Nadine Shah

Nadine Shah sings in a broad Geordie accent and delivers her songs with a theatrical sweep, which suits the post-punk, alternative rock and gothic pop labels attached to her work. Born in Whitburn, South Tyneside, to a Pakistani father and an English mother of half-Norwegian descent, she grew up beside the North Sea, absorbing 1960s and 1970s records from her mother and the Urdu ghazals her father sang in the car. Nina Simone and Scott Walker are among her main influences.

She moved to London as a teenager to sing jazz, then quit, studied at Camberwell College of Arts and settled on songwriting. After two EPs, her debut album Love Your Dum and Mad arrived in July 2013, produced by Ben Hillier, who has made all her music with her since. Her third album, Holiday Destination (2017), earned a 2018 Mercury Prize nomination, and her fifth, Filthy Underneath, followed in February 2024. Acting is now a second strand: her 2022 stage debut as Titania in A Midsummer's Night Dream brought a WhatsOnStage Awards nomination, and she is playing Goneril in a David Threlfall-led King Lear, for which she also composed the music.