When Celeste was sent a photo of her face on a giant billboard in west London, she had to see it with her own eyes. After heading to the busy roundabout, the singer came face to face with herself, bathed in light and 12 feet high. In the video she later posted on Instagram, we saw her totter precariously on the narrow pavement, waving the album in her hands at the passing cars and HGVs. It was a portrait of pure joy, a young woman’s earnest glee at the prospect of introducing herself to the world at long last.
We speak on the eve of the release of Not Your Muse, after Grazia’s socially distanced shoot. Celeste – full name Celeste Epiphany Waite – is excitedly nervous. ‘This is something that I’ve worked on with just a small number of people, and the idea that all of a sudden you have to hand it over to everybody else? That’s scary,’ she says. ‘This has taken precedence over everything else in my life.’
You may not have realised it at the time, but it was Celeste’s voice that was transmitted into practically every household in the country in the run-up to Christmas, when her song A Little Love accompanied the cultural fixture that is the John Lewis ad. Her earlier release, Stop This Flame, was used in the Royal Mail’s ad and Sky Sports’ winter coverage. The resulting buzz almost passed her by. ‘I don’t really watch TV,’ Celeste, 26, confesses. ‘But one evening my boyfriend [poet Sonny Hall] and I had had a little argument. I’d gone off into another room, but I could hear the TV in the living room and in the space of 10 minutes, I came on three times. He was like, “Well, if anything happened with us, I’d never get away from you, would I?”
Normally, a young pop star who had won last year’s BRIT Rising Star award – as Celeste did, following in the footsteps of Adele and Sam Smith – would be living in a whirl of album launch parties, drinking champagne at private members’ clubs. Instead, we’re chatting on Zoom in our living rooms. A summer of gigs and promos should have followed her win at the BRITs but, when the world shut down, her trajectory was sent on a different route. ‘To begin with, I was probably more relaxed than I should have been,’ she smiles. ‘At the time, I took it in my stride. I thought, “I’m going to have a bit more time to work on my album!” And then, all of a sudden, something hit me: all this opportunity, all the momentum, could just all go away. I didn’t know what to do to adapt.’ She turned to painting, reading and pottery, and says she has found comfort in the tight-knit community surrounding her home in London’s Kensal Rise.
Celeste’s relationship with Sonny has only really known lockdown – they met shortly before the pandemic hit the UK.
‘I think only now, in the last year or so, have I experienced what I can understand as real love,’ she says. ‘All the things I’ve written up until then were confused in a way. There’s a lot of love and romance on the album, and it’s a picture of me evolving as a person. I’m not completely grown up yet, but I guess I would like to describe it as like coming into womanhood. I think it’s only in the last two years that I’ve sort of stopped feeling like I’m 21.’
Born in California, Celeste’s make-up artist mum relocated her to Dagenham before the family settled near Brighton. She would listen to Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin on the way to school and try to emulate their notes and tones. Having enlisted at stage school at 10, she left within the year.
‘There were children whose competitive edge had sort of overridden their ability to just be human and nice to other people,’ she recalls. ‘I was quite repelled by that sort of personality, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near that. Even if I felt like I was good at something, I would kind of wait for other people to see it rather than put myself out there.’ Indeed, plenty have seen it. Elton John, Paul Weller and Tom Jones are all fans.
Celeste’s reserved demeanour and high- pitched speaking voice seem to contradict her rousing, almost melancholic singing and regal stage presence. For her, that side of herself is almost an escape. ‘My best performances are when I do just let myself go,’ she says. ‘Feel the emotion, and not be too aware that there are people in front of me. The way I perform isn’t really from choreography or trying to put on a show, because I’m too shy to do things in that way. It doesn’t feel like me. But I guess what feels like me is presenting a version of whatever I feel that day. Sometimes, that makes for a really good and honest show. And sometimes it can feel a bit discombobulated.’
Before we speak, it’s revealed that Celeste has shot a campaign with Gucci, appearing with Alexa Chung and Vanessa Kirby. She loved the experience, but in the past she says she’s had her difficulties in the fashion industry. ‘When I first started out, I’ve been on shoots where people would bring you tiny clothes that you would never fit in, or ask, “Have you not got shapewear?” I’m a musician, not a model! I’m not sample size. I’d feel mortified. So it makes a big difference when big brands make the effort.’
Professionally, she’s plotting a 2022 tour. But closer to home, she’s currently longing to see her mum and her grandparents, and has her fingers crossed that the Notting Hill Carnival will go ahead this year in some form. The album’s warm reception is a welcome handshake after a tumultuous 2020. But it could be bettered come March. Hear My Voice, the song she wrote for Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed drama The Trial Of The Chicago 7, is tipped for an Oscar nomination. She won’t bet on it, though. ‘I really don’t know how tangible it is or what those rumours really mean,’ she says. ‘I recorded the vocals in my bedroom and, as the process went on, I learned more about Aaron Sorkin and how he’s in “that league”. But I am not somebody who thinks of myself in that position, like Adele or Lady Gaga. I just go with the flow.’
Celeste’s album, ‘Not Your Muse’, is out now Celeste Interview
Photographer @carlaguler
Styled by @ellaluciaa
Hair @jamescatalanohair
Make up @beck_davenport_mkup
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