CMAT’s Fake Pop Star Days Are Over

A lot can change in a year — CMAT knows that better than anyone. Exactly 365 days before we met in December, the Irish singer-songwriter was working on what would become her third album Euro-Country in New York City and wanting to “kill everyone” by the end of her trip. Cut to December 2025, and she’s back in town to mark the biggest year of her career with some celebratory press and ice skating at Rockefeller Center. (She lasted all of 40 minutes before the touristy schtick lost its appeal.) “The problem with ice skating is all the other people that are ice skating,” she tells NYLON, her thick Irish accent swallowing every “h” in her sentence. “I won't be doing that again.”

We meet at her hotel after her ice skating outing, still dressed in her “little Christmas elf outfit”: a crimson sweater adorned with everything under the sun from dragonflies to seashells, white lace bloomers, purple knit tights, and floral embroidered kitten heels. Her tooth gems and auburn hair double as the perfect accessories, but the best addition to her look is the red leather handbag that’s been embellished with a set of caster wheels. “Look at this, it's so stupid,” CMAT (born Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson) says, showing it off. “I don't believe in excessive, I don't believe in overdressing. I believe in underdressing.”

Her latest NYC stint comes at the end of a “f*cking mental” year that consisted of a career-high Glastonbury set, a second Mercury Prize nomination for Euro-Country, and her first viral hit with “Take A Sexy Picture Of Me,” a glittering indie-pop critique of beauty standards and the sexualization of women. “I've been kind of like a dog chasing my own tail,” she says of her breakout year. “I feel like an actual pop star now, instead of a fake little funny one.” 2026 promises to be just as busy, as she’ll be “milking the sh*t out of everything that happened” in 2025 with a supporting gig on Florence + The Machine’s Everybody Scream tour and making her Coachella debut in April.

Lucky for her, she loves the work, as evidenced by her goal of playing over 100 shows in 2026 (up from the 80 she played last year), though she hopes to pencil in some downtime during Coachella to catch the Bob Baker Marionette Theater at the festival. “I'm a puppet person, I love puppets,” she says. “I love the beauty of them. I love the craftsmanship of them. I love that you have to both be visually talented to make one, and then comedically talented to perform them. I like that, with the limitations, you can access weirdly deeper and more profound emotions. There's just something about them.”

In theory, her passion for puppetry will always make her a kid at heart, but in reality, CMAT will be celebrating her 30th birthday in February. She doesn’t know how she’ll ring in the new decade just yet — she “can’t be f*cked” to deal with the planning — though the upcoming milestone has definitely taken up some real estate in her mind. “You know people talk about twink death?,” she asks. “I'm experiencing that, but it's pop star death. I'm turning 30 and they don't allow that. I have to start acting 24 again.”

“I feel like an actual pop star now, instead of a fake little funny one.”

Jokes aside, CMAT is at peace with turning 30, especially following the year she just had. “I think the anxiety people usually have about turning 30 is that they haven't done enough with their lives yet, and I don't think that's even a little bit true of me. I've done so much,” she says. As for what she’s manifesting for her next trip around the sun: more handbags, to meet Euro-Country fan Hayley Williams, and for the world to become kinder to gluten-free people.

Upon parting ways, CMAT asks her sister Róisín to grab another pair of shoes from her hotel room. “When you wear a backless mule, it has to use the sweat of your foot to glue onto the balls of your feet, and [the tights are] preventing that,” she explains. “Also, the floors in America are slippier.”

Photographs by Sarah Doyle.