Remembering MOBO founder Kanya King, 1969-2026

On June 3 this year, the UK music industry lost one of its foremost figures when Kanya King CBE passed away after a battle with cancer. A regular in our pages throughout her ground-breaking career, the MOBO Awards founder was the recipient of The Strat at the Music Week Awards in 2021. Of course, winning the highest honour at that ceremony is just one of many highlights of her time in the business, as the special tribute feature in our August edition illustrates. Here, Music Week looks back on the life and times of Kanya King in our obituary... WORDS: Yemi AbiadePHOTOS: Louise Haywood-Schiefer, MOBO Kanya King altered the course of Black British music forever. In the 30 years since the first MOBO Awards took place, her presence has given voice and visibility to legions of would-be superstars attempting to make their mark. King built the infrastructure to guide them, the opportunities to empower them and the ceremony to celebrate them. MOBO’s founder and CEO passed away peacefully on June 3, aged 57, after what the MOBO Organisation described as a “courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer”, surrounded by her family and the people who loved her most. “What Kanya created was never simply an awards ceremony,” read a MOBO statement. “It was an act of cultural justice. MOBO did not just celebrate Black music; it legitimised it, amplified it, and demonstrated its commercial and creative power to a world that had too often chosen not to see it.” Her family, meanwhile, remembered their “mother, sister and heart”, who “faced every moment of her illness as she faced every moment of her life: with courage, with faith, with humour and with an absolute refusal to be diminished.” ‘Fighter’ would be the opportune word to describe King, who faced adversity head-on to climb to the top of the mountain. Her story began in Kilburn, North London, where she was born in 1969 to a Ghanaian father and an Irish mother. The youngest of nine children, she witnessed prejudice levelled at both her parents as a child, an experience that would offer the foundation of her life’s work. “I witnessed so many inequalities,” she told Music Week in 2021, in a cover interview celebrating her Strat win. “My father had a strong African accent, he struggled to get a job. There was no kind of pride, you’d watch things at Christmas time, like Zulu, and the images of Africans were of savages – the very opposite [of reality].” After the death of her father when she was 13 and giving birth at the age of 16, King worked odd jobs before channelling her formidable will into a place at Goldsmiths, University Of London, where she studied English Literature. At this time, her first foray into music commenced as she became a promoter for R&B and reggae concerts, using her earnings to attempt a fleeting MOBO-prototype – the Black Music Awards – in 1992. The next stage of her early career was spent in television working as a researcher for Carlton TV. As she rose through the ranks, King often found herself the only person of colour in the room: in boardrooms, meetings and in the spaces where the top decisions were made. “I felt very much an outsider,” she admitted to Music Week. “It felt at times like a hostile environment.” Rather than fold into that discomfort, she refused to compromise who she was to fit in, even when advised to wear her hair in a bun and avoid make-up so as to be considered more of an ‘industry person’. “I just needed to be myself,” she told Music Week. That same instinct for authenticity ran through everything she built in music, and through her support of the wider community of women and people of colour pushing for change across the business. It was in 1996 that King refocused on the gap she’d attempted to address just four years earlier – one that nobody else seemed willing to. There was no major platform built to recognise and celebrate Black music in Britain. Rather than wait for permission, she built one herself. Working with no institutional backing or industry support, she remortgaged her home to raise the funds, risking it all for an idea. “I put everything on the line, and my Plan B was the same as my Plan A,” she reflected to Music Week earlier this year. “It had to work.” In November 1996, the first MOBO Awards took place at London’s Grand Connaught Rooms and was broadcast live on ITV. With Tina Turner, Lionel Richie and future UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in attendance, King’s gamble paid off handsomely, and nothing in British music was ever the same again. King was told, repeatedly, that Black music was too niche, that there was no commercial case for it, that the industry simply wasn’t interested. But she blocked out the noise and continued to build anyway, unflinching and determined as ever. In the years that followed, she recalled being told her event was “a fluke” and would never return, and senior figures discussing how to get rid of MOBO altogether at industry level. She kept going regardless. “Rejection, to me, became normalised,” she told Music Week. What King had built proved anything but a fluke. Across 30 years, the MOBO Awards has grown into a genuine institution, one of the key fixtures of awards season in the UK and a runaway commercial and financial success. It’s been broadcast on ITV, the BBC and Channel 4 and in countries around the world, and staged in London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Coventry, Sheffield, Newcastle and, in its 30th anniversary year, Manchester. The MOBOs has, of course, also welcomed a who’s who of legendary music talent. Diana Ross, Sade, Jay-Z, Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lauryn Hill, Janet Jackson, Amy Winehouse and Usher have all featured across the decades, alongside the homegrown talent the show was built to champion: Craig David, Soul II Soul, Ms. Dynamite, So Solid Crew, Kano, Krept & Konan, Stormzy, Little Simz, Raye, Central Cee, FLO and Olivia Dean among them. For so many of these artists, a MOBO stage was the first that saw and acknowledged them on such a scale. King took enormous pride in hearing directly from the artists whose careers MOBO had changed. Talking to Music Week five years ago, she pointed to Krept & Konan’s account of how performing at the awards transformed their trajectory, and to the African artists who told her that the commercial deals which followed a MOBO win had been transformative. King’s ambitions for MOBO always reached beyond one night a year. She engineered an entire ecosystem around the awards in her image. All with the aim of empowering creative individuals of all backgrounds. The MOBO Trust, launched in 2016, supports emerging talent through funding, mentoring and business support; MOBO Unsung, established in 2012, is a platform for developing artists; MOBOLISE, a 2020 creation, connects Black creative and tech talent with career pathways and leadership opportunities. Most recently, House Of MOBO, a physical cultural space for artists, entrepreneurs and fans to connect, opened its doors in South London in 2025. The scale of what she helped build is reflected in UK Music’s 2026 Black Music Means Business report, which found that Black music accounted for around 80% of the UK’s recorded music market, contributing £24.5 billion of the sector’s £30 billion revenue over a 30-year period. This would not be possible without King’s blueprint, putting the future of UK Black music on her shoulders. MOBO’s reach also extends beyond music: King forged partnerships with organisations including the NHS, using the platform’s voice to raise awareness of blood donation in Black and Asian communities, and she remained a vocal advocate for health equity even as her own health declined. “Sometimes I get emails out of the blue from executives who say, ‘Thank you for giving me my first opportunity,’” she said in her 2021 Music Week interview. It was, for King, the truest measure of what she had achieved. King’s honours stacked up as her career gained more layers: an MBE in 1999, elevated to a CBE in 2018; as well as honorary fellowships and doctorates from Goldsmiths, London Metropolitan University and Leeds Metropolitan University. Remarkably, it was only in 2016 that King was finally presented with her first-ever music industry award: the Media Pioneer honour at the Music Week Women In Music Awards. In 2021, to mark 25 years of the MOBOs, King was the recipient of The Strat at the Music Week Awards, which was handed to her on stage by Craig David (see p31). She was the first woman of colour to receive the honour. “I feel like I’m here on behalf of all those who have gone before me, who should have been recognised and celebrated, but are not,” she said on the night. “These moments in life are bigger than ourselves.” That same year, King appeared on the cover of Music Week’s monthly print magazine. Five years on, as the MOBOs turned 30, we returned to King for a digital cover story, finding her as driven as ever. In 2025, an Ivors Academy Honour recognised her work championing songwriters and composers. True to form, she accepted that honour in the middle of what she described as “a difficult week health-wise” – and still managed to inspire everyone in the room. That health journey had begun in December 2024, when King revealed she had been diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer. “This isn’t the end of my story,” she said. “It’s a chance to inspire resilience, raise awareness, and amplify the message of early detection.” In the months that followed, she spoke often about wanting to use her platform to highlight health inequity, determined that her illness should serve a wider purpose. In 2025, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Diversity Awards and was also taken by surprise when she was presented with the Paving The Way Award at the MOBOs. “I never allowed someone to define my limits,” she rallied to the audience. “Not in life. Not in business. And I’m certainly not going to have that happen now.” King continued to lead MOBO from the front through its landmark 30th anniversary year, overseeing the organisation’s biggest and most ambitious show yet at Manchester’s Co-Op Live in March, complete with a new Global Songwriter Award – awarded to Pharrell Williams – and performances from Olivia Dean, Estelle, FLO, Slick Rick and more. Even then, with her own health far from certain, she remained energised by what she saw coming through the ranks behind her. “Artists have more ways than ever to reach audiences, build communities and express themselves,” she told us before the ceremony. As ever, she remained focused not on her own achievements but on what came next. “When I think about the future, I don’t just see the next chapter of MOBO,” she explained. “I see the thousands of young people, artists and creatives who will shape the next chapter of British culture, and if we’ve played a small part in helping that happen, then that’s a legacy worth celebrating.” As for her own legacy, King said, “I hope it’s about opening doors that previously didn’t exist,” suggesting that she aspired to be remembered as she was: an individual who broke down barriers, so that the next generation could step into their potential with more confidence than she had been afforded. King is survived by her son, along with the family, friends and enormous MOBO community who loved her. In the days following her death, tributes poured in, from London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to Craig David, Stormzy, Ayra Starr, Mahalia and more – a true testament to the breadth of a legacy that reached far beyond the music industry. The world was a profoundly better place with Kanya King in it. She never asked for permission, never accepted that ‘no’ was the final word, and never stopped building, right to the end. Music Week joins the entire industry in saying farewell to one of the true greats of British music.

As she makes a major chart impact in the UK and US with debut album Visitor, don't miss our Music Week cover feature with British breakthrough star Sienna Spiro, alongside co-manager Miriam Maslin, Capitol Music Group CEO and chairman Tom March and the company’s president Lillia Parsa... Sienna Spiro is about to hit the big time. On the eve of her debut album Visitor, the Londoner is on a fast track to becoming the UK’s latest breakout superstar, powered by her inimitable voice, Spotify Global Chart Top 10 viral smash Die On This Hill and a growing legion of followers. Behind the numbers lurks a remarkable story, as Spiro tells Music Week. Joined by co-manager Miriam Maslin, Capitol Music Group CEO and chairman Tom March and the company’s president Lillia Parsa, she holds court for a discussion that takes in being inspired by jazz and Frank Sinatra, her painstaking quest for success, why “AI music is s**t” and more besides. The tale begins, however, with biscuits… WORDS: Ben HomewoodPHOTO: Amy Catarinozzi “I can’t touch another Custard Cream!” blurts Sienna Spiro. “You know, you say something you like, and everyone just decides that’s what you’re about. And I’m more than just a Custard Cream.” The singer, talking to Music Week on her tourbus en route to Glasgow, is setting the record straight. In September last year, she uploaded a TikTok (that now has six million views) in which she wore a skirt with a built-in purse, opening it to reveal three Custard Creams stashed side by side. A couple of months later, during an interview on Capital FM’s Breakfast Show, she was gifted a large Custard Cream-shaped tin, packed full of the biscuits. “Thank you so much!” Spiro said, amazed. “I love Custard Creams! I’m passionate about two things: music and English biscuits – I could talk about them all day.” She would go on to praise Jammie Dodgers and dismiss Bourbons but, seemingly, her desire to discuss biscuits has dimmed. And when we venture to ask which revelation of a preferred Spiro delectation might be next, her answer is firm. “Nothing!” she says. “I’m never saying I like anything again!” For what it’s worth, we add, we’re in total agreement with the opinions she expressed in the Capital interview. “Good,” she smiles. “You know what you’re talking about.” Her choice of phrase is appropriate, because, increasingly, it feels like everyone knows what Spiro is talking about. The 20-year-old, whose debut album Visitor is due via Capitol Records on July 3, has a huge fanbase (even if she concedes that, “I’m not very good at tech, my mum tells me when it goes up and down”). She has 117 million likes and 3.8m followers on TikTok and 1.2m on Instagram. Even her blankets are viral: she points lovingly to her throw, made by influencer-favourite Lola Blankets. On Spotify, she has over 28m monthly listeners, while her biggest song is Die On This Hill, with more than 450m plays. That track, released last year, hit No.9, her highest UK chart position to date, and has 620,249 sales according to the Official Charts Company. In January, it hit the Top 10 of Spotify’s Global Chart. “This is in-credible, what’s happening in my life and in my career,” Spiro says, matter of factly. “I’m 20. This is not normal for a 20-year-old.” “We knew that Die On This Hill was a record that was going to take over the world,” says Tom March, CEO and chairman of Capitol Music Group. “And it did…” Yet Die On This Hill is far from the only of Spiro’s songs – all instantly identifiable thanks to her husky, acrobatic tone, the result of nodes on her vocal cords – to have racked up formidable numbers. Maybe, released in 2024, has 458,403 UK sales, You Stole The Show has 292,045 and The Visitor has 146,985. New single Material Lover features in The Devil Wears Prada 2 and debuted at No.23. Also, in March, Die On This Hill, The Visitor and You Stole The Show were in the Hot 100 in the US at the same time. “And she’s about to have a fourth song in that chart with Material Lover,” says March. “We think it could be a first for a British artist before they’ve had an album out. We’re trying to get verification on that, but regardless of whether it’s a record or not, Sienna is breaking around the world. She’s been No.1 in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and she’s just been to South East Asia, and the scenes were unbelievable. She’s a superstar there already.” Former co-president of Polydor in the UK, March moved to LA to become president of Geffen Records in 2022, before promotion to his current role in February 2024. As part of the same Universal Music Group reshuffle, Lillia Parsa, former SVP of A&R at Universal Music Publishing Group, was appointed president of Capitol Music Group. Today, the pair are practically giddy as they join us to discuss the rise of Spiro, who was their first signing. “It was our first week at the office and we both had just heard Sienna,” says Parsa. “We had actually both met her separately, Tom when he was at Geffen, and me when I was at UMPG. I’d been setting her up in sessions with my roster super early on, trying to find her crew. Then, Tom and I were getting to know each other, and he called me, and said, ‘Do you know this girl, Sienna?’ And I was like, ‘That’s so funny, yes!’ It was instant for both of us. We signed her in our first week.” March recalls seeing Spiro for coffee on her very first writing trip to LA, at a meeting arranged by Jack Street, co-founder of Method Music, Spiro’s management company (also home to Capitol acts Sam Smith and Disclosure). “I had absolute faith that if Jack was this excited about somebody, I should probably meet them, and then I just heard her voice,” March recalls. “I always think, if you’ve got an incredible voice and you write great songs, a good team can help do the rest. You could tell Sienna had the magic there.” March and Parsa put paid to any notion of a “label scrum”. “We identified her really early, she had no music out,” March says. “We were looking for new artists that we were excited about, that we would take the time to develop. If you’re going to do that, they have to write great songs and have a great voice, but they have to have a great team around them, and we knew she did.” March takes care to credit Street and Miriam Maslin, who also manages Spiro, for “taking a leap of faith” with Capitol. “We’d just come into our roles and there were a lot of people that didn’t give us the time of day because of the job that it was perceived we had to do and how long people thought it might take to do it,” he says. “But Lillia’s resume spoke for itself and I’ve known Jack a long time and he knows I can develop artists.” “Miriam has since told me that she wanted to go with the people who are focused on the mission, which is to break Sienna,” Parsa says. “We were just so bullish on Sienna, no matter what else was going on.” March returns to the idea of the team around an artist being the key factor behind any success. “The best deals that you do come down to that,” he reasons. “Anyone can throw money down, but it’s more about asking, ‘What is the right team for an artist and who’s going to put the time in to develop them?’ At Capitol, our whole team is focused on artist development, so I think they saw that early, which was smart on their part and it paid off.” Maslin is delighted with the partnership so far. “There’s a real respect at Capitol for long-term artist development and for allowing things to unfold organically, rather than forcing commercial decisions that may work in the moment but not age well long term,” she notes. Even if it’s because of how early Capitol firmed up their interest in Spiro, a new UK act being signed out of America is notable. “The US made sense for us as it changes the scale,” says Maslin. “The reach is obviously huge, but more importantly it opens doors creatively and culturally. You’re suddenly operating in a much broader landscape in terms of collaborations, media, touring and discovery. But equally, we’ve been very conscious about keeping the campaign intimate.” Spiro, too, is happy with the partnership. “I mean, all my favourites were signed to Capitol – The Beatles, Frank Sinatra... I love all that,” she says, before laughingly adding, “And I really wanted [their logo] on my vinyl, you know?” The singer says her team at the major is “amazing”. “I love that one of the heads is a woman in Lillia, that was a really big reason for me,” she says. “I was very upfront about who I am and what I want to do, and they’ve allowed me to do what I want, and keep my vision. I’m very grateful for that.” Parsa says that Spiro and Maslin “run a tight ship” and hints that the singer means business in meetings, too. “Whatever you say to her, you have to really believe in it, you cannot waver, and you have to be willing to go at it with her,” she says. “If I’m not being honest with her, she’ll be like, ‘I can’t speak to you, you’re not being honest.’” Parsa sums this idea up with a memorable phrase. “Sienna doesn’t want fluff,” she says. “I mean, she wrote a song called Die On This Hill about believing in something. She doesn’t need to hear, ‘Oh, you’re so great…’ She’s just like, ‘I want to be the best, I want to work as hard as I can.’ Because there’s no plan B for her.” Sienna Spiro started writing songs aged 10 and one of her first, Lady In The Mirror, channelled her emotions after being bullied. She performed it in assembly in front of the whole school, including the person who had inspired it. The strength of her resolve shines through in many stories about her past, including the one about the weekend she spent at Reading Festival, frantically emailing East London Arts And Music (ELAM), where she was applying for a place. “I’ve known this is what I wanted to do my whole life, and that I would do anything to make it work,” she says. “After my GCSEs, I found ELAM, didn’t get in, then emailed them as many times as it took for me to be allowed in. Also, I had no other choice. I left my other school and I didn’t apply anywhere else, so I had to get in!” When she did, things began to snowball soon enough. Maslin got in touch after seeing Spiro’s TikTok video of her covering Finneas’ Break My Heart Again in 2022. “I did a bunch of meetings the week she reached out, and I was chatting so much shit because I had no idea what I was talking about,” Spiro recalls. “I’d just never met anyone like her. I knew I wanted to work with women, and she was so inspiring and hardworking, and our visions were so aligned.” Spiro is frank in her assessment of the make-up of the music industry landscape. “Women are absolutely not treated equally behind the scenes, in management, labels, studios, everywhere…” she says. “The term ‘boys club’ is very, very, true. It’s really alarming to see, and the further I’ve gone in my journey, the more I’ve noticed it. I really hope [things will improve], and they have changed for women who are front-facing and in the public eye. But I think the way women get treated behind the scenes is just awful.” Parsa emphasises the importance of the “almost 90% female” team they have built around Spiro, including senior director of A&R Aria McKnight, director of digital marketing Miya Ugursoy, SVP of publicity Lisa DiAngelo and more. “Sometimes I look around when we’re in a room and think, ‘It’s all women in here,’” Parsa says. “It’s also a young team, and we capitalise on that. It’s definitely unique and leads to direct conversations.” Maslin says her bond with Spiro is “much deeper than a traditional working relationship”. “I’ve managed Sienna since she was 16, so there’s an enormous amount of trust there,” Maslin says. “I think the role of a manager is ultimately to help create the conditions for an artist to thrive. That can mean pushing them, protecting them, or helping them navigate pressure or difficult decisions. It’s also about seeing the bigger picture, not just reacting to moments, but helping shape a career and identity.” Maslin also highlights the importance of “being the most honest person in the room”. “I know Sienna would say the same,” she adds. “My role is never to be a yes person or to allow the environment around an artist to become an echo chamber that feeds ego instead of potential. The job is to give honest feedback, even when it’s uncomfortable, because ultimately that is what helps an artist grow. There has to be somebody they can turn to who will tell them the truth without an agenda.” Right on cue, Spiro offers her thoughts. “I think a lot of people sometimes get distracted by new, shiny things, and Miriam doesn’t,” she says. “She’s completely my teammate and my equal. Maybe you just see my face in this, but it’s us two completely. Having someone there who protects and supports you, who is aligned with your vision and cares about you, the things around you and your artistry, is so important.” The latest example of the latter is the most emphatic yet. At a concise 10 songs, Spiro’s debut album Visitor excels most in the immediacy of its impact. As arrangements and choruses swell, Spiro’s vocal shines, while her lyrics often land with a satisfying thwack, like arrows from a bow. A line from Great Expectation serves to sum up the Sienna Spiro experience entirely, as she utters the words, ‘I sing just to know that I’m alive’. “I have struggled for a lot of my life to feel things, not in a victimised way, but it’s just, you know, the truth,” Spiro states. “I’ve grown up with a lot of depression. It’s a thing in my family, a chemical thing, and that comes with numbness. The way I’ve dealt with that is music, because it’s the thing that makes me feel the most. That was the last song I wrote for the album and that line is very self-explanatory and truthful.” Made in New York’s Electric Lady Studios, Abbey Road in London and Valentine Recording Studios in LA, Visitor was recorded with executive producer Omer Fedi, Blake Slatkin (SZA, Charli XCX), Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey, Florence + The Machine), Yakob (Banks, Kali Uchis) and Michael Pollack (Rosalía, Lady Gaga). Composers Larry Gold (Al Green, Silk Sonic) and Peter Rotter contribute orchestral arrangements to a record that started life as an EP, only for the concept to grow to the extent that it needed more songs to do it justice. “It’s about the temporary nature of life, and what comes with being a visitor, which is the way I’ve viewed myself my whole life,” says Spiro, who ruminated on the idea while taking in a show at Smalls Jazz Club in New York in 2024, when the band introduced a piece about impermanence. “I’m just so aware of the feeling,” she posits. “I even find flowers sad because I just hate it when they die. I don’t really get involved in friendships or relationships that I feel are going to end, because it’s happened so much during my life.” Reflecting on the finished record, Spiro says, is “a weird feeling”, and when she explains why, her words offer a peek at the precision behind her craft. “I very much knew exactly what I wanted to make, and I guess it’s hard when you know that and you then need to figure out how you are going to get there,” she explains. Visitor, an album that sounds so assured you’re inclined to check it wasn’t released decades ago, shows the value of Spiro’s perfectionist streak. “The album is incredible, you can see the musicianship in her, and that it’s very focused,” smiles Lillia Parsa. “The key to her process is letting her find it and get there on her own.” “I think the emotional intelligence sets it apart,” Maslin opines. “Sienna has an ability to articulate very complicated feelings in a way that feels timeless rather than trend-led. There’s a maturity to her writing that people don’t necessarily expect from someone her age.” Maslin also makes it known that recording a Bond theme is “a combined dream” for her and Spiro. On this evidence, it’s by no means a far-fetched ambition. Parsa highlights Spiro’s “deep knowledge of music” and goes as far as to say she hasn’t witnessed an artist’s writing develop as Spiro’s has. Instead of pursuing promo opportunities early on, Parsa focused on studio time, honing Spiro’s sound. “Now, she’s bringing in great musicians and telling them how she wants the song to sound,” the president says. “She’s really in the weeds on it all, which is really interesting. It takes us maybe a little longer to make a song, but it’s because she’ll work on the same one for a really long time!” One such example is The Visitor, which took nine tries. “That song is so important,” says Spiro. “I’ve just felt like a visitor in so many different ways that I just wanted to do justice to every one. Every time I’d write it, I was like, ‘Oh, I missed out this bit…’ I really wanted to have everything covered, and I think I did that.” In January, in her first Music Week interview, Spiro, who is diagnosed with ADHD, said “being neurodivergent is like having a superpower” and we return to the subject today. “Where being neurodivergent comes in with the way I write is my perspective,” she says. “I’m very self-aware, like, too much. Sometimes I can’t enjoy things because I have to analyse them and hold myself to things, which means I have this overwhelming feeling of guilt a lot of the time.” Deciding to hang her debut album on the idea of feeling like a visitor brought about some difficult times. “It took a lot of self-awareness, and asking why I felt like that and when I had felt like that – like knowing I wasn’t permanent to people around me as a kid,” she says. “Time, You & Me is a song about using time wisely. Another example is He’s Not My Baby, I’m His. That’s about this situation with an older man that I was in, and I went way deeper into it as to why it happened, and [realised] it was probably because of having a child complex – of wanting to feel young, taken care of or understood, because I didn’t as a kid. You know?” Perhaps the most important line on the album arrives in The Visitor, when Spiro sings, ‘I want to be remembered’. “I’m so scared of being forgotten and being left behind,” she says, offering a concise explanation for a hard-hitting message. “I just want to last, and I want the things I do to last. It’s a thing that looms over my head all the time.” Right now, in the era of streaming, social media and tech, building artists that will stand the test of time may be the biggest challenge facing record labels. Sienna Spiro herself suggests as much when we put it to her that her aim of “making things exist for longer and mean something, rather than pumping out loads of small things that don’t last” might seem at odds with the industry climate. “Yeah… literally!” she laughs. “It’s just this generation, to be honest – my generation. Everything’s so quick. But I don’t think that way; if you do, then you are fuelling the fire. It’s unhealthy for any musician to think that way.” Spiro – who says she “will always do my own personal social media just ’cause I’m a control freak” – spells out a simple solution. “Make what you want, what you think will last, what you love, what you feel like you’ll never grow out of,” she offers. “I think when you do that, people gravitate towards authenticity – they just do. We’re humans. It’s nature.” Given this stance, it’s no shock to hear her views on AI, which she makes clear has no place in her music. “I love real instruments, real music, doing things that feel human,” she says. “In the music that I love, you can hear the mistakes, the human fuck-ups that AI would never be able to replicate, and that is what real music and musicianship is. I think AI music is shit. Like, it’s just never going to be good. I’m not really sure why someone would use it, rather than just using their brain. Why would anyone want to listen to an AI song?” All of which makes the way Spiro – a 20-year-old obsessed with jazz clubs and vintage style who adorns her Instagram posts with tracks by the likes of Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald – is cutting through all the more fascinating. “What Sienna connects to in older music culture is intimacy and timelessness,” says Miriam Maslin. “She translates it into a modern context rather than trying to recreate the past literally. There’s something really refreshing about younger audiences discovering references outside of hyper-digital culture. Her world feels nostalgic but modern, and jazz plays a huge part in that. The live shows, especially, play a huge role in making those influences feel immersive and accessible rather than intimidating.” As for who Spiro’s fans are, Maslin says the net is cast wide. “What’s really beautiful is how varied her audience already is,” she says. “We have younger fans discovering her on TikTok, but we also have older listeners connecting. When we did the show at the Royal Albert Hall [for David Attenborough’s 100 Years On Planet Earth], she gained a lot of new fans.” When considering the question of how Spiro’s audience is blooming in such a way, Tom March leans back in his chair. “Wow, it’s a big question,” he breathes. “If you have an incredible artist with an incredible voice and great songs, then that happens. Right from the beginning, it’s just been about putting Sienna’s voice in front of people.” March says knowing that her appeal was so instant for the team meant they knew it would be for the wider world, too. “It can start with your strategy across social media,” he says. “And with every performance, whether it was a cover or an original, we just saw the numbers growing and growing, and people were talking about her. It really is about Sienna and her talent; then it’s our job to come with the right strategy and global release plan, and shine a light on her voice through live performance, promo, content, interviews… We led with her voice, and then started to weave in her personality.” Parsa points to a performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (“a full body shiver”) in the US and a slot on The Jonathan Ross Show (“she crushed it!”), while March confides that his mother texted her approval after the Royal Albert Hall gig. “My mum has now discovered Sienna Spiro!” he chuckles. “Now it’s about how we keep finding these incredible opportunities and moments.” March also pays tribute to the UMG operation. “It really does show the power of what happens when the whole global company comes together when we have a great artist like this,” he adds. Spiro’s debut album looms as the next staging post, with her team united on the message that it will be one of many more milestones to come. “I think success looks very different now,” says Maslin. “Of course everyone wants commercial success, but longevity is ultimately the goal. The industry moves so quickly these days that I think building an artist with a lasting connection to people matters far more than a first-week statistic. I want the album to perform well, but I want Sienna to become one of those artists who leaves a lasting imprint on people and evolves for decades.” “She is the voice of a generation,” says Parsa, simply. “So we’re very excited.” “We are not aiming to peak in week one,” adds March. “We are aiming to have a great showing in the charts and then build. It will be borne out by how we’ve developed through the campaign, but this is about where we are in Q1 next year, much more than when the album comes out. Sometimes I know the album coming out is going to be the peak; this is not going to be the peak for Sienna.” Growth, it emerges, is the axis around which the campaign revolves. “‘Breaking’ is a subjective word,” March says. “I’m not looking at, ‘Can we try every trick in the book to put an album at No.1?’ It’s all about sustaining. And if we do that well, by the end of Q1 next year, I think we’ll be in a place where, hopefully, millions more people around the world know who she is.” With that in mind, amidst the wave of UK acts including Olivia Dean, Sam Fender, PinkPantheress, Lola Young, EsDeeKid and more enjoying global success, Spiro is an exciting prospect. “The UK keeps producing unbelievable artists,” grins March. “It has never felt hotter, and what Sienna’s achieved in such a short space of time is pretty exceptional. I can’t think of too many artists that have exploded on the global stage from the UK and with so many songs [in a similar timeframe]. So it is very unique, but she is very unique.” Spiro highlights a “rise of amazing musicians who use real instrumentation and are very honest, a lot of whom are British”. “It is refreshing to hear,” she says. “And British music is so important. Some of the greatest artists in the world have been British: The Beatles, Adele, Amy Winehouse… There’s an honesty and integrity to British music that is important. I really love when the world discovers a new British artist, and I feel very honoured to be British and be part of people recognising British music.” On the subject of Britishness, we circle back to where we began. It turns out that Parsa and March have enjoyed tea and biscuits with Spiro on multiple occasions, although not enough for Parsa to be familiar with one of the giants of the market. “A Digestive? I don’t know what that is!” she admits, prompting a closing promise from March, amidst much laughter. “You know what?” he says. “I’ve got some at home, I’m going to bring you some Digestives, Lillia. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate… All day long. I do love a Digestive!” It’s tempting to wonder what Spiro might make of this exchange but, as she told us at the outset, she is about much more than just biscuits…

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