Talay Riley Birth Chart: The Cancer Stellium Behind the Songwriter's Voice
The Cancer Sun, Mercury, and Jupiter stellium behind Talay Riley's hits for H.E.R., Britney Spears, and Dua Lipa, plus the chart wiring that made him the songwriter other artists called when a lyric had to land.
Photo: SerenAstro · house
By Sera Vane·June 9, 2026AI-assisted, editor-reviewed
You probably know 'Lights On' without ever knowing who built it: H.E.R.'s spare, aching opener, the track that launched her Grammy debut, drafted by a London-born songwriter named Talay Riley. He was stabbed and killed in Silvertown, East London on June 5, 2026, at 35. His birth chart is the blueprint of an invisible craftsman, with three personal placements stacked in Cancer (Sun, Mercury, Jupiter) that read like a wiring diagram for the kind of lyric that lands in a stranger's chest as if it came from their own diary.
Jupiter at 25°42' Cancer conjunct natal Mercury (orb 1.21°)
Sources
Wikipedia (FreeBMD citation), Rolling Stone obituary
The Cancer Stellium at the Center
Start with the obvious. Talay Riley's chart carries a Cancer stellium, the technical name for three or more planets piled into a single sign. His Sun sits at 17°56' Cancer, Jupiter at 21°25', and Mercury at 26°55'. Three personal placements, all in the sign that feels its way through the world before it thinks. Cancer wires for emotional memory, the kind that can recall the exact pitch of a slammed door from a decade ago. With Sun and Jupiter only a few degrees apart, the chart pattern fits a person who pours that emotional bandwidth outward, freely, in service of other people's feelings. Ariana Grande's chart carries a different Cancer Mercury wiring, more performer than ghostwriter, but the same gift for sounding like the listener already wrote the song.
The Square That Wouldn't Let a Hook Go
Now overlay the aspect that gave the stellium its bite. Mercury at 26°55' Cancer presses against Mars at 28°32' Aries in a tight square, the ninety-degree angle that produces grit in a chart instead of flow. Mercury is the writing brain. Mars is the urge to attack. Drop them at right angles inside one chart, and what you get is the songwriter who can't stop revising. Who rewrites the bridge at 2am because the line isn't yet doing the thing. Who finishes a session, then opens the file again on the cab ride home. Riley wrote 'Oopsy Daisy' for Chipmunk at 17, a UK number one. The craft engine started young, and Cancer Mercury crossed with Aries Mars sharpens that engine until it nearly bleeds.
The Aquarius Moon and the Distance He Needed
Move out from the Cancer pile and the chart cools sharply. The Moon sits at 15°45' Aquarius, the sign that processes feeling at arm's length and converts it into theory. Then add the second square in this chart: Pluto at 15°02' Scorpio forms a near-exact friction angle to that Moon, less than a degree from precise. The pattern fits a person whose emotional bandwidth ran very deep but stayed mostly out of sight, channeled into songs that other artists then sang aloud. His brother Scribz Riley told the public their last conversation was about staying positive and everything they still had left to do. That's the Aquarius Moon talking, the one that holds intensity behind a steady frame. The cost of that Moon-Pluto signature is real: the people closest to a chart like this often don't get to see the bottom of it until it's too late to ask.
The Jupiter-Saturn Opposition Underneath the Pop Hit
The pop machine doesn't run on feeling alone. It runs on the tension between a great hook and the discipline to ship it on time, on budget, on brand. Riley's chart pictures that tension exactly. Jupiter at 21°25' Cancer faces off against Saturn at 22°20' Capricorn in an opposition, that 180-degree mirror aspect where two planets stand at opposite ends of the zodiac and force a negotiation between them, with less than one degree between them and exact.
Jupiter wants expansion, generosity, the lyric that opens the listener up. Saturn wants the verse to come in on the count, the hook on the chorus, the master delivered Monday. The chart pattern fits a writer who could be lush and on time. Ringo Starr's Cancer Sun reads through a different rhythm and a different generation, but the same shadow holds across both charts: Cancer makes the song feel, Capricorn makes the song land on its mark.
What Happened in Silvertown
On Friday, June 5, 2026, paramedics were called to the garden of a residential property on Pankhurst Avenue in Silvertown, East London. Talay Riley was found with stab wounds and pronounced dead at the scene. The Metropolitan Police later arrested three people on suspicion of murder: a 24-year-old man, a 27-year-old man, and a 25-year-old woman. None of the three has been publicly named as of June 8, 2026. Riley's brother, the producer Scribz Riley, confirmed the death on social media. Industry tributes came in from Stormzy, Khalid, Kehlani, and Ella Mai. The rapper Chip wrote: 'You ain't deserve to go out like that fam, fly high bro. Your pen will live forever.'
To anyone outside the songwriting credit page, the names below his might surprise. 'Oopsy Daisy' for Chipmunk hit number one in the UK in 2009; Riley drafted it at 17. 'Clumsy' lived on Britney Spears's Glory in 2016. 'Last Dance' was on Dua Lipa's self-titled debut the same year. 'Lights On' opened H.E.R.'s 2017 self-titled debut, the record that won Best R&B Album at the 2019 Grammys. The credits page also lists Usher, Jason Derulo, Khalid, Ella Mai, Kehlani, FLO, Ellie Goulding, Iggy Azalea, Tinie Tempah, and Zendaya. A 17-year career hidden inside other people's voices.
The Transit Now Bringing the Catalog Forward
Look at the sky in the week this catalog is being re-listened to. Transiting Jupiter at 25°42' Cancer is now applying to a conjunction with natal Mercury at 26°55' Cancer, within a degree and change of the exact same-sign alignment that astrologers call a planetary fusion. Jupiter expands what it touches. Mercury is the planet of language, voice, and the written word. The chart pattern fits the kind of posthumous Jupiter pass that pulls a writer's catalog into wider public attention than the writer himself ever stood inside. None of that suggests the chart caused anything. It suggests the timing of who hears him now is itself a kind of cosmic punctuation, the period at the end of a sentence that was always going to outlive the person who wrote it.
What This Chart Asks Us to See
There's a temptation, every time a public figure dies suddenly, to retrofit the chart against the event. Don't. Riley's chart is not the chart of how he died. It's the chart of how he wrote. Cancer wires him to feel a line before he can write it. Mercury Cancer wires him to think through that feeling rather than past it. Jupiter Cancer presses his generosity into other people's songs instead of his own face on the cover. The Mars-Mercury square keeps him rewriting until the hook lands. Tom Cruise's Cancer Sun under that same Capricorn Saturn axis sits in a different career altogether, but the chart wiring is the same recipe: a feeling-first instinct disciplined by structure. The tragedy is that his name was finally about to catch up to his catalog. The catalog will catch up now without him.
For entertainment and self-reflection purposes. Not predictive and not a substitute for professional advice.
What is Talay Riley's zodiac sign?
Talay Riley was a Cancer Sun, born July 10, 1990, in London. His chart also held Mercury and Jupiter in Cancer, forming a three-planet Cancer stellium that anchored his songwriting voice. Cancer is the cardinal water sign associated with emotional memory and instinctive connection, the wiring that lets a lyric sound like it came from someone else's diary.
What hit songs did Talay Riley co-write?
Talay Riley co-wrote 'Oopsy Daisy' for Chipmunk, the UK number-one single he drafted at age 17. His later credits include 'Clumsy' on Britney Spears's Glory, 'Last Dance' on Dua Lipa's self-titled debut, and 'Lights On' on H.E.R.'s Grammy-winning 2017 album. He also worked with Usher, Khalid, Kehlani, Zendaya, Jason Derulo, and Ella Mai.
What does a Cancer stellium mean in astrology?
A stellium is three or more planets crowded into one sign, and a Cancer stellium concentrates that energy into the cardinal water sign of feeling, family, and emotional memory. People with this pattern often build their public identity around caretaking, songwriting, hospitality, or any work that translates private feeling into something the rest of us can use.
How does a Mercury square Mars aspect show up in a songwriter?
Mercury square Mars produces a writing brain that fights with itself, in a productive way. The mind keeps revising past the point most people would stop. In a songwriter, this often expresses as obsessive lyric edits, hooks rewritten on instinct, and a willingness to argue down a melody until it physically feels right in the room.
