Crystalline.
Amelia Onuorah, Madeline “Maddie” Haynes, and Yssabelle “Yssy” Salvanera of the British girl group Say Now are calling in from separate cars, on their way back from an appearance at THE CUBE.
The live game show attraction in East London is based on the hit U.K. game show of the same name, where contestants compete in Squid Games-style mental and physical challenges in a futuristic glass cube. It’s a distinctly British piece of cultural property, and Say Now is a distinctly British girl group. Recently, they have been leaning into their roots by penning lyrics that reflect “how they talk” on the day to day, slang and all. They've also been creating a visual world that is “so British” — as can be seen in their floral-clad music videos. Haynes describes their viral “Hot & Talking” video as featuring garments “you’d see your cool older cousin in … like my cool cousin's Cath Kidston bag."
Say Now first launched in 2022 without a name, or rather, with the meta moniker “needanamebro" alongside an EP. After, they released a slew of single under their official name, Say Now.
Their music, up until this year, had been consciously nostalgic: Destiny’s Child-sounding R&B that, while a fun throwback, was a bit gimmicky to modern ears. These days, Say Now doesn’t claim much of their early work, calling an early cut “Netflix” “traumatizing.” It’s clear with their recent releases like “Hot & Talking” and “Met My Match,” that they’ve found more solid footing: these are dangerously catchy, gorgeously sparkly pop songs, but they also feel D.I.Y. They are produced like speaker knocking bedroom pop songs, but sung by singers who have been training to hit a Whitney Houston vocal run since grade school.
Their new EP Say What You See, out November 13, was produced by Oscar Scheller (known for his work with PinkPantheress, Kelela, Natanya, among many others) and executive produced by PinkPantheress, whose exceptional taste and distinct “honesty” helped shape their new sonic era. “It's like when you have an older sister before you go to high school who can warn you about things,” Salvanera says of the Fancy That singer.
Below read a conversation with Say Now about finding their new sound, PinkPantheress and Oscar Scheller’s mentorship, and making music with your best friends.
Crystalline.
The FADER: I feel like something's definitely changing for you guys. When you came back to London from your recent New York City trip, did you notice people recognizing you more?
Maddie Haynes: Definitely. Especially if we're together as a three, if we see someone our age, they usually always know Say Now.
Amelia Anuorah: We can't be mistaken for anyone else because we're such a specific combination of people.
Ysabelle and Amelia, can you tell me about how you initially connected and decided to start this journey, and then found Maddie?
Yssy Salvanera: We got scouted online. I used to post these music Reels with my friends from college, because I went to a music performing college. Our tour manager now — she was our manager at first — she emailed me. I just ignored it because I was like, "This is definitely a scam." Two weeks passed and then she followed up, and I was like, "Oh, shit. Okay." Amelia was the first person to be found by her, also off Instagram from a Billie Eilish cover.
Amelia and I met for the first time in our management's office. It was the first time I'd ever been to London properly. I was 17, Amelia was 18 at the time. And then Amelia was basically an A&R and found Maddie and just DM'd her and was like, "Oh my gosh, do you sing?"
Maddie Haynes: I saw that message, and I was like, "I'll give you any style.” We met the next day, which was Ysabelle’s birthday, at King's Cross [in London], and we've been best friends ever since.
Did you guys grow up wanting to be in a girl group?
Amelia Onuorah: We all loved girl groups growing up, but I feel like once the X Factor / Britain’s Got Talent era died, it wasn't even really an option. I grew up singing, but I didn't really know what path there was for me back in Luton, [England] — it just presented itself to us. We thank the universe every day that we get to do it together, because it's not easy doing it on your own.
Salvanera: Girl groups were dying. Little Mix was on their hiatus, and it just wasn't seen as that cool at the time. I'm glad we stuck through with it, because now we're in the girl group renaissance and everybody's coming back. It's so good to be in this position.
Through this whole process of the past four or five years, we've realized more and more that I don't know how people do this on their own. Being together all the time and going through all the hardships and peaks of being an artist —even going to events to meet new people, new faces, and brands. We're always so chill because we're just going with our best friends.
Haynes: We get an automatic plus two to everything. Especially as women, I don't think it's spoken enough about how scary it could be going into those rooms in a predominantly male space, especially with producers. We're so lucky to be working with PinkPantheress, because she's one of the only female producers, let alone one of the best.
Crystalline.
Crystalline.
“Girl groups were dying. Little Mix was on their hiatus, and it just wasn’t seen as that cool at the time. I’m glad we stuck through with it, because now we’re in the girl group renaissance and everybody’s coming back.”
I remember seeing you guys when you first began online, and it definitely felt like this throwback girl group sound. It’s clear you’re reinventing your sound for this project. What do you think of your earlier work?
Salvanera: Honestly, I was listening back to our early stuff the other day and I was just like, "What the fuck is this?" I was like, "No." There's some songs where I'm like, "I can't believe we had to put that out." There's a few songs in our discography where we're like, "Turn that shit off." There's this song called "Netflix" that we have, and it's just so traumatizing.
Haynes: We always feel bad saying that we don't like "Netflix" because we know that there's a song for everyone, but realistically, we would never put that out nowadays.
How did you get connected with Oscar Scheller?
Haynes: We made an EP that got scrapped [during our first week working with Oscar Scheller]. But that week was so good, because if we weren't making that EP, we would have never met Oscar. So we did that week, and then we did a month with him in L.A. and that's when we really spent loads of time writing the new EP. And then we did 10 days in the Cotswolds.
Anuorah: The fact that we did this old EP with him and then this new one shows how flexible [Oscar] is. We had completely different references for the first EP. It was a lot more 2000s Destiny's Child with a lot more R&B references. This new one, has a lot more of those super pop tracks.
Why did you scrap that first EP?
Anuorah: It just didn't compare to the new things that we started making. They felt way more us and special, whereas the ones before were all amazing songs, but they could have been anyone's songs. They weren't specifically Say Now.
Crystalline.
"We're so lucky to be working with PinkPantheress, because she's one of the only female producers, let alone one of the best."
How did PinkPantheress come into the picture? What is her magic as a collaborator?
Salvanera: It's all like a domino effect. If we didn't meet Oscar, then we wouldn't have met Pink. And then if we didn't have our old EP that was technically going to come out, we wouldn't have met Oscar.
Haynes: She expanded our taste horizon and made us re-remember songs we maybe listened to growing up and forgot about, or these U.K. one-hit wonders — stuff that's so niche and that we wouldn't have thought about by ourselves. Because we are best friends, all three of us tend to listen to the same music and like the same artists at the same time. PinkPantheress is a hitmaker with taste — she wasn't just showing us any old generic 2000s big song. We really trust her taste, too, which is something we find hard to get, because there are so many people and so many voices in the industry.
Anuorah: What PinkPantheress has that a lot of people in the industry don't have anymore is she's so good at being really honest. As artists, you can get to this place where [collaborators are] saying yes to you a lot. If you say, "I want to make this type of track," that's what you're probably going to do in the studio. But she has this ability to be so brutally honest that she pushes your boundaries to where you actually didn't know they could go. Then you create something so much better than the first thing you could have done. She's never too scared to say her opinion, and having that in a room is so important and a lot harder to find these days.
Was there a particular song where you remember how she came in and shifted it?
Haynes: "Hot and Talking."
Ysabelle: We didn't like that song at all. The demo was horrific. As much as they tried to tell us it wasn't that bad, we literally thought it was so bad. The chorus was the only thing where we were like, "Yes, this chorus is amazing." But when she said that that was her favorite song that we'd written so far —
Anuorah: We were literally scared. We were like, "There's no way." We were in disbelief. She didn't care. She was like, "No, it's really good, this is the one." So then we trusted her. She reproduced it alongside Oscar and Count Baldor. We were like, "Oh my gosh, wait."
Haynes: And then she wrote that bridge!
Anuorah: And helped rewrite a pre-chorus for us and a verse. She really helped rework the song and made us love it.
I feel like I'm getting to know you guys a lot better through this work than your previous projects. How did you infuse yourselves and your personalities in the writing of this EP?
Anuorah: Whenever we're starting a song, we always write down what we're just gossiping about at the beginning of the session. It’s important for us to use words that we would actually use in real life. Even in "Money Man," PinkPantheress was making sure she was using British phrases like "bread" and things that not everyone is going to understand. And "Hot and Talking" — so many of those verse lyrics just came from actual phrases that we were saying.
Haynes: We'll be like, "Oh, they aired us."
Anuorah: When you're writing pop songs, you can get in that habit of trying to make it sound like a pop lyric and making it like, "Oh, what's the prettiest word?" But actually, sometimes it's so much cooler just to say it exactly how you would say it in real life. And now, I think that's why you get the essence of us in the songs way more.
The aesthetic you guys are exploring is cool and specific. How did the aesthetic come together?
Salvanera: With the florals, Cath Kidston was such a big brand when we were growing up. Even the peplum dresses — you'd see your older sister or your aunt wearing that. I always wanted to wear that to the club. And [the wall paper in the “Hot and Talking” music video], you'd see that in your grandma's house.
Anuorah: When we get to speak to our U.S. fans, they love it so much because it's not something they were oversaturated with when they were growing up. They're looking at this like, "Oh my gosh, I don't really know what this reference is." For a while we would have thought, "Oh, it's too specific … maybe people wouldn't get this." Now we're realizing it's our strength to pull on those small little things that were really cool to us when we were growing up that not everyone actually knows about.
Crystalline.
