Nina Nesbitt

Nina Nesbitt, whose songs fuse pop melodies, partially acoustic backings, and themes of romantic yearning, drew an early comparison to Ed Sheeran after serving as his opening act while still a teenager. She soon forged an independent path, scoring a U.K. hit with “Stay Out” and landing just outside the Top Ten with her 2014 debut album Peroxide. The follow-up, The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change, entered the U.K. chart at number 21 in 2019 and reached the Top 30 of the U.S. Independent Albums chart. Between 2020 and 2021 she issued a varied run of singles that included “Miss You 2” with Gabrielle Aplin, “Family Values” alongside R3hab, and the breezy viral track “Summer Fling.” Extended periods of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic led her to explore different expressions of love, material that largely shaped her third album, Älskar (“Love”), released in 2022. Her fourth album, Mountain Music, followed in 2024.

Although Scotland-born Nesbitt had first aspired to write fiction, she eventually began pairing her short stories with music composed on piano and later acoustic guitar. At 16 she started performing in Edinburgh and created a video channel that alternated original songs with covers. A 2011 chance meeting led to an impromptu rendition of “Standing on One Leg” for Ed Sheeran, which secured support slots and an onstage cameo during his nationwide tour. Her cover of Example’s “Stay Awake” also reached the rapper, prompting an invitation to join the final dates of his U.K. run. She self-released the EP The Apple Tree in 2012, earning BBC Radio 1 airplay.

A deal with Island/Universal followed, along with further EPs highlighted by 2013’s Stay Out, which spent one week on the Billboard Heatseekers chart while its title track climbed to number 21 on the U.K. singles chart. The same song reappeared on Peroxide, her first full-length, which peaked at number 11 in the U.K. and number 40 in Ireland and combined earlier EP cuts with new material. Ed Sheeran’s 2014 album x contained the tracks “Nina” and “Photograph,” both inspired by their brief relationship. The Nesbitt EP Modern Love arrived in early 2016 before she left Island; later that year she issued the self-released Life in Colour EP and signed with Cooking Vinyl.

Her first release for the label, the 2018 EP Somebody Special, sent its title track into Ireland’s Top 100 and prompted official remixes by Leon Lour and R3hab. Toward year’s end her version of “Oh Holy Night” charted in Sweden. She supported Rudimental on tour in early 2019, then launched her own U.S. headline dates, while Cooking Vinyl issued The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change that February. The album debuted at number 21 in the U.K. and featured production from Nesbitt herself, Fraser T. Smith, Lostboy, and Jordan Riley. In the U.S. it reached number 28 on the Independent Albums chart and number 11 on Heatseekers for a single week.

After her second album she continued releasing standalone singles in 2020 and 2021, among them collaborations with Gabrielle Aplin, R3hab, and SeeB. The solo album Älskar appeared on Cooking Vinyl in September 2022; entirely produced or co-produced by Nesbitt, it was recorded largely through remote sessions during pandemic lockdowns and included the previous year’s social-media hit “Summer Fling.” Exactly two years later came her fourth album, Mountain Music, which featured the singles “On the Run” and “Mansion.”