Anna Ash (Floodlights Anniversary) & Lila Forde (Album Release)

Anna Ash (Floodlights Anniversary) & Lila Forde (Album Release)

With a voice steeped in jazz, soul, folk, and old-school American songcraft, the Seattle-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter has always carried a deep sense of self through her music. But on Life Can Still Be Sweet, her sophomore album, that self comes into fuller focus: A little older, a little wiser, and more firmly in command of the world she’s building. Warm, whimsical, and full of growing pains, the record captures Forde in the thick of her twenties – learning lessons, finding her people, and holding onto beauty even when life gets hard.

“I think I have a unique voice – not just my literal voice, but my proverbial voice,” Forde says. “In this day and age, and in this industry, there’s a lot of trend following, and there’s a lot of homogeny. I’m just really trying to be my own artist.”

That individuality has been there from the beginning. Her 2025 debut album Vessel introduced her sound with grace and intention. Arriving after Forde’s Top 5 run on Season 24 of The Voice, Vessel affirmed what had already been true: “I want to be a vessel for the music,” she said at the time. “I’m here to serve it.”

Life Can Still Be Sweet is the sound of that next Lila arriving in real time. Where Vessel was recorded before The Voice and released after a long gestation, this new record feels present in her hands – immediate, timely, and deeply connected to the life she’s living now.

Since releasing Vessel, Forde’s world has “exploded like a garden blooming,” full of new friendships and musical possibilities. Unlike her debut, Life Can Still Be Sweet came together through a wider constellation of players and co-writers – but for all its moving parts, it is unmistakably Forde’s record.

The album glows with Laurel Canyon warmth, old-school soul, country twang, jazz-rooted phrasing, Hammond organ, three-part harmonies, and live-band richness – songs made by real people in rooms together, shaped by chemistry, instinct, and the trust that comes from playing night after night.

Forde began writing “Life Can Still Be Sweet” while she was on The Voice, stuck in hotel rooms in Burbank, singing the same songs over and over, her creative bandwidth stretched thin. The rest came later, but the feeling stayed the same – a reminder that even inside chaos, life can still be “the most delicious thing.”

That phrase holds even deeper meaning in the context of Forde’s family. Her mother, a classical pianist, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s three years ago – a reality that has reshaped the past few years of Forde’s life and found its way into the emotional core of the album. “Life for her is so different now, and it’s so challenging,” Forde reflects. “And yet, she said to me, life can still be sweet, you know? You walk the dog, you eat a delicious meal. She comes to my concerts and my shows.”

From “Molly,” the album’s aching love song to her mother, to the lighter, stranger, funnier edges of growing up, Life Can Still Be Sweet lets each lesson take its own shape. For Forde, music becomes a series of snapshots – living documents of who she was, who she is, and who she is becoming.

Right now, that becoming feels golden. Forde describes this chapter as her “Roaring Twenties,” a sweet, scrappy era of development before everything gets bigger, heavier, and more complicated. “I know I’m going to look back at this point in my life and recognize it as a really sweet era of development,” she says. “I’m learning the lessons that will cement me into womanhood.”

Life Can Still Be Sweet is full of those lessons: Love should lift you, not drag you uphill. Home is a place full of ghosts, stories, and characters. Friendship can break your heart. Family illness can change everything without taking away beauty. “I hope that listeners can see the world in that way,” Forde smiles. “That even when the walls are caving in, everything’s crashing down. …