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Phoebe Katis: Still coming of age

Phoebe Katis is the latest guest on Leo Sidran's The Third Story
The Third Story/courtesy of the artist
Phoebe Katis is the latest guest on Leo Sidran's The Third Story

Phoebe Katis — a UK-born, New York–based songwriter can pinpoint the moment when her life and career were quietly reoriented. It started with a single direct message.

Katis traces her journey from being a young singer-songwriter in England, measuring herself against inherited ideas of success, to becoming part of a global musical community through a series of small, intentional actions — including the DM that led to her first collaboration with Cory Wong, years of touring, a move to the U.S., and a creative and personal life she never could have planned.

Phoebe Katis and Leo Sidran
courtesy of the artists
Phoebe Katis and Leo Sidran

At the center of the conversation is the idea of the inflection point — the moments that don’t announce themselves while they’re happening, but later reveal themselves as before-and-after lines. Katis speaks candidly about ambition, people-pleasing, pop music as a delivery system for emotional truth, and the reality of sustaining a creative life without asking your art to carry everything.

Her latest album, A Coming Of Age was released in late 2025. Here she reflects on success and arrival, the value of side hustles, pop music as a delivery system for truth, how to build a creative life without asking your art to carry everything.and what it means to keep “coming of age” well into adulthood.

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Leo Sidran is a Grammy winning multi-instrumentalist musician, producer, arranger, composer, recording artist and podcast host based in Brooklyn, New York.