Producer and singer-songwriter, Faye Meana’s soulful experimentations will make you dance and cry at the same time. Her artistry is built on an alchemic combination of serendipity and raw talent; and when brought together, you have the catalyst for the kind of artist whose unique style comes with ambient layers of depth.
Producer and singer-songwriter, Faye Meana’s soulful experimentations will make you dance and cry at the same time. Her artistry is built on an alchemic combination of serendipity and raw talent; and when brought together, you have the catalyst for the kind of artist whose unique style comes with ambient layers of depth. Whether she’s producing, crafting music as a solo artist, collaborating with her 5-piece band or others, every subtle guitar riff or muted keyboard loop resonates with deeply-rooted emotion and a nuanced grasp of life’s complexities.
She grew up on the outskirts of London, in the ‘greenery’ as she puts it, and just a short car journey from the city’s confines, it felt like an entirely different world. As a child, she’d spend her time in the garden, listening to whatever new noise her dad was blasting out of his speakers. Her dad’s eclectic taste, spanning indie, rock and roll, and electronic genres, alongside her mum’s penchant for soul, disco, and 80s hits, inevitably shaped Faye’s own musical palette. Having classically trained in piano as a child presented both a challenge and blessing as she navigated her career. Having initially learned piano through a rigid, ‘by the book’ approach, she had to etch away these rules and rewrite her own creative formula. As she began to experiment with GarageBand on her Dad’s MacBook and a MIDI keyboard she’d picked up at 14, she was able to muck around with the knowledge and compositions she’d brought with her from training classically. Driven purely by a sheer fascination in the creative process at the time, this unknowingly manifested into a future with music at the forefront. And at 16, she started to produce ‘with intention’, releasing her first song onto SoundCloud just two years later––where her fanbase started to grow.
Over the past few years, she’s released three balmy neo-soul EPs that are in the lineage of the likes of Erykah Badu and suffused with a warm optimism. A self-appointed ‘diehard Aretha Franklin fan,’ you can trace Faye’s appreciation of raw vocal excellence and emotive storytelling to the moment she picked up her very first CD––Aretha Franklin Now––a record she describes as carrying connotations of childlike innocence, that feeling of being without a worry in the world. This same sense of joyous liberation is now integral to her own music.
Her debut EP Nothing’s The Same arrived in 2017. Two years later Faye followed up with her sophomore EP, Shades Of A Dreamer. With resounding production and stark lyrics, Shades, revealed an artist speaking to the inner workings of her own mind with immense vulnerability and clarity. Using the sonic and visual repertoires of her childhood as a guiding force, Faye contemplated on healing, calling upon the time-honoured medicine of self-love. 2021’s Sweeter Than Heaven is a funkier, and more sonically diverse EP. Prioritising the interplay between slick bass, synth and her vocals, as much as the lyrical messaging; she crafts a remarkably broad emotional arc in under 20 minutes. Keeping her storytelling open-ended, the funk-infused lead single ‘Giving It In’ quickly became a fan favourite––the kind of song you’d secretly have on repeat in a moment of nostalgia. Her masterful blends of neo-soul, electronic and disco celebrate the complexity of each genre’s history, brandishing her ineffable ability to experiment with any sound she chooses.
Faye aims to continue on with her serendipitous approach as her career progresses. She sings about following your dreams, finding salvation in love, and honouring a greater purpose on this earth. She draws inspiration from her surroundings, turning her songs into a diary of daily confessions that reflect her reality both subjectively and objectively for listeners. From the outset, she knew she could achieve her goals through some graft––Faye has built the kind of DIY music career that most of us assume doesn’t exist anymore, and she’s done it with an enviable self-assurance and skill.
