Lily Lyons - Re-Open The World Lily Lyons

“An ensnaring combination of ethereal melodies, precise enunciation and haunting, up-close vocals.” - Sunday Times Culture

‘Re-Open The World’ is the debut album from Lily Lyons, due to be released by Fiction on 31st October. Produced with Joel Pott (Athlete, George Ezra, London Grammar), ‘Re-Open The World’ is a collection of 10 immaculately crafted songs. Lily’s songwriting across the album captures beautiful vignettes of her experiences in life so far. Perceptive lyrics, delivered in a voice for the ages, examine the multiplicities of self, giving space to it all whilst believing in the power of music to soothe and to heal.

For Lily, music feels like hope - or perhaps, possibility. Growing up split between London and Somerset, making weekly eight hour drives across the country between the base she knew with her mother and the faraway town her father had left for, she remembers the comfort of the car stereo on the open road. As she grew older, struggling to fully realise herself in the world, music was the thing that offered a window to an alternative. She cites Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell as formative influences, whilst for her debut album, Lisa Marchiano’s feminist text The Vital Spark provided huge inspiration. The book celebrates Lilith, the woman said to have come before Eve, who refused to be of Adam and was thus labelled the “anti-mother”. 

“The book is about celebrating when it’s quite good to let your inner Lilith come out: to say, ‘No, I’m not gonna take care of you and take on your crap because I also have dreams and things I want to do in the world’,” she says. “I’m not seeing my life as a vehicle for someone else. It’s its own thing, and it’s for me.