By Cydneii Lung’aho
Mood music. Chill vibes. Study songs. Gym Grind. Music is the soundtrack of our lives and arguably one of the arbiters of our taste.
After last Sunday’s Grammy Awards marked one of the biggest nights in music, the award season’s annual return brought out viewers who always seem to have their opinions on who should or shouldn’t have won and whose favourite artist got severely snubbed.
Everybody loves the underdog, right?
As the Grammys took centre stage, artists Kendrick Lamar and Doechii delivered clean sweeps in the rap categories, while Beyonce made history after finally winning Country Album of the Year. Other mainstream artists graced the stage, like Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n Sweet performance and Billie Eilish’s beautiful outdoor display.
Photo by David Jones via Wikimedia Commons
Though big names now and internationally acclaimed, there was one point or another that someone, somewhere would’ve deemed those artists underrated.
Some, probably, still do!
With that in mind, people in the Holloway area gave their opinions about their most underrated artist and their favourite song by them, hoping to get a little something new for your (and our) playlists.
When I bumped into Vasilis Garbis Mavrokefalos, his excitement almost died when he thought he couldn’t recommend a Greek artist. Rest assured, we’ve brought some culture to this article with his recommendation: “Lex” by Nyxterides.
He was with his friend, V Dimitriou, who seemed to have a similar recommendation at first, but changed it right at the last minute to “Rack” by Wkeanous.
After playing a few seconds of each song for me, the two explained their standard for being “underrated” lies in the lack of Greek house music in London. This was their guide to the start your Greek music obsession and, maybe, play more of it at your next house party!
Outside Europe
Keeping it international, while talking to Kahi Bradshaw-Williams, his recommendation hails from the USA. Low Roar’s “Don’t Be So Serious” took a more soothing approach to some of the other suggestions I received.
As a grad student studying neuroscience, Bradshaw-Williams said: “ [He] tends to stick to chill music that helps him relax and focus on the hours of studying ahead of me.”
His metric for underrated came from the stats: Low Roar’s 4,916 listeners in London via Spotify. Comparatively, St Vincent, winner of the Best Alternative Music Album at the 2025 Grammy Awards, has 49,768 listeners in the UK’s capital. The numbers don’t lie.
Lack of recognition
My next batch of interviews all followed Kahi’s logic, attributing their artists as underrated due to their lack of recognition in the industry.
Taison MH Cassidy’s recommendation Cold, Cold, Cold by The Family Crest was a bit of an outlier (in this article and my own music taste) with its classical undertones and indie feel. Te’Lyah Taylor’s suggestion of RINI’s Good Intentions had heavy R&B influence and ended up being quickly added to my playlist.
Interestingly enough, I caught up with music artist, Kamiino, who gave me two recommendations. The first, “3AM in Prague”, is his own song while the second is “UMI’s Remember Me”. Much more mainstream than the other artists mentioned to me, his second recommendation leaned heavily towards the artist’s lack of recognition, and the first is what I guess you could call a shameless plug.
By my last interview I was surprised to not have been hit with anything controversial. With Danish Zaheer, though, I stood corrected with his choice of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”.
Based on the look on my face and the people around us during the interview, Zaheer defended his choice and said: “I know it’s controversial, but in modern times, the old music tends to be forgotten. Yes, Led Zeppelin was famous, but who really listens to them now?”
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