alba: On Metamorfosi, Finding Her Voice and Making Music Beyond Language

alba is an Italian singer-songwriter in London, bringing Italian storytelling into a soulful pop and R&B world shaped by vulnerability, change and real life. After moving from Naples to London to pursue music, she has been building an independent project across releases and live shows, while creating space for predominantly Italian music within the UK scene.

Her latest EP, Metamorfosi, captures a period of transformation both personally and artistically — a project about losing parts of yourself, letting go and eventually finding your own voice again.

Where it started

Music has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mum is a singing teacher, so I grew up around music schools, watching people learn, rehearse and find their voices. I actually started as a drummer when I was eight and played for around eight years before I began singing at fourteen.

As I got older, songwriting became the part that felt most personal to me. I grew up in Naples, but I was really drawn to the UK music scene and to the way songwriting, performance and production could exist together. That eventually brought me to London, where I graduated in Vocal Performance & Music Production.

Moving countries changed a lot more than my music. I had to build a life and an artistic identity away from everything familiar, and I think that inevitably found its way into my writing. Over time I stopped trying to fit my music into one specific box and started understanding what actually felt like me: Italian songwriting at the centre, with the soul and R&B influences I’ve always loved.

The come-up

The road here hasn’t always been straightforward. One of the biggest things I’ve had to learn is how to keep going without waiting for someone else to give me permission to do it. Being an independent artist means you’re not only writing and singing — you’re constantly figuring out releases, live shows, budgets, musicians, content, opportunities and all the uncertainty that comes with it.

I also chose to build my career in London while making music predominantly in Italian, which at times can feel like creating your own lane rather than stepping into one that already exists. For a while I wondered whether the language would limit where the music could go, but performing here has actually taught me the opposite. People can connect with a song before they understand every word.

One of the biggest shifts for me has been learning not to measure whether I should continue by how quickly things happen. I’ve had to become very resilient and resourceful, but every release and every show has made the project feel more real. Selling out my full-band headline show at SJQ in London this year was one of those moments where I could physically see that something I had been building independently was actually reaching people.

The project

The latest is **Metamorfosi**. The EP came from a period of my life where I realised I had made myself smaller without even noticing I was doing it. It was written through the end of an important relationship, but the project became much more about what happened afterwards: rebuilding my sense of self and learning to make choices from my own perspective again.

The songs capture different stages of that process. There’s grief, uncertainty, leaving, starting again and eventually a sense of taking yourself back. That’s why I called it Metamorfosi. I didn’t want transformation to sound like this beautiful, effortless thing, because it wasn’t. Sometimes becoming someone new means accepting that parts of your old life can’t come with you.

What did it cost me? Probably comfort. I had to let go of people, versions of myself and ideas of what my life was supposed to look like. And creatively, it meant being much more vulnerable than I had been before. But making the EP also gave me something back: it made me trust my own voice a lot more, both personally and as an artist.

What they want you to know

I’d love people to feel like they don’t need to understand every word to connect with my music. I grew up listening to so much music in English before I could actually speak or understand the language, and I still fell in love with those songs. I connected with the voices, the melodies and the emotion long before I knew exactly what they were saying.

I think that experience has stayed with me, especially now that I make predominantly Italian music while building my career in London. I never want language to feel like a barrier. My songs come from very personal experiences, but once they’re out, I want people to be able to find their own meaning in them, whether they understand every word or not.

What's next

I’m already working on new music and I’m really excited about where it’s going. I feel like Metamorfosi helped me understand my sound and myself as an artist a lot more clearly, and the new songs feel like a natural next step from that while also opening up something new.

Live-wise, I’m taking the project outside the UK more. I have two shows in Switzerland this November, including Studio Foce in Lugano, followed by a show in Milan on 20 November. After bringing Metamorfosi to the stage with a sold-out full-band headline show at SJQ in London, I’m really excited to keep playing these songs in new places and in front of new audiences.

The bigger goal is to keep growing the project between the UK, Italy and beyond, while releasing new music and continuing to develop the live side of what I do.

Follow alba: Spotify · Instagram · TikTok

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