A pop singer with crisp, jazz-inflected delivery,
CYN found an early mentor in
Katy Perry before emerging with her debut EP CYN in 2014. After signing to
Perry's Unsub Records in 2017, she had a string of off-kilter singles that quickly reached seven-figure streams, including 2017's "Only with You" and the tender "I'll Still Have Me" from 2018.
CYN, aka Cynthia Nabozny, grew up near Detroit. She spent her teenage years listening to classic vocalists like
Frank Sinatra and
Doris Day with her grandmother, meanwhile entering talent competitions and uploading covers on social media. A motivational boost arrived with the opportunity to meet
Katy Perry on
Perry's California Dreams Tour in 2011, and she continued to write and sing while earning a degree at Chicago's DePaul University. Over the years,
CYN collaborated with producers including
Felix Snow, Sorrow, and
Galimatias, and she collected five songs featuring her vocals on an eponymous 2014 EP. Her own stand-alone single, "Something," followed in 2015 and proved to be a minor streaming breakthrough.
In 2017,
CYN became the first signee to
Perry's Unsub Records label and released the single "Together," which featured production by OMEGA. While continuing to issue periodic singles, she opened shows for
BØRNS and
Sigrid, and
CYN made her festival debut at Bonnaroo in mid-2018. That September saw the release of her single "I'll Still Have Me," which garnered millions of online plays by the end of the year. September 2018 also saw the release of the animated family film Smallfoot, featuring her song "Moment of Truth." Singles including "Holy Roller" and "I'll Still Have Me" followed in 2019, both of which appeared on that year's
Mood Swing EP, and in 2020
CYN dropped the singles "Drinks" and "Lonely Gun," ther latter of which appeared on the soundtrack for the comic book/action film Birds of Prey. ~ Marcy Donelson & Heather Phares