The Mette Towley debut album, titled Coming of Age and due in September, is the kind of record that arrives with a full thesis behind it: the reconciliation of lost innocence with the reclamation of youth, made by a woman who has spent fifteen years in the industry finding out, quietly and methodically, what she actually wants to say.
From the Dance Floor to the Recording Studio
At least twice a week, Towley takes herself alone to a dance studio. The music goes on, the emotions come out, voguing to Charli xcx one session, something softer and more meditative the next. She records the sessions and plays them back, watching her subconscious move. ‘I see the history of my embodiment,’ she says. ‘It’s like an archive.’ It is also, she explains, a way of stepping into authorship, the central preoccupation of everything she is making right now.
Before she became METTE (pronounced Meh-teh, always in caps), dance was the primary language. She worked alongside Jennifer Hudson, toured with N.E.R.D. for five years, and appeared in the Lemon music video with Rihanna, dancing solo throughout, while Rihanna shaves her head in the opening sequence. That video, she says, changed her life overnight. So did the shaving. ‘I’d never felt exceptionally feminine in my appearance,’ she says. ‘When the hair was off, I felt this expansive quality of self for the first time in my life.’
The fashion world noticed. She became a fixture at Saint Laurent runway shows, performed at The Fashion Awards in 2023, and has since appeared in magazine spreads and films including Barbie and Hustlers. Her 2023 single Mama’s Eyes was nominated for an Ivor Novello. She supported Taylor Swift on the London leg of The Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium in 2024.
The Mette Towley Debut Album and the Case for Slowness
By most measures, Towley has already arrived several times over. But speaking on a Zoom call from the back of a car winding through Cannes, she’s in town for a non-profit event supporting women and the LGBTQ+ community in film, with a private performance to follow, she seems untroubled by the industry’s usual anxiety about momentum. ‘I’m not interested in being metabolised quickly,’ she says, with the calm of someone who has decided, firmly, what she is not.
The past few months have been deliberately introverted. Based in Los Angeles, she has been fine-tuning songs and taking a step back from socialising. ‘I wanted to prioritise rest and writing this album,’ she says. After amicably leaving RCA Records two years ago, she is now navigating the industry independently. ‘I could crash and burn,’ she says. ‘But cool, it’s all on me. I actually love that.’ There is, she adds, something electric about it.
The Mette Towley debut album takes its name from the most recent single, Coming of Age, which she describes as a kind of spiritual rebirth. Towley believes in reincarnation and considers this her first cycle through life. ‘I feel so fresh to everything,’ she says. The lead single’s propulsive electro production sits somewhere between retro and contemporary, and its opening lyric sets out her terms plainly: ‘This time when I’m born / I won’t be crying.’
The record ranges across different registers. Boil the Ocean repurposes a finance-world phrase about impossible tasks into a critique of power. ‘It’s about how you can dress up in a suit, but still be the phantom in the mirror,’ she says. Anxious to Love You, released in February, slows things down and attends to matters of the heart. What connects every track is, in her framing, an unrelenting drive to make the most of every second.
A Personal Style Built on Intuition, Not Trends
Off-stage, Towley is settling into a wardrobe that works on similar principles. A structured COS trench coat and character shoes from musical theatre are current staples. ‘I’ll wear the same outfit three days in a row,’ she says. ‘When I find something I feel good in, I’ll cycle through it constantly.’ The heel, she explains, does something precise: ‘It tilts my pelvis in a particular way and makes my shoulders roll back in an instant.’ She is quick to clarify what the look is not. ‘It’s not “soft girl”, and it’s not “clean girl”.’ It is, instead, rooted in intuition. ‘Nothing feels incredibly concrete, but it feels sure of itself.’
Born in Owatonna, Minnesota, with a Swedish father and a Ghanaian mother, Towley moved through several childhoods (suburban Maryland, small-town Alexandria, Minnesota) before the dance world and eventually music claimed her. She was a shy child with a speech impediment that has since resolved. At 12, she spent an entire English class hour reading five stream-of-consciousness pages she had written while listening to Rachmaninoff in her bedroom. ‘That was one of the first times I realised when music is present, I really open up,’ she says.
Coming of Age is due in September. With her thirty-fifth birthday approaching, Towley is characteristically unfazed. ‘Many days have gone by, and I didn’t see this one coming,’ she says. ‘But what a pleasure to be here.’
