flowerovlove

flowerovlove is the professional name of Joyce Cissé, a UK singer, songwriter and producer from London. Her music sits in dance-pop and indie pop, and she begins releasing music in 2020. She releases three EPs.

Background

Cissé is born in London to Ivorian parents and grows up in South London and Essex. She speaks Mandingo at home. She also attends a sixth-form college in 2022, where she studies A Levels in English, French and History.

Musical style and influences

She is interested in pop from a young age and grows up listening to Frank Ocean, One Direction and Justin Bieber, as well as ABBA and Boney M through her mother. She says One Direction's "Best Song Ever" helps her understand the power of music and visual presentation. As she gets older, she develops an interest in indie music and names Tame Impala as one of her main influences, especially the albums Lonerism and Currents, along with the Strokes and Strawberry Guy.

She says her early motivation for making music is the feeling she gets from listening to artists including Frank Ocean, Tame Impala and One Direction, and the wish to recreate that sense of nostalgia. Her earlier work is described as drawing on bedroom pop, trap, neo-soul, dream pop, indie rock, pop punk and psychedelic music. Her second EP includes an injection of pop punk, and in 2024 she says she wants to move further into pop while keeping an alternative edge. She says her single "breaking news" is inspired by Rex Orange County's "Loving Is Easy".

Recognition

flowerovlove wins Artist to Watch at the 2022 A&R Awards and New Artist at the 2024 Music Week Women in Music Awards. In 2022, she is named one of VEVO's Artists to Watch and one of The Forty Five's Future Five, and in 2023 BBC Radio 1 names her Future Artist of the Month.

Later work

In the lead-up to her third EP, she describes it as a set of pop love songs. She also says she is sometimes assumed to have a Willow Smith or soul-influenced sound, but identifies her music as pop and says there is space for a Black girl in pop.