- By Mark Savage
- BBC Music Correspondent
Generally, one track is all you want. And in 2023, Tyla discovered hers.
The South African singer is an image of cool confidence on Water, a hypnotically seductive summer time anthem that is grow to be her breakout hit.
“As quickly as I completed it, I used to be like, ‘Ay, this track, it is an excessive amount of’,” says the 21-year-old.
“I discovered myself re-playing it, over and again and again. Often artists, after they hear their very own track too many instances, they get bored with it. However I by no means acquired bored with Water.”
The success has additionally earned her fourth place on the BBC’s Sound Of 2024 checklist – which predicts the artists who’ll dominate the following 12 months in music.
“I am over the moon,” she smiles on a Zoom name from Los Angeles.
“With issues like this and the Grammys, I am tremendous grateful and blessed and glad that I can be amongst all the opposite artists. All of the greats!”
So, one track is all you want. But when Tyla has her means, Water is simply the primary drop of an oncoming flood.
“My objective has at all times been the identical and it is to be one of many world’s greatest pop stars,” she says.
“I am an enormous dreamer, very passionate, and someway I at all times believed that this was going to come back to me.”
BBC Radio 1’s Sound Of 2024
Born and bred in Johannesburg, and of Indian, Zulu, Mauritian and Irish descent, Tyla Laura Seethal knew she wished to be a singer from the second she carried out (How A lot Is) That Doggie In The Window in her college meeting.
“I used to be so small however I cherished it,” she recollects. “Once I sang, my gran was screaming there within the crowd!”
Picture supply, Epic / Fax Information
She wasn’t allowed to make use of social media however, when her father’s again was turned, she’d sneak off together with his cellphone to put up music on a secret Instagram account, and message it to Drake and DJ Khaled.
They by no means responded, however one of many movies caught the eye of a photographer known as Garth von Glehn, who emailed {the teenager} providing to handle her.
Tyla thought it was a rip-off and ignored it for weeks… however she could not cease serious about it.
Ultimately, she organized a gathering (along with her dad and mom in tow) and von Glehn arrange Tyla’s first recording session.
“I ended up going to the studio each weekend in my final 12 months of faculty. By the tip of the 12 months, I advised my dad and mom that I wished to do that full time.
“Then there was one other story I needed to take care of.”
‘A variety of crying’
Tyla’s dad and mom weren’t glad. They wished her to remain in training. She reluctantly enrolled to check mining engineering and, at one level, thought-about becoming a member of her father in “a boring nine-to-five job, working with cash”.
Their reasoning was stable – no South African artist had ever achieved success as a world pop artist – however Tyla had a counter-argument.
“I actually regarded as much as Rihanna, as a result of she got here from exterior America and simply dominated the trade,” she says. And if a woman from Barbados might do it, why not her?
After “lots of convincing and lots of crying”, her dad and mom gave her a 12 months to interrupt into the trade. If she did not succeed, she had to return to highschool.
“And I am nonetheless on my hole 12 months now!”
Picture supply, Epic / Fax Information
Tyla launched her debut single, Getting Late, in 2019, casually creating a brand new style within the course of.
Known as Popiano, it is primarily a extra streamlined, hook-heavy variant of Amapiano – the favored South African sound that blends home music with reggae, jazz and trunk-rattling kwaito bass strains.
“Amapiano actually felt like me, being a South African woman,” she explains. “However I additionally love pop and R&B so I wished to combine that affect with sounds from dwelling. It got here collectively very naturally.”
Showcasing her soulful, intimate supply over a shimmering shaker-and-snare groove, Getting Late put Tyla on an upward trajectory in South Africa – however the track lacked a music video, and Tyla lacked the sources to shoot one.
Undeterred, she begged, borrowed and known as in favours to make it occur. Her supervisor turned the director, her greatest pal was the stylist, however the objective was nonetheless “to make one of the best video South Africa has ever seen”.
“All unbiased, no cash from different folks – and once we dropped it, like we simply noticed the numbers fly. It modified my life.”
Picture supply, Epic / Fax Information
Getting Late triggered a global document label billing warfare. Legendary music government Sylvia Rhone – who has labored with Missy Elliot, AC/DC, Erykah Badu and Travis Scott – even put up a billboard in Johannesburg to point out her dedication.
“An entire billboard with my face, saying, ‘Love, Sylvia Rhone from Epic’,” she recollects, nonetheless barely awestruck.
However what actually swung the deal was Rhone’s promise of artistic freedom, “which was essential to me, as a result of I did not wish to have to alter my sound with a view to break internationally”.
Abruptly, Tyla was leaving South Africa for the primary time, touring with Chris Brown and dropping a collection of sultry, pneumatic dance anthems.
Her music lives within the tantalising moments the place attraction and temptation collide.
On the boisterous Overdue, she’s harbouring a secret crush. The agitated beats of Been Pondering seize the anxious second the place she confesses her emotions.
“I learn lots of teen romance once I was youthful, and I like these kind of tales,” she explains. “It is all very enjoyable and younger.”
Water is the place the eagerness boils over, as she guides a person again to her bed room and instructs: “Make me sweat, make me hotter / Make me lose my breath, make me water.”
The lyrics have been impressed by Aaliyah’s Rock The Boat – one other bed room anthem with an aquatic double-entendre – however the sound is all hers, with rattling log drums and South African slang phrases like Hayibo.
It turned a phenomenon on TikTok, the place million of followers copied Tyla’s steamy Bacardi-style dance strikes, which she accentuates by pouring a bottle of water down her again.
That pattern spawned a craze of its personal – the place girls would sit subsequent to their boyfriends and play the track’s opening bars. In the event that they leaned in to catch a glimpse of Tyla’s video, they confronted all method of disgrace and scorn.
The singer takes no accountability for any subsequent break-ups.
“I am not part of all of this!” she laughs.
Picture supply, Epic / Fax Information
The track has taken her world wide, onto the levels and TV reveals she dreamt of as a toddler. She made her dwell debut at Milan vogue week, and sat subsequent to Kim Kardashian at Dolce and Gabbana’s Fall/Winter present.
Ciara, Normani, Jack Harlow and BTS member Kim Tae-hyung (aka V) have all been in contact – however her thoughts was actually blown when Janet Jackson began performing Water as a mash-up with What Have You Finished For Me These days on her US tour.
“I used to be like, ‘What the heck!’ After which she DM’d me and he or she was like, ‘Congratulations, keep blessed’,” Tyla says.
“I used to be simply star-struck. I could not imagine Janet Jackson took the time to even say something, you already know? It is loopy.”
Tyla’s bid for world domination goes to plan, then. And he or she’s able to observe up Water along with her self-titled debut album in March.
“I really feel like persons are going to be so shocked, like, ‘The place did this woman come from?’,” she says,
“So I am very excited as a result of once I hear again to the album, I am like, the persons are not prepared!”
Her fanbase is simply going to develop in 2024 – however Tyla’s greatest supporter, relationship all the best way again to highschool meeting, continues to be her grandmother Ivy.
“She loves it! She watches all my performances,” laughs the singer.
“And each time I come dwelling she’s like, ‘What number of {dollars} did you make me?'”
