The rise and rise of Luvcat: Five pinch-me moments in her own words
On rare occasions, you get to witness something miraculous, like a true star rising from the start. In the world of music, people love to instantly get cynical about that and try every excuse in the book to discredit a swift and monumental rise, but no one can touch Luvcat: she’s the real deal.
If you’ll allow me to brag for a moment, I actually saw Luvcat before she was Luvcat. Years and years ago, I caught her as a support slot under her own moniker and remember even back then being wowed by her voice, which is at once both silky smooth and raw with emotion. I knew she was something special then, so when she landed on my TikTok ‘for you’ page years later, playing a gig at one of London’s beloved dingy venues with a new artist name, my inkling was confirmed.
What was glittering before was now certified gold; it was obvious that Luvcat had found her sound, which saw even the tiniest teaser of her track ‘Matador’ going “viral”, for want of a better phrase. All she needed to do was sing the lyric, “I only wanted to put on a little skirt, a little show for you, said babe this ain’t the Moulin fucking Rouge”, and a star was lit up, ready to soar.
Now, if you’ll allow us as a publication to brag for a second, we also got on board early. We did Luvcat’s first interview back in June 2023, when she told Far Out, “It obviously looks like it came out of nowhere, but it didn’t. It was it was many, many years of playing in pubs and clubs and stuff like that growing up”, and talked through her influences from The Cure to Tom Waits to Leonard Cohen.
A few weeks on, after seeing some of her early shows, I was hooked on her songs. A few months on, I was streaming them on repeat. Now, over a year later, her debut album is landing, and the cult we joined long ago has grown exponentially.
However, beyond stats and status, what we’ve seen here is a dream come true for Liverpool’s daughter, Sophie. Taking her around the world, inviting her into dream venues, offering her pinch-me collaborations and more, the last year and a bit has changed her life, and that’s not an understatement. So, on the brink of her record release, she shared her personal reflections on the best moments along the way.
Luvcat’s pinch-me moments from her meteoric rise:
Making the ‘Matador’ video (August 2024)<br>
After her track ‘Matador’ caught the world’s attention through 15-second-long teaser clips, it landed as her debut single in summer 2024 to immediate success; it was a breakthrough moment, but it was also the first go-around.
“This was the first video that we made,” Luvcat recalled fondly of the experience, “It was shot in a very Alice in Wonderland style garden up North. I still remember the smell of the early summer rain and the feeling that we were at the beginning of something special.”
It was also the start of something stylistic, too, as she looked around at her band and a uniform was set, adding, “This was the first time the band wore the velvet suits that I never let them take off afterwards”.
Announcing the album (July 2025)
Anyone lucky enough to visit Lake Geneva can attest to how magical the place is. It doesn’t look real as the water and sky both seem impossibly blue in the summer, and the mountains border everything like it’s a painted backdrop, and it is there that Luvcat shared important news.
“We were playing Montreux Jazz Festival the night that the record was announced,” she said. The dream landscape surrounded a dream moment as she remembered, “We went for a spontaneous swim in our underwear in Lake Geneva. The clouds were hanging low over the mountains, sun glistening off the water, and there was a group of longhorn players on the banks. It was like heaven’s gates were opening.”
It’s a moment artists barely even dare to let themselves fantasise about, and then suddenly, for her, it was happening: “Never experienced anything like it. All the years of hard work colliding into the most perfect afternoon I’ve ever had”.
Singing from a window in Switzerland (August 2025)
This summer, especially, Luvcat was busy. With her cult of fans growing quick, she hit the road and played a hectic calendar of festivals and dates, zig-zagging all across the world but especially around Europe. That in itself is a pinch-me moment as she got her first tour bus, but the artist has a knack for noticing and appreciating specific moments of serious beauty.
“We played some magical European festivals this summer. This was one of the last in Winterthur. The stage is situated between two beautiful old streets, and local folk hang from their windows to watch,” she said, wistfully remembering the scene.
Throwing the health and safety risk assessment quite literally out of the window, she seized the moment, and “I snuck up there for the last song and scared the shit out of my band and crew”.
Duetting with Dr John Cooper Clarke (September 2025)
You can take the girl out of the north, but you can never take the north out of the girl.
Surely any northern writer with a penchant for punk and a love for the left-field would also see getting the chance to collaborate with Dr John Cooper Clarke as a complete dream come true. It’s become a kind of star-making rite of passage in a lot of ways as the punk poet seems to bestow his support upon artists that he truly believes in, putting Luvcat in the company of Arctic Monkeys and a powerful cast of northern icons.
“This was such a surreal time. We revisited a murder ballad of mine called ‘He’s My Man’ on its first anniversary. John agreed to play my poisoned husband,” Luvcat said. But beyond the song, it was mostly the time she got to spend with him that stands out, about which she noted, “We drove around in an old Mercedes Pagoda together, and I got to hear so many of his stories in between takes. It was a true honour”.
Returning to the riverboat (October 2025)
Things come full circle in beautiful ways sometimes, and for Luvcat, her journey to her debut album was wrapped up neatly as she returned to the place where everything had begun: Paris.
“My first show as Luvcat was on a boat on the Seine in Paris a couple of years ago. I only had a few songs and a few pairs of satin panties with Luvcat printed across the front as merch,” she said, remembering a night way back in May 2023. Then, on the release week of the record, she returned to the same floating venue.
“It was beautiful to go back to the boat on the week of album release. The French fans sang so loud, we couldn’t hear a thing we were playing. We loved it so much,” she gushed, tying the journey up in a neat bow.
