I meet Sienna Spiro in the lobby of the Ludlow Hotel on a hectic day. After being exiled from her room after staying (far) past the checkout time (“I thought they’d let me stay, but they kicked me out!”), she’s speaking to me, then running to a photo shoot, then finally flying home to London.
It’s no wonder she’s being pulled in all different directions: that’s what happens when you’re one of the most in-demand new names in music. It was only four years ago that Spiro dropped out of school to pursue singing and songwriting full-time; now, with 1.2 billion global streams already under her belt, the 20-year-old has released her debut album, Visitor, via Capitol Records. The project follows the runaway success of Spiro’s lead single, “Die on This Hill,” an aching, piano-driven ballad textured by her raspy contralto. (When Spiro performed it on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this year, she earned multiple applause breaks mid-song.)
Here, Spiro talks to Vogue about this magic moment.
Vogue: “Die on This Hill” is everywhere, your debut album is coming out, and you just sold out your world tour. Where is your head at these days?
Sienna Spiro: All I can think about right now is a chicken sandwich. [Laughs.] Since I’m visiting New York, Chick-fil-A is on my mind. But no, I’m just very, very grateful. I’m trying to be as present as I can and take it in, because I know this is not normal. I know this is not real life. It’s just very, very crazy.
Tell me about how “Die on This Hill” came to be, because I understand it was pretty much written by accident?
I was in LA and I was just scrolling, looking at YouTube videos, and I saw someone playing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” While I’m not amazing at the piano, I just felt the urge to learn it. I was trying to, and it just was not working at all, so I kind of gave up. The chords that I managed to figure out were wrong, but then I rearranged them, and then played those over and over again. Meanwhile, the phrase “die on this hill” was always something I wanted to write about, since it’s a saying, so I just started writing it over those chords. The next day, I remember I went into the studio with [producers] Omar Fedi and Michael [Pollack], who I met for the first time, and we ended up finishing it that day.
Borrowing a phrase from chicken sandwiches, did you know at the time the song had that special sauce?
The song was really different for a long time, to be honest with you. It was originally on the guitar, and it went super fast; like The Fugees or Lauryn Hill kind of thing. I was desperate for an uptempo song. It was really Omar who said, “This should be a ballad.” I am very stubborn, as you can probably tell by listening to the song. So I said, “No, it’s not.” I wanted anything with drums in it so I could move in some way on stage. But I was trying to force something that wasn’t right…he was correct, because it definitely felt right as a ballad. That taught me a lot about giving a song what it wants and not what you want, and I think that’s a mistake I’ve potentially made in my earlier music. I was a bit selfish in the way I made music because I was like, “Oh, I want this to be in the song, so I’m gonna put it in there,” not really considering what was correct for the song and what fit.
