Sevdaliza

A multi-faceted artist, Sevdaliza makes artful, passionate left-field pop that incorporates trip-hop, R&B, orchestral music, and sounds from all over the world. After emerging with a series of short-form releases, the singer, songwriter, producer, and director’s majestic 2017 audiovisual album Ison earned critical acclaim as well as comparisons to Portishead, Björk, Velvet Rope-era Janet Jackson, and contemporaries like FKA twigs and Little Dragon. With 2020′s Shabrang, Sevdaliza expanded her explorations of identity and healing with sounds that reflected her Iranian roots, and on 2022′s Raving Dahlia, she presented a danceable, sci-fi version of feminism that spoke to real-life truths. Collaborations like 2023′s “Nothing Lasts Forever” with Grimes and 2024′s chart breakthrough “Alibi” with Pablo Vittar and Yseult took Sevdaliza’s message to wider audiences as they broadened her sound. Born in Tehran and raised in Rotterdam, Sevda Alizadeh played basketball for the Dutch national youth team and earned a master’s degree in communication before she opted to explore her artistic impulses in the early 2010s. Following tracks such as 2012′s “DelftsBlauw,” she delivered a pair of EPs in 2015, The Suspended Kid and Children of Silk, that she created with Rotterdam-based producer Mucky and released on her own Twisted Elegance label. The following year, Sevdaliza issued The Formula, a short film featuring songs including “Mad Woman,” which appeared as a single in 2017. In April 2017, Sevdaliza’s debut album, Ison, arrived. Named for a sungrazing comet, it was an ambitious set of songs revolving around identity and past lives that was also released as a visual album. She followed it in 2018 with The Calling EP and a string of singles, including 2019′s “Martyr,” that preceded the August 2020 release of her second full-length, Shabrang. With a title alluding to a black horse that appears in a 11th century Persian epic poem, the album reunited Sevdaliza with Mucky and string arranger Mihai Puscoiu. Sevdaliza returned in February 2022 with Raving Dahlia, an EP of dance-based songs about a robotic “femmenoid” artist who liberates herself from the expectations put on women. Along with releasing the EP on her own Twisted Elegance label, she also constructed a version of the robot. Later in 2022, Sevdaliza issued the single “Woman Life Freedom,” kicking off a period where she concentrated on short-form releases. Next up was 2023′s “Ride or Die,” a collaboration with Villano Antillano; toward the end of the year, she teamed up with Grimes on “Nothing Lasts Forever,” a song that encouraged women to break free from expectations, and released “Who Are You Running From” on her own. The following year, she collaborated with Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna on “Good Torture” in January, then returned in May with “Ride or Die, Pt. 2,” a version of the song that added Tokischa and peaked at 43 on the Hot Latin Songs Chart in the U.S. Sevdaliza experienced more chart success with “Alibi,” which featured Pablo Vittar and Yseult. The reggaeton and baile funk-tinged track went viral on social media and reached the Top Ten in 13 countries. In the U.S., it peaked at 95 on the Hot 100 Singles Chart, marking the debut on that chart for all three artists and making Vittar the second drag queen to appear on the chart after RuPaul. ~ Heather Phares & Andy Kellman