Finding her voice as a pop singer took a while for Lydia Ainsworth. Growing up, she would happily sing along with her favorite requiems or whatever pop songs were on the radio. But she became quickly self-conscious after hearing a recording of her voice.
“It shocked me,” she says, speaking from her home in Toronto. “‘Oh my god… that’s what I sound like?’ I remember reverting to being really shy about it.”
Once she was in college, studying music and composition at both Montreal’s McGill University and New York University, she brought her voice back into the equation. Encouraged by one of her teachers, the experimental artist Joan La Barbara, Ainsworth started adding wordless vocals as texture to the film scores she was writing. Then she was urged to perform at a friend’s house party and decided to start writing some songs with lyrics for the occasion.
Since then, Ainsworth has evolved into one of the most fascinating electronic pop/future R&B artists around. Her 2014 debut album Right from Real was recorded primarily in her apartment, with multi-tracked vocals (some inspired by the close harmonies heard in Bulgarian folk music) and pop-locking beats augmented by the languid sounds of a string section. The record was a breakout success, earning Ainsworth a nomination for Electronic Album of the Year at the Juno Awards and invites to LA to write material for other artists.