Discover: Get to Know Meron T, the Ethiopian-Eritrean British Artist Turning Longing Into Sound

When Meron T jumps on the call with OkayAfrica, she is speaking from her hotel room in Addis Ababa. She has just come from breakfast and will be leaving Ethiopia’s capital that night, squeezing the conversation in between family goodbyes.

The silky-voiced singer is there for a family wedding, spending most of her time at home, seeing relatives and a few friends. It is a quieter trip than some of her recent visits, but still part of a larger return. After 12 years away from Ethiopia, the South London singer has now been back three times since 2025.

On a previous trip, she shot the video for her single “Stormy Weather” in Addis almost by accident. In the video, Meron sings directly to the camera, moving between solitary car scenes and moments where she appears to sing to someone emotionally guarded and inconsistent, trying to stay open despite all that.

“I chose you / But I know I can’t own you,” she sings.

“I had about a week left in Addis, and I wanted to make the most of it,” she tells OkayAfrica about shooting the video. “I told my friend, ‘I really want to do a video. There isn’t a big budget, and we don’t have much time… what can we do?’ We planned it in less than a week and shot the whole thing in a day.”

That sense of improvisation sits close to where Meron is now as an artist.

Born and raised in the U.K. in a deeply Ethiopian and Eritrean household, Meron grew up with both cultures always present. Her family spoke Amharic at home, and she was surrounded by cousins, and family gatherings. At the same time, she was also growing up in London, shaped by hip-hop, grime, garage, indie, electronic music and the quiet interior world of a girl who loved to sing.

“It was probably the one thing I didn’t feel inferior in,” she says. “I felt like I had a natural ease with it. It wasn’t something I had to be forced to do.”

Years later, that early confidence has grown into something fuller and more intentional. Meron’s music now sits somewhere between R&B, soul, jazz, electronic textures, U.K. club influences and the melodic pull of her East African heritage. When asked to describe it, her sister, within earshot of the call, offers: “Silky… decadent… indulgent.” Meron agrees, adding her own words: “Ethereal, kind of like dreamy music… that kind of hopeless romantic longing.”

That energy is best experienced on Palindrome. Released last September, the eight-track EP is Meron’s first project in six years. It brings those qualities together in a body of work that feels silky, romantic and emotionally unresolved in the best way.

The project is about the way people move back and forth through love. The title came after Meron noticed the emotional arc of the songs. Palindrome opens with “1sidedlove,” a song grounded in self-respect and refusal. But as the project unfolds, it drifts back into longing, obsession, romance and surrender.

“Palindrome actually means a word that’s spelt the same backwards and forwards,” she says. “But when I think of a palindrome, I almost think of a pendulum as well, going forwards and backwards at the same time…which is life, right? You take two steps forward and five steps back. It’s not linear.”

Meron’s own path to music was not linear either. At 16, she asked for a guitar and began teaching herself through YouTube. By university, she was writing songs, recording demos on her phone and slowly finding the courage to share them. Her first studio experience came through singer Will Heard, who invited her into a session to record “Say.” She put it on SoundCloud and began performing at open mic nights at Sussex University.

For years, Meron sang with her eyes closed. “I was terrified,” she says. “I didn’t open my eyes on stage for at least five years.” But the more she performed, the more she learned how to be seen. Touring as a backing vocalist for Masego in 2018 also helped her imagine her own musical world, giving her a clearer sense of how musicians build community, support one another and bring a live show to life. Today, Meron can be placed within a growing wave of Habesha-rooted artists in the U.K. who are blending Ethiopian musical language with R&B, jazz, club sounds and diasporic experimentation.

Still, Palindrome took time. Her previous project, Mirage, came out in 2019. Lockdown shifted her relationship to music. She began producing, collaborating more widely and stepping outside the more insular way she had once worked. The years between projects became a period of gathering songs, choosing the tracklist, finishing vocals, shaping the concept and deciding how she wanted to return.

“It was definitely a slow burner,” she says, describing the process of becoming more outward-facing as an artist and collaborator. It was also about “believing in myself enough to think that people would want to work with me.”

Part of what gives Meron’s music its pull is the way her voice moves. She hears her Ethiopian and Eritrean background in her melodic choices, even when the production around her leans toward London. That tension between South London and Addis, inherited culture and chosen sound, has become central to the way she understands herself.

And yet, closeness to culture has not always erased distance. Meron does not speak Amharic fluently. Being asked again and again about her language skills at family gatherings has, over time, affected her sense of belonging.

“Every time you’re at the family function, when all you can say is, ‘I speak a little bit of Amharic,’ and you can see the look of disappointment on their face, it does chip away at your sense of your identity, or your sense of belonging,” she says.

That is part of why her recent collaboration - the 2026 track “It’s You (Ante Neh)” - with London contemporary Ethio-jazz duo ZENA (Yohan Kebede from the band Kokoroko, and Menelikon) felt so meaningful. For Meron, the collaboration was healing because it did not demand fluency or cultural perfection. It allowed her to enter the music as she is: a diaspora artist still learning, still reaching and still deeply connected.

“It felt like an answered prayer,” she says.

She is already thinking about what comes next: Palindrome headline show in London ( possibly one in Addis!), more visuals, more collaborations and a steady stream of new music. She is also working toward a fully self-produced album. With the newly released video for an acoustic version of “fiyah!,” her song with IZCO and Sam Wise about being pulled back toward someone even when you know better, Meron is making clear that she is ready for the now.