But to close this conversation, I’m both Coloured in South Africa and a Black woman.”

“That [controversy] was really confusing for me,” she admits. “I understood both sides of the story, but I was left asking, ‘OK, but what do I do now?’ When who you are is challenged, especially when it’s all you’ve ever known, it shakes you. You want to stand your ground, because if you don’t, someone else will try to define it for you.”

That tension — the constant negotiation between personal identity and public perception — is one many artists know intimately. For those who move between cultures, like Tyla, identity isn’t just personal; it becomes part of their artistic appeal, adding depth and global resonance to their work”.

I want to move on to an interview from British Vogue. Full name Tyla Laura Seethal, there are sections of an in-depth interview that caught my eye. We learn more about Tyla’s upbringing and the controversy around how she discovered her racial diversity. British Vogue sat down with Tyla as she “adjusts to life as the Queen of popiano, Funmi Fetto travels from London to her home town of Johannesburg, where she discovers a 23-year-old on the cusp of global domination”:

“From the outside looking in, Tyla’s rise to fame has been nothing short of phenomenal, seemingly exploding out of nothing and nowhere. That’s not how she sees it. “Since I was little, when anyone asked me what I wanted to become, I always said, ‘I’m going to become a singer,’” she tells me, a determination in her voice, in between delicate mouthfuls of pap, boerewors sausage and chutney, a quintessential South African meal she cooked herself as part of her Vogue video shoot and packed up for the car ride.

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Michael Jackson, Aaliyah, Beyoncé and Britney Spears: these were the artists that soundtracked her childhood in Johannesburg, where she grew up, the second of four siblings to parents of Zulu, Indian, Mauritian and Irish descent. But it was the Barbados-born Rihanna who really moved the needle for Tyla and to whom she is most often compared. “Coming from somewhere outside the States, I really looked up to her,” she says. “I used to think you’re only going to become famous if you’re born in America. She made me realise there is another way.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti for British Vogue

Young Tyla would sing everywhere. “For my family, for competitions, on talent shows, on Instagram…” The latter is where she was spotted, in 2019, by photographer and music producer Garth von Glehn, who would introduce her to manager Colin Gayle (the British-born Jamaican behind Africa Creative Agency, known for taking African musicians global and bringing the likes of 50 Cent and Ne-Yo to the African continent). “He wanted me to come in to record in a studio,” Tyla recalls. “So I met him – my parents came with me – and I recorded my first song that day.” Following that, she was “literally going between school and the studio, school, studio, school, studio…” The

The UK, in particular, has long embraced and been influenced by the South African music scene. Reading-raised DJ Charisse C, the South African amapiano powerhouse and NTS radio presenter, explains that amapiano’s success in the UK stems from a long-standing relationship with South African dance music. “It goes back to the times when sounds like bacardi and songs like DJ Mujava’s ‘Township Funk’ were really instrumental to shaping and influencing underground club culture in the UK.” Which, ironically, resonated deeper when lockdown hit. “On social media, people were seeing the ways in which South African people were connecting to dance music at home and the viral videos of them dancing at parties. That spirit of joy really connected with people.”

Hence the level of fame Tyla is now operating in hits far beyond her home turf. But it can be lonely – and, at times, intimidating. Once, not long after the launch of her first single, “Getting Late”, she was accosted by three middle-aged men at a US airport. “They were like, ‘We know you. You’re Tyla,’” she recalls. “‘We should go for a drink.’ I was alone because my friend went to go get something and there’s these big men asking me all these questions. It was scary.” She now has security with her at all times, which means she can no longer do the things she once took for granted. “Sometimes I even cry over it,” she admits. “I just miss being able to walk. Or sit in the park. Or go to Nando’s.” The last time she tried, she went to order “and they all started singing ‘Make me sweat…’”

She can “probably walk around, but I have to be in disguise because I don’t like when people record me”, she continues. “It’s not like I don’t love my supporters or anything – ask for a picture, we can take one – but when people secretly try to take videos or photos… How do you have the right to just do that? It feels like it should be illegal”

I am ending with an interview from last month. One of Glamour’s 2025 Women of the Year, this artist and fashion icon has the sound and look of a new generation. An artist ready to stand alongside the most popular and biggest artists of today. In a fascinating Glamour interview, we learn new sides and dimensions of Tyla. If this artist is not in your life, then make sure that you bond with her now. Someone who is primed for global domination and huge longevity:

“Tyla is still defining where she’s going to go for this sophomore album. “[Making WWP,] I didn’t feel like I wanted to commit to anything as yet. I wanted to still play around,” she says. If the element that represents her first album is water, then the EP is definitely fire. “We wanna party” is a carefree statement often chanted by crowds in clubs in her home country, but a deeper look at the lyrics in the dance-floor-ready tracks reveals a tension often felt by the singer—she’s trying to create a carefree world while under intense and sometimes ruthless public scrutiny.

As happens for almost all young females in the spotlight, her public appearances have been judged. Sometimes the judgment feels flimsy (e.g., she wasn’t dancing closely enough with Usher at one of his concerts), but other times it’s more fraught, often spurred by the fact that Tyla refers to herself as “coloured” and has done so in a 2020 TikTok and in interviews. This led her to be pressed on the radio show The Breakfast Club by cohost Charlamagne tha God. Then, when WWP was released, some commentators, like Black news media outlet The Root and rapper turned broadcaster Joe Budden, focused on making comparisons between the physical sales of her debut album versus the EP to prove the point that her comments have turned Black listeners off. She’s not letting it get in her head, though.

“I just wanted to have a good time. I wanted to go out, I wanted to party, I wanted to say anything and everything. I realised that people just like to talk—that’s just my life now,” she says. Tyla briefly changed her Twitter bio to “Entitled uppity African,” echoing an insult leveled at her by media commentator Armon Wiggins. “Instead of social media clapbacks—[which] I’ve been doing—I just wanted to sing about it and turn it into something fun and pop.”

Even though she’s creating a public persona, Tyla still feels that internally very little has changed.“When I’m at home, I’m who I’ve known for 23 years of my life, and when I’m out in the world, I have to do all these things that are not normal. It still feels like me but like I’m playing a game. Like I’m in a virtual world.”

The unusual thing now is that the eyes of the world are watching her live out her young years. In August, after a picture circulated of her allegedly being carried out of a party in Brazil—a scene many may have experienced in their early 20s—she tweeted an iconic photo of a young Beyoncé slumped in the back of a car. The club brings her so much inspiration for her music, but her fame adds a new complex dynamic.

“When I’m on stage, I really do not care. I want people to look at me. I want everyone to be entertained. But when I’m off the stage, I’m kind of shy,” she says. “I don’t want people watching me party. I want to be in my own world. I remember in the beginning it was very weird for me, because it felt like an overnight switch. It was very drastic.”

The singer admits she likes to keep her circle tight, especially when it comes to getting advice on how to navigate fame. “Being very honest, I don’t really speak to people besides my family and very tight people. I’m kind of just figuring it out by myself. I’m very private,” she says. She unwinds from working by taking trips to get back in touch with nature, finding quality time with herself to bike over the Brooklyn Bridge, journal, and “doodle” (although a quick web search will show that word is modest, as her paintings could be hung in the Louvre.) “I want to be in a chill outfit, barefoot, no makeup, to just feel like myself”.

Let’s finish there. The remarkable Tyla is going from strength to strength and is releasing the best music of her career. When her second album is released, it will draw spotlight and scrutiny. I think it will confirm that she is one of the most important artists of her generation. There are some who do not know about Tyla and her brilliance, though that is going to change…