Laura Marling

Born on February 1, 1990 in Eversley, Hampshire, British singer-songwriter Marling was introduced to folk music at an early age, learning to play the guitar. At the age of 15 she was playing gigs and by the time she left school at 16 was signed up by Virgin Records. Equipped with her distinct voice and acoustic guitar, Marling started making waves across the indie scene with her folk-pop sound, playing a busy schedule of gigs. She was also part of the original Noah and the Whale lineup, featuring as a backing vocalist on the band's debut album Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down but she split with the group before it was released in 2008. Her debut album Alas, I Cannot Swim was released in February 2008 to high praise from music critics and earned her a nomination for the Mercury Music prize; Marling became the youngest nominee for the prize ever. She followed up with the Brit Award-winning I Speak Because I Can (2010) and A Creature I Don’t Know (2011), two universally acclaimed albums that peaked at Number 4 on the UK Albums Chart. Following a successful tour throughout the US in 2012, Marling released Once I Was an Eagle (2013), a more mature-sounding album that reached Number 4 on Billboard’s Folk Albums and was ranked 2nd on The New York Times’ Top Ten Year-End List. Despite the tepid success of Short Movie (2015), Marling came back in full force with the Blake Mills-produced Semper Femina (2017), which received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. The following year, she formed the duo Lump with Mike Lindsay, from the group Tunng, who recorded the albums Lump (2018) and Animal (2021). In the meantime, she released her seventh full-length, the stripped-down Song for Our Daughter (2020), with longtime collaborator Ethan Johns. The album, inspired by Maya Angelou’s book Letter to My Daughter, reached number 6 in the UK charts and was nominated at the Grammy Awards. It was followed in 2024 by her eighth album, Patterns in Repeat.

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