Lucie Silvas

Lucie Silvas first reached listeners in her native Britain as a vocalist and composer whose soul-infused, adult-alternative pop surfaced on the 2004 album Breathe In. After moving to Nashville, Tennessee, she issued her third full-length project, Letters to Ghosts, in 2015; three years later the follow-up E.G.O. placed her on the Billboard Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts for the initial time. Beyond her own recordings she has supplied material for Miranda Lambert, Katharine McPhee, and Reba McEntire, while issuing joint singles with Sheryl Crow titled “Cool Down” and with Brandi Carlile titled “We Don’t Know We’re Living,” both arriving in 2021.

Born in 1980 to a father from New Zealand and a mother from Scotland, Lucie Silverman divided her early years among those nations and her English birthplace. An early affinity for music led her to begin piano lessons at five and to complete her first composition by ten. She later left secondary school to sing backing vocals for former Take That member Gary Barlow, then signed with the EMI subsidiary Chrysalis Records in 2000. Under the name Lucie Silvas she released the single “It’s Too Late” that same year, yet the label parted ways with her before any album appeared.

She spent the ensuing period writing for Liberty X and Will Young, but ultimately chose to focus on performing her own songs. Mercury Records signed her in 2003, issuing the debut album Breathe In the next year; it reached number one in the Netherlands and number eleven in the United Kingdom. Subsequent touring took her across the U.K., Europe, and parts of Asia. Her second album, The Same Side, entered Dutch stores in October 2006 and climbed into that country’s album-chart Top Five, though Mercury postponed the British release after lead single “Last Year” underperformed; when it finally arrived in November it peaked at number 62.

Silvas then ended her association with Mercury and resumed co-writing for other artists while developing her own material. Her collaboration “Même Si” with Grégory Lemarchal appeared on the singer’s posthumous 2009 collection Rêves, and she contributed several songs to Katharine McPhee’s 2010 album Unbroken. In 2011 she opened for Jamiroquai at the O2 Arena; the track “Fall to Fly,” written with Mike Busbee for the Osmonds’ 2012 record, received a cover on the second season of ABC’s Nashville in 2013. That year her compositions also surfaced on NBC’s Smash. By then Silvas had settled in Music City, and over the next two years her writing appeared on projects by Lucy Hale, Dave Barnes, Jamie Scott, and additional artists. Early in 2015 she issued the self-titled EP Lucie Silvas on her own Furthestpoint imprint. Later the same year she married Brothers Osborne member John Osborne and released her next studio album, Letters to Ghosts, which Decca reissued in 2016.

Silvas supplied background vocals for Miranda Lambert’s 2016 album The Weight of These Wings, which contained the co-written song “Smoking Jacket.” Further writing credits surfaced on 2016 and 2017 releases by Lily & Madeleine, Kandace Springs, and Reba McEntire. She returned with the solo album E.G.O. in 2018, featuring co-writes with JD McPherson, Tenille Townes, and Natalie Hemby. Issued on Furthestpoint, the record debuted at number 11 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and number 35 on the Independent Albums chart. A sequence of collaborative singles, among them “Cool Down” with Sheryl Crow and “We Don’t Know We’re Living” with Brandi Carlile and Joy Oladokun, followed in 2021.