FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Shygirl

FEATURE:

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Jessica Madavo

Shygirl

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ONE reason for…

PHOTO CREDIT: Hendrik Schneider

including Shygirl in this Modern-Day Queens is that her album, SWALLOW!, is released on 6th November. It is surely one of the most anticipated of the year. There are a couple of interviews from last year I want to cover off before coming to one from this year. ELLE spoke with Shygirl about her E.P., Club Shy Room 2 and why she wanted to follow up the original first and not go on to a new project. Shygirl also talks about her clubbing experiences and collaborating with some incredible artists on her new E.P. So compelling to read and hear what Shygirl has to say:

“Born in London as Blane Muise, Shygirl first entered the scene at parties in college, then frequented club nights in London before becoming a DJ and releasing her own music in 2016. Her debut album Nymph was shortlisted for the 2023 Mercury Prize and received widespread acclaim. She has released upwards of four EPs, and then remixes of those EPs, and has remixed or been featured on songs for Charli xcx, Arca, Björk, FKA Twigs, Lady Gaga, and Blackpink. In short, Shygirl is a music-making machine.

While she had already developed a following on the dance floor, she reached new heights last year as she collaborated with Charli xcx on Brat and joined her and Troye Sivan on their SWEAT Tour. To close out her run on the tour, Shygirl hosted a Club Shy night at the Knockdown Center in Brooklyn for over 3,000 fans. Club Shy began as an afters for Primavera Sound in Los Angeles in 2022 where Shygirl would play demos and experimental music into the wee hours of the morning. These rave-induced evenings inspired her February 2024 EP Club Shy. The follow-up EP, Club Shy Room 2, drops tomorrow with even more tracks from those electric nights. She will host Club Shy sets around the globe in support of the new release, all the while working on her second studio album.

“If you come to Club Shy night, you’ve heard Club Shy Room 2 twice over. You just didn’t realize it, because I’ve been playing those demos. I do it all the time. There’s beauty in a demo. It’s unfinished, there’s potential, and I love that sound of potential. Then, when you get a finished version, it’s timestamped by that moment. That’s why some songs feel timeless and some songs feel like they’re of a time,” she says.

I’ve been fascinated by the concept the club as a space where you can just let go. How do you feel sex and club music are intertwined? How can clubs be spaces for exploration?

All my best friends are from the club. I kind of found myself there. It’s boundary-less, or it was when I first started clubbing. That’s something that I really push for still to have in my life. It’s funny when you have so much discourse around “safe spaces,” but actually I like that sometimes the club is dangerous. It’s somewhere that you have to fight for your space, secure it, and hold onto it. I feel like that strengthens you and your identity. Obviously, I don’t want my club nights to be dangerous, but they could have a bit of edge. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You’re out at night, you don’t come back until two days later sometimes. I feel like you should be able to have that energy in the music. All the songs that I make are soundtracks to the movie that’s my life. I want to feel like I’m that bitch in the video whenever. They make me into that character, and I take that back into my everyday life.

You have some great collaborators on Club Shy Room 2, like Saweetie and PinkPantheress. How do you choose which artists to work with?

It’s funny, because when I’m making music, I feel so wrapped up in what I have to say and the energy I need to give, that it’s not always obvious to me who else could fit on the songs. I really take the offerings of circumstance and what’s put in front of me to know where else to go. None of the collaborations I’ve ever done have been through a label. If anything, the labels have always suggested people, and I’m like, “That’s not going to work.” I love hearing people in different ways. I don’t want to hear them in a way that they’ve done before. That’s not exciting for me. I want to hear what you’re like in my world, where I completely mesh genre.

It’s nice that this project actually turned out to be very female-driven, and that was just by happenstance. I really try to work with people who I genuinely have a friendship with, because there’s nothing worse than having a song between you, and you don’t like each other anymore. It’s like getting a tattoo together”.

I was interested to look back to last year and work to now. Just seeing what Shygirl has been up to. With a new album coming soon, there is a lot of excitement and anticipation. Speaking about another E.P., ALIAS is Me, i-D spent some time with this phenomenal London artist. They write that, “To mark ALIAS’ birthday—a thumping project on which she inhabited multiple characters and pulled us out of our cursed 2020 lockdown malaise—she recently released the follow-up project ALIAS is ME, featuring collaborators like JT, Nick Leon, and George Riley. She brought the EP to life with the ALIAS 5th Anniversary Skin Box—yes, an edition of the EP wrapped in silicone fake skin, mirroring the original’s stretched out sci-fi artwork—as well as a link-up with the sex positive party people HOWL to make a lube too”:

“For this release, you encased the record in silicone skin.

I thought about how to approach it differently. I wanted to be intuitive with my audience, not just give them a product, but an experience that feels intentional and personal. The skin box is made from silicone, and honestly, it really does resemble that Doctor Who skin character—because deep down, I’m a nerd and I love that reference. There’s something metaphysical about it too: the album cover is me looking directly at the beholder, and in Paris I essentially brought my entire discography to life. As people entered the space, the speakers reacted—almost like the music was greeting them. There’s something meaningful about touch and about objects that carry my identity, becoming extensions of myself. It’s metaphysical in a way.
The whole thing aligns with my sex-positive identity and personal evolution, both musically and emotionally. The silicone choice made sense—it supported the concept and the production process. And honestly, without the lube, the box is literally hard to open.

Your audience is consuming your music, which is essentially you. What’s it like navigating different public perceptions of you?

How I look rarely bothers me—but how others perceive my appearance does. It’s not about looking good, but looking happy. Sometimes you look great but feel awful, and that disconnect shows.
In general, my fans are amazing, but occasionally someone will say, “It’s so great to see someone like you be confident,” and I’m left wondering what they mean by “someone like me.” People ask how I became confident, as if it’s surprising. I’ve been fortunate to grow up with encouragement—from family and friends who truly see me and love me. It’s strange entering a space where people assume you need something extra to belong, as if it’s not obvious that I want to be here.

Growing up, were you musical?

My parents encouraged us to do activities outside the house, but I never studied music. I did tap and ballet, but quit early on after sensing systemic racism in that environment. We didn’t even have a creative department at school, but I still gravitated toward other performers, doing photography and capturing other musicians.

Outside of your music, what do you get up to?

Creative work is strange because your career is often you, which makes work-life balance tricky. Right now, I’m trying to spend more time with loved ones. I get so busy that sometimes my family only sees me on Instagram or FaceTime.

I’m also terrible at nesting, so that’s something I’d like to work on – anything to do with the house is a struggle. Between touring and being in and out of London, my place ends up looking like a squat”.

I am ending with Sleek and their interview with Shygirl. This is an artist who has gone through these different phases and evolutions. Ahead of the release of SWALLOW!, Shygirl talks about the seeds of the album and what it represents. Or what genre it is. Shygirl has never been one to be defined by genre, so it is interesting reading how love itself is the genre more than anything else. Shygirl began working on SWALLOW! “at the end of 2023, after turning 30 and falling in love, taking her time to explore a sound that draws as naturally from strings and classic instrumentation as it does from the electronic experimentation that has shaped her music from the beginning”:

“LUCIE RITTAU Where did this album begin for you?

SHYGIRL The starting point was wanting to articulate how happy I was, or am. I had recently fallen in love and turned 30, and I guess I’d taken a little bit of a break after my last album. I started working on the music at the end of 2023. A lot of it was congratulating myself on the decisions I’d made before and how I got here. It’s nice to have that perspective when you’re in a really good place. You can congratulate yourself for all the ways it took you to get there and not be regretful of anything.

LR You worked on it for more than two years. What did not rushing give you?

S It almost felt like having a secret. I could have fun with Club Shy because I knew I had this other thing I was working on. Instead of it feeling overwhelming, it gave me space to relax in a weird way because I didn’t have to prove anything. Club Shy wasn’t an artistic opus for me. It was a space to really have fun and get to know this new environment I’d found myself in, on the same level as my audience a bit more. With this record, I wanted to make a statement on my artistic endeavours.
At the time, I was playing arenas on the SWEAT Tour and seeing how big the spaces I could potentially fill were. I started thinking: what music should I make that could be deserving of that space? I think you can hear all those experiences feeding into the music.

LR Is there one song on the album that feels most like you?

S I really do feel like these are all pieces of me. I’ve played it to family and friends, and they always say they can really hear the person they know, and have known since before the music, in this album. I haven’t redacted my words here. I think I often did that in club songs because you naturally do it to make the hook. Here, I’ve been more explicit in the way I speak. In any conversation with me, people get to know how I talk, and I think on this album I’m speaking in the same way.

LR Love keeps coming up when you talk about this record. When did it become something bigger than your own relationship?

S It started off as an explosion of emotion for me. Falling in love justified the fact that I’ve been pursuing desire at the forefront at all times. But it also felt like something I could be an activist about. The idea of upholding love and appreciating feeling above all things feels like a worthy cause for me. In fact, I had struggled with what activism is for me. I feel like my existence is activism. My conversations, my art are activism, and it’s an activism that I’m comfortable with.
Same as this record, it’s about making a decision about what you stand for, what you live for. I live for the experience. I live to love, to cry. As soon as you fall in love, you’re very aware that you can be hurt. It’s never too far away, that vulnerability and the idea of pain.
Songs like Mantra are about saying those words to myself in times I perhaps don’t feel the strength of them. Making this record is about reminding myself of that time because who knows, maybe I won’t feel that way in a year or ten or whatever. But I did. And it’s good to say that you did. And that you chose to feel that way”.

On 6th November, SWALLOW! is released. I can see it earning some huge reviews and getting a load of love. Shygirl is one of our absolute best artists. Having played in New York earlier in the month, there are a few other dates that take her through October and November. You can check them out here. If you can get to see her at any point then do so, as Shygirl is…