Imagine it now: you’ve not even released your debut album yet and you’ve already checked performing during the headline slot on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage off your bucket list. That’s the, uh, quite unbelievable reality of Spanish-American singer-songwriter Victoria Canal, who was invited on stage by friend and mentor Chris Martin to perform Coldplay’s ‘Paradise’ at Worthy Farm earlier this year, despite only having a handful of EPs to her name.
“It was wild!” Canal excitedly tells NME, fresh from her shoot for The Cover. “Every famous person under the sun was there watching at the side of the stage. I was so nervous… but it’s literally my life dream!”
Martin has had a big impact on Canal’s journey so far. He helped her secure a record deal with Parlophone after she made a spoof magazine cover that claimed she’d “wowed” him – but he is just one person to have encouraged her to chase her dreams. After starting her career at 15, “putting out tip jars and playing covers in restaurants”, Canal enrolled in a music conservatoire. There, she found “friends in music, six or seven years older than [her], who taught [her] to put on gigs with a band” and music teachers who taught her not only how to write and co-write but also how to build an online presence to turn her dedication into a real career. “I feel like there were a lot of people who saw my obsession with music and wanting to do it for a living, and they really egged me on,” she says.
“As an artist, I’m interested in pushing my limits and boundaries, and if I get it wrong, it’s because I’m a human being”
Her experiences so far have underlined just how important mentorship and friendship are in forming solid foundations when it comes to a career in an industry as competitive, overwhelming and flimsy as music. “The right people will believe in you if you stay committed. I think that’s the main thing,” she tells NME. If anyone would know, it’s Canal.
Her support system has been essential in her building resilience in the face of rejection or anxiety within the industry. “All these people around me are so uncompromisingly themselves and so kind and generous, and that’s what I aspire to be. It’s amazing to see people have such a positive impact not only on the people who don’t know them – in a public-facing front – but also behind the scenes,” she explains. “I’m pretty comparative as a person; that’s probably my Achilles heel, and it really helps to be around people who are so fully themselves and don’t even see a reason to compare themselves to anyone else.”
Only one moment in her journey so far has made Canal consider abandoning music altogether: when she was just 18 and was invited to LA by a “big pop manager, that everyone knows” for a meeting to see if they could further her career. Nervous for her first big music business meeting, she’d taken “all the best bits of [her] songs and made a little compilation” for him, only to be told: “What you do online is cute, but I just don’t think you have what it takes.” It was a devastating blow. She responded by booking a one-way flight to Australia, where she questioned what she was going to do now her dreams were dead – but before she knew it, she’d found herself a uke, and took up busking. Soon enough, she was surrounded by like-minded musicians once again and was inspired to apply to a music programme at NYU.
“I just decided I was gonna use his rejection as fuel, to the fire, like: ‘No. I do have what it takes to make a living from what I love.’ And I’m so glad I had that experience because I think it’s important to experience rejection to know what it is that you really want.”
It’s a couple of days after her 26th birthday when we catch up with her, and the occasion has brought on all kinds of existential realisations. “I’ve had this crazy summer and my identity has actually been very put into question, so at this very moment, I’m very like, ‘Oh my god, who am I?’ I’m in a full-on quarter-life crisis!” she laughs. “I think the main thing that I’m learning and practising as I get older is accepting things how they are and just sitting with all the different complex emotions.”
Now in her mid-twenties, she’s both clearer and more confused than ever: but that, she reasons, is just part of life’s package. “I’m never gonna have everything figured out,” she says matter-of-factly. “As an artist, I’m interested in pushing my limits and boundaries, and if I get it wrong, it’s because I’m a human being, and I will inevitably make mistakes. Life is just one big experiment, and the most I can aim for is to feel brave while going for the punch.”
For Canal, that has looked like branching out and exploring a poppier, Latin-influenced side to her music that heavily differs from her previous, more delicate sound. “It’s such a departure from the last two years,” she explains. “It’s a real risk because that stuff has really clicked with people, but now I’m going for all this other wacky, crazy stuff.”
“Celebrity is weirdly similar to disability – they both involve people staring at you and misjudging you”
‘Slowly, It Dawns’ (out January 17, 2025) sums up the transient nature of this part of our lives. Canal explores “sexual exploration, avoidance, escapism, doom, social anxiety, clarity, confusion and self-understanding… or lack thereof” through the narrative of a party. Kicking off with the piano-led pop single ‘June Baby’ – where she moves through the realisation she’s falling in love – she then swiftly reaches the sultry ‘California Sober’: an examination of the exciting danger of sexual desire. ‘Cake’ goes on to reveal a need to stay out until the early hours with the hopes of delaying a disastrous hangover, while the introspective acoustic ‘15%’ searches for answers. “It felt like I was telling the story through quite a simple frame, which made room for all the things in the music that are much deeper, you know – it’s not about a party. It’s all these things I experience all the time,” she says.
Navigating these muddy waters has been easier with the help of her friends and mentors, who have been unequivocal in their support. Chris Martin’s not the only familiar face she’s bonded with – she hit it off with Tom Cruise after meeting him at Glastonbury, a friendship that led to her extended family calling her from Spain to say they’d seen on TV she was apparently the actor’s new squeeze (to clarify: she isn’t).
She laughs and shakes her head at the strangeness of it all, but the whole ordeal taught her to look at any celebrity news with a new perspective, aware that anything can be twisted into a different story. “I’ve been keeping up with what Chappell Roan has been talking about in terms of celebrity culture and stalkers, and I think it’s amazing she’s talking about that.”
Victoria has amniotic band syndrome, a disability which means she was born without a right forearm, and she finds there’s some comparison between celebrity and disability. “[Celebrity] is weirdly similar to disability,” she explains. “They both involve people staring at you, misjudging you, assuming things about you… you feel extremely ostracised and lonely, from either of those situations. It limits where you can go, it changes how people treat you – obviously, celebrities come out on top because they’re adored, and they have access and exclusivity, but I think it’s just really interesting to think about those parallels and how ‘celebrity’ can be really limiting.”
It’s a strange combination of alienation and dehumanisation – as a woman, as a famous woman, as a famous woman with a disability – but Canal is keen to practise and stick to her boundaries, no matter how difficult that might be. “Something I’ve really learned about myself recently is that I do share too much, and I’m trying to learn how to share less, and to hold more in my own space and in my own self and knowing that I can handle whatever it is.”
“Leaning on others is an important crutch, but it’s so important to build your own backbone and know that you can handle things independently. I’m a person who’s so eager to connect, but these days, I’m valuing myself more and more as my own person. I’m my own friend!” she says brightly. “My favourite thing about it all is that that’s so normal – as intense as everything is right now, it’s so indicative of our age – it’s what we’re supposed to be feeling.”
Though the last few years have been “surreal and crazy” for her, they’ve been a huge learning curve, too, aiding Canal along towards becoming the person she feels she’s supposed to be. ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ – with its intense highs, profound lows, anthemic pop elements and those more restrained emo moments – is only the beginning of the rest of her career. “It’s been a long time coming for a full-length, but I’m gonna be doing this for my whole life,” she promises with a grin. “There’s still many, many, many albums left in me. No matter what happens, I’ll be making music forever.”
Victoria Canal’s single ‘15%’ is out on October 11. Her debut album ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ is out on January 17, 2025 via Parlophone
Listen to Victoria Canal’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music.
Words: Tilly Foulkes
Photography: Bella Howard
MUA: Annelie Bystrom using NARS
Styling: Francesca Russo, Yasmine Sabri, Gloria Madenge
Location: Tileyard TYX
Label: Parlophone