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Nilüfer Yanya on Tour Exhaustion, Dancing Shoes, and “the Real Work”
Nilüfer Yanya has spent 2025 in motion. After releasing her Dancing Shoes EP this summer — a four-track companion to last year’s My Method Actor made with longtime collaborator Will Archer — she’s taken the songs on the road, supporting Alex G across North America and joining Lorde on select arena and stadium dates in Europe.
Tour mode sounds romantic from the outside. From her side, it’s a little harsher.
“It's the deadly combo.... but if you can't sleep you can't really function.”
No mythology, no fake rockstar poetry — just a blunt assessment of what happens when the basic stuff (sleep, food, travel) starts stacking the wrong way. If she can’t sleep, the whole operation starts to wobble.
Reading the Crowd by the Eyes
A lot of these shows are in front of crowds who don’t know her yet — Alex G kids, Lorde kids, people who might only recognize a song or two. When she walks out and looks at that sea of strangers, she’s not scanning for phones. She’s watching faces.
“It’s kind of something you sense more than see .. if a crowd is into the music or not.. but the eyes do give away a lot !”
That line could double as a thesis for her writing. So much of Yanya’s music lives in that half-space between what’s said and what just hangs in the air: the tension, the flinch, the way someone looks away at the wrong moment.
Alex G vs Lorde: Same Artist, Different World
This year puts her in two very different ecosystems. Opening for Alex G nudges her into the orbit of guitar kids and left-field indie obsessives; stepping into Lorde’s world is something else entirely.
“I think the Alex G and Lorde shows will feel very different. It kind of felt like a different world with Alex G but at the same time not too far away… I think Lorde might feel like a different world because of the venues.. stadiums and arenas are a different world to clubs and theatres.”
She’s not pretending the jump in scale doesn’t matter — arenas are a different planet — but she’s also not over-correcting her own set just to fit the room.
“As far as our show , I don’t think we’re changing that much... but I think they will be a bit more like an experiment with Lorde, could be a hit or a miss!”
That’s very on brand for her: keep the core of the show the same, treat the giant rooms like a live A/B test, and let the songs do the work.
No New Songs on the Bus
With a schedule like that, you’d imagine her punching ideas into Voice Memos between soundchecks. She’s not romanticizing that either.
Have you been making any music while on tour?
“Nope”
No tortured “I wrote this on a napkin backstage” storyline. For Yanya, the creative headspace and the tour headspace are separate modes. When she is back in writing mode, there’s one person who usually hears drafts first.
“Probably Will Archer who I’ve been working with on the last two albums, but it depends on what it's for :)”
Archer’s been a throughline from My Method Actor into Dancing Shoes, and the EP’s press notes back that up — the tracks grew out of material they revisited after she came off the album tour.
Inside Dancing Shoes: Quiet Tension, Loud Guilt
Dancing Shoes isn’t a big, glossy “dance record” — it’s more like the echo after a long night out. Reviewers have called it a brief but emotionally intense extension of My Method Actor, built around sparse but textured arrangements and a lot of inner conflict.
Taken together, the EP reads like four angles on the same thing: distance, guilt, and that weird comfort you find in situations you know are bad for you. The production stays pretty understated — guitar, subtle electronics, space — so the emotional turbulence sits front and center.
Which loops back perfectly to how she talks about her own songs.
“Most my songs are open to interpretation and for me the meaning is never in stone, it changes over time !”
She doesn’t get mad when people “misread” them:
“Yeah can be! I don’t read into it too much though.”
If anything, Dancing Shoes is built for that: songs that feel like they’re constantly shifting depending on where you’re listening from — on tour, post-breakup, or just walking home at 2 a.m.
Letting Collabs Find Her
When we ask for a collaboration fans wouldn’t expect, she doesn’t throw out a flashy name or pre-packaged fantasy scenario.
“I have no idea… collaborations are always kind of random for me because I never go seeking them… they kind of just happen…”
The way she says it matches everything else: no forced narratives, no over-strategizing. The music, the tours, the connections — they’re allowed to arrive on their own time.
After All This: Back to the Real Work
At some point, the Alex G shows end. The Lorde dates wrap. The EP has done its first lap around the world. So what’s next?
“Back to the real work!”
