Music like Nilufer Yanya

Nilüfer Yanya (; born 11 May 1995) is an English singer, songwriter and musician.

Yanya is the daughter of two visual artists, her mother is of Irish and Barbadian heritage and her father is Turkish. Yanya grew up in Chelsea, London listening to Turkish music and classical music playing at home. She gravitated to guitar rock and learned how to play the instrument at the age of 12.

Informally starting her musical career with demos uploaded to SoundCloud in 2014, Yanya turned down an offer to join a girl group produced by Louis Tomlinson of One Direction and focused on developing her own music instead. She has spoken out against this model of talent acquisition, telling The Guardian “‘Let’s go and pinch some young people, tell them we’re going to make a really successful group but we’re obviously going to make a lot more money than them.’ It’s a very selfish thing to do.” The project was reportedly abandoned after a year.