About

“The Wages clan was run out of North Carolina for stealing horses and other boorish behavior. We settled in North Mississippi and evolved into three groups: the preachers; the drunks and outlaws; and then kind of a mid-range group. I came from the mid-range group.”

Cyrena Wages fell in love with music on the country backroads between Millington and Shelby Forest, two small towns just north of Memphis. Her father, the hometown judge, drove her to school every day in a 1967 gold Cadillac with the license plate “ROBN HD” on the back, an homage to the underdog ideology, and the conceptual through-line of her debut 2024 album, Vanity Project. Wages tapped Grammy-winning producer Matt Ross-Spang (Isbell, Price, Prine) to helm the debut at his Southern Grooves Studio in Memphis. Upon the heavy-hearted country soul-meets-indie pop confessional’s release, Cyrena toured in support of artists like Lilly Winwood, Hailey Whitters, Maggie Rose, Lucero, and Chaparelle, and debuted in spaces such as the Troubadour, The Bluebird Cafe, SXSW, and Americanafest.

Produced by Johnny Black, Cyrena's sophomore album, Miss Melancholia, may differ sonically (and emotionally) from her debut, but the delicately punk narrative remains intact: a woman raised in North Shelby County, relishing in the witticisms of the South, while fighting like hell to shake her "Bible Belt beauty pageant" conditioning.

"I didn't go in to make this new record feeling unheard or carrying unarticulated pain. I wrote Vanity Project from a wound, and I am writing this project from a scar. If Vanity Project was despair, healing, and truth-telling, this album is swagger, boundaries, levity, fun, and full of a sense of humor that I lost touch with for a long time."