She was born in the bowels of a riverboat on the Seine before running away from home on the eve of her sixteenth birthday to join a Parisian circus.

So with such an eventful start to life it’s perhaps no wonder that British singer Luvcat, real name Sophie Morgan, ended up in showbusiness.

The 27-year-old songstress, who’s currently touring with beloved British indie band The Libertines, has 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, with fans enchanted by her enigmatic persona, dark vintage style and decadently jazzy music.

Despite a thrilling backstory, Luvcat, whose EP Love & Money has delighted fans thi week,  wants to maintain some ambiguity around her personality – after feeling bored by the plethora of information she learnt about her favourite bands as a young music fan. 

She told Rolling Stone, ‘I miss those old days when there was an element of mystique and a bit of playfulness where you don’t quite know where the line is drawn between truth and fiction. Isn’t that just a bit more fun?’ 

‘I grew up with bands where they had fun names you know, like Rat Scabies from The Damned. I love all that stuff, rock and roll has lost a bit of mischief and playfulness I think.’

So, when she sat down to write her artist bio for a promoter, Luvcat decided to have a bit of fun with it, blurring the line between fact and fiction, much like she does in her lyrics.

Fans can read an alternative narrative about Luvcat on her social media – where she hails from Liverpool but now lives in London. 

She’s got an unusual backstory filled with drama at mystery, but don’t take Luvcat’s (pictured) tale at face value 

Besides information on her birthplace, she keeps any evidence of her history, including a reported affair with the circus ringmaster which forced her to leave life au cirque behind – shrouded in mystery, only offering fans scraps of information on her glamorous existence.

However, one thing she doesn’t hide is her musical inspirations, and she shares tales of how her father influenced her tastes from a young age liberally, revealing how he introduced her to the likes of Morrisey, Joni Mitchell, and The Cure, shaping her outputs today.

Don’t be fooled; her inspirations aren’t always so saintly, and her single, Dinner @ Brasserie Zedel, came from entirely different origins, ‘I just met someone I really f****** fancied,’ she told Dork.

She added: ‘All I wanted was to dress up fancy and be taken to Soho, to a white tablecloth restaurant, spending the night with him, drinking wine and saying dirty things to each other.’

She can now turn a lusty date into a hit streamed globally as her full time job due to the power of social media, with her blowing up after a TikTok of her performing in her local pub went viral.

‘I definitely wasn’t planning on releasing any music for a while, but a video from one of our first gigs in my local pub in London blew up online, so we released the single independently as quickly as we could,’ she said.

It was the start of her career in the spotlight, with her adding: ‘We put out another single and have been playing as many shows as possible, including our first headlines in London and Liverpool at the Kazimier Garden.’

Her first Paris headline show in May 2023 took place where it all began for Luvcat – on a riverboat on the Seine.

It has been a stratospheric rise, which in Luvcat’s own words, make her feel ‘like I’ve lived 10 years in the last two’.

Just a few short months ago, the singer was playing gigs in south east London to ‘no-one’ – and now she’s on tour with Pete Doherty et al.

The beginnings of her career can be traced all the way back to her school days and a  chance meeting with The Verve’s Simon Jones – which led to her skipping school in favour of recording sessions in his studio.

Luvcat, whose name was influenced by The Cure's The Lovecats, was featured in Spotify's 'Our Generation' podcast

Luvcat, whose name was influenced by The Cure’s The Lovecats, was featured in Spotify’s ‘Our Generation’ podcast   

The singer, who owes much of her fame to the power of social media, is currently on tour with The Libertines

The singer, who owes much of her fame to the power of social media, is currently on tour with The Libertines

In the years since, Luvcat’s life has taken all the right turns at a dramatic pace, with her selling out European tour dates and accompanying The Libertines, belting out her hit songs like Metador to thousands of fans.

She also has enlisted a loyal band of fans, who call themselves her ‘Kittens’, that follow her around the world. 

‘POV: You just played a show in Paris and your favourite band gave you roses in your dressing room and now you’re driving to Berlin for the next show with your band who are also your best friends and you are listening to Leonard Cohen and drinking red wine from the bottle and eating a French baguette,’ she said on TikTok, adding in the caption: ‘Life is sweet’.

Speaking to DIY magazine earlier this year, Luvcat revealed how her wild yet elusive lifestyle is the thing that motivates her in her career as she takes advice from her father.

‘That’s what my dad always taught me as a kid: comfort is killer. You’ve gotta always have that bit of abrasion when you’re young, otherwise you don’t grow,’ she recalled. 

In the same interview, she revealed the theme that most inspires her song writing now: love.

Dismissing the idea of making a political anthem (‘I don’t know much about politics’) she instead wants to focus on intense passion with ‘hellraisers’ – whom she claims are her type.

But beneath Luvcat’s leopard print-clad, hedonistic image, is a vulnerability.

She revealed: ‘Every time I’m about to play a show, I think, ‘Why have I chosen this life?’, because I have terrible stage fright and feel so ill.’

However, she described a ‘pure euphoria’ that comes upon her when she begins singing – an addictive feeling that keeps her singing. 

So, while the origins of her story are wrapped in a playful puzzle, Luvcat’s future successes in the music world appear plain for all to see.

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