Up next in 10
NIKI on 'Nicole', her lost YouTube archive and being inspired by Taylor Swift
29K views
Feb 9, 2025
Indonesian singer-songwriter NIKI – aka Niki Zefanya – got her start online, then wiped the slate clean when she exploded on the big stage. Now on second album ‘Nicole’, she is finding her way back to her own beginning. In this interview, NIKI talks about the journey back into her past, to breathe new life into her much-loved "archive". Read the full profile and see exclusive NIKI photos at https://www.thefortyfive.com Follow us on IG: https://www.instagram.com/the_forty_five/ Subscribe to our channel for more in-depth conversations with our favourite artists
View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music] hi i'm cordelia for the 45 and today we
0:07
are absolutely delighted to be chatting with the incredible singer-songwriter and recording artist mickey
0:15
who we're so glad to have with us thank you for your time um how are you nikki i'm good i am in jakarta
0:22
uh just spending some time with family so it's been great you've had a really
0:27
exciting and busy couple of months in the lead up to now you played coachella you then dropped the news that you'll be
0:34
putting out a very highly anticipated new album and you shared a couple of the tracks with us
0:39
so how has that all been up till now it has been a whirlwind i can't lie uh
0:46
yeah i think i i texted um my manager that i was
0:51
thinking of sort of putting this together i don't think that was a full year ago i think it was probably like
0:57
eight months ago um so it has been really jam-packed and um
1:03
yeah yeah no it's been it's been so great though i i love i personally love being um the feeling of being busy
1:10
it must feel especially special given that you're being busy doing
1:15
sort of like completing the circle on a really long-standing body of work um
1:21
which i'd love to get into now your upcoming sophomore album nicole
1:27
so i have to say when the announcement came from you that you were dropping this um my heart just like left out of
1:33
my chest and if if you like comb through the thousands of comments under that you will see mine
1:40
in there being like oh my god because i never comment on like you know artist stuff i was just like i had to i
1:46
had to because this means so much to those of us who have been your fans since like you had a
1:52
youtube channel and who have like we've followed you into this amazing new career and
1:57
i think it's just very beautiful and gratifying for people like me and people who like have followed you like
2:04
me to see you come back now from where you are in life and where you are in your career and i think also for the
2:10
fans who don't know you from then it'll be just a really beautiful new door that you're opening for them to
2:16
get to know you in like actually quite a fundamental way even though it'll be quite new what was it like when you decided that you would do this and then
2:23
what what does it mean now to be able to do it so i think it it started with just sort
2:28
of um sitting with myself and sort of like my body of work in front of me
2:34
during the pandemic um yeah throughout lockdown i was just kind of in a very reflective
2:40
uh space uh internally i think and i was just kind of
2:46
evaluating every nook and cranny of my life just for sure
2:52
uh music included obviously um and so i think i i went on this like deep dive of my old youtube stuff
3:00
because i archived all the videos i took them down when i started nikki as sort of this like rebranding
3:06
uh move yeah and i realized i still very much resonate with all these songs and
3:12
yeah i was honestly like quite impressed with my younger self
3:18
um i i definitely feel like i i've lost some brain cells since um and dumbed
3:24
down yeah i was just so um
3:29
i was just sort of fascinated with how passionate i was about kind of like
3:35
writing and just how i wrote was so was so completely different anyway all that to say um
3:40
yeah i just felt very inspired obviously that so that sort of like planted the seed of huh maybe one day one day i
3:47
don't know when but someday and then when taylor's version sort of like started popping off and i was like oh
3:53
[Music] this works yeah yeah it started turning and i think like when
4:00
she put out all too well um the 10 minute version obviously it sort of like
4:05
evoked this very familiar yet unfamiliar feeling in me it felt like
4:10
i was listening to a song that i have always known but also at the same time never heard before
4:18
because it's a new version um and so it's just sort of this like strange uh rooted in the past but also moving
4:25
forward into the future kind of like the hybrid feeling and i was like oh that
4:31
must be such an i don't know it was such an interesting feeling for me as an as a listener and so i
4:37
on a whim i sort of was just like can we get a studio day i just kind of wanted to like lay down a vocal
4:44
and uh just a guitar like an acoustic guitar track of all my old songs and we'll just go from there
4:49
i didn't even have the thought of like let's make an album it was just kind of like i feel inspired right now so i'm
4:55
going to do that for myself um and then here we are
5:00
that's amazing that's amazing yeah um and i think so that's a couple of things
5:07
that i just want to say which is like yes the impressiveness of young nicole
5:13
um i i think you mentioned in your announcement you were like young nicole's music deserved to be
5:19
heard and to be like platformed with you now and i think it's so meaningful because listening
5:26
back i'd love to discuss your like your take on your songwriting back then um
5:31
how like cerebral it was and really like literary almost i don't know if any of
5:37
that resonates the descriptions where you were super like the the language was
5:43
super precise and really like analytical um and i just wondered you know
5:49
do you feel like your songwriting has changed since then and in what ways and now getting to like listen back how do
5:55
you feel about it all yeah no this is a great question
6:00
you know even the way that album came together was really it was a process you know i didn't
6:06
unlike moon child i didn't really have a set track list i sort of was like let's see what this evolves into and so now
6:13
the final structure is half of the first half uh is comprised of like all of these
6:19
unheard news archive songs and so a lot of those the the writing style of the
6:25
in the first half i feel like differs quite a bit from the second half which is comprised of old songs um i think
6:32
back then like i it was very metaphorical and it was very
6:39
imagery heavy and i i was absolutely just like a total nerd um
6:45
in you know my english literature class that was like my favorite subject and uh i was very much
6:51
um sort of like working my writing muscle sort of every day at school um yeah and so i kind of transferred onto
6:59
my music as well and i was reading so much so much poetry and analyzing poetry
7:05
and all this stuff and uh definitely like have not been as diligent about that nowadays
7:13
yeah i think my vocabulary back then was very rich and vast but i will say now as a 23
7:19
year old i sort of like look back on my style of songwriting back then yeah and and i sort it's like sort of
7:26
like chuckle fondly at it yeah because i think it's sort of like it errors on the side of like
7:32
innocent pretentiousness where it's just like you're 17 and you
7:39
don't know any better and you know you think the world is literally going to end um
7:44
because of this heartbreak unless you're writing uh you know consequently you're writing this way
7:50
and um yeah so i i think now i am very much it's a much more blunt approach i think
7:58
back then like uh the the melodies were sort of like
8:03
blanketed under this not facade but sort of just like a lot of metaphors right and then now i'm just
8:10
like you're ugly when you cry yeah
8:16
i i'm just a lot more brutally honest now i think um not that i wasn't then it was just kind of like a different kind
8:21
of honesty which is really cool i really like the the juxtaposition i think of the first half in the second half
8:27
writing-wise and yet at the same time it still feels very much me yeah for sure i was i wanted to ask you
8:35
about like that divide so obviously the second half is um stuff that um people will be a little
8:41
bit more familiar with that's like floating around out there having been published on youtube in some form before
8:47
and the first the first half is i think you've mentioned some of it is actually still old but just
8:53
unreleased is any of it um is any of it like you wrote it now and sort of
8:59
inspired by that universe yeah so some of it um the first half is an interesting mix of archived songs and
9:08
new songs that i wrote about that era so yeah it's definitely a blend of both
9:15
yeah that's incredible so i one of my questions was how do you feel
9:20
like when you went back to revisit those old songs what did you bring from current nikki um into those and maybe
9:27
when you were writing your current songs what did you bring from old nicole into it i think i i tried to um
9:36
i i truly like to tap back tap back into that vocab yeah definitely i try to
9:42
bring the emotion of it obviously but i think like writing retrospectively is always
9:49
i i hate to use this word i hate it because i know i'm 23 and i know like all the older people
9:55
but i feel like there's this like mature
10:01
sort of like a more mature disconnection from you know like whatever it was you were experiencing you know what i mean
10:07
and so like writing retrospectively i feel like i felt i was able to sort of like dis
10:14
write in a more like honest less melodramatic way if that makes sense i
10:21
think the first half um is a lot less melodramatic in my opinion
10:26
that's just my personal opinion um and it could totally strike others in a completely different or the opposite way
10:32
but um yeah i think i just tried to embody sort of like the era and kind of
10:39
what it represented for me what it symbolized without writing phrases like sonora soirees
10:50
no i know i i i have a special place in my heart for like those like to this day i still i
10:57
love the fact that i wrote that it's just like i would i would never write that now you know what i mean
11:03
um but i'm glad that i wrote that then yeah you know what the the thing that
11:09
made me like now that we get this really beautiful opportunity to listen to like the various halves or the various parts
11:17
of your artistry together and sort of like interacting with each other now is
11:22
you get this sense of like young nikki was writing super like precociously you know that lyric that
11:28
taylor swift lyric it's like how can a person know everything at 18 but nothing yeah
11:34
and it's like you write like you know you you just have this like command of the universe
11:40
in your bedroom um and obviously now you know so much more but you go
11:46
like now you write more simplistically and more like um directly um so yeah it's just great that now
11:53
you've actually presented that juxtaposition to people um and i wondered
11:59
you know that the way this sounds to a listener is almost like some you hear someone going back to revisit their old
12:04
journal entries or their old old writing um did you learn anything
12:10
new about yourself back then or about yourself now like any links that you've been able to make yeah um
12:18
in track four i mentioned that i'm a an anya type for aquarius
12:25
i remember that yeah i think like um you know i i really i remember there i
12:31
had a phase where i was like so obsessed with the enneagram uh when i was like when i was 18 around the area the same
12:37
era that i was writing like oceans and engines and all these things um and then i sort of left that behind and then
12:43
recently i sort of like read my type profile again and i was like huh so i haven't changed
12:52
but i think like i what i learned like just sort of like revisiting everything about myself um
12:59
it's just i i love to feel like i i truly don't mind
13:04
it you know and i i have some of my variable friends are the complete opposite where they just like i don't we
13:10
don't like i don't understand how you could if you're sad like yeah
13:15
focus on not being sad and i'm like no it's the best part is feeling that like the you
13:23
know just feeling the gravity of how sad you are how angry you are so anyway all that to say like i think i just i'm
13:29
somebody that doesn't mind feeling emotions and um actually quite enjoy it
13:35
and i i find like that i um my aliveness i guess comes from
13:41
feeling and uh i think that i try to sort of like
13:47
or i guess i guess naturally consequently it sort of translates in my writing i hope
13:53
for sure for sure yeah lately i have been watching the oceans and engines music video um and i
13:59
know i know i'll cry especially when um like the hands start and i already
14:05
start crying and i'm like i love it like i'm literally like inject it like let me do it again like let's run it back for
14:11
sure oh my god i i'm the same way i appreciate that
14:16
no absolutely so thank you for giving me so much so much like so many ways into that like whether it's this or lala lost
14:23
you when i had my first breakup um yeah like i was like oh
14:29
um it just it's so important the work that you do to like give people this oh
14:34
my god vessel to cry with um so that's
14:39
my purpose in life is just to make people cry i wondered so this album is obviously like you mentioned taylor's uh
14:46
the from the vault taylor's version um so this album is obviously kind of like a calling back to that um old body of
14:55
work and instinctively it's sort of a different direction for you
15:01
right up until now but also 88 rising which is not intuitively
15:06
um singer songwriter acoustic focused um maybe also because it's like very
15:13
very focused on getting asian representation and visibility into these traditionally exclusive spaces like
15:18
hip-hop and rap and um r b and it did seem like at the beginning of your debut with them it was really r b
15:26
focused so what has it how does it feel now with you and also 88 rising to be
15:31
ready to take this sort of pivot what's so great about
15:37
being in 88 rising or within it i guess is that um i have always felt like i had
15:45
agency over what i wanted to do um right and i always felt like i was at liberty to
15:52
decide where i wanted to drive the ship and um
15:57
yeah sean uh ceo slash my manager uh has always sort of been
16:03
my biggest cheerleader i think uh at the start of like my career i really
16:09
i was i was definitely um it was sort of like my coming of age i
16:15
think you know i was writing all of these folk in the singer songwriter songs on youtube as a high schooler and
16:21
then boom i graduated high school and i broke up with somebody uh like you know
16:27
my my high school first love and i just i wanted everything to rebrand as you do when
16:32
you're 18. right and so i went the opposite direction which is
16:38
still by the way like r b was also what i grew up with it truly was yeah uh
16:44
that was sort of like my first exposure to music so i like through my mother and so um
16:49
yeah i think i always carried sensibilities from both kind of like genres or
16:56
uh spectrums and ends of the spectrum i guess and uh i decided to sort of lean into r b
17:03
because i wanted to um rebrand and i think that for the past five years i have just sort of
17:09
it's so great and i feel so blessed because i don't think a lot of artists get to say this but i really like ada
17:14
rising just like allowed me to grow in my music and supported me through it um
17:22
throughout the yeah throughout the past five years i've just i've never had anyone be like
17:28
really like are you sure you know they're just like yeah do do you and um
17:33
i think i've just utilized the past a few years to sort of figure out my sound
17:40
and um i i obviously i don't want to speak too soon because again like we're all ever
17:46
evolving me especially like i just am such a sucker for every genre ever um
17:52
i really do feel like i that if i were to describe my sound this
17:58
record is it um i think i've just really found this like a sweet spot and also just because i
18:06
um was so so so deeply involved in the production of this record like the
18:11
actual instrumentation and building each song um yeah it i just have learned so much and
18:17
grown so much as a producer as well which i think um more so than any other record before
18:23
yeah incredible that's that is like hard for you to say because you were already such a capable
18:28
producer from the beginning like um i remember when all of your first few songs came out with 88 rising they were
18:35
either like one half produced by you or like see you never and i like you were pretty much your production too
18:43
um yeah yeah so so on that i'd love to now get into talking about some of the tracks and the
18:49
choices that i've made on them some of these lyrics were just like i was just listening to them on the train and i was
18:54
like because some of them were just like they were like hitting like on um oceans and
18:59
engines first of all um the production obviously you've had the
19:04
opportunity to kind of amplify it or like build it up from like a stem that you laid down when you were
19:11
younger so i i felt like it was a lot deeper and a lot a lot more kind of rich um the way that
19:18
you've done the sound on this one so talk to me about what time you were trying to set like obviously it started
19:24
off acoustic with the guitar but it was like almost phoebe bridger's like at the beginning um
19:31
yeah no that's that's the highest compliment i'm a huge time of the falls through and through i
19:37
love phoebe um yeah i think you know well first of all just completely like logistically and
19:44
transparently i don't have any of the original stems from all of my videos
19:49
you just did it fresh yeah yeah i know those are all gone with the wind along with my um 2011
19:57
macbook um yeah i restarted everything and i also
20:02
was just um i that that's how i would have wanted to that's how i wanted to do it anyway was to restart everything and that's where
20:08
my heart was and how i felt inspired to do it um yeah you know oceans and engines was really interesting because
20:15
that was one of the remember how i told you at the start of this interview that i decided to go randomly on a i don't
20:22
know wednesday night or something into the studio and just record a vocal and a guitar track so oceans and enemies was
20:28
one of those songs um that i recorded that night where it's just the vocal and me playing acoustic
20:35
and then i'm just gonna produce around that um and so i sat with that demo for a long
20:41
time and then i sent it to jay gabriel who produced um yeah who produced it with me
20:47
and it was like this is great but i i just i don't hear
20:53
i i hear something else and then i was like but i also hear something else so i started with the bones of the of of the
21:00
what you hear now um yeah you know with this drum pattern and then he actually made the decision
21:06
to change it to be an electric guitar instead of an
21:11
acoustic guitar oh yeah i was like that's the game changer
21:17
that's it that's it you know what was so funny is i was um i was at
21:23
his house and we were working on oceans and engines we had designated that day and i was just so i think i was jet
21:29
lagged or sleepy or something i don't know but i was very very sleepy and i fell asleep
21:34
and i woke up like three hours later it was too long of a nap and the song was
21:39
done and he was just like he was like you want to listen i was like you're done he's like yeah
21:45
i was like okay so then i listened to it and i i literally
21:50
sobbed because i was like i have zero notes this is it like this right here
21:56
yeah and that's very rare for me like i am not a zero notes kind of person um
22:02
so yeah right after i woke up from my magical miraculous snap and it was done
22:08
um so yeah well that must so on that first listen it's literally like
22:14
hearing it for the first time living again like with a second life right what you know right
22:20
so how does it feel hearing your own words but like in a modern context or like today
22:26
yeah i i feel you know because when i was listening to uh
22:32
the the fearless taylor's version and then uh the fearless record and also
22:37
read i just i felt very emotional as a long time swift you know
22:42
i was like oh my goodness like all of these songs but her voice has matured she's in her 30s
22:49
and um yeah as a listener i was just so i listening
22:54
back to my own re-recorded uh songs i think i i felt like a fraction of what i
23:01
felt for taylor because obviously that self-filter of like yeah
23:06
i don't know but i definitely yeah i was it was very an emotional
23:12
experience because i think i just sort of had this flash of like 17 year old me
23:17
um who probably would have like done backflips just sort of like listening to this production um
23:24
yeah yeah i also had this like realization that like man when i was 17
23:30
i had no idea how to produce a song and then here we are like you know uh five
23:35
years later well i mean it was very it was very diy for you like i think yeah you had a very
23:41
distinctive style already back then where especially like coupled with the fact that you're also kind of your own video producer i remembered very clearly
23:48
you would have like
23:58
and also just a very like you had a style um and you know you had to like set up your guitar at home and
24:05
like light light the fairy lights that's crazy you know all of this i'm shocked
24:12
um and it's it's just nice that like over the years people have like preserved that um
24:18
online so we can like revisit um i wanted to talk to you about high
24:24
school in jakarta um which i think is one of those like if you know you know you know kind of songs
24:30
because it's a very specific it's a very specific memory that you're
24:36
describing and i think maybe other people who grew up in asia like me
24:41
um may relate to parts of it but it's like super the specificity of it actually
24:47
makes it quite universal in terms of what you're describing so like tell me tell me what story you're
24:52
telling on that because it's like it's kind of brutal it's kind of like cutthroat but also like loving
24:59
yeah so that that's a that's the quintessential example of uh a song i
25:05
wrote rex perspective retrospectively and i wrote that more recently um
25:12
about that era and so i think uh it honestly started the inception of the
25:19
idea was truly just like i had this thought that i wanted to have a song where i name dropped all of my best
25:25
friends because i i just love that ariana did that on thank you next and i was like i want a
25:31
song like that with all of my friends that's fun um you know and so yeah it started with that and then it
25:38
just sort of like naturally evolved into kind of being this like lament to my high school first love about
25:44
our uh story i think and it kind of like narrates it from the start uh
25:51
to the end because that line about um the vespa line yeah
25:57
like everything you hear on this song is a true story like none of the lyrics
26:03
um none of the lyrics were made up and so wow yeah i really did you know i
26:08
remember i sort of like revisited that feeling of being 15 and just like crushing so hard on
26:15
someone and then seeing that take somebody else home on their vespa and just you know
26:20
um yeah so it felt very uh nostalgic and just
26:27
true like at the end of writing that it felt like i had scratched an itch in my brain
26:34
that i didn't know it if that makes sense you went back in time to scratch
26:40
it as well yeah and it was done and like all of the words came out and it's sort of like i was able to kind of like close
26:47
that i mean not that chapter necessarily but just like that portion of the story
26:53
um it was one of those very like gratifying satisfying songwriting experiences and
26:59
it was done very quickly um so yeah that story was just about
27:05
me in high school crushing on someone and then ending up with them and then not ending up with them
27:12
beautiful and i think the lyrical tone that you strike on all of these is
27:18
like really micro like you're going into each moment and really like fleshing out a really clear
27:24
picture i wanted to kind of get your um take on how what kind of head space were you in when
27:30
you wrote back burner and facebook friends um which are my favorites i
27:36
think they're incredible um they're so sharp they're so like
27:41
like you catch everything that you want to say and it like i think it shows that art of like articulating
27:48
the thing that you want to explain you just like when you write it properly and nail what you're trying to say it's just
27:55
so effective that's so funny because those are two of my favorites too although honestly i can't lie like every single one of them are my favorites yeah
28:02
but uh yeah back so it's interesting that you chose those two because facebook friends was an
28:08
archived song and back really yeah facebook friends was archived i wrote that you know you know what's
28:13
funny is facebook friends was the very last nicole's bagna video that i never
28:19
published it was like right there it had been uploaded and i all i had to do was hit publish and i didn't duke oh my gosh
28:27
i can't remember why i think i truly was just like i'm gonna publish this when i get home and then i just never did
28:34
and so that was the last nicole's fondest video before i debuted as nikki so wild um
28:42
and so yeah with facebook friends obviously that was i
28:48
wrote that while everything was still fresh we had just broken up and um
28:53
yeah i i really love that song it sounds completely different to what it uh originally sounded like um
29:01
and then back burner is a newer one that i wrote retrospectively as well
29:06
um that one i feel like again has sort of this like detachedness
29:13
to it if that makes sense but yeah um you know it's not as in the moment but
29:18
like uh i i i love it that's my favorite one um or one of my favorite ones and i
29:24
think like with back burner it's so funny because i was around one
29:29
of my friends that was going through that exact situation and it sort of like triggered all of these old memories of
29:35
like oh like not being prioritized by someone that you want to be prioritized by yeah
29:41
and so i think sort of like reliving that experience just
29:46
vicariously by witnessing sort of like what my friend was going through um burner sort of like just came out really
29:52
naturally as well and um that's such a like taylor swift writing about abigail on 15
29:59
type of vibe yeah exactly i'm going to write this for you
30:04
um yeah yeah i know it definitely was a mixture of like writing it about sort of
30:10
cause i inspired by loosely inspired by her but also i wrote it definitely for myself and um
30:16
yeah that was inspired by college when i when i went off to college i remember just um
30:23
cursing whenever google iris by the google dolls would come on uh my spotify
30:29
my spotify shuffle i would just be so upset i'm just like skipping so angry
30:35
um because that was our song and uh yeah classic i absolutely had to shout out
30:40
the goo goo dolls because they were pretty formative in uh sort of like my first love
30:47
yeah no but it's it's so when you do that it like really takes us all back to that time because you know
30:53
when you hear that you're immediately like oh i know exactly where i am how i feel etc on the subject of publishing uh
31:00
facebook friends as your last last video um i'd love to talk about the
31:06
the way where you were in your life when you like were building your youtube channel and how you made it up because it was such a like rich time on youtube
31:13
where like i i remember gaining so much inspiration from people like you and dodie and
31:19
everybody in that yeah every like you when when i would like see you and dodie talk to each other i'd be like whoa whoa
31:26
whoa this is like kind of a crossover um it was just like and like just that
31:33
being a young girl online at that time i think is is something that i'd love to get your like experience of because
31:40
obviously you were active and doing things and really building that culture um and it was so like out of your
31:46
bedroom um what you know we what were you kind of doing it like on weeknights weekdays how
31:53
are you doing this yeah i i definitely like did not have a
31:58
schedule it was just whenever i felt inspired and i think that's um
32:03
interestingly like that's also how i am inspired by my past self was whenever it's like whenever i just felt this like
32:10
tiny stroke of like inspiration i would just go do it you know which is like not at all
32:17
my style now i think i sort of would sit on things um i was definitely just a very
32:23
like i mean i think that era was just so i don't know like inspiring youtube
32:29
was very different culturally i think um but just sort of like the content that was being made was so niche and
32:37
uh specific to that time and i i just was so
32:42
i wanted to be a part of it you know and um i felt like that was
32:48
how i sort of expressed and developed my individuality as well because you know i went to a christian private school
32:55
everybody uh or uniforms nobody was allowed to you know dye their hair have
33:01
piercings or whatever just um you know just your stereotypical ways of
33:06
expressing yourself was was not allowed and i think music was sort of that
33:12
way for me uh to do so i was just truly just interested in in that and in
33:19
writing and so um youtube that that era of youtube truly just sort of opened the floodgates
33:25
of inspiration and just sort of seeing other you know other creators my age from all
33:33
over the world and like i could connect with them because all i had to do was just send them a
33:38
message or just drop a comment on their youtube or their video and they would respond and it just felt
33:45
um i think that was the first time where my little jakarta bubble started to feel
33:50
like it was growing a little and i i sort of had my first taste of um
33:56
just kind of uh the world outside of my little
34:01
you know room even though i know that kind of sounds like an like a paradox or you know an oxymoron because i was in my
34:08
room while i was doing all this but um it definitely made my world feel bigger and i think uh
34:14
it just sort of um yeah was was a very formative
34:20
experience i think um and i wouldn't take it back obviously because otherwise
34:25
we wouldn't have nicole for sure um and like how
34:32
how was it received when you would like go to school and obviously you'd have posted something the night before or like with your family
34:38
what was it like bridging that you know what's so funny is that i'm realizing now that you're asking me because no one's ever asked me that before is
34:44
nobody talked about it like no one acknowledged it and i think it was aware of it
34:50
they were aware of it oh yeah there was absolutely an awareness and i i know that they spoke about it like people
34:56
spoke about it within themselves but never to me um like even in my family it would just be
35:02
kind of like my mom sort of being like oh did you like post a video like yeah and then that's it
35:08
you know and then even as it got bigger yeah even as it got bigger um it was
35:14
just not really talked about because i think there was you know as funny as i and now that now that i'm talking about
35:19
this i'm realizing that i think that the reason is there was this assumption that it would go nowhere right and i think it
35:25
sort of like lived it lived within me too and that's why i didn't really like speak about it um because
35:32
you know that wasn't serious and i was the serious thing was to go to college
35:37
and so i'm not you know like my youtube channel was not at the forefront of anybody's minds my mind included um
35:44
and it's just but yeah i think part like part of why it made it so cathartic and
35:50
exciting for me was because of that because it wasn't a secret but like
35:56
it was just sort of like um yeah nobody nobody talked about it and i think in a way it was my way of
36:05
i don't know i guess proving something uh to myself maybe more so than to others
36:11
and um yeah yeah incredible like i i just remember like being on youtube at that
36:17
time and being so inspired by people like you with the way you were writing and also like the i could i could really
36:24
relate to this because you were very clearly like doing it late at night like in your room presumably
36:30
like coming back from dinner and i would i was like into trying to make covers and things and i would like
36:36
learn different things from different people like you and like community channel like editing three versions of myself into the same price
36:42
and i just thought like it's specifically like early 2010's youtube was like the time to
36:49
just try and it didn't it didn't need to go anywhere but it could also have been everything and
36:55
um it's just amazing that you've like grown out of there um
37:00
and one question for the fans is did you consider putting little souls on this
37:05
album oh my goodness um
37:10
yes i did i actually recorded it um wow
37:16
just the vocal and the guitar it was one of the songs from that night that i recorded ocean dungeons as well um but
37:22
it didn't make it only because i think you know i had to initially i really was
37:29
probably going to put all of the songs into you know the record was just going to be all of those songs and no none of
37:35
that at once um and i think i i just realized like well
37:42
i love little souls it still absolutely still has a place in my heart but it's just not
37:47
within it's not the same tone i think it doesn't sort of feel like it fits within
37:53
this specific uh universe but we'll see yeah you've done it once now
37:59
you could do it again um who knows what's going to happen and i don't i i i'm not saying this cryptically like i
38:06
genuinely yeah yeah and that i've been doing this for so many years like things could very well change in like a
38:13
few months where i'm like hey by the way dropping little souls i don't know i don't want to i don't want to like plant
38:19
that seed though when you drive i'm going to take a day off work i'm actually going to take a day off work and just like lie there and
38:26
listen to it um so is
38:31
in similar vein of like what's possible what's not possible did you did you like delete your youtube channel entirely or
38:37
is it just like chilling is it just under the covers it is
38:44
i don't know if i want to reveal this no i can't i can't it's it's chilling it's true okay
38:49
i'm not yeah i i'm not somebody that has the heart to just like delete something you
38:55
know um it's like a mini time cap time capsule i i could i just it's a remnant of that era i could
39:02
never just say goodbye to it forever so don't worry it's chill okay good because as long as it's not
39:09
like in the ground then you know just let it let it let it lie um i could never
39:15
so just to wrap up on um what's coming next and so that we're all prepared for
39:21
all the all the stuff you have in store you're going to be going on a massive tour a headlining tour of both the
39:27
states and parts of asia which is so meaningful um how are you feeling about you know
39:34
being at the helm of your own tour now and on with this content as well especially i
39:39
can't tell you how deeply excited i am and also just how
39:45
i it's just such a joy and i truly just feel so much gratitude that everything
39:51
panned out the way it did um because yeah i i'm just so i can't explain to
39:57
you how awesome and full circle it is to be touring this record out of all the other ones
40:03
and um yeah like i truly believe like everything happens for a reason
40:09
yeah but absolutely and getting to do like uh and getting to do like a home
40:15
taking your album around like parts of your home is really cool yeah yeah absolutely i think um i've i
40:22
mean i've been on the road before i've opened for other acts and i've learned a thing or two from them and just kind of
40:27
watching how they command the stage and how they conduct their tours and um yeah just so excited to do it for myself
40:36
do you think they'll be crying will there be like a crying section of your tour i
40:41
i don't know i mean these are the songs yeah
40:48
yeah i wouldn't be shocked if that occurred i'd be like yeah this is pretty good the lights up kind of thing like
40:54
you have to be one of those exactly yeah um and also speaking of learning of
40:59
learning how to like command huge stages congratulations on coachella um
41:05
thank you thank you it was man it was an experience let me tell you
41:11
um yeah the two weekend format really just threw me in a loop i was kind of like because you know the adrenaline rush of
41:17
just a big show you're done and you go home and you're like oh i have to do it all over again next next weekend but it
41:23
was it was great um i learned a lot that was the first hotel
41:29
i've ever been to like period and so uh yeah it was a lot of fun my whole family
41:35
was there all my friends were there and so just made everything yeah awesome big flex that's the first
41:40
time you've ever been it's also like you're on stage um
41:46
and just in terms of like what what that meant obviously it's such a big milestone for like the asian community
41:52
and the asian females community and you're one of the first few if not the first like indonesian artists or artists
41:58
from indonesia to play that kind of venue um that kind of stage
42:03
um how did it feel doing that it felt so
42:10
surreal like i um i i've said in interviews before that i process things quite late and um
42:17
honestly even to this day i i don't know if i fully i don't know if it's fully settled yet because i mean it really
42:24
does feel like that was just yesterday that i did that um but yeah man i'm just so grateful and
42:30
honored that it was me and that you know did that and i was just yeah grateful to be amongst
42:38
an amazing line-up and just that i got to do it at all period um it was a really awesome
42:45
awesome experience yeah incredible well thank you so much for your time nikki um we've been so so grateful to
42:52
have you and oh my goodness thank you
42:58
and we can't wait for the album and the tour and just to follow everything that comes next so thank you so much
43:05
[Music]
#Celebrities & Entertainment News
#Music & Audio
#Performing Arts