Born and raised in a creative household in west London by artist parents of Irish-Barbadian and Turkish heritage, singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya learned the piano from a young age before switching to electric guitar. After starting out posting demos to SoundCloud, she was longlisted for the BBC’s Sound of 2018 award and released her debut album, Miss Universe, in 2019. The New York Times once said her music “harnesses the antsy buzz of modern anxiety and transforms it into something not just manageable but actually beautiful”, and her latest album, 2024’s My Method Actor, was widely acclaimed. She’s sold out venues across the globe and supported Lorde, Adele, the xx and Mitski on tour. Next she performs at London’s Southbank Centre on Sunday 14 June as part of Meltdown, curated by Harry Styles.

It was my mum who told me about this app but I have a feeling my older sister told her about it and now we’re all using it. It lets you scan the barcode of any item and tells you whether it’s good or bad for you with a score out of 100, regardless of whether it has healthy branding. I mainly use it for cosmetics but you can use it for food, though I tend to buy ingredients more than packaged things. It’s really important to have that extra knowledge when you're putting things on your face or into your body – to know if there are hormone disruptors or toxins in something. It's funny, because when I was younger my dad would say “this is poison, it’s toxic” about stuff, and I'd say “no, no, it's safe”. Now I’ve ditched some products that I used regularly.

I listened to Lena Dunham’s memoir as an audiobook, which was great because I was doing lots of walking that week. She's such an interesting character. My older sister was a big fan of the HBO series Girls, which she wrote, directed and starred in, but I was a bit young when it came out. Now my sister works in film and photography and she was telling me that there are still not that many female film and TV directors; the music industry is actually a lot more progressive with more women to look up to. So I was listening to the book with that in mind and it’s one of the angles in her memoir – how backward everything still is. It’s also about her health conditions and the stress she went through [with work in her 20s and 30s]. One of the things she talks about was trying to do everything, saying yes to everything, and I did relate to that sense of “got to keep going” because you don't know when [opportunities] will run out. 

I was also really excited to get Kae Tempest’s new novel for my birthday. I've read all of his previous books. The main protagonist is just out of jail and has gone back to their hometown and is haunted by ghosts. I'd forgotten how good his writing is in terms of the way you totally get inside the characters.

This is a very new thing for me, but I just love roses at the moment. I’ve got a new place with a little patio, and when I moved here there was already a rose bush established and I really enjoyed seeing it come back to life in the spring, and I've been watching lots of nerdy garden videos. You may think gardening is a bit grannified and that roses are not that interesting, but actually they’re really cool. My interest started when I got pricked by a thorn cutting back the dead things, and my finger got infected. It wasn’t that bad, but it was swollen, and I discovered that roses carry lots of disease despite being associated with love and beauty. They’re amazing, and I think it's such a privilege to have any kind of green space.

I was in Copenhagen in April doing some writing with friends and everybody said “you've got to go to Louisiana”. It was perfect. You get a half-hour train ride out of the city and it's all along the coast, so it's a beautiful journey, and luckily when I was there it was a beautiful day too. It looks more like a house than a museum and it’s basically on the beach, and you can see Sweden across the water. There are gorgeous gardens, a cafe and it has really good permanent sculptures in the garden and temporary exhibitions, including one by Basquiat when I was there. My parents are both artists and my younger sister is also doing art right now, so visiting galleries is ingrained in me.

I’m telling everyone about this coconut drink: it’s so great, especially in the heat. You have to shake it because it has coconut sediment in and it has an amazing salty edge. It’s different to any coconut milk I've had before. It's not like the ones you get in a can, it's not as gummy as that – it’s more of a very refreshing drink. I spend a lot of time working out what's good for me in terms of what I'm eating, and something else I’ve been enjoying recently are caramelised dates on a yoghurt bowl. I saw these dates on Instagram and I started making them, and they’re so easy and so delicious. You just hit the date, flatten them, and then lightly fry them in a pan with olive oil or butter and a little bit of salt, and they get caramelised. And you put them on your yoghurt and it's amazing. Plus the smell is incredible. 

Interview by Imogen Carter