Overcoming exhaustion from touring and career pressure, Nicole Zefanya loosened up and took the reins for album three T he song’s about to start (Can you hear it?) / The door’s about to open (Can you feel it?) ” Anticipation is palpable on the feathery chorus of ‘Buzz’, and throughout NIKI ’s third album of the same name. This excitement about what’s right around the corner was hard-earned, as the record’s buoyant indie pop was born not out of excitement, but fatigue. The singer-songwriter born Nicole Zefanya had been running on empty.
“To be honest, I was feeling really overwhelmed with this artist’s life of constantly being uprooted,” the 25-year-old tells NME of the experience touring her last album, 2022’s ‘Nicole’ . “I was also trying to wrestle with a completely new identity and sound, and I had to keep it all together onstage for the audience and fans.” To pull herself out of that tough spot, she wrote a song that she’d later title ‘Strong Girl’ – a reminder that she would “have to display a lot more strength than you’d initially thought”.
NIKI sings urgently: “ I’m a pendulum...
I just know that I can swing it, I’ll always swing it...
Who am I if I can’t be everybody’s strong girl? / Aren’t I? ” Zefanya offers an answer to that rhetorical question: “Growing up in an Asian household, there were a lot of expectations. I’m also the oldest child. So there’s sort of this ingrained sense of perfectionism in me.
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