NME’s latest star of The Cover, Gigi Perez, has created an exclusive playlist to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The New Jersey-born, Florida-based singer-songwriter is on this week’s (September 15) edition of The Cover, a manifestation of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read Gigi Perez’s profile here, written by Hannah Mylrea and featuring photography by Aubree Estrella.
Perez has curated an exclusive playlist to accompany her appearance on The Cover, putting together a selection of tracks she’s been listening to recently. Titled ‘Lately NME’, it features the likes of Alex G, Blondshell, Hannah Jadagu, Ravyn Lenae, Arca, and Yves Tumor, among others. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
In The Cover, Perez spoke to NME about her journey as an artist so far – a path that, at one point, she didn’t expect to take. “My older sister, she was the opera singer,” she explained. “That was always in my mind, like that was what she was going to do, and I loved to watch her.”
After discovering songwriting as a teenager, though, Perez briefly attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music and scored her first viral recognition in 2021 with ‘Sometimes (Backwood)’, a poignant cut of stripped-back indie folk. That song helped land her a major label deal, but after a handful of singles, she exited the agreement.
“That period of time was so important to me, and was so formative [in] allowing me to experience [what] otherwise feels like a very deep failure as an artist to be in that position,” she reflected. “The best part about it is nothing happened. I woke up the next day, I had air in my lungs, and I got to ride my bike, and I got to be around my family. That is the ultimate blessing.”
Read Gigi Perez’s full Cover story here and find out who else has been on The Cover here.