Flowerovlove

A notebook, a brother's beat, and a first single at fifteen

Flowerovlove is Joyce Cissé, born in London on 18 February 2005 to Ivorian parents and raised between south London and Essex, speaking Mandinka at home. The first songs were written into a notebook given to her by an aunt. She has said the turn towards making rather than writing came at thirteen, when her brother challenged her to sing over a beat he had made; the pandemic turned the hobby into an occupation.

Her debut single, 'Kiss & Chase', came out in August 2020 when she was fifteen, followed that year by 'Unseen Miracles' and 'Fat Wave'. The first EP, Think Flower, arrived in May 2021, produced by her brother Wilfred Cissé alongside Isaac Levine, and built around nature imagery and an adolescent environmentalism she was open about at the time. Her first live show was at Laylow in June 2021, a month later. Management from FAE grp followed almost immediately.

There was a parallel career in fashion that she cut short deliberately. She modelled for Gucci, Pangaia, Maison Kitsuné and Swarovski, and walked Paris Fashion Week for Xuly Bët, but told FLOOD in May 2024 that she abandoned modelling after roughly six months to concentrate on music, eventually leaving school to do it full time.

Five years of EPs, festivals and slow accumulation

The singles that built the audience were scattered and stylistically restless: 'Malibu' in August 2021, the psychedelic-leaning 'Saturday Yawning' that December, then 'I Love This Song', 'Will We Ever Get This Right' and 'Hannah Montana' across early 2022. The video for 'I Love This Song' was nominated for Best Pop Video Newcomer at the 2022 UK Music Video Awards. Her first UK television performance was on Blue Peter, singing 'I Gotta I Gotta', and she took her first proper support run opening Role Model's TourX. A second EP, A Mosh Pit in the Clouds, came out self-released in November 2022 with contributions from the Invisible Men and Dan Smith.

She signed to Capitol Records on her eighteenth birthday, 18 February 2023, and spent that summer on the European festival circuit — Primavera Sound, TRNSMT, Latitude, Standon Calling, Boardmasters, Pukkelpop. 'Love You' ended up on the Heartstopper season three soundtrack, a placement she credited to her own fans lobbying for it, and 'a girl like me' travelled on the strength of its bridge. Her Glastonbury debut came in 2024, the same summer as 'BOYS' and 'breaking news', the latter written under the influence of Rex Orange County's 'Loving Is Easy' and later used in the film The Housemaid.

A third EP, Ache in My Tooth, followed in October 2024 through Capitol, written with Skyler Stonestreet and Amy Allen and sequenced as a chronological run through different kinds of love. A streaming compilation, Summerovlove Setlist, appeared on 13 May 2025. That year she opened for Halsey on For My Last Trick and for Haim on the I Quit tour, took a nomination for Best Newcomer at the MOBO Awards, and closed the year with a Christmas single, 'wishlist', in November 2025.

MINI SKIRT WARRIOR

The debut album landed on 28 August 2026 through Capitol: twelve songs, and a title lifted from a comment left on an Instagram Live fit check. She kept the phrase in her bio for two years before deciding it was an album. The record is organised around firsts — as she put it, first times falling in love, first times getting to know yourself, first times falling out of love — and tracks the distance between late adolescence and early twenties without pretending the distance is large.

The writing room was a step up in scale. Skyler Stonestreet and Pom Pom are the principal collaborators, with Amy Allen, Steph Jones and Steve Mac also credited. 'girls will be girls', the closer, features WILLOW, an artist Cissé has named as one of the reasons she started making music in the first place. 'American Wedding' was picked up by Rolling Stone as a song worth hearing; 'KISS KISS KISS' was the announcement single.

Reviews have been warm rather than reverent. Writing for euphoria on 2 September 2026, Nmesoma Okechukwu praised the range — heavy pop production on some tracks, acoustic guitar carrying others such as 'Don't Even', with 'Legend Has It' functioning as a scene-setter and 'Debonair' as the record's franker moment. Maddie Browning at RANGE framed the album as a balance between nonchalance and yearning, arguing that the emotional register had widened without losing the campy melodic instinct. Capitol put her combined global streaming total at over 156 million at release.

Where she stands in September 2026

The album has been road-tested in front of crowds who did not come for her. She played Coachella on 12 April 2026 on the Gobi stage, an early-afternoon slot at 2.05pm, and Governors Ball on 6 June, also early afternoon, on both occasions previewing unreleased album material before it existed on streaming.

The bigger commitment is the current one. She is the support on the UK, Irish and European leg of Niall Horan's Dinner Party: Live on Tour, which opened at Utilita Arena Birmingham on 22 September 2026 and runs through Newcastle, Manchester's Co-op Live, Glasgow and Sheffield before crossing to Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and France, taking in two nights at the O2 Arena in London and finishing in Belfast in November. She told People shortly before the run began that the two had not yet met in person.

On 14 September 2026 she announced her own headline tour for February 2027: Dublin on the 6th, Glasgow's King Tut's on the 8th, Manchester's Deaf Institute on the 9th, O2 Academy Islington on the 11th, then Amsterdam's Bitterzoet, Cologne, Berlin's Privatclub, Antwerp and Paris's La Maroquinerie on the 20th. Artist presale opened on 15 September and general sale on 18 September. Songkick currently lists 33 upcoming shows across ten countries.

The set as it stands

What she is playing is short by necessity and consistent in shape. The documented festival sets from this year run to eight or nine songs in roughly the same order, opening on something brisk and ending on 'breaking news', with 'a girl like me' held back as the penultimate singalong. 'In My Victoria's Secret' was debuted live at Coachella months ahead of the album, which says something about how the touring and the release schedule have been run in parallel rather than in sequence.

The arena support slot compresses that further, and the February 2027 headline run will invert the problem entirely: rooms of a few hundred rather than a few thousand, and a full album's worth of material to choose from for the first time in her career.