Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.

In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.

Today, we're taking a look at Sienna Spiro, one of 2026's boldest new faces, and her song "Pure."

How did it get here?

A couple months ago I got this text from my dad:

Well-meaning, sure, but he had a question and I had an answer.

Do I stand by this assessment? Absolutely. But now I have a real reason to look into Spiro and her whole shtick. It feels like she popped up on the charts this year as yet another attempt to reverse-engineer a new-gen Amy Winehouse. But where exactly did she come from?

Sienna Spiro (pronounced spy-row) just turned 21 two weeks ago, making her the second subject of this column that's younger than me (see: Freya Skye), an almost-23-year-old. Spiro was born into one of relatively few Jewish families in the UK (Jews represent ~0.4% of the UK's population), but seemed to live a very charmed life due to her father being a world renowned jeweler who's designed pieces for UK royalty and several American celebrities like Beyoncé and Jay-Z. According to a profile of him in The Telegraph, Glenn Spiro's pieces have gone for up to eight figures.

Sienna began writing songs around age ten, inspired mostly by mid-century jazz and traditional pop music. At 16, she started posting videos of her singing covers of popular songs on TikTok.

She looks completely unrecognizable pre-label-induced makeover, but her vocal talent is undeniable.

When her social media presence began to take off, Spiro dropped out of sixth-form (UK equivalent of high school) to pursue music full-time. The consistency with which covers showcased her powerhouse vocals scored her a deal with Capitol Records (which is a subsidiary of Virgin Music Group, which itself is a subsidiary of UMG... isn't vertical integration so cool???), who put out the singles that would eventually coalesce into her debut EP SINK NOW, SWIM LATER in February of last year.

Given the chamber orchestral instrumentation of Sprio's debut single "NEED ME," it's very clear the label more than welcomed any Adele comparisons that would come her way. The fatal flaw – that to this day has not been remedied – is the lyricism rings completely hollow.

The EP didn't make much of a splash outside of the UK, and even there the reception was timid. Shortly after, Spiro was given the '60s glam makeover (complete with a sky-high bouffant) that hallmarks her appearance today, a honeypot for Winehouse comparisons. "I think I’d find it hard if I looked the same off and on [the job]. I don’t feel like I’m in a costume, but it feels far enough away that I feel like I can show up for anything,” she told Billboard.

The issue, though, is Winehouse had a lot to say – Spiro does not.

The singles that would eventually appear on Spiro's recent debut album Visitor gained her her first entries into the Hot 100. "Die On This Hill," her first entry, climbed to #19 from it's #100 debut at the start of this year. In collaboration with Israeli producer Omer Fedi (SZA, KATSEYE, Lil Nas X) and seasoned pop songwriter Michael Pollack (Maroon 5, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus), Spiro writes her own songs.

Most of Spiro's songs, at least currently, are these sweeping, grandiose ballads that act as a vehicle to show off her prodigious vocal chops more than anything else. The songs themselves are perfectly fine, but very easily blend into one another. They evoke the platonic feeling of sadness sonically, but don't really do enough lyrically to get me invested in whatever story is being told.

Both of her biggest hits thus far, "Die On This Hill" and "Great Expectation," tackle Spiro's misgivings and grief towards a relationship she stayed in longer than she should've. I can sympathize with the Faustian bargain of sacrificing your privacy for the sake of a good pop song, but Spiro's lyrics are frustratingly vague and heavily reliant on tired clichés: "I cried all the tears I could cry," "you wrote the book, I just took a page out," etc.

Visitor released this past July to lukewarm reviews, but has caught a wind of momentum from her Best New Artist win at the VMAs and her subsequent performance at the televised ceremony.

But with all that said...

Is the song any good?

"Pure" is an examination of Spiro's self perception as an artist, and her struggle to separate her persona as an artist from her real self and how that affects her relationships with her friends and family. This is a premise I'd be much more intrigued by if it were not a song on her debut album. This is a feeling that Spiro may be able to explore with a convictions stronger than "I don't know what this all means" or a conclusion more nuanced than "I just wanna feel special" with some more life/career experience under her belt.

The track provides a respite from an otherwise piano-heavy album, opting for soft acoustic guitar and a tasteful addition of strings around the song's climax. It's a completely serviceable ballad, just not one I would ever find myself vying to return to.

Where is it going?

Spiro very clearly has big ambitions. An entire portion of her recent Billboard profile discusses her drive to improve as a pianist. She wants to write a song for a James Bond movie and open up a jazz club. I don't doubt that these ambitions are genuine, and they're certainly well within her reach.

While doing research for this, I found a Forbes article that argues she could very well snatch the Best New Artist Grammy out from under Ella Langley. Would I find that to be a particularly just outcome? No, certainly not, but it's not one I'd be particularly surprised by. By and large, this is the same Recording Academy voting body that awarded the similarly classy UK hitmaker Olivia Dean the honor last year, and to jazz underdog Samara Joy in 2024.

I hope with age and more life experience and hours behind the piano, Spiro is able to put out something resembling the critic-awing, musically-dense record that she very clearly desires to have her name behind; she has nothing but time. But until that happens, the shadow of her influences will continue to loom in front of her.