‘Nobody looks like me and sounds like me’: flowerovlove redefines what pop stardom means

“Everybody says [redacted] is saving pop. No, Joyce is saving pop,” a fan declares on a voice note at the outset of flowerovlove’s single “muse.”

Joyce Cissé, known by her artist moniker flowerovlove, is a breezy, deeply thoughtful and remarkably confident singer-songwriter from South London.

Her discography leans into bubblegum pop, igniting the giddy teen emotions of a newfound crush. On other tracks, she stands on business, solidifying her status as a major catch and refusing to compromise for a subpar man.

Cissé doesn’t wait around for things to happen. Since her first high-fashion campaign for Gucci at 15, the now 20-year-old music artist and model demands attention and has the talent to back it up.

Her résumé is already significantly more stacked than most people who recently exited their teens. The singer previously opened for Olivia Rodrigo, Halsey, Khalid and Haim and performed at Glastonbury, Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza.

Now, she is preparing for her Coachella debut on April 10 and 17.

Many fans discovered her via the track “new friends,” an honest and lighthearted bop about not wanting to be friends with an ex.

“Usually, my writing process is very planned and very strategic,” she explains on a call from her family home in London. “And for this specific one, we didn’t know what to write about, and I just went to the studio, and I started reading some text messages.”

She scrolled through texts with an old situationship with the help of her co-writer Justin Tranter (the songwriter behind Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck Babe” and Justin Bieber’s “Sorry”). While Cissé was initially hoping to write a love song, she says Tranter encouraged her to go with another track “shading men.”

“ The lyrics are literally mostly the text messages that I had sent,” she explains. “That’s why it’s so fun and free and conversational because it’s real life.  I sang the song how I would tell my friends a story.”

The resulting single is playful and defiant — the perfect combination for a song of the summer. And there are plenty of cheeky lines like when she sings, “Last night has led me to confusion / Was it good or was it friction?”

Growing up, Cissé loved listening to disco music, specifically the Black artists that built the genre in the 1970s. She enjoyed Boney M. and their call-and-response style and often includes audience interaction in her own work. She also idolized Donna Summer, who she calls “mother of pop, mother of disco.”

Describing her own music as “whimsical,” she typically opts for a preppy, ’90s-inspired look to complete the vibe and identifies as a miniskirt warrior.

“ I’m being dead serious,” she giggles. “I love miniskirts, and it’s such a big part of my brand, and I feel like my most free, authentic self when I am in a miniskirt, to be honest.”

It’s deeper than just a cute garment.

“ It has that womanhood in it for me. I think long legs really represent growth,” she says, adding that she loves her heels.

On her latest single, “Casual Lady,” she sings, “I wear boys like fashion / Don’t give them passion / Nonchalant baby / I’m a casual lady.”

She typically acts unbothered, but on this vulnerable track, she sheds a little light on her lover girl personality as she romanticizes all the ways she wants to build a life with a new man.

Cissé is a Renaissance woman. In coordinating the accompanying music video for “Casual Lady,” she tackled a variety of roles from director to producer and stylist.

“ I live in a very specific, colorful world and a very specific aesthetic realm, so it all has to be down to me,” she says. “There’s this one lyric that Doechii sang, and I was just like, ‘Yeah, real.’ And it was, ‘End of the day, everything is on me,’ and honestly, when you are the artist, at the end of the day, whatever’s going on behind the scenes always gets pointed back to you.”

Her brother Wilfred is a producer and kickstarted her career when he encouraged her to sing over a beat he created years ago. He continues to be her creative partner, and she entrusted him with shooting, editing and grading the music video.

“ I don’t feel like anyone, but my brother, understands my vision at all,” she said.

Cissé didn’t have time to waste and filmed the video on a family vacation in Greece. While the final shots look delightfully sunny, she says it was a miserably cold day.

“I did not enjoy filming it,” she confesses.

Near a resort pool and on a narrow balcony, she prances around in a variety of adorable outfits including a pair of custom bedazzled hot pink heel roller skates. Cissé continuously searches for ways to reconnect with her inner child.

“ I love the concept of high heels on roller skates. I think that’s so fire,” she says. “I’m always trying to find ways in fashion to do something that I haven’t seen before or something that I really would’ve loved as a kid.”

It’s no surprise that with such an innovative spirit, Cissé isn’t slowing down. Her forthcoming single “American Wedding” drops Friday. The track is a nod to Frank Ocean’s commercially unreleased track of the same name.

“ He truly makes timeless art, and ‘American Wedding’ is a song I felt like always should have dropped,” she says. “I have never once in my life had a dream of being in America and being married in America. I’m very much so in love with my African culture and I love London, but I just love the concept of that song, and I feel like it was a banging title, so I wrote a whole story about that from the title.”

Along with making fun, relatable music, Cissé deals with the huge undertaking of building a successful pop identity as a Black girl in a white-girl-dominated realm.

“There’s a lot of white pop girls,” she says. “It’s a lot easier for them to get to the main stage and to become VIP because it’s more digestible, and it’s something we have seen before and something we have all grown up on that it’s easier to consume.”

Cissé adds that she is a big fan of the pop girls currently in the spotlight, but she hopes for a cultural shift where artists of color don’t face as many challenges in rising to the top.

“ My space in adding to pop is that there isn’t anyone who looks like me and sounds like me,” she says, “And that’s something I would’ve loved to have seen growing up.”

Cissé is honored to be that pop star for other young Black girls.

“ We want to feel seen and understood and represented. That’s why we have a favorite artist and that’s why we have a favorite actress and a favorite TV show because it made you feel something and it made you feel accepted,” she explains. “So that’s what the whole ‘saving pop’ concept is, and I’m really glad that the fans came up with that.”