She just released a new EP, but the singer has already cancelled most of her upcoming tour dates.

April 26, 2025

By Nick Krewen

Special to the Star

She’s won two Grammys and a Juno and has been associated with some of the biggest names in hip-hop. Then she went independent and virtually disappeared.

Now, after being out of the spotlight for 13 years, Melanie Fiona is attempting a comeback.

“I wanted to be the captain of my own ship moving forward,” the acclaimed Toronto singer told the Star in an April 14 interview. “But it was also very humbling to realize how much the captain has to bear.”

Just a few weeks ago, Fiona released the six-song EP Say Yes, her first new music since 2011’s The MF Life, and she was scheduled to perform at Toronto’s Axis Club on May 10.

But earlier this week, Fiona announced that — except for a show in Washington, D.C., on April 29 and one in Los Angeles June 1 — she has cancelled the rest of her 15-date tour.

“If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I create and move from a place of intention and alignment,” Fiona wrote to her 700,000 followers in an April 19 Instagram post. “Despite every effort, the many pieces required to make this tour happen simply didn’t come together in the way I’d hoped — and going forward, wouldn’t reflect the experience I want for myself or you, the fans.

“Throughout my journey back to releasing music,” she continued, “I’ve faced plenty of obstacles, but letting you down is by far one of the hardest.”

Fiona wrote that she intended to return to touring later in the year “with the songs you’ve loved and new music I’m excited to share.” 

When asked to elaborate on the reasons for the cancellations, Fiona’s management did not respond.

A pop star’s progress

Melanie Fiona Hallim first entered the spotlight in 2002 as a member of the female R&B trio X-Quisite, which released a self-titled album on Warner Music Canada. She then worked briefly with Drake in the mid-2000s, before signing with U.S. label Universal Motown Records in 2007, and landing a management deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and a tour with Kanye West.

Her first two albums — 2009’s The Bridge, featuring the million-selling single “It Kills Me,” and 2011’s The MF Life, featuring the gold hit “4 a.m.” — drew critical acclaim and industry honours.

She won Grammys in 2012 for best traditional R&B performance and best R&B song for “Fool for You,” a duet with CeeLo Green, and nabbed a Juno for “Gone and Never Coming Back” (off The MF Life).

But when it came time to exercise her option to remain with Motown, she decided to go the independent route.

And just like that, she disappeared.

Fiona offers a simple explanation for the absence: life got in the way.

“I decided to shift gears a little bit,” Fiona said. “I decided to reshape the way I wanted to approach music. In that time, I also did a lot of self-work, mental health work — how to be healthy and sane in a crazy world. That’s been really instrumental, and it’s required focus and time.

A proposed third album in 2017 called Awake went unreleased when Fiona and her creative partner split over artistic differences. Then came what she called “a happy accident”: the birth of a son with Jared Cotter, a songwriter, record executive and Shaboozey co-manager.

That was followed by the pandemic, the birth of a daughter, and “stepping into motherhood and partnership and being a wife and building a life.”

“It all takes time and suddenly you look up and go, ‘Oh, it’s 13 years! Where did all that time go?’ It was just working through all these things and rebuilding and getting reinspired by life.”

Fiona admits that her decision to break from a major label and go independent was a risk.

“The beautiful thing is that I was able to achieve pretty significant success with the big machine and, even when I left the label, it was on great terms. It wasn’t a regretful situation.”

She says that her accomplishments — especially the two Grammys — gave her the confidence to tackle the unknown and take control of her career.

“It’s something some people spend their whole career working to achieve, and I was very fortunate to achieve it early,” she said.

“I wanted to see what else I could do, how else I could experience music. Going independent gives you a bit more freedom and you don’t feel so locked in sometimes.”

For Fiona, however, an even bigger blessing has been motherhood, something she worried might negatively impact her career.

“Motherhood — as an artist and a musician — I was initially so scared,” she said. “I was scared of the judgment and the seeds of shame that had been planted in so many women that say, ‘You’re going to be less attractive and nobody’s going to relate to you anymore.’ All these things that are so not true.

“Going through it in that season of my life really pushed me to say, ‘I don’t want to be a victim of this planted seed … I want to redefine what it looks like to be a mom in music. I want to speak out on the things that women and mothers in the industry are not really talking about or they’re afraid to say out loud.’ So I really opened myself up to share more personal sides of my life and it really helped grow my audience.”

During this time, she didn’t leave the music business completely, having played the occasional concert since 2022. She credits fan loyalty — and especially support from women — for inspiring her to gig after the birth of her son.

“Having other women around me who said, ‘Put the baby in a backpack and go out on tour — it doesn’t have to stop’ — they gave me the encouragement to do that.”

In 2022, Fiona began co-hosting a popular podcast about motherhood, The Mama’s Den, an endeavour she says that has been particularly rewarding.

“With Mama’s Den, we have guests who want to share their stories and it’s given me greater purpose to know that my voice is needed and (being) used … to bring entertainment, family and conversation to the community.”

Back in the groove

Fiona’s new EP, Say Yes, unsurprisingly follows on the same path as her two solo albums, with a stylistic diversity encompassing balladry on the title track, reggae on “I Choose You” and soulful pop on “Mona Lisa Smile.”

“I’ve always felt diversity in music, especially when it comes to R&B,” Fiona said. “R&B is the perfect complement to any genre, whether it’s country, hip-hop or pop — an R&B hook will take you somewhere else.

“Growing up in Toronto, which is the most diverse place ever, has influenced me to never feel like I was always doing one sound. I was influenced by so much and I wanted my projects to reflect that.

“The point of doing an EP after this long was to open up the palate again, to give people the perfect spring/summer vibe that pays homage to a sound that they’re familiar with, but also a direction that maybe they didn’t expect.”

Considering that pop and R&B tastes are often fickle, is the 41-year-old Fiona worried about ageism being a possible obstacle to her return?

“I don’t think about that at all,” she replied. “I think we’re actively changing the perspective of what it means to live a full life at all ages, and those thoughts of ageism and even the thought of women not being able to be mothers in entertainment or business, those are all very patriarchal things that we’re actively working at dispelling.

“When I look at Beyoncé — who is 43 years old and the hottest, most beautiful, most sought after, biggest touring artist right now — I think it’s a testament to evolution and how dynamic women can be.”

However, Larry LeBlanc, a Canadian Music Hall of Fame member and senior writer for entertainment news magazine CelebrityAccess, says that Fiona faces new challenges as she launches a return.

“The terrain has changed tremendously in the past five years,” he told the Star, adding that comebacks are particularly difficult in pop and dance music, because “there are so many artists vying for those spots.”

She’s also competing against performers who are 18 to 21, he said. “She’s not going to appeal necessarily to younger people, and older people don’t use social media and don’t go on a lot of different streaming sites.

“If you’re an older pop diva — unless you have one hell of a name and you have stickability and an audience — it is ultra-ultra-difficult.”

For her part, Fiona doesn’t sound too concerned.

“I place value in my talent,” she said. “I know I’m a really amazing singer and I will sing as long as I have breath. I feel very connected to my audience; I feel very current. I’m still healthy. I still feel ‘young.’ I feel exactly how I’m supposed to feel.

“I’m focused on being the best version I can be at any age that I am.”