After debuting three years ago with an EP that included a No. 1 single on the BBC playlist
After debuting three years ago with an EP that included a No. 1 single on the BBC playlist, Teri Sillo is once again introducing herself to the music world.
The reintroduction is “No Need to Hide,” a hauntingly beautiful love song to her daughter, who was born in February. A 4D sonogram picture taken late in her pregnancy inspired the song and is the cover photo.
The hiatus was two years of Covid lockdown, and another year devoted to her daughter’s birth.
She says the peaceful look on her daughter’s face – almost as if she were hiding, she told one interviewer – inspired the soulful vibe of the music.
“My heart is a garden,” the song begins, “Your soul is my hiding place.” She sings to her daughter:
Take me to the old days / When we walked among the stars
Empowered by our immortality / No need to hide
“That's why I decided to make it that kind of, you know, chilled out, reflective vibe. I think my little baby girl inspired it mostly for me to do it that way,” she said.
The sound of “No Need” is very different from her first EP, which featured a lot of the Afropop beats that reflect her heritage as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants to England. She was born in Sheffield and lives in northeast England.
“I was born and raised in England, but ethnically I’m from Nigeria, Africa, so that has a lot of influence, as you can imagine,” she said.
Her musical roots are in Africa, but she did not necessarily grow up listening to African music.
“Well,” she said, “technically, not necessarily, because my father used to listen to every kind of music, John Denver, country music, all sorts of music, just not necessarily Afro beats.”
She expanded the list to Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Eartha Kitt, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder and said, “In fact, I only started to listen to Afro in the last three years-ish.”
Her first EP, Plus or Minus You, released in 2019, was five tracks with a mix of Afrobeats, pop and fusions of those styles with others.
“Obviously, as you can tell, I wouldn't necessarily have a precise genre that I lean to. I write in all kinds of ways. I can do some Afrobeats, which is what you hear in that EP. There's some more of an Afro fusion like Afro soul, which you hear in songs like ‘I No Fit Lie’ and ‘I've Had Enough.’ There's a soul kind of sound, a bouncy type of sound, and then you hear some that are a bit more pop.”
“Jejely” (pronounced jayJELLy), was the song from the EP that made No. 1 on the BBC playlist. It is fun, playful, written in an English dialect of immigrants from the Guinea coast region. It is about a young girl just chilling (jejely), but then a young man comes along:
I sit jejely o / Fine boy no be small / Na so I see de man dey go
I no fit let am go away / Na so I come dey run dey go / Jejely o
“The song is saying I'm just here minding my business and then along comes this pretty boy, and I can't [“no fit”] ignore him. I have to respond to him, to his presence.”
She writes from her own experiences, or about something she sees that strikes her as unique or different, or the experiences of other people. One of the songs that she will release soon in England is “It’s Boring Here on Earth,” came from a work interaction.
During the peak period of the Corona virus, she and some colleagues were talking in the office about how everything “everywhere was dead dry.” One co-worker said, “Oh, my goodness, it’s so boring on Earth right now!”
“When she said that, I said, ‘Oh my goodness, Kelly. I’m going to write a song about that.’ Well then that’s so funny,” said Teri. “Who says something like that? So I wrote it.”
Her take on her co-worker’s words, in a song set to “a very pop kind of vibe,” is, “It's boring here on Earth, and I'd rather be with you, but if I can't, I'd rather just not be here.”
She has been writing and performing since about 2015, but it wasn’t until 2019 that she decided to put herself into “the music marketplace” by putting out singles and the EP and registering a company, Boldly Artistic Ltd., with the United Kingdom’s Companies House.
Her plan is to release “It’s Boring Here on Earth,” then, sometime in the fall, another EP and then an album a year, each with 10 to 12 tracks. They are all written, she said, but not all recorded yet.
“I'm still pushing, obviously, to gain that visibility and become a sound that is well known across the world.”
Her desire is for her “music to go global.”
“And when I say that,” she said, she means, “I want my music to find its audience, and I really see it going on a large scale, you know. Grammy nominations and wins, you know? It's because I want people to hear the music.”
As she embarks anew on her journey, stay connected to Teri Sillo on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
Websites:
Apple Music
Deezer
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
No Need to Hide
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