British pop star Skye Newman: ‘I come from a vulnerable background and there are vultures in this world’ | Pop and rock

AAlthough she is on her way to pop stardom, with two Brit Awards nominations next week, 22-year-old Skye Newman lives in a cottage beneath her sister’s garden in London. It’s the backdrop to the music video for her song Hairdresser, which has 7.5 million views on YouTube. In the clip, she is seen wearing make-up, with her hair in rollers, as she hangs out with a group of friends. She licks her fingertips to roll a cigarette, and laments her one-sided friendship with another woman: “When I need me, know I’ll be there first / Don’t reciprocate, girl, it hurts.”

It’s a model for Newman’s songs: a contemporary, song-driven soul that goes beyond romantic sadness to cover all kinds of pain and recrimination.

The cabin gives Newman independence, but also closeness to family in the main house, which is where she sits today, barefoot, barefoot, drowning in an oversized black tracksuit. Her sister, also Newman’s manager, sets tea on the table and hovers nearby. The sisters each have their blonde hair slicked back in top knots. Today is a busy day and tomorrow they travel to the US where Newman has two sold out shows.

Newman’s family is the subject of her biggest song to date, Family Matters, which is nominated for Song of the Year at the Brits (she’s also nominated for Breakthrough Artist). It reveals the pain she endured growing up: phone calls from the police, drug use in her home, and brushes with death. “At school, weed was my perfume,” she sings. “Then my brother’s drugs got harder/His drug use got harder, so he’s a stupid bastard.”

It is understood that she closely guards the details of her family history, but the accumulation of stress that she and her siblings were experiencing contributed to her having two life-threatening seizures, being hospitalized and being tested for a brain tumor or bleeding. As for the situation she sings about in Family Matters, she says: “We all tried to love him, because that’s all you can do. It’s weird to grieve for someone who’s still alive.” In the comments on the song on YouTube, fans are giving Newman heartfelt support and comparing her to Amy Winehouse and Adele.

Newman shares some qualities with these two generational talents: a voice that could move a rock, an energy that shimmers as she speaks, and that magical ability to distill emotion in a way that feels utterly personal to an audience of millions. One major difference is that she was twice rejected from the British School, the performing arts institution from which Adele Winehouse graduated.

Instead, as a teenager, she began posting performance videos on social media, which exploded during the coronavirus lockdown. She was initially reluctant to answer the calls that soon followed from A&Rs and record companies. “I come from a weak background, and there are vultures in this world,” she says. “People are jumping on it.”

Furthermore, the council estates where she grew up taught her a lot, and she credits her storytelling to the range of people she saw as she moved around south-east London living with different family members: “Life can be hard but I like the way I grew up because I was able to experience people and understand them.” “It made me very empathetic.”

She is passionate about highlighting people who grew up in similar environments. “There can be a lot of love and education for people who have less because there’s a lot of knowledge in those places; there’s a lot of talent but they don’t get the same opportunities.”

Another artist who shares these sentiments is Ed Sheeran, who recently made a plea for the government to invest more in music in school curricula. He asked Newman to do a support set at his homecoming in Ipswich in 2025, where they also performed together. “He’s the nicest guy. He’s so natural, like Lewis,” as in Capaldi, who she supported on tour last year. “I’m attracted to them, because that’s who I am. I’m not above anyone, and no one is above me.”

Ahead of our interview, her team shared some unreleased music including “I Am the Woman,” a flawless piano ballad about female relationships that got her through tough times. Here, Newman’s voice sounds softer and more controlled than it does on her great songs.

Ask about times when she needed this support. “My whole life,” she says with another laugh. “All my life, I feel like there’s been…” Then her voice wavers and there are tears. Her sister puts on her slippers and wraps her arms around Skye.

“I hate saying that because I feel like it sounds like, ‘Poor me,’” Newman says, still crying. “I’m good, I’m a very strong person, and I have a lot of strong women around me. But it never ends. These are the conditions I live in, with my family and my things.”

Once again, you fall back on specifying those exact circumstances. “I’m grateful, because it means I can write a lot of music that helps a lot of other people,” she gathered. Many of them had told her as much. “It breaks my heart every time I hear that, especially from children,” she continues. “But there’s no better feeling than knowing that something I went through did something for them. I feel strong. It makes me feel good to know they’re not alone. That I’m not alone.”

She also writes clearly about the toxicity that can tear apart relationships. On Out Out, she pleads with a closeted partner: “Is it really that hard to love me out loud?” It’s the kind of relatable sentiment that speaks to women her age and older. “Since there are no strong role models to look up to in the male field, it is very difficult to choose the right person,” she says. “I feel like I’m attracting hurt and I’m attracting brokenness. I’m also fighting for things that I shouldn’t be doing.”

In her latest single, Lonely Girl, Newman speaks to teenage girls like her older sister: “Please don’t let him take over / He’s too old / To be the one to take you home.” The song was inspired by a 15-year-old friend of hers who was involved with a 21-year-old guy. Newman says many friends have been subjected to such predatory behavior, and she herself was stalked and bullied by men when she was 12 years old.

“I got more and more attention from guys and builders, from ages 12 to 16, and then it got less and less as I got older,” she says. Then she asks: “As a grown woman, do you actually get ridiculed in the street like you did when you were a child?” The question surprises me, but the answer is no. “A lot of it is about control,” Newman concludes. “There are men who do it who are pedophiles, and there are men who do it because they say, ‘Well, you can’t do anything about it.’

A fire burns inside her. “Most men think women are weak, weak and dependent. No, we are not. Feminine women are independent.” She goes from having her feet underneath her to stretching and gesturing. “It comforts me. We need to get back to women ruling the world.”

During I Am Woman, she sings “Our cycles are in sync, it’s bigger than you think.” “We’re out of our damn courses [by men]. “We’re supposed to be in sync with the land and nature: it’s Mother Nature for a reason,” she says, noting that there are species that reproduce without male intervention. “I honestly think women used to be like this. We got bored and created the man. Because what are you? You’re half of who we are. You’re just our chromosomes with a cut off leg.”

She says she believes there is another power above her, even though it is not a divine, male figure. “I don’t think this”—our world—”is everything. If anything, I think this is hell. We’re in hell, my friend, and we need to work our way to find inner peace. And on the other side of that is heaven.”

It’s fun to watch her go off like that, with the power that she’s clearly captured for herself and channeled into her songs. She believes this operation may have saved her life. After experiencing near-death episodes caused by emotional distress, she “turned my head around” and stopped hiding things. I started writing. “It’s how I let go of everything in a healthy way. I don’t know what I would do without it.” One of the songs she wrote at the time, which has not yet been released, was tear-jerking when she sings: “I’ll be selfish with my life, ’cause it’s mine.”

“I felt like that song was a song for God, the universe, my aunt, everyone else, and it showed me that if you think about yourself and give back to yourself, your body will naturally give back to you,” she says. “And that’s exactly what happened.” She is signed to a major label and, in January, topped the BBC’s “Sound of…” poll, the breakout artist competition that Chappelle Rowan and Pink Panthers have won in recent years. “The hairdresser went out, the family affairs stopped, everything was gone. People say: How do you do it? And I say: Your ideas are so powerful!”

And with her star power also growing, she says she’s keen “not to get caught up in this.” With so much turmoil in her life ahead of this new chapter, she’s happy to be close to her sister with her own breathing space — “I enjoy sitting in my cabin with my friends, smoking weed, watching movies and that’s about it” — and finds that in an industry that can be slippery and attracts people with ulterior motives, she wants to protect herself. “I feel like a lot of this world is just kind of an exchange, and not in a good way. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours — and I will when needed. But I don’t feel the need to put myself through all that. I’m very happy with the people I have in my life. I’m very happy with my life the way it is. Very happy with my cabin.”