FEATURE: Modern Queens: Victoria Canal

FEATURE:

Modern Queens

Victoria Canal

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THE last time…

that I properly spotlighted Victoria Canal was back in 2023. I have talked about her since but, for this Modern Queens, I wanted to discuss one of the most important artists around. I am going to start off with some interviews from earlier in this year and will end with some reviews for her incredible debut album, Slowly It Dawns. I would advise people pick up a copy of her album. Canal is currently undertaking some U.S. tour dates. For their Class of 2025 feature, DIY spoke with an artist who had a phenomenal 2024. Including playing with Coldplay at Glastonbury and a second Ivor Novello award win, the Spanish-American was being tipped by many to be the sound of 2025. Her debut album won huge acclaim:

“Set for release in January, ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ is not just the culmination of three years’ work for the singer, but a record that shows a wider breadth of her talents than ever before. “Definitely going on tour with Hozier was the catalyst for that,” she explains of her new, expanded sonic scope. “I think seeing just how varied his music is and how huge it could be, and experiencing those fans that are young, queer and very sentimental, I was really inspired by what my show could become and what my music could sound like. I took the pieces of what inspired me about his show in terms of the grandiosity and used it as inspiration for my own recording process and songwriting.

“I definitely wanted to keep the more intimate, singer-songwriter, bedroom style stuff that is so close to my heart, but I think the album is split into two sides,” she notes. “Side A is this much more confident, unhinged side, which did take a lot of inspiration from that time, and then Side B is the much more introverted, wounded, wiser side.”

Keying into the old school approach of splitting a record into two distinct sides, the album begins with the more carefree fun of ‘June Baby’ before moving into the sultry flirtation of ‘California Sober’ and the hedonistic rhythms of ‘Cake’ which, Victoria explains, represent the earlier phases of life. “To me, the flirty, sort of overconfident, naive side is emblematic of younger life. You know, you’re 18 or 19, you’re going out, you’re trying things for the first time, you’re trying to discover who you are and maybe overshoot.

“I think the main thing is that I just had fun,” she says of her approach when writing those songs in particular. “Music is mostly such a brooding, sorta weepy experience for me – and that is where my heart lies, but I just wanted to test myself and see if I could genuinely have fun and not restrict myself in any way. All the songs on Side A, I felt like they were just a result of me being like, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to make whatever I want today’, and yeah, it did kind of flow; particularly the music and production elements. I think we were just having so much fun, so it felt easy.”

It’s in the album’s second half – around the existential lullaby-esque ‘Vauxhall’ – that things shift to a more reflective, introverted space. “I really liked the idea of bookending the album with ‘June Baby’ as Track One and ‘swan song’ as Track 12, sort of from beginning to end of life and basically a coming-of-age story,” she explains. “There does come a point where you wake up and you’re 24 or 25 and you’re like, ‘Oh jeez, what was all that?’ and ‘I should probably get serious now’. The rest of the album from there becomes more wise and more reflective and self aware, which is much more how I feel in my life now.”

While her debut mostly explores new territory for the songwriter, there are a few familiar faces within the track listing. “Those songs, they’re sisters and they deserve a long life,” she says of the record’s final two tracks, ‘Black Swan’ and ‘swan song’, which previously featured on her 2023 EP ‘WELL WELL’ and 2022 release ‘Elegy’ respectively. Did she always plan to include them on her full-length? “I did, yeah. I just felt like I didn’t want to leave them behind and they’re so representative of who I am and the deepest part of my soul. I wanted to make sure that they got their moment again; it feels really right to me.”

There’s something poignant about the fact that, through the writing of the album, it’s still the songs she wrote some years ago that speak to Victoria most now. “I think that’s part of the concept behind the album too,” she agrees, “that it’s cyclical. You’re born and you live and you die and you’re born again. Even within your life; maybe it’s not a literal death, but it’s an ego death or it’s the death of an idea of yourself. That’s also part of the reason I called the album ‘Slowly, It Dawns’, because it feels like a sunrise and eventually the sun sets but it will rise again. It is interesting, and it really is based on where I am in my life that I feel more like ‘Black Swan’ and that Side B energy versus like, confident, loud, unhinged Side A energy.”

An album of intense honesty that also celebrates the multitudes of the human experience – whether foolish and loud, or meditative and quiet – ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ aims to move away from the highly-curated snapshots of life that society seems so intent on projecting, to showcase it for the contradictory muddle that it can actually be. “I think that’s one thing that I just don’t see too much of online, particularly with really established artists that I follow, for example,” Victoria offers up. “It’s like, they can be this one thing, all the time, and it’s always energetic and it’s always happy and it’s always lively and they’re always performing and whatever,” she says.

“But, for me, I just find that there’s like… I call it the God and goblin complex.” Two halves of the same emotional coin, much like the two sides of the album. “I’m a fan of music and I feel like I’ve been searching for an artist to admit that they are both this and that, you know what I mean?” she asks. “I’ve decided I can basically be that person”.

I am going to move to an interview with Brick Magazine. For anyone who does not know Victoria Canal, I would urge you to seek her out. I think this is an artist that is going to climb to huge heights. Someone who will be headlining big festivals soon enough. Her music is like nothing else. Brick Magazine stated that Slowly, It Dawns is a “defiant yet delicate reflection on the life-long lead-up to her debut album”. It is one of the best albums of the year:

“The record is imbued with memories of her international upbringing. Born in Munich to Spanish and American parents, she grew up mostly in Madrid, but – thanks to her dad’s job in medical tech – she had resided in Shanghai, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Dubai all before adulthood. Her genre-spanning sound has also been the result of abundant creative collaboration, as she was inspired to formally start the album while on tour with Hozier in 2023. “Seeing Hozier up-close and working with Coldplay, I was exposed to bands and artists that make many kinds of music and really stretch themselves in terms of genre and songwriting,” she explains. “I felt inspired to stretch myself, to lean into the pop side of myself, lean into the more brooding, folky singer-songwriter side, and everything else in between.”

She pauses. “At the same time, it is true that your debut album takes your whole life to make,” she adds. To roll out the album’s singles and accompanying visuals, she used the allegory of a house party, embracing the same teenage innocence that once painted Friday nights as the most important times of your life.

The first track and lead single, ‘June Baby’ opens to glittering piano chords and Canal’s soft whispers, as if you’re being awoken by a light breeze as the sun pours in and the hope of a new day rises. The mood heats up on ‘California Sober’ as she flirts with new desires amid sizzling Cuban-inspired guitars and mariachi backing vocals. The deliciously dangerous ‘Cake’ hears Canal descend further into her hedonism, delaying her inevitable return to reality through self-destruction, singing “Fuck the cake, let’s go straight to the vodka.”

She enlisted creative director Abbie Coombs to aid in crafting a universe where ‘Cake’ and the diaphanous ‘swan song’ end up on the same record. Canal discovered that ‘June Baby’ and ‘swan song’ worked best as bookends, saying they felt like “a beginning and an end of a life” that she could then piece together.

“When you grow up, you’re overconfident, you’re naive, you’re really loud about your opinions and convinced about the way the world should be, but you also don’t know anything at all. Then there reaches a point in life where everything flips on its head, and you question: who am I?” she remembers. She asks this on ‘15%’, the album’s keystone track. “It’s looking back and thinking, ‘Oh my God, why did I say those things? Am I amazing? Or does everyone hate me?‘ This social anxiety kicks in but there’s also an understanding that it’s just the way the brain works, and you can’t control it.”

Slowly, It Dawns’ second half reckons with this discomfort and reflects on agency, accountability, and acceptance. On ‘Vauxhall’, Canal speaks to her lover and fantasises of their escape away from responsibilities and repercussions – singing “I wish it was that easy / trading in my dreams for peace of mind” – before realising that she can’t escape her problems as she can’t escape herself. The song is another stand-out from the album, building with discontent until she bursts from frustration, hollering “I wish I had a choice” until it fades to silence.

Meanwhile, the agonising ‘Totally Fucking Fine’ starts out as sarcastic and resentful as its name might suggest, capturing her growing self-belief like weight being lifted from her chest, before transitioning to a meditative instrumental, creating a space to stop and breathe among the chaos. This introspection has undoubtedly been aided by her meticulous commitment to journaling – she’s been writing them since she was six years old, and admits she can get through one every few months.

Canal explains the magic of songwriting, for her, is in its development process and trusting in an idea’s evolution. She needed to create a space “where there are no bad ideas” to sharpen her thoughts, cultivating this with renowned songwriter Eg White who contributed to half the record’s tracklist. “Part of my process – since 2020, when it felt like the world was ending – is to make music where I don’t care if anybody ever hears it. I’m making exactly what I want to make and that’s what matters to me. Then when people hear it and connect with it, that’s an amazing reward,” she explains.

Not caring about what others think is a well-practiced perspective for Canal, who was born without her right forearm due to amniotic band syndrome. Navigating her rise in an industry that “loves to turn you into one thing”, she expresses her mixed feelings towards visible representation and being seen as a spokesperson. “Honestly, if I think about it too much, it’ll give me a headache because it is so conflicting,” she begins. “I feel a responsibility to manage it a certain way, and as I’m becoming more public, I want to get it right. I want to represent without overly identifying with my disability, as it’s just one part of me.”

Looking ahead, Canal is starting the year back on the road, celebrating the album’s release with two Rough Trade performances in London and Bristol, before embarking on a seven-stop US tour, including a stop at Hollywood’s infamous Troubadour. Reflecting on it all, she shares: “The lesson I’m learning in life is that everything will go wrong, but the question is: how do you respond to it? I think success isn’t just things going right in your life, it’s learning how to handle when things go wrong. That’s what success is to me, and that’s something that I’m still working on and finding the strength to live up to.”

To add to her ever-expanding to-do list, the musician has set herself a new goal: to improve the accessibility of music venues on her tour. “There are many venues that some of my fans couldn’t access because they weren’t wheelchair accessible which is so disappointing and something that I think needs to be worked on, particularly for medium-sized and smaller venues,” she explains.

She reaffirms that creative careers are never linear paths to “a Grammy, or 100 million streams, or a million followers” – behind the alluring heights of pop stardom are the stresses of merch shipments getting lost, overbudget tours, and the perpetual fear of flopping. After spending years shrouded in her own uncertainty, Canal has shed her adolescent anxieties to uncover what matters most to her: protecting her peace. She asserts, “I’m really grateful for all the difficulties I’ve faced because I’m learning so much about what it means to feel satisfied and accomplished and purposeful”.

I want to finish off with a couple of reviews. I am going to come to one from When the Horn Blows and their assessment of a remarkable and distinctly original debut album. For those who are looking for an artist who is going to endure for years and continue to put out music of the highest quality, you need to look in the direction of Victoria Canal. I have been a fan for years now and will continue to follow her:

“Victoria Canal’s ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ is a debut album years in the making, but the graft pays off with a dazzling set of self-empowerment pop gems.

The road here was not always pretty, and more convoluted than the German-born, Spanish-American artist, singer, songwriter, actor and manifester’s story sounds. The finished product was made over three years and recorded in London and LA – with Victoria recently posting support on social media for those affected by the ongoing wildfires in the latter. The final product is universal, effortless and refined, reflecting life in your twenties, a time that is usually anything but.

The first half of the album is a pop girl brimming with creativity, beginning with last summer’s single ‘June Baby’. The vulnerability is visibly present in a sunshiny track written with The 1975’s Ross MacDonald, with fellow band member George Daniel on co-production. Victoria sings: “You saw me naked, totally freaking out. Afraid to say it, I think I love you now.” When she repeats the line “I am falling apart, I am falling apart,” it morphs into an anthemic juggernaut.

The glorious “some kind of euphoria” continues with ‘Talk’, about an inconvenient crush over a driving vibe. It has all the hallmarks of another summer smash with her delivery: “We don’t need to talk about it, we don’t need to talk at all.”

‘California Sober’ is big and bold, dripping with confidence and a little Latin sweat. It’s where VC, raised for most of her life in Spain, lets that side in after years admiring Anglo-American acts. Written with Låpsley, the feeling of romance is underpinned by exotic sounds and queer liberation. She sings: “Baby beg for it, lay in it, so close that you can taste it. Be my guest, be my guest” with more beauty than beast. It is crying out for dancing and hot as hell all-night vibing.

‘Cake’ has dramatic undertones and cinematic desperation. There’s a sense of escapism despite strong almost-dystopian electronics, all wrapped up in three minutes. The key line - “Fuck the cake! Let’s go straight to the vodka. We don’t ever have to think about the cracks in the machine” – sums up some of the contradictions at the heart of the album, and the world. Meanwhile, ‘15%’, about the yin and yang of life, gives the album its title. “Slowly, it dawns, I’m a pain in the ass. Is everyone happy I’m leaving?” Victoria seeks reassurance despite ongoing doubt in a delicate and sombre track. There is also another nod to her mixed heritage, briefly flitting between tongues: “Depende¿ De que depende? It depends on you. It depends on me.”

Side A ends with ‘Vauxhall’ - not the area in south London, but the thought of trading her music dreams for the suburbs with an overly assertive man in a naff car: “I could use your confidence, and your shitty Vauxhall.” It has full-blown popstar energy with another Bond-esque sound, and rounding off by singing “I wish I had a choice”.

The second half shows a more “self-aware” Victoria Canal in another, slightly less chaotic world. ‘How Can I Be A Person?’ is 165 seconds of calm glory, drifting pleasantly on the idea of recollection with few words, before the meditative sound of Totally Fucking Fine’, which fuses an explicit title with a mellow centre. The bracing and honest piano ballad was delivered in one go, in which she asks: “What good is a holiday if you’re already bored?” It is the track where the girl born without a lower arm most talks about the concept of the body, repeating “that body’s not mine” before declaring the title line again. It has a soft ending, before coming back for a final line of heart-wrenching vocals.

In ‘Hollow’, Victoria questions: “How did I end up here? Guarded and insincere, walking on tippy toes. Nobody knows.” She fears being fake, but the result is 115% real: “There’s no morning glory, no bible or moral of the story to follow. Beneath it all, we are hollow.” In ‘Barely’, VC delivers the lyric “We’re all solar systems, we’re so fucking small. Centres of existence, barely here at all” with beauty and calm, despite the words having a punk energy which a different band would blister through in seconds. It is one of the myriad ways that Victoria changes and subverts ideas, capable of doing things in splendid and unusual ways.

The final songs are a twinset from previous EPs. Coldplay’s Chris Martin, a mentor to Victoria and a key figure in getting her signed to the band’s label Parlophone, described ‘Black Swan’ as “one of the best songs ever written”. It also won the Ivor Novello Best Song Musically and Lyrically last year. In it, she sings: “Mama, turn me blonde, take my final form. Black swan, black swan”. Meanwhile ‘swan song’ is stylishly crafted, as Victoria ends by contemplating: “Who knows how long we’ve got? As long as I am breathing, I know it’s not too late to love.” It is a sentiment that runs throughout every part of ‘Slowly, It Dawns’.

In a crowded field of female singer-songwriters, Victoria Canal is unique in many ways. The vulnerable and introspective piano art is sometimes at odds with the bravado of Side A, but it is the feeling of being human. She won’t be defined by her limb difference, instead turning to universality which is in the strong songwriting and beautiful harmonies found on this album. Victoria has finally found clarity as her own artist – sometimes wholesome, sometimes sexy, and always showing there’s unlimited potential in her career.

‘Slowly, It Dawns’ is an impressive benchmark jammed with well-executed songs and a strong pop performance. For a woman who begins her album singing “I am falling apart, I am falling apart”, it’s all come together. It’s taken a while, but this is Victoria Canal’s moment”.

I am going to end with a short review from DIY. A 2025 masterpiece, the coming years are going to be really exciting. I have high hopes for an artist who should be on everyone’s radar:

“For anyone familiar with Victoria Canal’s earlier discography - which, after sharing her first EP all the way back in 2016, is already plentiful - the opening chimes of ‘June Baby’ might come as a bit of a surprise. Where her most recent releases (2022’s ‘elegy’ and last year’s ‘WELL WELL’ EP) dwelled in the more introspective corners of life, there’s a sunny warmth to the opening track of her debut full-length ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ that feels unexpected but still well-worn. It’s this spirit that’s carried into the first half of the record via the flirtatious strut of ‘California Sober’ and the thrumming, hedonistic vibrations of ‘Cake’, proving Canal has many more strings to her pop bow. For those more enamoured with her intimate, stripped back songwriting, never fear; ‘Slowly, It Dawns’’ second half is as powerful and devastating as ever, with ‘Barely’ standing out as a particularly raw but striking highlight (“We’re all solar systems,” she sings, in an almost whisper, “we’re so fucking small”). That she chooses to close proceedings with the one-two of her previous stand-out singles ‘Black Swan’ and ‘swan song’ makes perfect sense in context, too; the tracks that helped introduce her to the world now become the poignant final notes of her newest era. A gorgeous debut”.

There are few artists who leave as big an impression on me as Victoria Canal. Slowly, It Dawns is a tremendous album that rightly won impassioned reviews. The future is very bright for Canal. I have never seen her perform live, though that is something that I need to do at some point if she plays London in the future. If you are not following this amazing artist then you need to do so…