SLEEK MEETS FREYA RIDINGS

We meet Freya Ridings in a Berlin studio. Before the conversation begins, she opens her bag, takes out a small matcha travel set and stirs the green powder. A quiet, almost meditative ritual – like a brief pause before emotion turns into language.
Freya became internationally known with “Lost Without You”, a song that had grown over years in small London open mic nights until its placement on Love Island brought it to a global audience. A single TV moment catapulted a deeply personal song into the public sphere.

Success has never altered the intimacy of her music. For a long time, the song was just her and her keyboard. No strategy. No calculation. Just feeling. And that is still how she works today.
She does not have a permanent studio. Instead, there is a piano in her living room, just like in her parents’ house. That is still where she prefers to write – in comfortable clothes, with a cup of matcha, often with her eyes closed. She trusts that “the universe will give something”, as she calls it. Her creative process is less production and more a return to herself. Following trends has never been of interest to her.

Sometimes she does not write for weeks. And then, in a single evening, several songs are born. She refuses to produce content when she has nothing to say. “It’s like calling up a friend when you don’t have anything to tell them”, she explains.

Her songs are inspired by relationships – with partners, with family, with friends, with people she has lost. For her, music is a means of communication. A space to express things that might feel too heavy in everyday life. In a song, emotions are allowed to be bigger, more cinematic, more intense. And it is precisely this radical personal honesty that makes her music universal.

Often it is the most specific, almost strangely detailed lines that make listeners say: that exact thing happened to me. Perhaps that is her strength: she writes from a deeply subjective place and touches collective experiences. She describes it as holding each other up. She shows vulnerability and is held. That experience gives her the courage to open up even further.

Her new album “Mother of Pearl” carries a noticeable shift. Alongside vulnerability stand anger, maturity, and womanhood. Especially as a woman in a male-dominated environment, she had to learn to remain faithful to her intuition. What once felt natural – sitting at the piano and writing instinctively – became overshadowed by doubt, expectations, and industry pressure. The new album is therefore also a rebellion, a reclaiming: a return to her own voice.

Freya Ridings lives intensity. Her art is born from the courage to feel deeply. And when she is ready, she shares it unfiltered, honest, and profoundly human.