Sasha Keable: Turn the Page

Years of industry frustration had Sasha Keable ready to give it all up. Then, last year, her single Hold Up blew up on TikTok, reintroducing the south Londoner to an audience that resonated with her fierce lyrics and distinctive, unvarnished style. As her life kicks back into overdrive, this time she’s determined to do things her own way, on her own terms.

Sasha Keable was ready to quit. After a decade-long battle for creative control and a series of solo near-misses, she felt she had exhausted all her options. Burnt out and frustrated by a music industry that kept trying to pigeonhole her, she gave herself an ultimatum early last year: if she was still not where she wanted to be in 12 months’ time, she would focus on songwriting for other artists instead. By the end of 2024, her single Hold Up was a viral TikTok hit and Beyoncé had described her as one of her favourite artists. “Everything started going up and up and up, and it’s just been a whirlwind from then,” she says. 

When we speak, the British-Colombian artist is in LA, where she’s been in the studio every day for the past few weeks, working on her next project. Being in the studio feels different this time. She is gearing up for the next step after finally breaking through, and online, her fans have been loudly expressing their impatience. This afternoon, she will finish recording Tai Chi, a track she first played for Tiny Desk Concerts in July. When it didn’t appear on her latest EP, Act Right, released in August, her TikTok was flooded with comments demanding “Justice for Tai Chi.” But Keable is learning to move at her own pace. 

“I haven’t stopped moving around this whole year, so it’s nice to have some time in one place where I can actually write and be in the studio,” she says with a sense of relief, her signature fiery hair pulled back from her face. This new schedule reflects her status as a rapidly ascending star. She likes being busy, though. It’s a reminder of how far she has come since the start of 2024. 

These weeks in LA have come off the back of a packed summer festival schedule, during which she performed at her friend Little Simz’s edition of Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival and supported Cleo Sol and Sault at All Points East. This will be her last short-term stay in LA. In January, she will relocate there for at least a year, leaving south London behind for the first time. 

“It felt like the universe was telling me I needed to leave,” she says, reflecting on departing the city she has always called home. The streets of south London have left an indelible mark on her work, shaping it through the creative opportunities they sparked and the grit and resilience at the heart of her rise. It’s also in the south London lilt that glides through her songs, lending her distinctive, soulful vocals a down-to-earth edge that sounds like getting relationship advice from a best mate.

“I was really sad to get rid of that flat because it had so many memories,” she says. Serving as an erstwhile party house and creative hub, her place in Deptford was where she wrote all her music, hosted friends’ birthdays and shot photoshoots. Earlier this year, though, when rats crawled up from the restaurant below and a flood left her staying at her dad’s house, she took it as a sign to leave. The move to LA isn’t just a change of scenery. It marks a new era of creative confidence for an artist who has spent the past decade grafting for the right to let her artistic vision fully flourish. “It feels like I’ve shed one layer of skin and  I’m able to come into a new one,” she continues. 

Since signing her first record deal with Polydor aged 17, Keable has already shed her skin many times over. Her breakout moment arrived more than a decade ago when she lent her vocals to Disclosure’s Voices, a song she co-wrote for their 2013 Grammy-nominated debut, Settle. The singer-songwriter has since worked with an eclectic roster of UK artists, including Dev Hynes, Ezra Collective and Jorja Smith. Despite garnering critical acclaim as a solo artist – with some even likening her vocal style to Amy Winehouse and Adele – her early releases didn’t reflect the artist she wanted to be. “I was like, ‘Oh shit, have I pigeonholed myself into a feature artist?’ That was never my intention,” she says.

Growing up in Eltham, south London, she listened to everything from heavy metal and R&B to traditional cumbia (Keable is half-Colombian). Her father used to print out guitar tabs for her to sing along to, and she started writing songs on the piano with a friend from school. This, combined with her hatred of the school she was attending at the time, led her to apply for the Brit School, where she studied in the same year as King Krule. “Going to the Brit School really helped introduce me to the south London creative scene,” she says. “It felt like a real community.” 

Keable’s first brush with success came early. She was still a teenager when she recorded her first EP, Black Book. Hinting at her affinity for soul and R&B, her striking, husky vocals are laid over trap-influenced percussion and atmospheric, electronic textures. It was released in 2013 when she was 19, but she recorded it while still at the Brit School. “I was getting up at six for school, doing a whole day, then going straight to the studio and getting home at 1 a.m.,” she recalls. “I loved it. Obviously, I had the energy of a fucking teenager – who needs sleep?” In those early days, she followed the impulse to say yes to every opportunity, which is how her features on tracks with Disclosure and DJ Zinc came about. “I was having a good time just recording with whatever. I never really thought of the implications.” 

Black Book was well received, and she was lauded as an exciting new voice in UK R&B – but behind the scenes, Keable was feeling increasingly dissatisfied with the direction her career was going in. Looking back, she feels her youthful enthusiasm was taken advantage of. Instead of respecting her input and creative vision, the label wanted to shape her into the kind of pop star she didn’t want to be. “They just saw me as a little teenager that could sing,” she says. “People had lied to me. They said they cared, when what they really wanted me to do was pop. I felt like I was led astray for quite a few years by older people who should have taken a little more care and consideration over a young woman’s dreams, aspirations, craft and work ethic.”

Reflecting on those early releases, she says she “fucking hates” them now, before backtracking to cut her younger self more slack. “There’s a lot of beauty in those projects. I just would prefer to not play them live.” Another EP, Lemongrass and Limeleaves, soon followed in 2014, but by the time Keable turned 20, she was already feeling burnt out and deflated. After splitting from her label, she took two years away from music completely – and then spent another two trying to fall in love with it again. “I was just fed up with everything, and I didn’t want to have to deal with anyone I’d previously had to deal with,” she says. “I didn’t really know anyone else I could go forward with.” 

There was a time when she didn’t think she would ever go back to making her own music at all. She was spending her days “being a degenerate 20-year-old, just enjoying my life”. Until, one day, her friend Junior asked if she wanted to get in the studio and record a track. She told him she wasn’t writing anything at the time, but he persuaded her to write a song with him on piano at her mum’s house.