Meet Freya Ridings, the Titian-Maned Goddess of Acoustic Pop

It’s a Wednesday evening in the middle of May in King’s Cross. The balmy evening air is still heavy with the feverish buzz of London’s rush hour, but the atmosphere in the nave of St Pancras Old Church is hushed and still. At the altar, behind a piano, sits a figure with auburn curls who, cloaked in a gothic bohème black dress, exudes a soft, scintillating glamour. The packed-out pews are charged with anticipation. She starts to play.

The figure is 23-year-old singer-songwriter Freya Ridings, and this was her first headline show and debut album recording. One year on from that life-changing night, she still vividly recalls its magic. “There was something in the air – it was really special,” she remembers. “When something becomes real like that, after ten years of ups and downs, working continually on one thing… It was the beginning of a journey – but also the end of us doing it in the shadows.”

The setting for Ridings’ “shadow” years was London’s open mic circuit in the late 00s. Encouraged by the thrill she got from a school open mic as a fresh-faced eleven-year-old, Ridings committed herself for the next decade to grafting the gigging underworld. That open mic in her school hall, though, sticks out as the night that changed everything: “I was terrified – I clung onto my green coat like a safety blanket for the entire evening. But it was like a lightening bolt hit me – I knew I had to hold on to that feeling,” she tells me over the phone.

Although our interview takes place early on a Sunday morning and Ridings is speaking from the airport departures lounge, she has an infectious aliveness and bounce that renders my morning coffee unnecessary. Her excitement is unsurprising really, given she is due in an hour to take off for Washington DC, where she will be supporting singer Ella Vos on her US tour.

In spite of today’s cheer, the tone of Ridings’ debut album, Live at Saint Pancras Old Church, is unmistakably sombre. Hits like “Lost Without You” and “Blackout” cover themes of longing and regret. But Ridings insists the record is about more than failed romance: “It tells the story of a decade of different phases, loves and losses.” The more I listen, the more I pick up on its bittersweet nuances: it reads like a love letter to her nearest and dearest, drawing out the intimacy we overlook in these everyday relationships. “What ties the album together is more than heartbreak. It’s loneliness – the fear of it, or being lost in it,” she says, adding: “I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. At school lunchtimes when everyone would go into their groups, I would go to the piano room and tell the stories that you would tell to a friend.”

Dress, FRENCH CONNECTION
Necklace, JESSIE WESTERN
Boots, SENDRA

Sonically, her debut evokes this image of an intimate dialogue between Ridings and her piano. Her mesmeric vocal wraps sweetly around the lulling melodies, dripping poignantly into the instrumental swells between her verse. With the added atmos of the live church acoustics, we’re left with something quite hypnotic. “I love playing live – it takes away that barrier. You can’t overthink it; you just have to be in the moment and feel it,” she says. This heartfelt presence lends a hallucinogenic texture to her sound, compelling fans to connect with the emotional layers that usually hide dormant beneath everyday trivia. 

Ridings’ connection to the piano seems somewhat primal. “The piano is genuinely the love of my life,” she laughs, joking about the “painful” withdrawal symptoms she experienced being separated from the instrument on family holidays as a teenager. Her lunch dates with the piano at school quickly became more of an urgent necessity than just a haven from school dramas. “That hour at the piano became this time to just get down what I felt from the day before.” She pauses and reflects: “You’re like a clam. You have this pearl inside you that you have to keep letting out or it builds up inside.”

“Places that feel uncomfortable to go, I’m following like a compass. If you’re not scared about what you’re doing – it’s not enough.”

Ridings grew up in the North London neighbourhood of Palmers Green. Her hometown is intensely suburban, but she was brought up in a creative family. Although an actor by trade, Riding’s father’s real love is music – she learnt how to play the guitar intuitively from watching and copying his movements. Her song writing process is similarly instinctive: “When I write, it’s when I can’t keep the feeling in – it’s just coming from a deeper place,” she says. “My mum always said to listen to the quiet man in the room.”

Although she was BRIT-school educated from the age of 16, Riding’s artistry has been informed more by intense introspection than contacts or prestige. Like other lyrically renowned female alumni of the school – from Adele and Kate Nash to the late Amy Winehouse – what empowers the singer is her reluctance to make music for the sole purpose of being liked: “I like that back then no one was trying to please anyone,” she says.

This brings us to the artistic purpose that runs deep through her songs: a commitment to honesty. “It’s almost like a relationship with a person – you know when you’re holding back, and when you’re giving it your all,” she says of her music. “When something comes up that you’re scared to admit, you need to let yourself feel that brutal honesty that other people don’t let themselves feel. The songs I’m most proud of are the ones that were the hardest to sing.”

Ridings cites lyricists like Lorde, Taylor Swift and Leonard Cohen as her artistic inspirations. But her own authenticity extends discreetly beyond the arresting power of her lyrics and into the minimalism of her production. Intimate piano arrangements and live acoustics magnify her vocals, enriching her records with a distinctive rawness and vulnerability – the very antithesis of synthesised, manufactured pop. “No one is after something completely flawless – they’re after something human. We try and be perfect but the most imperfect thing is what people connect to the most.”

Dress, LENA HOSCHECK
Belt, PINKO

How does she remain so grounded, I ask, amidst the whirlwind of tours, Spotify hits and collaborations with huge artists like Diplo and RL Grime. She attributes a lot to her diary, which she calls her “anchor”. Focusing on three simple goals a day – like doing her yoga stretches or FaceTiming her family – gives her the accountability to make each day her best, “and I just love nuggets of personal growth wisdom,” she adds. Her favourite is Serena Williams’ mantra ‘play the point’. “Whenever I get anxious or overwhelmed about the bigger picture, it reminds me to focus on breaking down the one little door that’s in front of me.”

Currently working on her studio album debut, Ridings is enjoying exploring new realms of rhythmic experimentation and lyrical sincerity. “Places that feel uncomfortable to go, I’m following like a compass.” Success for this young star, it seems, will always comes back along the lines of how things feel: “If you’re not scared about what you’re doing – it’s not enough.” Amen to that.