Andreya Triana is a singer, originally from South London. She released her debut album Lost Where I Belong in 2010, and her follow-up Giants was released on May 4.
Here, she chats about feeling isolated, feeling inspired, and making other people feel good.
When did you start singing?
That’s tough because I was always singing, I come from a family of instinctive singers. Mum was always singing, grandparents were always singing – anything and everything. For my grandparents, it was old hymns from Jamaica, for Mum it was always just soul and Motown. I was always itching to sing aged about eight, but you had to be a bit older. I got my first big moment when I was in Year Seven and I sang Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.
When did songwriting get serious?
When I moved away from London when I was 14. We left everything. I felt very isolated and family life was difficult. I shut myself in my room and that’s when I really started listening to music and examining lyrics, and writing my own and expressing myself. I didn’t have any other avenues to do that. My mum’s husband at the time got a new job and was moved to the West Midlands, so we went from a housing estate in Brixton and upped sticks. I went from a very diverse area to a predominantly white, middle-class area. And it wasn’t a race thing, I just felt isolated and life was very different.
What music were you into then?
Nothing on the radio, really. I was just delving deeper into old soul and things, Bill Withers, Jackson Five, lots of older music. Really inspiring.
When did you think you could have a career singing?
I’ve always taken it seriously, but my mum said I should do something that I was going to make a living from. After university I was doing all sorts of jobs that I hated – I worked in a hearing-aid shop, in an ice cream van in a layby, in a basement with no windows throwing out files from a university, at an insurance company and so on. That was for a few years, while doing my first album. Around that time, I rang my mum and said I was going to do music full-time and I thought to myself that I would get rid of all my horrible polyester office clothes. So I did. I got rid of my plan B, and made my plan A working harder at my music. I couldn’t have afforded to buy all those clothes again if it didn’t work!
You worked with Aqualung’s Matt Hales on your new album. Where did you meet?
In LA a couple of years ago. We worked on one song together and then nothing happened and we lost touch, and then we were talking at my label Ninjatune, about who we should get to produce it and Matt’s name came up. So we met again and got on like a house on fire. We wrote one song together in London which is the title track of the album.
What’s your main music aim?
To uplift people, that’s my main aim. It’s not about me. It’s about being able to bring some goodness into someone’s life in those minutes of downtime, in the same way the songs I listened to did for me.
What’s your favourite song on the album?
My favourite is Giants. That’s the title, and the song Matt and I wrote together. That song was a real labour of love – it took me a week, so I’m most proud of that. I really poured something into it. It’s about being in difficult circumstances and being around people that might be toxic, or situations that are rubbish, but finding the strength to be stronger.
Sounds like that’s from personal experience?
They all are.
Is it about the same person?
No. I was thinking about this. It’s not a relationship album. I write about relationships, but I write about them in different ways. I write about relationships with my friends, or my mum, or things that aren’t in the romantic sense. There are only two romantic songs on the whole album. The rest is other stuff and observations.
