With maturity and wisdom beyond her years, Tara Lily is an old soul. Her culturally diverse soundscape, paired with knowledge and understanding, fuses the sounds of her upbringing and the world around her together. Her eclectic style acts as a gateway into her ever-shifting psyche. “I think it’s taken a long time to find my sound,” she shares. “I still feel like I’m learning and experimenting in multiple directions because my sound is yet to be stamped as its own thing.”
This onward push is what keeps Tara Lily exciting. Her sound is one she has been shaping for many years. “Having good musical training helps you have a good musical understanding and once you have that, it can be applied to anything,” she states. “Understanding the history behind specific genres and getting to the core of the sounds you are influenced by really helps you expand your own sound.”
A resolute individual, Tara is earnest about her craft. She knows her self-worth. “I know I’m good,” she confidently claims. “There are not many people that can say they’ve done what I’ve done.” The only downside to the career being the amount of downtime she gets as now, with feeling a lot more stress and pressure, Lily spends her time “calming herself down, doing yoga, or reading.”
“With having ADHD, everything has to come from a place of interest for me,” Tara continues. “I struggled a lot when I was younger and was expelled from the BRIT School simply because I couldn’t focus.”
This brazen desire to trust her own intuition is what makes Lily’s music great. “I’m quick with things I like and with things I don’t like.” Listening to Tara talk about her mechanisms and approaches to music is living proof of that fact. “Everything I create has to have an intention behind it,” she emphasises. “It’s the approach you need to carry within everything you do.”
Her ambition for her music is global. Tara Lily wants her sound to take her to new places. “I hope to make it to Asia because I know that’s where most of my listeners are and, with it being my cultural background, I feel like it’s a place that appreciates and will continue to appreciate my music,” she highlights. “I want to make my own journey because I think that’s where you truly find authenticity.”
WHAT: Soulful pop with a jazz-leaning aspect.
WHERE: South London
3 SONGS: ‘Don’t Explain’, ‘Hotel Amour’, ‘You Can Go’
FACT: Debut single ‘Who Saw Who’ was produced by grime legend Jammer.
Words: Shannon Garner
Photography: Sophie Mayanne
Fashion: Sabrina Soormally
