NIKI Talks New Song "Switchblade," Identity Crises, and Opening for Taylor Swift

In her new song “Switchblade,” 21-year-old pop-R&B singer NIKI sings about the arc of her career up to this point: “Take a good look at it girl, take a good look at this world,” she sings. “No one’s a familiar face, but I’m not afraid.”

Premiering on April 2, “Switchblade” is an anthemic homage to taking risks and making space for yourself and your work in the world. NIKI, whose full name is Nicole Zefanya, has had no shortage of those kinds of experiences over the past six or so years of her music career, which has taken her from her home in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Nashville, Tennessee, to Los Angeles.

“Switchblade represents the beginning of my journey here in the U.S,” she tells Teen Vogue. “Just being super green and [new to the] industry, kind of naive. I had this super courageous, optimistic outlook towards the world.”

Her career kick-started after winning a 2014 contest to open for Taylor Swift’s Red tour date in Jakarta. She can’t remember much about the 15-minute blur of being on such a massive stage, but NIKI tells Teen Vogue the opportunity was formative in more ways than one. “It was a solidifying experience, because after that I was like, OK, I think I want to do this forever,” she says. She was 15.

To enter the contest, NIKI had to submit videos of her singing — after the concert, she kept up the habit, launching a YouTube channel and doing covers of Ariana Grande and Frank Ocean along with early original songs. Her mom, a singer at their church, was always “jamming around the house” with friends, and her love for ‘90s/early 2000s R&B and hip-hop — Aaliyah, Boyz II Men — trickled down into NIKI’s own tastes, too. Then, she got a music scholarship to a college in Nashville, Tennessee.

She was in Nashville for a year, more inclined to stay in her dorm room and work on her music than explore the city. But that’s when her career picked up too. In 2016 and 2017, she released a string of singles like “I Like U,” with clear influences: a little Destiny’s Child, a little Ariana Grande, and all written or co-written herself. Around the time she left Nashville for Los Angeles, she was teaming up with label 88Rising (which also works with artists including Stephanie Poetri and Rich Brian) to release her first EP, Zephyr, in 2018. It was the same year she opened for Halsey on her Asia tour leg, another formative experience. NIKI then dropped Zephyr follow-up wanna take this downtown? in 2019.

Now, she’s gone from “truly the epitome of a bedroom kid,” to a larger pop force, with a million Instagram followers and a hit single (“lowkey” has more than 70 million plays on Spotify). Her sound is more established, leaning on the quippy lyrical intimacy of an artist like Julia Michaels and a Billie Eilish-esque soprano waver. (“Genres are kind of obsolete,” NIKI notes.) With “Switchblade” and her forthcoming album project Moonchild, she’s ready to reflect on the whiplash-inducing journey from Jakarta to Nashville to Los Angeles, and the “winds of change” that have transformed her.

Moonchild is definitely a concept album, NIKI says, and the songs are chapter markers. Altogether, they’re inspired by her global childhood and now, adulthood.

“This is my coming of age story,” she says. “I grew up going to an international school in a non-English speaking country, and then spoke English around my friends and my teachers. And then going home [to my] Indonesian family, it was just a huge identity crisis.”

Moving to the U.S. only complicated that further. “Now I've learned how to just accept me the way I am,” she says, and Moonchild will detail that process. She’s spoken in interviews before about how she’s still navigating how to discuss her identity, how to use her platform to advocate for Asian artists. Her existence, she says, already is validating for Asian kids who “have taken piano lessons for 12 years and then are made to quit because it's time to get serious, to go to college and abandon your 12 years of hard work.”

“I see that happen a lot and I think I'm here to be like, no girl, do whatever you want to do, whether it be music or art or anything,” NIKI says. “As long as that's what you're passionate about, then just do it.”

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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue