Nilüfer Yanya

Chelsea and the first EPs

Nilüfer Yanya was born in London on May 11, 1995 and grew up in Chelsea. Her parents are both visual artists, her mother of Irish and Barbadian heritage and her father Turkish, and she is named after a Turkish pop singer her mother heard on the radio while living in Turkey. She began on piano and took up guitar at 12. Her sister Molly Daniel directs her videos and photographs her albums, and her younger sister Elif sings backing vocals and made the artwork for Painless. With Molly she also co-founded Artists in Transit, a not-for-profit that runs art workshops for displaced people.

She started in 2014 with demos on SoundCloud, and according to Wikipedia turned down an offer to join a girl group produced by Louis Tomlinson. The EPs Small Crimes/Keep on Calling (2016), Plant Feed (2017) and Do You Like Pain? (2018) preceded the debut. Inside Out (2021) collected the three on vinyl with proceeds going to Artists in Transit.

Miss Universe, Painless, My Method Actor

Miss Universe came out on ATO on March 22, 2019, recorded between January 2016 and October 2018 at studios in London, in Penzance in Cornwall and in Los Angeles, with producers including Wilma Archer, John Congleton and Dave Okumu. Its short interludes, titled WWAY Health, are automated phone-style messages she voiced about a hostile health bureaucracy. It scored 85 on Metacritic, Pitchfork gave it 8.3 as Best New Music, and NME called it an early contender for album of the year while criticizing the skits for disrupting the flow. She played a full-band NPR Tiny Desk in September 2019 and a Tiny Desk (Home) concert on July 22, 2020.

Painless (March 4, 2022, ATO) was made with one producer, her friend Will Archer, at Press Play in London and Riverfish in Cornwall, and she told Dummy she did more co-writing than before. Its singles were "stabilise" (November 9, 2021), "Midnight Sun", "Anotherlife" and "The Dealer"; Pitchfork's Laura Snapes wrote that it relies less on power than on texture and immaculately sparing detail, and NPR called it grungier and remarkably tougher than the debut. She told NPR it was definitely rock music now. It reached number 86 in the UK. In July 2022 she played before Adele in Hyde Park.

My Method Actor (September 13, 2024) was the first on Ninja Tune, produced by Archer at Echo Zoo, and reached number 53 in the UK and number one on the UK independent chart. Pitchfork's Matthew Schnipper called it her third and best album. The EP Dancing Shoes followed in 2025 and she supported Lorde on the Ultrasound World Tour. Setlist.fm has 291 setlists for her.