Hannah Diamond

“For me, becoming a pop star can be the most realised form of a self-portrait; an embodiment of lots of different signifiers that make up an identity,” Hannah Diamond says ahead of the release of her second studio album, Perfect Picture.

Hannah Diamond is building her own world. The London-based multidisciplinary artist has spent the last ten years creating her own self-portrait: a 360-degree universe that combines her visual and sonic artistry to imagine a crystalline rendering of the artist as the internet’s original pop princess. Her high-res legacy spans music, creative direction and beyond, with bubblegum-pink imagery that explores the experience of growing up as a girl online, while shining a pixelated lens on girlhood and pop stardom.

Coming of age at the onset of Instagram and social media, Hannah Diamond is a digital native, having released her first single “Pink and Blue” in 2013. Using the internet as a tool to freely explore her identity beyond the limits of the IRL – “it’s transformative – you can become who you want to be” – she arrived online at a time when conversations surrounding digital identity were still in its infancy. With hyper-sleek self portraits positioning the artist as a bona fide pop icon from the very beginning – a glossy aesthetic that has since been adopted industry-wide – a celebration of pop culture as well as a playful dig at consumerism. “I’m thinking a lot about what it means to be a person who is required to have an image, visual language has become a part of our everyday lives, it's now a very normal part of the online experience to build and perform these virtual self-portraits and worlds through the images we share,” she says.

Operating between the extremes of the uncannily synthetic and the earnestly sincere, her music deconstructs notions of ‘pop perfection’ by offsetting crystal clear, high-definition production with intense vocal processing and unexpected lyrics and melody lines. “I’m really interested in the intersection between a person and their image – how we try so hard to project these perfect versions of ourselves and this pressure is especially true for pop artists. I think our flaws remind us how fragile life is, that our time here is limited. Perfection is an expansive impossible unattainable idea and In a way it’s fun to try to do impossible things, ” she explains. She uses the synthetic parameters of pop music as a tool to explore much deeper, complicated feelings surrounding identity. “I want to show that pop songs can be fun but also still be a valid expression of art and not just reductive or commercial versions of music,” she says.

“Dave and I had countless conversations about what truly makes a perfect pop song. We both shared a strong belief that it's all about capturing the essence of the artist in the most direct and relatable way possible. We see pop music as this magical tool that has the power to take something complex, like a human personality for example, and distill it into a song that anyone can connect with. With each song on the album, it felt like embarking on a quest to uncover a different side of myself. We were on a mission to find that one song that was the perfect depiction / performance of who I am at my core.”

This is particularly true for the spectacle of girlhood or girliness as something that is performed, which she parallels to the experience of being a pop star: both can be considered a performance, while being shaped and commodified by mass culture. “More recently I'm finding ways to feel empowered by the aesthetic of girliness and cuteness in ways that previously felt disempowering and reductive to me,” she says. “As I've found the confidence to embrace this part of myself and express it outwardly in my work and appearance I'm learning a lot about how the concept of girlhood is received in a world outside of my own.” Another expression of girlhood, the colour pink is a powerful carrier of femininity within pop culture: “Pink holds an incredible power because of its association with ideas of girlieness . It has embodied all of the multiple dimensions, paradoxes and contradictions that come with being a girl,” she elaborates.

As a founding member of PC Music, Hannah Diamond has played a pivotal role in shaping the London label’s sonic and visual identity at the start, making images for herself and her peers – for example, SOPHIE and QT – and even going so far as to do her own retouching. From her origins as a bedroom pop star, she uses the imagery of the teenage girl’s bedroom to explore her own interiority. “For me my bedroom is an intimate place of creation and inspiration. It’s a safe space to be alone and a place where I am in control of the energy around me and in that space I can make it feel healing and magical. I can dream the dreams that become my reality. I always think of people's bedrooms as a really pure form of self-portrait, it's a place where you can be your true self. The bedroom self is the self with no FX on. ”

Perfect Picture is Hannah Diamond’s big pop album. Following on from her 2019 full-length debut Reflections, which solidified HD’s popstar persona across the cultural digiscape, the new record – produced by David Gamson (Kesha, Chaka Khan, Charli XCX) – sees HD bring the pixels to life across 12 glistening experimental pop tracks that straddle the line between feeling both mainstream and underground. Exploring her interiority on and off screen, in front and behind camera, the album marks a new chapter for the artist, both sonically and as a performer. “This album is more focused on who I am on the inside (a multi layered self portrait it's about who I am on the inside and the things I think about),” she says. “I’m the girl you already know but grown up. I’m more self assured and exploring my dreams.”

Whereas Reflections touched on personal experiences she was going through at the time, Perfect Picture is a more concept-led album, solidifying her reputation as the original poster girl for PC Music. Underpinning this is a photograph of the artist’s grandma as a young girl in a ballet costume about to perform on-stage. While holding sentimental value, the image also mirrors HD’s own musical and personal evolution from a bedroom producer into a fully realised pop queen, having moved from stage to stage – both literal and metaphorical – to inhabit both her digital self and “imperfect” natural self. In other words, it’s a Perfect Picture of the artist’s past, present and future.

On the uplifting lead single “Affirmations”, HD takes listeners behind the scenes, scratching at the perfect pop sheen to tackle feelings of insecurity, which she counteracts with empowering mantras that ring like diary entries (“I’m building my own world /I’m a business woman and my own CEO”). “This one particular day David Gamson and I were on Zoom and my carefully placed camera angle in my bedroom had accidentally shifted to reveal my “wall of self esteem”. It's a wall of affirmations I put together when I was at a really low point. I decided that every day when I was struggling write five good things about myself and add them to my wall. Through the window of the Zoom, I became aware that my wall might be perceived, so I explained to Dave what it was. He was super supportive and after a long chat he said, ‘hey ‘Affirmations’ – great song title’.”

“Perfect Picture” sees Diamond carefree and unashamed, transcending the walls of her bedroom as an embodied star strutting towards an imagined future. “A photograph is never true to life, sometimes it's hard to live up to the perfect life”, she sings, before asserting: “But pictures always stay the same unless their pixels rearrange.” In contrast, “No FX” is an intimate portrayal of the artist stripped-back and reconnecting with her true self. “‘No FX’ is in a way its own affirmation,” she explains. “One of the things I’ve realised being a musician is the energy you put out into the world becomes the things you believe about yourself. For me, this song is about putting out into the world the kind of love I would like to experience in 2023. It’s a dream of finding someone who really sees you for who you are without needing any special effects.”