About
Windsor, Ontario’s Kat Valentine is loaded with confidence. “I’m meant for the stage, baby,” she declares. Since 2021, the 24-year-old, who first gained national attention on the popular YTV talent show, The Next Star, when she was 13, has released 10 songs, including a 7 song EP, Sirens Pt I, and her most successful single, 2022’s “i stayed awake,” a bubblegum-drum ‘n’ bass and last year’s “HOLD” and “What U Want.” Nine of the 10 songs were self-penned and self-produced. Sirens PT II will be her next major collection, slated for release on Valentine’s Day, 2025.
Ever evolving, her next single, “Talk Tuff,” a departure from her previous singles, is a rap song for her challengers, that will be coming out late summer. She started performing it at her live shows and it went over so well, she recorded it.
“I pulled from different experiences like getting expelled for writing Wattpad books that ‘ruined the moral tone of the school,’ or being a digital dominatrix to pay for partying in college. I’ve never been scared of taking the routes other people won’t,” Kat says. “But, as an artist, my words have always been the thing that polarizes and pisses people off the most. There’s no need to raise fists when you know how to talk tough.”
Adopted into an Italian family, in a city far too small for her personality, she has managed to be memorable in every setting she enters. She has played piano since the age of 5, first learning jazz, then classical before finding her pop prowess. Ten years ago, she was finalist on the 6th season of YTVs The Next Star (2013).
On the show, she covered a range of chart-topping hits, including Mary J Blige’s “I’m Going Down, Sia’s “Titanium” and Ed Sheeran’s “Lego House,” as well as played piano. Her solo single, “Lioness,” was written by Matthew Tishler and appears under her birthname. “I wasn’t any good at writing yet; I was 13,” she says.
Kat then took the time to focus on high school, then post-secondary, but during her first year at Western University in London, Ontario she realized it wasn’t for her and returned to Windsor focused and determined to make music her life.
“I want a lifetime in music,” she says. “I want to be respected by my influences and influence others. I want to keep my expectations for myself high and never stop improving. I truly do believe my life is a tightly bound pathway towards the stage and I was made for nothing else. Creation is existence to me.”
She took on the stage name Kat Valentine, reflecting what she writes about, “love in all its forms and functions,” she says, and she was on her way, confidence fully loaded. “I am a popstar baby. The style may change, but the goal is always iconic,” she says.
The 7 songs on Sirens Pt I explore a range of themes, balancing independence and an ongoing search for love.
About con’t
“The title-track introduces the heroine of the EP,” says Kat. “She’s already gone through this relationship and she’s reflecting on all the ways she’s changed, most importantly in her self-assurance. I call on my sirens, my sisters of the deep, to protect me and carry me away to the safety of a blue void, free from reality and open to all the love that’s to come.
“The whole EP explores these themes in their separate parts. ‘Decide’ is about being so independent and so powerful that in romance you’re looking for someone to take the reins and let you kick back. ‘Under Your Skin’ is a ballad about asking someone to open up to you so you can fully appreciate all of their parts. ‘I Fall Apart’ is the crossroad between loving someone so deeply you’d do anything for them but realizing how dangerous and self-destructive that can be, and ‘Body’ is a loud and proud declaration of thirst for the femme form.”
Of the follow-up, Sirens Pt II, Kat promises, “It will blow Pt I out of the water.”