Winwood & Wages
This post has been in the works since the end of February. Only I did not know it.
The only reason I heard of Lilly W was due to a remark at Christmas. I don't remember the remark but my reply was something like this: "There was a female singer who covered Higher Love." BOOM!
That female was a schoolgirl called Lilly Winwood and that version of her dad's most famous song, perhaps the reason Lil herself chose her path, was used on a Superbowl commercial for that awful "chocolate". Absolutely nobody in England knows this.
Lilly chose to settle permanently in Nashville at 18, an age when I had no idea what I wanted to do but I knew full well I would rather be a novelist than a computer programmer. I could say this: "but my dad was not Steve Winwood". That is not the barbed remark you might expect. Lilly really had to put in the work. She is still putting in the hard yards every day.
Lilly's song Sleep Issues is a masterpiece and it shows she had to work shifts just like everyone else trying to make music in Nashville. Nothing has been handed to her. She is so proud of Steve and sometimes seems to worship him in her quiet English way. But she is a unique talent in her own right. I pray for the day that Steve is introduced on stage at Wembley as "the father of Lilly Winwood."
Lilly messaged me when I started sharing her songs on my stories. I don't know why. This was mid February. We shared maybe 6 messages in three months if that. But if not for that, I would never have found Cyrena Wages, that mystical siren of the songbook and medusa of the microphone that is at once as serious as a heart attack and also the funniest joke you could ever imagine.
Cyrena is my B-est BFF that I never met. Never even spoke. Maybe 4 emails. Maybe 20 DMs. I have no idea what rock she crawled out of. But she loves Lilly Winwood. Something in her Memphis molecular make-up draws her to an English sensibility. When she realised I could write, and that I really wanted to write about her music, she pushed me forwards. One DM received (appropriately enough for Americana) on a train from Manchester to London on 29th April 2025.
I will be writing more about Cyrena as she releases her singles this summer and, perhaps this fall, her album. Yesterday her capacity to surprise me increased a couple of notches. Have a look at the video reel below and tell me you no longer think of If It Ain't Broke in the same way ever again. Her latest single was always funny but that video is hilarious. As I listened to the unreleased stuff on Marylebone station, surrounded by wage slaves (wait for it!) I realised what I was: a Wages slave. And it feels good!
This joyride was not supposed to be about me. It is not, not really. Lil released a new EP a few hours ago. One of the songs was written by Steve Winwood, who turned 77 this week, the age my dad passed in 2023. But Steve has a long way to go. Oh boy. He's actually getting younger! As well as writing such wonders as Higher Love and Back in the High Life, he was in Traffic and also Blind Faith. This I did not know. Soz Steve-o.
One of the track's on the new Lilly EP is Blind Faith's Had to Cry Today. That man is a god. Oh fucking hell. I think I just realised something. This whole junket has been a crazy insane way to arrange one beer with Steve. Haha. The only kicker is I no longer drink.
Something you got, baby
Makes me work all day
Something you got, babe
Makes me bring you all my pay
Something you got, babe
You ought to know
I said
My my, whoa whoa
I love you so
You can listen to Lilly's new EP on Spotify and wherever you like to stream. You can watch a tease of Cyrena's new video below via the 'gram. She has the funniest knees in Memphis. That's how funny she is. Her other stuff is here.
