Sienna Spiro – The Visitor
Today, London-born singer and songwriter SIENNA SPIRO shares the heartwrenching official music video for her powerful single “The Visitor.”
A very big song about feeling very small, the orchestrally backed ballad is the spiritual centerpiece of SIENNA’s highly anticipated forthcoming debut album, Visitor, which arrives July 3 on Capitol Records.
Directed by photographer and filmmaker Rachel Fleminger Hudson, the immersive visual delves into the song’s theme — of feeling like a mere footnote in someone else’s story — with emotional intensity and surreal flair. We open on SIENNA, looking to nurse her broken heart with a solo trip to ballet. But the romantic duet onstage first stirs up jealousy, and then something else entirely as the narrative begins to resemble her own. “Say that you love me, say I’m all you need / In the back of my mind, I know I’m temporary,” SIENNA sings in the song, while the male dancer seems increasingly interested in putting distance between himself and his partner. Suddenly, the ballerina is all alone, dancing through a void. When the camera cuts to SIENNA, the impact of it is written on her face.
Written and produced by SIENNA with Omer Fedi (SZA, Lil Nas X) and Michael Pollack (Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus), “The Visitor” draws its enthralling power from a show-stopping vocal recorded in one take, lyrics that cut to the bone, and a 20-piece string orchestra led and arranged by Academy Award-winner Peter Rotter (Oppenheimer, The Last Repair Shop). While SIENNA’s poetry and the video nod to matters of the heart, by the song’s end, we sense she’s singing about something more: what it means to matter to anyone at all — lovers, friends, family, fans — and what that means to one’s sense of self. That sentiment is the driving force behind the concept that powers the album, Visitor.
As SIENNA recently shared, “I’ve always had a strong awareness of impermanence; I’m very fearful of things ending and people leaving. It’s so intense that I often won’t participate in new relationships or anything I know won’t last, so in a way I’ve spent most of my life feeling like a visitor — like someone who’s just passing through. Making this album really taught me how to savor things in the moment, instead of constantly worrying about the future. When people hear the record, I hope it helps them to find some comfort in the fact that everything is temporary. We don’t always have to rush to let go — we can let things matter without needing them to last.”
Of course, SIENNA is very much here to stay. Her music has amassed over 1.2 billion global streams so far and, in late March, she had a trio of singles climbing the Hot 100 all at once: “The Visitor” (which so far peaked at #43), heart-wrenching UK Platinum smash “Die On This Hill” (#19), and the enduring “You Stole The Show” (#55). All three are set to appear on Visitor, which was executive produced by Fedi with additional production from an elite crew including Blake Slatkin, Yakob, and Pollack, plus composers like Larry Gold (Al Green, Silk Sonic) and Rotter. SIENNA and her hand-picked collaborators brought her vision to life in an array of legendary spaces like Electric Lady Studios in New York, Abbey Road Studios in London, and Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles.
The result is a high concept and wholly elegant collision of rich soul and symphonic pop that explores Visitor’s underlying theme of transience and emotional exile. The songs within occupy a richly defined yet unfussy sonic world that feels fully lived-in — endlessly tempering its grandeur with a warm, unvarnished intimacy that perfectly complements SIENNA’s poignant, soul-searching songwriting and the raw impact of her powerhouse vocals.
SIENNA only just wrapped up her completely sold-out The Visitor Tour, including her first-ever North American headlining run — which itself sold out within seconds and then sold out again when she added more dates.
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