Hope Tala

Tala was born on 18 November 1997[5] in London, England. Her father is British Jamaican and her mother is of British and Irish descent.[1][6] Tala has described her upbringing as "amazing", with a stable family and encouragement from her family.[6] She has said that there were "equal amounts of discipline and love" when she was growing up.[6]

Tala first played music at 8 years old, when she played the clarinet.[1][6] Tala would go to regular music classes every Saturday, with a "mixture of clarinet, orchestra, and classics".[6] Alongside the clarinet, Tala played the oboe and the double bass, later describing her playing as "rubbish".[6] Tala's favourite musicians as a child were Take That, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and Beyoncé, with whom she stated she had a "dangerous [obsession]".[1] Tala first started to sing at the age of 15 at the suggestion of her music teacher, Miss Raven.[6] She wrote her first compositions during her study of music AS-Level, at the age of 17.[7] At home, she experimented with Logic Pro, producing demos which she published on SoundCloud.[6][8][9] Tala describes her favourite instrument as the guitar, with a preference for nylon guitars but also enjoying acoustic and electric guitars.[10] She is a self-taught guitarist.[11]

Tala's All My Girls Like To Fight was listed as one of Barack Obama's favourite songs of 2020.[4][23] According to GQ, Tala found out that she was included on the list from a second-hand source, stating to Dork that it was through an Instagram comment,[24] having switched off her phone at the time to watch Strictly Come Dancing with her mother.[24][11] Her song Tiptoeing was chosen by Clara Amfo as BBC Radio One's "Hottest Record in the World" on 19 October 2021.[25][24]

Stating that she abandoned the concept of "genre" within her work, she describes her process as going along with what is natural to her and what she likes.[14] She has described her musical style, speaking to Gay Times, as "the late 90s, early noughties American R&B music, bossa nova, pop, indie as well."[3] Speaking to British Vogue, she stated that she wanted to create "a sound that I'd never heard before but wanted to listen to", and that the resulting product was a synthesis of bossa nova with Latin influences, R&B and soul.[12] Tala states that she has a soft spot for the Neo soul genre, stating that the female-dominated genre was quite rare "particularly in black music", describing it as an intelligent and self-aware genre.[26] Speaking to TMRW Magazine, Tala stated she was raised on contemporary R&B and soul, and that Latin and bossa nova had an influence on those genres. Those influences had inspired songs that she listened to as a child, such as 1 Thing by Amerie, Beautiful by Snoop Dogg feat Pharrell Williams and Charlie Wilson, and Señorita by Justin Timberlake.[10]

Her musical works often draw their inspiration from authors that she admires, such as William Shakespeare,[3] J. D. Salinger, Donna Tartt, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,[12] Ruth Ozeki, Françoise Sagan, Chinua Achebe,[6] Maya Angelou, and Audre Lorde.[13] Tala describes Sylvia Plath as her favourite poet.[3][13] Speaking to gal-dem, Tala stated that she cannot remember the names of famous actors, but that she would "remember authors' names and book names forever".[9] Her EP Sensitive Soul was inspired by Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.[12] Tala derives inspiration from objects of desire and biblical references, such as the Garden of Eden.[1] Tala's single Party Sickness drew from the social experiences faced by youth struggling to acclimatise to social situations following the COVID-19 pandemic.[27] Tala writes about her personal experiences as a queer person of colour, finding it important to write music that "queer people can see themselves in" but not "[forcing] my own narrative onto anyone".[9]

Tala is bisexual.[12] She came out at the age of 14 to her parents, who accepted her.[6] Speaking to Complex Magazine, Tala described her difficulties in finding a sense of identity and the lack of representation that LGBT individuals face in mainstream media, music, and literature.[6]

Tala, who was born to a Jamaican father and British-Irish mother, considers herself Black or Mixed Race.[6] Describing her experiences as an individual coming from two different backgrounds, Tala stated she felt caught between two cultures, having to navigate between two differing cultural spaces as a child.[6] She describes her interactions with her peers and how she felt the need to change the way she spoke navigating between different cultures, being asked, "You're black, why do you speak like you're posh?"[6]