Four hours before Sienna Spiro kicks off her first U.S. headlining tour, the 20-year-old London singer-songwriter sits upstairs on the Troubadour's empty balcony, looking down as several crew members move a grand piano on stage.
“The fact that I'm 11 and a half hours from home and this room is full of people who have never met me and I've never met before, it's crazy,” he says. “I'm a little scared.”
The song that brought Spiro to West Hollywood last Tuesday is “Die on This Hill,” a spectacular pop-soul ballad about staying in a toxic relationship: “I'll take my pride, I'll be here for you,” she sings, “I'm not blind, I'm just seeing it through,” which has been streamed more than 300 million times on YouTube and Spotify since it came out in October. Built around vibrant piano chords and Spiro's titanic vocals, the song peaked at number 9 in the UK and entered the Top 20 of Billboard's Hot 100; Last month, Spiro (whose famous fans include SZA, Mark Ronson and Alex Warren) was nominated for a Critics' Choice Award at England's annual BRIT Awards.
With its unabashed emotion and throwback feel, “Die on This Hill” can be heard as the latest in a long line of melodramatic ballads from young Brits like Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Lewis Capaldi and Olivia Dean, the last of whom was just named best new artist at the Grammys. However, Spiro's voice stands out: rich and pulpy, with a crack that she knows how to use for maximum pain, she might be the most impressive instrument to come out of England since Adele emerged almost two decades ago.
“Sienna is a true artist with the voice of a generation,” says Sam Smith, another English singer (and former Best New Artist winner) with a talent for ugly-scream theater. Late last year, Smith, who identifies as non-binary, invited Spiro to join them on stage in New York to perform Smith's song “Lay Me Down.” Smith remembers that Spiro “destroyed the room,” one of the reasons they brought her back Wednesday night to San Francisco's Castro Theater, this time to sing “Die on This Hill” together.
Says Smith of the younger artist: “The world is at her feet.”
At the Troubadour, where he will follow Tuesday's sold-out concert with an encore appearance on Friday night, Spiro describes singing as a calling in life. “I've known what I wanted to do since… honestly, since I was a conscious human being,” he says. Dressed in a black and white striped turtleneck, her legs are folded beneath her on a wooden bench; Her dark hair hangs loose around her face, but it hasn't yet been styled in the '60s style she'll wear come show time.
“I always felt a little invisible,” she adds, whether at school with friends or at home as the middle child. “Not in a victimized way. But I always struggled with that existentialism. Music is the only thing that made me feel real.”
Are we to believe that one of pop's shiny new stars was once… kind of a pain?
“In my own way, yes,” he says, laughing. “It's okay. It happened. Character building.”
Spiro grew up in a privileged area of London, one of four children of Glenn Spiro, a prominent jeweler who counts Jay-Z as a client and friend. Her father turned her into Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone and the Italian film “Profumo di donna” when she was little; At the age of 10 she had written her first song (“Lady in the Mirror,” it was called) and had given her first concert (in a pub not far from Heathrow airport).
At 16, she enrolled at East London Arts and Music, a performing arts academy that she describes as “the up-and-coming version” of London's prestigious BRIT School, whose students include Adele and Winehouse. However, her academic career didn't last long: on her first day of school she posted a TikTok of herself covering Finneas' song “Break My Heart Again” which sparked a wave of interest from various types in the recording industry; He soon dropped out and began traveling regularly to Los Angeles to work on music.
Today Spiro says he has a “love-hate relationship” with the city where he estimates he spends half his time. “I'm very English, and I think one thing about English people is our honesty: you don't really have to guess what people say. What surprised me when I got here was that people didn't say what they wanted to say.
“I felt very, very alone and it was difficult to make music when you felt like that,” she adds. “I make sad music, but it's hard to be a teenager and be away from your family and your friends and be in a place where you have to pretend to be an adult.”
Did the suffering among the two-faced liars of Los Angeles ever lead you to question your commitment to music?
“No. It just made me question as I was doing it. And not everyone is a two-faced liar. “There are some good ones out there.”
Was she ever at risk of becoming a two-faced liar herself?
“Oh, I'm too English for that,” she says. “If I did that, I would get slapped.”
Sienna Spiro performs this week at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.
(Ariana Drehsler / for The Times)
Spiro began releasing singles in 2024 and quickly signed a deal with Capitol Records; Last year she opened for Teddy Swims while on tour and turned heads with “You Stole the Show,” a slow, lushly somber track with echoes of Adele’s “Skyfall.”
For “Die on This Hill,” which he wrote with Michael Pollack and Omer Fedi (who later produced the song with Blake Slatkin), Spiro wanted to capture the feeling of “when you go above and beyond just to feel something reciprocated from someone,” he says. But if the writing came quickly, the recording didn't: Spiro jokes that she cut “900 different versions” of the song, including one that she says sounded like Silk Sonic and another that sounded like Lauryn Hill.
“I was desperate for something with groove,” she says, given that virtually everything she'd released so far had been a ballad. However, Fedi pressured her to record the song live with just her on vocals and Pollack on piano. They did four takes, according to the producer, one of which forms the basis of the album that finally came out.
“Very old school, very human,” Fedi says of the process. “Maybe I'm corny, but with Sienna, less is more. Her voice is so special, so big and direct, that you just want to put a giant flashlight on it and let it shine.”
In early January, Spiro delivered a gutsy performance of “Die on This Hill” on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show; A clip on TikTok has been viewed more than 70 million times. For that appearance, she wore a retro mini dress printed with an old photo of Johnny Carson behind her desk; For a recent performance at the BBC's Live Lounge, she wore a different dress that featured the faces of all four Beatles.
On stage at the Troubadour, her dress features images of the Chateau Marmont and the Capitol Records tower — a bit of preparation, she says, for her next single, “The Visitor,” out March 13. Spiro has been slowly putting together his debut album for the past two years, but with headlining gigs left to play, he's looking for some of his old 2024 tracks.
Some, not all.
“To be honest, some of my early stuff wasn't the most authentic,” he says as his drummer starts playing a snare drum during soundcheck. “I was trying to be someone else because I didn't really feel comfortable with myself.”
Can you point to an example?
“'Back to Blonde,'” she says, referring to a vaguely Lana Del Rey-like number about a woman who dyes her hair after killing a bad lover. “I posted it for all the wrong reasons. It was a mistake, an inauthentic move that I regret.”
What were the wrong reasons?
“It's a long story and it's not very interesting. I didn't do it because I loved the song; that's what I'll say. But at the end of the day it's my name and I have to defend it.”
That's why he's taking his time on the LP. Some artists his age don't care much about the album format, but Spiro is a true believer. Among his favorites: Sinatra's “In the Wee Small Hours,” Stevie Wonder's “Songs in the Key of Life,” Adele's “21” — “a perfect album,” he says — and Billie Eilish's “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”
“I love an album where you never wonder why a song is on it,” he says. “Where everything seems intentional.”
He doesn't want to divulge too much about the work in progress. “The problem with me is that I have a huge mouth and I give it my all,” he says, which…hey, great.
“No, I know it's for you,” he adds, laughing. “But not for me, because when I really want to make the big reveal, I have nothing because I've said everything.”
He will allow one detail: “It won't be 12 ballads, I assure you.” She looks up at the ceiling, shaking her head slightly, as if she's doing some mental calculations regarding the song list.
“I mean, there are a lot of ballads,” he says. “I love ballads, I can't help it.”
