1 week ago
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In the game of love, there are no winners or losers, just happy couples or hard-earned lessons. At 25, NEDA experienced the latter. Her takeaway? “Unrequited love is boring.”
NEDA brought that sentiment to her latest song “Front Line,” a cathartic work of alt-pop featuring driving drums and a weepy pedal steel. “It’s about someone who would get a kick out of hurting me and being trapped in that, but finding a way to get out of it,” she says. The track is more than inspired by true events, it contains real moments from NEDA's relationship. “The one thing my ex always said was, ‘you are too much for me.’ That’s how we decided to start the song.”
Featuring Persian musicians, with instruments like tombak and santur, “Front Line” pays homage to NEDA’s Middle Eastern heritage. Simultaneously rhythmic and reflective, it also manages to reflect opposite emotions: the power of moving on, and the regret that comes from looking at the past. Hindsight is 20/20, and for those buried deep inside a toxic relationship, it feels a whole lot like bringing a knife to a gunfight. “Sometimes those you care about most in your life are the ones who end up hurting you. You don't expect it, but you still have to navigate through it,” NEDA adds.
“Front Line” is just one soul-bearing track off of her upcoming EP And Then Came September, out 12 March via House Anxiety, and follows recent singles “Surface” and “Leave”. It details her first real experience with heartbreak. “I wrote this song with James New. When I told him what I was going through at the time, naturally, we decided to write a song centered around love and loss. Lyrically, it’s the song that I'm most proud of on the EP.”
Because of the freshness of her feelings, NEDA says “Front Line” came about almost effortlessly. That wasn’t always the case in the past. She has been making music for over a decade, having studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, but she feels like her years of practice are finally paying off now: “I was always quite innately a talented singer. But with songwriting, I had to study. It took two or three years of writing every day to get quite confident at it, and then another two years on top of that to start figuring out what my sound was. This EP was the first project where I wrote songs that I genuinely loved and I kept listening to over and over again. Before, I didn't really have that feeling.”
For others hoping to reach this place of total creative alignment, NEDA encourages opening oneself up to new experiences and enjoy the ride. “There are a few artists that really get it straight away,” she shares. “I've been to open mics before where they're like, ‘this is the first song I ever wrote,’ and it's amazing. If I ever performed the first song I ever wrote, I'd get tomatoes thrown at me. For others, it takes years, just give it time. Put the 10,000 hours in and listen to as much music as possible. I think that would be my biggest advice.”
This approach worked for NEDA, who ended up finding inspiration in an unexpected genre: country. “The music genre that influences me the most is country music, and if you told me that when I was, like, 13 or 14, back when I didn't even listen to country music, I would've been quite shocked. Never be close-minded by any genre. You never know what sound or artist or style you're going to be influenced by.”
The country influences come through on NEDA’s entire discography, including on “Front Line,” courtesy of that slippery pedal steel. It’s not just the instruments she loves in these songs, though. It’s the structure of them too: “Whilst I was at school, there were a lot of students who tried to be more experimental and pursue more avant-garde styles. I came across a song called “Make The World Go Away” by Hank Cochran, and I kind of delved quite deeply into that world. Whilst all my friends were trying to be as crazy and experimental as possible, I found myself leaning more towards these songs that are just written on an instrument paired with a really beautiful melody.”
Beyond country music, NEDA is also endlessly inspired by her peers in London. “There's quite a lot of brown women in South London who are killing it, like Tara Lily and Joy Crookes. They come from places not too far from me and are just making music with this melting pot of diverse influences. As an ethnic person myself, I find that’s really something that inspires me regularly.”
English (US) · 