Star Study
Your new favorite rising acts talk personal style, artistic influences, and their biggest wins to date.
LOEWE Shirt and Sweater, at loewe.com.
Photo: Marcus Maddox
School may be out, but Star Study is back in session. Welcome to the summer edition of our guide to your next music faves, with new installments releasing every other week.
Naomi Scott, once a star of Lemonade Mouth, has always had the chops: The British actress has a history of playing pop stars, which says something about her effortless magnetism and good looks. She grew up listening to gospel and R&B in church; both her parents were pastors. In 2011, she broke out as Mo, a good girl turned rocker chick in the aforementioned Disney Channel original movie. That led to a sequence of lead parts, including as Jasmine in the live-action Aladdin, one of the new-gen angels in the Charlie’s Angels reboot, and Skye Riley, a glam-pop vixen staging a comeback, in Smile 2. She could have gone the usual Disney-alum route by hiring big hitmakers and brand managers to oversee a wild-child invention. But instead she kept things low-key, quietly releasing a self-written album with a title inspired by Sylvia Plath. (She did dye her hair bright pink, though.)
Like the titular fruit, F.I.G. (Falling Into Grace) is juicy and sensual with its own subtle tartness. It is ’80s-style R&B-pop with the poise of Janet Jackson, the effervescence of Carly Rae Jepsen, and the haze of Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes — Scott’s friend and a collaborator on this album. It is the work of an artist with really refined taste. On a Friday afternoon in late May, a jetlagged Scott rattled off all of her musical inspirations at The Cut’s office and scribbled them down on a whiteboard. There is Janet Jackson, of course — “she is everything” — and Kate Bush — “she’s just always in this childlike state of play.” Oh, and Caroline Polachek, Peter Gabriel, Kylie Minogue, Jill Scott, Nourished by Time, Oklou … After five minutes of feverish listing, she paused and took stock. “Yikes, it’s too many,” she said, wincing. “I’m just now talking about my favorite art.”
Age: 33
Hometown: Woodford, London
Listen if you like: Backyard barbecues, using Popsicle juice as your lip tint, summery wistfulness, ’80s soft-pop and R&B
The song you should start with: “Cherry”
Her “pinch me” moment: “Lollapalooza 2025, definitely. It was just under a year before the album was even being released. I basically thought, Oh, this is great practice. No one’s going to be there. I was very much expecting it to be a very small crowd, but it was not that. I guess I didn’t realize that Lemonade Mouth had such a renaissance. Or maybe there were some people thinking I was gonna cosplay Skye Riley from Smile 2.”
MIU MIU Top, Bikini, and Skirt, at miumiu.com. Photos by Marcus Maddox.
MIU MIU Top, Bikini, and Skirt, at miumiu.com. Photos by Marcus Maddox.
Her top artist of 2025: “Last year, I listened to a lot of Oklou’s Choke Enough. There was also FKA Twigs’s Eusexua. I listened to a lot of Essex Honey, obviously, by my guy Dev Hynes. Those three were my main albums from last year. There’s also Earthstar Mountain by Hannah Cohen, which is really good. I had a phase with an album by Milton Nascimento — the iconic Brazilian artist — that everyone talks about, Clube Da Esquina.”
On meeting her friend and collaborator Dev Hynes, a.k.a. Blood Orange: “I’ve been a superfan for a very long time. He’s from Woodford. I’m from Woodford. No one’s really from there. This sounds so creepy, but I knew one day we would be friends. And then, while I was making the album, I saw he was following me and we got to chatting. I was like, ‘I’m going climbing tomorrow. Do you wanna come?’ There’s definitely a funny video of him falling. There’s this bond that happens where, even though you didn’t know that person when you were a kid, you feel like you did.”
Photo: Marcus Maddox
On her friendship with her Lemonade Mouth co-stars: “Oh, my girls are my girls. Hayley Kiyoko and Bridgit Mendler — we try to see each other when we can, when I’m in LA. You don’t understand how smart Bridgit actually is. [Editor’s note: Mendler co-founded an aerospace startup after graduating from MIT and Harvard.] Every time I’m like, ‘Wait, so what are you doing? So what is it? Okay, you’re sending it up — is it in space, or are you sending it somewhere else?’”
Her ideal summer day: “I’m thinking a friend’s barbecue vibe. A barbecue in the U.K. just means coming around and making food. For my friend’s birthday the other day, my cousin cooked so much. It was a combination of jollof rice, fried rice, plantain, mac and cheese, curry goat — just all of that comfort food. That feels like the perfect meal. I feel like my mum would make some dal, and maybe I’d make a potato-and-cauliflower curry with raita — basically yogurt, cucumber, and mint. I think dessert has to be light. It’s giving pavlova — fresh fruit with something creamy.”
CHLOÉ Dress, at chloe.com. Photos by Marcus Maddox; .
CHLOÉ Dress, at chloe.com. Photos by Marcus Maddox; .
On being a dessert person: “All I can think about is food. I love food so much. My favorite dessert of all time is banoffee pie. For the Americans out there, it’s not banana cream pie, although there are similarities. It’s a biscuit base with caramel, fresh banana, fresh cream, and chocolate shavings. Very simple. It’s all fresh ingredients. Also, I love a good crème brûlée. And sticky toffee pudding. There are so many things.
An outfit that makes her feel the most her: “Honestly, it’s giving girl in process, which is code for: I’m still figuring it out myself!”
CHANEL Bikini, at chanel.com.
Photo: Marcus Maddox
Production Credits
Photographs by
Marcus Maddox
Styling by
Emma Oleck
Photo Assistant:
Steven Molina Contreras
Hair:
Ryann Carter
Makeup:
Ryann Carter
Hair and Makeup assistant:
Aidan Rodriguez
Styling Assistant:
Lili Marner and Cole Norton
The Cut, Editor-in-Chief
Lindsay Peoples
The Cut, Photo Director
Noelle Lacombe
The Cut, Deputy Culture Editor
Brooke Marine
The Cut, Photo Editor
Sofía Mareque
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