SALLY SHAPIRO

Influenced by Swedish pop and Italo disco artists such as Valerie Dore, Lili & Susie and Katy Gray, work colleagues Sally Shapiro and Johan Agebjörn joined forces to release their heralded debut album Disco Romance in 2006. Further albums, My Guilty Pleasure (2009) and Somewhere Else (2013), sustained interest in their elegant, melancholy synthpop sound despite Shapiro’s low-key public persona and choice to eschew playing live.

By 2016, Shapiro and Agebjörn’s musical tastes had begun to drift and the project was seemingly over. However, the last five years has seen them working in seclusion with various co-writers including Electric Youth, Highway Superstar and Tommy ’86. Despite Shapiro’s preference for keeping the music industry at arm’s length, the duo’s sumptuous melodies and expertly crafted songwriting ensures that Sad Cities is an early contender for synthpop album of 2022.

Sally, people often tell us that you’re very shy, so what made you want to take part in the extrovert pop industry?

Sally Shapiro: “When I recorded the first song that I made with Johan I didn’t realise that he’d send it out to a lot of different online forums. Had he asked me if I wanted to be a pop star I would have probably said no, I don’t want to do that [laughs]. We just made the record for fun, but it got a nice reception and people liked it, and since I don’t feel the need to perform live and we’ve never done any TV shows, it feels OK for me to just make recordings.”

Sally Shapiro is not your real name. Does it feel more comfortable using a pseudonym as a mode of expression?

SS: “I didn’t feel comfortable using my real name and found that it’s much better using a pseudonym, which makes me feel more confident at doing what I do. When I sing as Sally Shapiro it’s a mixture of writing lyrics about things that are very personal to me and the identity that I created.

Sometimes it’s easier to say things out loud when you’re not