Cyrena Wages fell in love with music on the country backroads between Millington and Shelby Forest, two small towns just north of Memphis. Her father, the hometown judge, drove her to school every day in a 1967 gold Cadillac with the license plate “ROBN HD” on the back, an homage to the underdog ideology, and a conceptual through line of her debut 2024 album, Vanity Project. Wages tapped producer Matt Ross-Spang (Margo Price, St. Paul & the Broken Bones) to helm Vanity Project, a heavy hearted country soul meets indie pop confessional, at his Southern Grooves Studio in Memphis. Upon it’s release, Cyrena toured in support of artists like Lilly Winwood, Hailey Whitters, Maggie Rose, Lucero, and Chaparelle, and debuted in spaces like the Troubadour, The Bluebird Cafe, SXSW, and Americana Fest.
The first two singles off Wages’ Sophomore album, “Miss Melancholia,” produced by Johnny Black, were released this Summer. “I didn’t go in to make this new record feeling unheard or carrying unarticulated pain. I wrote Vanity Project from a wound, and I am writing this project from a scar. If Vanity Project was despair, healing, and truth telling, Miss Melancholia is swagger, boundaries, levity, fun, and a sense of humor that I lost touch with for a long time. And then, of course, a little darkness, too. But it all just has more of a wink and a backbeat to it this time.”
The Sophomore album may differ sonically (and emotionally) from Wages’ debut project, but the delicately punk narrative remains intact: a woman raised in North Shelby County, relishing in the witticisms of the South, while fighting like hell to shake it’s “Bible Belt beauty pageant” conditioning. Influenced by artists like Amy Winehouse and Patsy Cline, “Miss Melancholia” is slated for 2026 release.
