The looping sound of subways and trains, travelling light while re-examining growing pains—Billianne’s debut album Modes of Transportation is a raw and poetic examination of what it means to move: between places, moments, relationships, and selves. At just 22, the Canadian singer-songwriter navigates personal transition with remarkable clarity, pairing introspective lyrics with a voice that feels like a revelation. Her vocals are both velvet-rich and hauntingly pure—able to swell with ache or shrink to a whisper without ever losing their warmth. There’s an unmistakable emotional intelligence in the way she delivers a line: subtle shifts in phrasing reveal entire inner worlds. No wonder Rolling Stone described her as “like a young Adele”; her voice carries the same commanding tenderness and stunning range, a rare ability to feel both unguarded and timeless at once. On “Jessie’s Comet,” a standout folk/Americana gem inspired by her sister moving out of their childhood home, Billianne sings through grief and quiet transformation: “It's a song about missing my sister, and also feeling strangely let down by the fact that she's moved out, even though it's a natural process of life,” she says. “My sister's gone now—she's not just down the hall from me, and we're never going to have that time again.” Laced with melancholic daydreams and romantic voyeurism, Modes of Transportation asks: how do we become who we are? Through the album’s ten tracks—written and produced with long-time collaborators Duncan Hood and Nick Ferraro—Billianne explores the tensions between staying and leaving, the city and the country, comfort and momentum. The sparse piano ballad “Modes I” becomes the project’s spiritual thesis: “New modes of transportation / Moments of realization.” It’s a meditation on change, and on the people who do—or don’t—come with you through it. “The part of the song that talks about how everything is changing, except for you, can be looked at many different ways,” Billianne explains. “It can be looked at in a positive way—like, ‘You're my rock, you're someone that's always going to be there.’ But it can be looked at in the way where it's like, ‘I'm changing, and everything else is changing, but you're refusing to change.’ I always think of it both ways when I sing it.” Stylistically, Modes is lush and eclectic: the melodic upbeat pop of “Baby Blue” and the Top 10 at Canadian Top 40 Radio hit “Crush” sit beside dusky acoustic folk (“Cassiopeia,” “Let Me Run”) and slow-burning indie rock (the ’90s reminiscent “Future Emma,” “Wishlist”). Strings, banjo, pedal steel and warm backing vocals give the project a wide palette, with each track showcasing a different dimension of her voice—whether playful, meditative, somber, or soaring. Fittingly, the album was recorded across Ontario—from a downtown Toronto house to a quiet cabin in Huntsville and a family basement studio in Etobicoke—mirroring the album’s central metaphor: the different ways we move forward. “When we were working out the album, we were all like, ‘This song feels like the step,’” she says of “Modes I.” “‘This feels like the direction. This is Billianne. This is what it's going to be.’” Raised in a musical family as the youngest of four, Billianne grew up to the sounds of Shania Twain and Cyndi Lauper, joined school funk bands, played trombone, and improvised songs for her phone camera. “Any opportunity to sing and do music, I took it,” she says. “It’s always been this thread in my life, where I'm singing all the time.” She captured the internet’s attention in 2021 when her cover of Tina Turner’s “The Best” went viral on TikTok—garnering millions of views and praise from Taylor Swift, The Lumineers, Joe Jonas, P!nk, Ryan Reynolds, and more. “That was when I realized that music was a possibility for me,” she says. “It wasn't just my family and friends hyping up my voice—it was a career I could do and would enjoy.” Since then, she’s amassed over 100 million global streams, toured across Europe and North America with artists like KT Tunstall, Half Moon Run, Julia Jacklin, and Hollow Coves, and appeared on NBC’s Today, The Kelly Clarkson Show, and CBC’s Q. Her debut EP The Things We Talk About (2023) introduced her as “music’s next big voice” (The Toronto Star), but Modes of Transportation is where she truly arrives. It’s an album rooted in movement, but unshakably sure of itself. "I learn something new about myself every time I step out of the house,” she says. “I'm also a person that's hyper-aware of the changes in me. And when I go on tours, I'm learning my limits. I'm learning what I do and don’t find fun. But throughout all of this, I’m also learning how to trust myself." With her voice as a sail and the road wide open, Billianne is charting her own way forward—one song, one stop, one realization at a time.
