Long before Lolli Wren began releasing her own avant-pop music, she was already obsessed with what the human voice could do.
That fascination took her online, where under the name “Fairy Voice Mother” she built an international audience analysing the techniques of famous singers and demonstrating her own ability to reproduce an extraordinary variety of vocal approaches. With more than 375,000 YouTube subscribers and 51 million views, Wren established herself as a distinctive voice in the world of vocal analysis.
But studying the voices of others was never going to be the end of the story.
Today, Wren is developing an artistic identity of her own as a London-based artist, composer, vocalist and producer. Her music combines avant-pop, experimental pop, progressive pop and art pop with an instinct for cinematic storytelling. The result is work that feels closer to a complete creative universe than a collection of isolated songs.
Her latest single, ‘are we alright?’, represents a particularly revealing step in that evolution.
The track emerged from Wren’s response to the emotional atmosphere of contemporary life. She describes feeling overwhelmed by the existential dread surrounding doomscrolling and urban isolation, and the song became her attempt to reach towards others experiencing something similar.
That motivation gives the track its emotional centre. Beneath the ambitious production and elaborate vocal arrangements is a very direct human impulse: to ask someone else if they are okay.
Musically, however, Wren makes that simple question anything but straightforward. Her four-plus-octave range allows her to treat vocals almost like an orchestra. Distortion, agility, harmonies and layered arrangements become compositional tools, while her ability to perform every backing vocal herself creates a remarkable density.
It is here that Wren’s previous life as a vocal scientist becomes part of her identity as an artist. She understands voices analytically, but she also understands them emotionally. She knows that a tiny change in tone, texture or placement can alter the personality of a performance. On ‘are we alright?’, that knowledge is used to create atmosphere rather than simply demonstrate technique.
The influence of They Live, the 1988 cult science-fiction film, adds another dimension. Its vision of a hidden dystopia provides a conceptual framework for Wren’s exploration of modern alienation. The result is a song that seems to exist somewhere between pop song, film score and psychological portrait.
Her collaborators help give that vision physical shape. Eduardo Moreira produced the track and provided the main instrumentation, while Barry O’Connell handled mixing and mastering. Wren herself remains at the centre, responsible for the writing, performance and all backing vocals.
This multidisciplinary approach is increasingly characteristic of her work. Her debut album To Build A Sea, released in November 2024, introduced audiences to her character-led and concept-driven music videos, while its streaming figures have since passed 500,000 Spotify plays.
What makes Wren’s trajectory particularly interesting is that none of these identities seem to cancel each other out. Vocal scientist, performer, composer, producer and storyteller are becoming parts of the same artistic language.
‘are we alright?’ feels like a significant marker in that evolution. It is darker than simply showcasing vocal ability, more ambitious than straightforward pop and more emotionally vulnerable than an exercise in sonic experimentation.
Wren is no longer simply explaining what a voice can do.
She is showing us what her voice can say.