Ever had a breakup so bad you thought you couldn’t go on? That’s what happened to Toni Sancho during lockdown. She started singing and playing ukulele to combat depression and process her heartbreak. The four singles the 25-year-old has released since then are brittle beauties from those lonely days, all showcasing her unique vocal – unshowy yet fabulously expressive, with a velvet dagger for a tongue.
Survive! is a catchy, guitar-led bedroom anthem, with Sancho’s aching, longing voice riding a sleepy-lidded beat, promising “maybe, baby we can survive”. It went mildly viral as the pandemic ended – it felt like an appropriately weird celebration. Recently, though (during a gig in her band’s dumpling shop), she introduced Survive! as a song about fake, delusional happiness: “When you realise that someone’s too good for you, and you’re the problem.”
That raw, disarming honesty is where she’s happiest. Inspired by her Trinidad-and-England upbringing, 2023’s Don’t Wanna Break Your Heart smartly slid Caribbean carnival rhythm into a song that’s a yearning, operatic ballad at its easily bruised heart. “I really struggle with absence of love and not feeling love,” Sancho says, “and you hear that a lot in my music.” Latest single Everybody Leaves! is another example of her genius for extracting beauty from trauma. “I used to work at Pedigree dog food,” she beams, “and now I’m engaging in my passions for a living!” Not just surviving, thriving.
Everybody Leaves! is out now, followed by Free Falling in April and an EP on 31 May
