{"id":38899,"date":"2025-08-01T08:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T08:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/38899\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T08:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T08:01:07","slug":"i-have-different-weathers-in-my-brain-how-celeste-rekindled-her-love-of-music-after-heartbreak-and-loss-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/38899\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I have different weathers in my brain\u2019: how Celeste rekindled her love of music after heartbreak and loss | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Glastonbury\u2019s Pyramid stage in June, Celeste<\/a> appeared wearing smeared black eye makeup and a leather jacket moulded with the impression of feathers, latched at the throat. She evoked glamour and tragedy, a bird with its wings clipped. \u201cMy\u00a0first album came out nearly five years ago and I didn\u2019t expect it to take so\u00a0long,\u201d she said of its follow-up. \u201cBut\u00a0I\u2019m here now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Celeste broke through in 2020, her voice reminiscent of Billie Holiday\u2019s racked beauty, but sparkling with a distinctly British lilt: a controlled, powerful vibrato that stirs the soul. Despite her jazz-leaning balladry not being obvious chart fodder, she became the first British female act in five years to reach No 1 with her debut album, Not Your Muse<\/a>, which was\u00a0nominated for the Mercury prize. She also won the BBC\u2019s Sound of 2020 poll and the Brit award for rising star and was nominated for an Oscar for best original song (for Hear My Voice from The Trial of the Chicago 7<\/a>) the year after\u00a0\u2013 but her chance to capitalise on those accolades was stalled by the pandemic. She had to\u00a0halt her touring ambitions. Of the\u00a0years since, she\u00a0says: \u201cSometimes you\u00a0worry: are\u00a0you\u00a0on\u00a0your\u00a0path?\u201d<\/p>\n

Celeste was haunting and spectacular when I saw her at Glastonbury, but now, as we stroll through Hyde Park in central London, she is relaxed and laughs easily. She becomes distracted by a carousel ride \u2013 \u201cThey\u2019re my favourite! I love the music\u201d \u2013 then she is back to talking about the five-year struggle to make her excellent second album, Woman of Faces, which will be released in\u00a0November.<\/p>\n

Haunting and spectacular \u2026 Celeste on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury in June. Photograph: Jaimi Joy\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cThe title was kind of a diagnosis of how I feel sometimes; a device to help me begin to understand my own complexity,\u201d she says. She was born Celeste Waite in California to a mother from Dagenham, east London, and a Jamaican father. Her mother had found her way to Hollywood as a makeup artist and Celeste was born \u201cquite quickly\u201d after her parents met there. They separated when Celeste turned one and she and her mother moved to England to live in Celeste\u2019s grandparents\u2019 home. \u201cIt was almost like my mother was my sister, because we were both being looked after by my nan and\u00a0grandad.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are happy memories, but she has \u201cthese different weathers in my brain \u2026 I\u2019ve always had this little tinge of melancholy.\u201d Maybe, she says, it stems in part from a lack\u00a0of rootedness: \u201cYou move from\u00a0America to England and you don\u2019t really remember it, but you know that there\u2019s people that you\u2019ve known there and built connections with. And then you don\u2019t have that.\u201d She wondered if she would end up with a mental health diagnosis, \u201csomething more clinical later on down the line. But I didn\u2019t feel I really needed that.\u201d Instead, she found solace in other artists\u2019 music,\u00a0\u201cpeople\u2019s lyrics and\u00a0emotions and melodies, even how they dress themselves\u00a0\u2013 that\u2019s always been quite a big remedy without needing to have a\u00a0professional\u201d.<\/p>\n

While she is frequently compared to Adele and Amy Winehouse, unlike them Celeste did not attend the Brit school of performing arts, instead studying music technology at sixth-form college in Brighton and working in\u00a0a pub as she got her career off the\u00a0ground. \u201cI\u2019m really glad I taught\u00a0myself to sing,\u201d she says, arguing that it gives her \u201crawness and authenticity\u201d. Her venture into\u00a0music was galvanised by the death of her father from lung cancer when she was 16: \u201cWhen you lose someone, every day you wake up and you\u2019re stunned by the\u00a0fact that\u00a0they\u2019re gone. And there\u2019s a certain point where you say to yourself: I\u00a0can\u2019t do this any more, and that\u2019s when you start to\u00a0either go to the gym or get into a practice. For me, that was where I\u00a0picked up music and became really focused.\u201d<\/p>\n

People\u2019s lyrics, emotions and melodies, even how they dress themselves \u2013 that\u2019s always been quite a big remedy<\/p>\n

In the mid-2010s, she started uploading music to YouTube and SoundCloud and got a manager. She was picked up as a guest vocalist for producers such as Avicii, while Lily Allen\u2019s label released her debut single. \u201cI worked double shifts in a pub on weekends to afford to go to the studio,\u201d she says. \u201cIt took my energy away and\u00a0I wasn\u2019t able to\u00a0sing as well any\u00a0more.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she carried on doggedly, got signed to the major label Polydor, bagged the 2020 John Lewis Christmas ad soundtrack and\u00a0beguiled listeners on songs such as Strange, in which her vocal tone expresses every contradictory emotion in a breakup\u00a0\u2013 resignation, hurt, bafflement, poignancy, even a\u00a0kind of helpless amusement at how awful it all is \u2013 in just four\u00a0minutes.<\/p>\n

She is clear that she has received plenty of support and encouragement within Polydor: \u201cThe people that signed me came into music with the intention to make meaningful, poignant, credible music.\u201d But at the commercial end of the industry, there is still \u201ca huge pressure to make money. If you\u2019re not in the top 2% of acts who have such a huge fanbase, you maybe don\u2019t get the freedom\u201d to do adventurous work. She says that developing her initial sound caused friction. \u201cI\u00a0was hanging around all these jazz\u00a0musicians like Steam Down<\/a> and Nubya Garcia<\/a>, real innovators, and it wasn\u2019t easy for me to go into the label and be like: this is what I\u00a0want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m really glad I taught myself to sing\u2019 \u2026 at a pre-Oscars show in Los Angeles in 2021. Photograph: Richard Harbaugh\/Rex\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

She has managed to preserve a sense of strangeness and singularity. Unlike her earlier peppy soul-pop hit Stop This Flame, familiar to millions as backing music on Sky Sports, most of the songs on Woman of Faces don\u2019t even feature percussion \u2013 almost unthinkable in 21st-century pop \u2013 and there aren\u2019t many British singers on major labels doing symphonic jazz. She wanted \u201ca cinematic feel\u201d and referenced Bernard Herrmann<\/a> \u2013 a composer for films by Hitchcock, Welles and Scorsese \u2013 in the studio as she worked with the conductor Robert Ames and the London Contemporary Orchestra. \u201cHerrmann was a real innovator and it\u2019s reflected in people like Busta Rhymes sampling him [on Gimme Some More] all those years later. So we wanted to make sure that if we went into that territory of a cinematic string orchestra, it didn\u2019t feel like an impression of the 1950s \u2013 it sounded like something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this ambitious scope and Celeste shuttling between sessions in Los Angeles and London, it took a lot longer than expected to complete Woman of Faces. It was originally due to be finished by the end of 2022 and released a year later. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect it to take so long,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd if I\u2019m really honest with you, at the end of\u00a02021, into 2022, I experienced some heartache and\u00a0I\u00a0fell into such\u00a0a depression about it all.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Watch the video for On With the Show.<\/p>\n

A relationship had ended. \u201cWhen you lose the person from your life that you really love, there\u2019s a grief that comes over you,\u201d she says. The album\u2019s first single, On With the Show, was written at her lowest point. \u201cI didn\u2019t really want to go to the studio; I didn\u2019t really feel like I actually wanted to live at that point. I didn\u2019t find meaning and purpose in the music.\u201d She just had the song title, which she shared\u00a0with her collaborator Matt Maltese. \u201cI didn\u2019t even have to explain to him what it would be about, because he just knew. We\u00a0spoke about the song and what\u00a0it\u00a0needed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had also recently seen Marius Petipa\u2019s 1898 classical ballet Raymonda<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s about a woman in the Crimean war and she has two lovers: one is in Russia and one is in Crimea,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u00a0could relate, because she was torn between these two entities: at\u00a0that point, my dedication to music and my dedication to a person. And\u00a0one was taking the energy from the other. So On With the Show was about me having to find the courage to let go of something, to meet back in with the path of my\u00a0life as\u00a0a\u00a0singer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worse, she says, \u201csocial media had come in to erode my relationship\u201d. As a public figure on social media, \u201cpeople can view your relationship and have so much awareness of the fact that you\u2019re even in one. There\u2019s this really strange, invisible, intangible impression that interactions in that space can leave upon your living reality. I was upset at how much that had come to affect my personal, real life.\u201d On Could Be Machine, a curveball industrial pop song inspired by Lady Gaga, Celeste explores the idea that \u201cthe more time we spend with this technology, the more we become it\u201d.<\/p>\n

When you lose the person you really love, a grief comes over you. I didn\u2019t find meaning and purpose in the music<\/p>\n

\u201cMy phone had become this antagonist in my life, via communication that I didn\u2019t want to receive and the fact it could just be in your hand. It was quite alien, in a way. I hadn\u2019t grown up with a phone stuck to my hand and it was something that I had to become more and more \u2018one\u2019 with in my music career.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says that, during the relationship, love had reverted her to a kind of \u201cchild-like state \u2026 a really pure version of yourself, before the world has seeped in and shaped you\u201d. Losing the person who brought her into that state meant that she had to \u201clearn how to steer and guide\u201d herself to rediscover it.<\/p>\n

She is leaning on other musicians to help her understand these difficult years. She cites Nina Simone\u2019s song Stars, a ballad about the cruelty and melancholy of being a professional musician. \u201cIt\u00a0says so much about the tragedy of where her life is at that moment in time, but then there\u2019s so much triumph in the fact she even gets to express herself in that way.\u201d Another inspiration for Woman of Faces was the 1951 musical romantic comedy An American in Paris<\/a> and one of its stars, Oscar Levant, who spent time in mental health institutions. \u201cI was really moved by what he seemed to carry in his being. And, I suppose, I relate a lot to artists who carry this pain, but their work eases it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I relate a lot to artists who carry pain\u2019 \u2026 at a Bafta fundraiser in London in 2024. Photograph: Carlo Paloni\/Bafta\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Whereas Celeste was previously in thrall to American blues and R&B (\u201cthe older sense of what R&B was in the 1940s\u201d), down to the way she might \u201ctime things and phrase things and even pronounce things\u201d, she has \u201clearned what my true voice is and who I really am as a person. I\u00a0still have some of that phrasing and pronunciation there, but I exist a lot more as myself, therefore I sing a lot more\u00a0as\u00a0myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buoyed up by her and others\u2019 art, does she feel happy? \u201cYes!\u201d She\u00a0grins and throws her hands in\u00a0the air. \u201cThe main thing is finding\u00a0happiness within the relationships I maintain around me and making sure those are kept\u00a0really positive and nourishing.\u201d She is glad to be in her\u00a030s: \u201cAge\u00a0becomes kind of taboo for a woman in the music industry \u2013 but then you hear people\u00a0like Solange speak about women really coming into their true sense of who they are within their work. There\u2019s been a shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if the happiness in her career ever dissipates, she has decided she\u00a0will simply move on. \u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t really see the need to live in a feeling of oppression, when I know there\u2019s so much freedom outside this world. And anyway, I\u2019m sure I\u00a0would find my way back to it again. But on my own terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woman of Faces is released on 14 November on Polydor<\/p>\n

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans<\/a> can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org<\/a> or jo@samaritans.ie<\/a>. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline<\/a> on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org<\/a> or text HOME<\/a> to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline<\/a> is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Glastonbury\u2019s Pyramid stage in June, Celeste appeared wearing smeared black eye makeup and a leather jacket moulded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-38899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}