LYVIA’s Homecoming
Words By: Anya Duncan
There is a softness to LYVIA’s story. Her descent into the music industry wasn’t born of confrontation or single-mindedness, but of listening. To herself. To her city. To the rhythms of chance encounters and redirection.
Of course, singing had always been there. What shifted for LYVIA was confidence. “I was always creative. I didn't love the academic side of things. I always liked music, dance and drama. So I think it was just about finding confidence.”
That confidence bloomed in Nottingham, the city she calls home. Its creative ecosystem became a lifeline for LYVIA as she grew into herself. “There's a massive community in Nottingham, which I'm very lucky to be part of. I went to a community studio in Nottingham — there’s some amazing musicians that inspire me literally daily. It's why I'm still here and not in London, you know? My sound wouldn't be this way without the city that I grew up in.”
“I always wanted to do drama. Drama and dance,” she reflects. “I was auditioning for drama schools and there was a girl there who’d auditioned for the same drama school five years in a row. I remember thinking: I don’t think I like drama enough to do that. I always sang, but I was just too shy to do anything about it. But then I took a year out before uni and focused on music. It solidified for me that that’s what I was going to do.”
Image By: Saskia Kovandzich
In her voice, Nottingham feels less like geography and more like family. Here she's created a community of peers and mentors, shaping her artistry in subtle, essential ways. In fact, it was the very streets of Nottingham where LYVIA first began to sing to a crowd.
“I've been performing live for a very long time. The boys that are my producers in Notts and that play in my band, they really wanted to instill the live performance side of things in me early. I've been playing with them for a long time. But even before that, I used to be a street musician. I used to busk on the streets with my best mates, too.”
Her first performance? “Probably to four people walking past me on Nottingham High Street,” she laughs. And her biggest? Opening for Tinashe in London. Two ends of a spectrum, bound together by a voice that learned to carry itself in the open air.
“I’d say that busking is actually probably the hardest thing I’ve done, performance wise. No one's asking you to be there. The general public is probably the hardest audience to please. So on a rainy Monday morning in Nottingham, people probably don't really want to hear it. It gave me a massive amount of confidence. That's where I learned to sing, to be honest. It was the best thing I did, and I didn't even know it at the time.”
These lessons into self-confidence which LYVIA learnt on the cobbles of her hometown were vital to her music. Most recently, in moments of artistic risk, like choosing to use pronouns that reflect her own truth:
“For a long time, I didn't use female pronouns in my music. Half my family didn't know that I was into girls, and it can sometimes feel a little bit scary to write that. Then, one day I wrote a song, and it was the first time I'd ever put a female pronoun in there. I posted it on TikTok, and I woke up the next day to around a million views. That was a sign to me. When you're yourself, you get rewarded for it.”
LYVIA
It’s a reminder that songs reflecting the artist resonate the most deeply. “To be honest with you, when I wrote most of the songs on the project, I was sure that I could never release them. I just wanted to write it for myself. I sent them to my team and they were like: yeah, Liv, you have to put this music out. I think that's how the best music comes out, isn't it?”
The title of her upcoming mixtape feels fitting: Honey, I’m Home. A return, a grounding, a warm arrival. “I'm working on a mixtape at the moment, which is coming out in different bundles of three. The next one is out now! It’s called Honey, I'm Home. I'm just really excited for the music to be out in the world. I've had these songs for over a year now and I just want the world to hear them.”
The project seems to carry the essence of her whole journey: from shyness to expression. From writing in secret to releasing with pride.
“Obviously, you face difficult comments, but on a spiritual one, I feel like I've always just been told to keep being myself.”
And that’s what LYVIA offers through her music: authentic connection. Her songs are less about escape than about belonging, so that when she says, Honey, I’m Home, it feels like an embrace. It feels like an artist, finally comfortable in her skin, inviting the world into her living room.
Team Credits
Photographer: Saskia Kovandzich
Stylist: Lauren Croft
Makeup Artist: Margot Schifano
Hairstylist: Lewis Samson
LYVIA
Drops Anticipated Mixtape
Honey, I’m Home
Listen Here
Nottingham’s own soul-pop provocateur LYVIA has today unveiled her highly anticipated mixtape, Honey, I’m Home, a powerful collection of vulnerable storytelling that cements LYVIA as an artist at the height of her craft. Effortlessly shifting between styles while remaining grounded in raw emotion and narrative-driven authenticity, LYVIA delivers a body of work that is as daring as it is intimate.