Priya Ragu – 'It feels like a mission for me, this whole music thing'

Priya Ragu's vivid debut album, Santhosam, has been a lifetime in the making. Here, the Tamil Swiss artist tells Rolling Stone UK how creating music that resonates has become her life's work

- By Hollie Geraghty.

‘Everything kind of made sense, you know?” says Priya Ragu, thoughtfully gesturing towards her head as she recalls a moment of enlightenment. The Tamil-Swiss singer has only been on our video interview for four minutes when we arrive at the end of the story of her debut album, Santhosam, which means ‘happiness’ in Tamil. “It’s like me finding my own happiness throughout these songs,” says Ragu.

It’s a word that has continued to reveal itself in different ways throughout the past few years. Not only is it the final lyric on her dynamic new album, but it’s also the name of the song that capped off 2021 debut mixtape, damnshestamil. “There’s a lot of symbolism going on,” she says, adding that the true meaning of the word for her is “being content”.

It’s certainly been a journey for the singer, 37, to reach a point where she can confidently say that, having only quit her day job as a technical purchaser for Swiss International Air Lines two years ago. “I really lived a nice, comfortable job,” she says. “But time was just running. I just felt like, ‘Oh man, I don’t want to be this wasted talent. I at least have to try.’”

Ragu got her head down and spent six months in New York working on music back in 2017. By 2020, she had signed to Warner Music after turning down 20 different record labels. But even then, she continued to juggle her music career with an 8-5 job, finally taking the plunge to commit to music full-time in 2021. “I just took a lot of time for myself until I had the confidence to do it. I felt like it was waiting for me to open that door,” she says.