For the past year and some change, FLO – the British girl group comprised of singers Stella Quaresma, Jorja Douglas, and Renée Downer – have captured the hearts, attention, and most importantly, the support of people all over the world. One of the most impressive aspects of FLO is that they check off the boxes of music lovers with different tastes from different generations.
Their music sounds like it was made from the 1990s-2000s era of shimmering and theatrical R&B production, enough so that millennials will smile and maybe gain a bit of hope for the kids of today. Their soaring vocals and pristine harmonies will make the R&B traditionalists send a hallelujah or two into the sky in relief that their beloved vocals are still important in the genre. Gen-Z can beam in delight at the sight of girls from their generation who shares similar qualities: the resistance to tradition, being fearlessly outspoken, and having confidence in all the best ways.
FLO has it all, and with that, there’s no denying that they’re ready to take over the world.
The girls’ recent steps have come through the releases of “Fly Girl” with Missy Elliott and “Losing You,” records that both fit the mold of FLO’s DNA despite being polar opposites sonically. “I think they’re quite contrasting and I think that’s kind of what we’re about,” Stella says about these songs over a Zoom call with Uproxx. “We’re very multifaceted.” Similar to their The Lead cut “Another Guy,” “Losing You” leans into the characteristics of an R&B ballad to bid a final goodbye to a past lover who mistreated them in more ways than one and share the relief that came with their exit.
On the other hand, “Fly Girl,” similar to “Summertime,” is steered by the feisty fun that lives in the heart of a lively part. FLO is fierce, confident, and dismissive to anyone and anything that falls short of their reasonably high expectations because, I mean, c’mon, it’s FLO we’re talking about! “I think that they were good contrasting songs to put out one after the other,” Stella says. “That’s also what our album gonna be about, just us and our journey and being honest about everything.”
FLO’s journey began with the release of their debut EP The Lead in the summer of 2022. A viral clip of one of their music videos on Twitter help make them the beloved darlings to fans that they are now, but the music on that project sufficed as the most ideal launching pad toward their current success. “It was quite a journey getting to that list of songs,” Stella says. “We’re proud of it [The Lead] and proud of the songs and proud of the list. We worked really hard to get everything on there to be how we wanted it.”
That work paid off thanks to excellent entries to The Lead like “Not My Job” and “Immature” which once again find insufficient men as the subject their heavenly harmonies dive into. These songs, as well as others like “Cardboard Box,” stand out as the most quality entries, or “bops” as the girls call them, in their discography. Think they can’t top these? FLO has something to tell you about that. “We like the kind of pressure that, [because] we keep putting out bops, we need to top them because we want to grow as artists,” Jorja says. “We just want to keep pushing ourselves because we want to release the best music possible. We don’t feel pressure from anyone else, we just feel a healthy pressure [from ourselves].”
As the saying goes: pressure creates diamonds. Though the girls still have plenty to achieve in their careers, they have successfully created a career that their younger selves would be proud to see. “It’s really important to us that we stay true and honest to ourselves and each other and to the people that we’re working with who have the power over our music,” Jorja says. “The way we carry ourselves through and navigate these situations is something that our younger selves would be really proud of.”
These situations include their first US tour which came to an end at the end of April with a closing show at Los Angeles’ Fonda Theater. Over the course of two weeks, FLO made stops in major cities like Atlanta, New York City, and Chicago to not establish an audience across the pond, but meet and connect with fans who’d been supporting them for months at a minimum.
“I don’t even think that we’ve had time to process how people are receiving like our shows because it’s [been] so fast-paced,” Jorja admits. “As much as we love meeting people, we kind of hate meeting people in that rushed setting where it’s like, this is this person, ‘hi!,’ next person, next person. I don’t feel like we’re actually like connecting with this person and like getting to know them and actually processing the things that they’re saying.”
Despite that, the girls are still taking in and appreciating these moments as best as they can for the circumstance at hand. “We’re very happy that like overall everyone is really enjoying the show,” Jorja added. “We can’t wait for it to be over so we can actually process how amazing the experience has been.”
Now that tour is over, FLO will get back to work on their upcoming debut album. Though details on it are slim, the project is undoubtedly a highly-anticipated follow-up to The Lead and FLO’s ambitions for the alum are just as high as the excitement from fans for it. “I think definitely around the album, a personal goal is for us to create a video that, through and through, we’re really proud of and there’s no doubt about it that this is just the best video that we’ve created,” Jorja says.
Stella’s response was a bit different saying, “It would be really cool to get some cool features on the album with people we’re inspired by” while Reneé notes, “I’m most excited about having a final piece and being able to reflect on the process of getting there. That’s gonna feel really special and be a very key point in our careers and I want to make sure that we’re able to feel the most amazing feelings about it, even though it’s a crazy process and things might go wrong, the outcome, I want us to feel really proud of it.”
FLO has plenty to be proud of and it’s evident with their upcoming album which is one of the more anticipated debuts in recent time. Through this process, the girls have learned lessons and received advice that will be extremely handy in their expansive toolkit. One of them is simple but equally important to their growth: always do your best. “You never know what people are gonna latch on to,” Jorja says. “So you want to make sure that everything you’re doing is something that you’re like 100% proud of.”
Another example comes with the reminder that this is just the beginning of a career that FLO hopes will turn them into household names like Beyoncé and Whitney Houston. “We’re not in full bloom yet,” Jorja says. “We really want people to just stick around and watch us develop and turn into the incredible artists that we know we are deep down inside.” Taking over the world is in FLO’s destiny, and with the cards they have in their deck, Stella, Jorja, and Renée have just what they need to make that a reality.
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