Artist
Diana Vickers
Why we feature this artist An unmistakable voice inside two very different pop records Diana Vickers arrived on television with a voice that seemed to catch on the edges of words. Her records worked out how to build pop around that fragile, sometimes unruly in…
- From
- United Kingdom
- Sound
- Indie pop, indie rock, folktronica
- Active
- 2008–present
Start with the music
Tracks to explore
The artist, in context
The story of Diana Vickers
Why we feature this artist
An unmistakable voice inside two very different pop records
Diana Vickers arrived on television with a voice that seemed to catch on the edges of words. Her records worked out how to build pop around that fragile, sometimes unruly instrument, first with bright major-label production and then with the more concentrated electronic world of Music to Make Boys Cry.
After the television introduction
Her appearance on the 2008 series of The X Factor made the Lancashire singer recognisable before she had released an album. Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree followed in 2010. Its lead single Once went to number one in Britain, taking a distinctive vocal manner that might have seemed an awkward fit for mainstream radio and placing it at the centre of a direct, emphatic hook.
The Boy Who Murdered Love helped establish the debut's character: romantic trouble delivered with a slightly theatrical imagination. Vickers could sound tentative inside a verse, then suddenly sharp and insistent when a chorus arrived. The production generally gave those changes a colourful, accessible frame, putting an unusual singer into concise songs that still had the direct appeal of mainstream singles.
The second album takes a turn
Music to Make Boys Cry appeared in 2013 through So Recordings. The title track and Cinderella brought synthesisers and a more defined dance-pop pulse to the foreground. The voice remained easy to identify, but the material felt less like a collection assembled around a television introduction and more like a particular pop world with its own lighting and proportions.
Vickers also developed a parallel career on stage, a useful context for the expressive exaggeration already audible in her singing. Her two early albums document different solutions to the same musical problem: how much polish to put around a voice whose appeal partly depends on sounding exposed. The second record gives that tension a particularly attractive electronic setting.
Essential releases
Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree
Once and The Boy Who Murdered Love introduce a recognisable voice through vivid, immediate pop.
Once
The British number-one single makes its central hook forceful without smoothing away the singer's unusual phrasing.
Music to Make Boys Cry
Cinderella and the title track anchor a more cohesive excursion into electronic pop.