Sienna Spiro thought her life was over. Two years ago, when she was just 18, a doctor informed her she had nodules on her vocal cords, leaving her with what she calls a “raspy, husky voice.” Her dreams of becoming an accomplished singer seemed to die then and there. The London-born chanteuse, who was in Los Angeles at the time, sat outside an Alfred neighborhood coffee shop sobbing.

“I was crying my eyes out,” Spiro says in her unmistakable British accent. “I was like, ‘I’m fucked.’ I remember this day so viscerally. I thought I was over before I even started. I didn’t even have a song out yet.” 

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Though she had the option to get them removed, she decided not to and, instead, embraced the rich, texturized tone the nodules give her voice. She stuck with it and continued recording songs—albeit with a little more caution. 

“I do think I’ve had them the majority of my life, so I really don’t want to get them removed,” she admits. “I would be too scared. I had to stop smoking. I can’t have tomatoes sometimes. I drink tea with honey and lemon all the time and do vocal rest. I was so scared because if I couldn’t sing, I would genuinely die. Like that’s not exaggerating it—I would truly struggle to live if I couldn’t sing, so I was very vigilant about it. I had a year of basically not talking. It was very isolating, to be honest. I felt very lonely.” 

But that quickly changed. Spiro has had a whirlwind year after her 2025 breakthrough single about unrequited love, “Die on This Hill” (released on Capitol Records), dominated streaming services, sold more than four million copies worldwide, and peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its success led to an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and a packed touring schedule. It also showed off Spiro’s sophisticated musical palate, one she developed with the help of her father Glenn, who played a lot of Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, and Marvin Gaye around their London home. 

“My dad has really good music taste,” she says. “He grew up in the ’60s, so it was definitely of his time. He would play loads of music when I was growing up. 

My cousins are great musicians and my older sister’s got great music taste, too, so they all would introduce me to these records and artists, and it kind of became my pop music in a way. 

“I caught up a bit with what was actually my time in pop music, but that’s what I grew up listening to and I just fell in love with it. I would try and copy the way they’d use their voices and sing like them.” 

Her father also helped Spiro with her songwriting. She cites Sinatra as a major influence, who she calls a “very visual singer.”

“There’s a quote from Frank Sinatra that says something like, ‘You can’t sing if you’re not telling a story,’” she says. “That’s what singing is all about. I’d sing for my dad and my dad actually was honestly a big fan of me. 

“He would just tell me to shut up, not in like a mean way, but he would be like, ‘You’re not telling a story.’And I’m like, ‘What fucking story?’ But he was right. I feel like when you get moved by singers, it’s like they are really singing every word, really meaning the words. Now when I do a performance or sing, I really think about what I’m saying and what the song’s about. And if it’s a cover, how does it relate to my life? That really stuck with me for a long time.” 

Most of Spiro’s music is autobiographical, emotionally charged and arranged in a way that feels like it’s from a bygone era.“The Visitor,” released in March, is another gorgeous, piano-driven ballad that allows her voice to take center stage. Her latest single, “Material Lover” from the film The Devil Wears Prada 2, is more uptempo than other songs, and the video adheres to her vintage aesthetic with ’60s-style clothing and bouffant hairdo. She thrives on using live instrumentation and feels like people are yearning for it. 

“I’ve got strings on all my records, which I’m so honored to have and I’m so lucky I get to do that—have a live band on everything,” she says. “That’s what I love. I love hearing, like, ‘Oh, that was a mistake there,’ but it sounds like the record wouldn’t be the record without it. There’s so many cool things in music, like on Prince’s song “Kiss,” there’s no bass on it. There’s these small things that l love that make really timeless records for me. Timeless is what I try to do. I feel like music is really coming to a cool place and people are gravitating toward live again, which is amazing.” 

Now, with her debut album, Visitor, arriving July 3, Spiro is bracing herself for another whirlwind of press appearances and the upcoming My House Tour that begins October 13 at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Every North American tour date is already sold out. 

The crux of the album revolves around her fear of being temporary in someone’s life. It comes as somewhat of a surprise that Spiro has always felt like an outlier—whether at school or in a relationship. It’s something she’s consciously had to work on to become more present in her own life. 

“It’s a very specific feeling that I think a lot of people feel,” she explains. “It’s an album about impermanence; the fear of people leaving, moments ending and feeling temporary in your own life. I guess being a visitor is being very aware of how fragile relationships are and how fragile your identity is. I have this big fear of impermanence, so it’s learning about being present and allowing these experiences and life things to matter whilst not trying to make them permanent. 

“I think I was so used to people leaving me and I was so used to being temporary to people that I got a huge fear of it, so I wouldn’t enter anything where I thought it was going to end. I couldn’t enjoy what was happening in the now. Even during shows, I had this huge fear, like this is going to end any minute. I was so bad at being present and bad at allowing life to take its course and allow it to like start and end.” 

There’s a song on Visitor called “Mono No Aware,” a foundational Japanese philosophical concept that roughly translates to “the beautiful sadness of transience.”

“To me, it means the gentle sadness of knowing everything beautiful is temporary and we should love it more because it won’t last,” she says. “When I found that it changed my perspective. It’s an obvious thing. Like, of course you know everything’s temporary, we’re temporary, life is temporary, time, whatever. It really allowed me to look at things in a different way and be like, ‘OK, I’m gonna be present for this moment, make the most of it, love it for what it is and allow it to pass. I’ve been honestly a lot more content since then ’cause I’m not always somewhere else. I’m really there.” 

It comes across in our Zoom conversation. She’s fully engaged, relatable, and down-to-earth, refreshing traits for a budding superstar, though she confesses to often being plagued with insecurity on the song “Pure.” She wrote the song when she was wrestling with a bout of depression as her mother, or “mum” as she calls her, underwent surgery for a brain tumor, and she was unable to be there with her. The raw emotion comes through with every note. 

“I’m a very normal person,” she says. “I’m a 20-year-old, Gen Z girl who’s grown up with social media. I feel the way that most of my other friends feel about myself. I think you can’t be a great artist without being a great human and good at understanding the human experience.” 

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