Career Milestones

2023

In January 2023, Armstrong released her first single Speed Dial, co-written with the multi-award-winning Matt Long. By Mach, her first full-band performance at the legendary Tuesday Night Music Club was performed to a sold-out audience.

Her debut six-track EP Love, Sex and Death was released three months later to critical acclaim and Armstrong was invited to perform aboard Joe Bonamassa’s prestigious Keeping the Blues Alive Mediterranean Cruise. Her momentum only grew, with Armstrong performing across the UK and mainland Europe to crowds of over 6,000 people at shows, festivals and legendary venues including the 100 Club, Marshall Records and The Clapham Grand. She reached the top three most played list of the IBBA and the top 20 in Blues Matters Magazine, was nominated in six different categories at the UK Blues Awards, and performed at the 2023 ceremony, sponsored by Marshall Amps.

2024

In 2024, Armstrong was named Contemporary Blues Artist of the Year for the first time and won the UK Blues Challenge, earning her place at the 2025 European Blues Challenge. She released her critically acclaimed live EP Live at Area 88, played even more sold out shows across the UK and Europe, and received regular support from BBC Radio 2 and Cerys Matthews. Her music featured consistently in the IBBA’s Top 20, while her dynamic performances and striking visual identity continued to build her reputation across the UK and beyond.

An article in ERB Magazine said: “She’s a born entertainer, with a voice very few people could rival. If you can get to one of her gigs, I would recommend going to hear what could easily be the voice of a generation.”

Armstrong credits Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Tina Turner, James Brown, Koko Taylor, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Donny Hathaway, Freddie King, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Dinah Washington as just some of her musical influences, and peppers her performances with a trademark sense of humour inspired by The Goon Show, French and Saunders, and Monty Python.

Personal History

Growing up as an only child in a small cottage in the South of England, Armstrong was raised on her grandfather’s stories of being a musician in post-war London. Combined with her parents' obsession with Blues, Jazz and Soul, Armstrong’s blossoming love for the golden age of music took hold. At school, Armstrong was ostracised for being poor, ‘fat’, loud and ‘weird’ due to her neurodiversity and love for the unusual and macabre. Whilst her classmates watched Disney movies and worshipped *NSYNC, Armstrong would listen to Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and old tapes of the Goon Show on her Sony Walkman, watched Monty Python movies and pouring over Victorian and Medieval ephemera.

A few years later, Armstrong found likeminded friends at college, where she was introduced to the wonders of dubstep and 80’s glam rock. By the age of 17, she would study art and design by day, whilst writing and performing music with friends in pubs and clubs around Surrey and Hampshire.

Armstrong moved onto art college, where her studies were soon stopped dead in their tracks by a car accident. Whilst healing from her injuries, Armstrong fell behind, leading her to drop out and work as a waitress in an art gallery tea shop, whilst creating art, running open mic nights and hosting bohemian jams at home in the evenings. More challenges came in the form of the suicide of a close friend, followed by crippling migraines caused by photophobia (extreme light sensitivity), the reason for which Armstrong wears her now trademark red glasses.

Armstrong pours her complex past, a wealth of both pain and joy, into her dynamic songwriting and emotive vocals. Top all this off with wry British humour, fierce body positivity, a passion for inclusivity, colourful human stories and relatable experiences, and you end up with powerful music for all walks of life.