Whenever NIKI appears on stage, she radiates; both in the physical and energetic sense. Crowds explode with anticipation and screeching cheers can be heard a couple of seconds before her first song. Right when she steps up to put the mic to her mouth, her raw and sweet vocals soar beyond reach and it’s clear NIKI’s confidence to hype up a crowd with her heart-wrenching songwriting ability is unparalleled. Whether it’s an intimate hometown show or headlining a sold-out festival, the Indonesian singer-songwriter recognizes that she’s living her dreams and she cannot be more appreciative. “There’s sort of like this alchemy in the room that you don’t really get anywhere else,” she recounts of her shows.
For those who are familiar with the Asian-based label 88rising, NIKI is a staple within their success. She was one of the first artists to be signed to the label along with fellow Indonesian artist Rich Brian in 2015. Since then, a slew of other major talents joined like Joji, Jackson Wang, Milli, and Loren who have found their own niche and achievements. The label grew to gigantic proportions with the worldwide expansion of Head in The Clouds Festival and they even produced the soundtrack to Marvel’s Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings. “It’s just really inspiring to be a part of it all and seeing all of my friends on the come up and just expanding and doing everything that they always said that they would,” NIKI muses.
An English teacher of mine in high school once told me “The more specific you are, the more interesting the story is,” and actually the specificity makes people feel like it makes the story even more relatable. I’ve always been clinging on to that.
Amplifying Asian voices has been one of NIKI’s philosophies as a songwriter from the start; she’s an absolute champion for representation. The current music scene is flourishing with booming Asian talent with some of her favorite rising acts like Sarah Kinsley, beabadoobee, and Katherine Li—the latter of which is opening up for NIKI on her Nicole World Tour. On how she feels about the surge of Asian performers, she says, “I’m not surprised because it’s been a long time coming and you know what, this is what we deserve. Obviously, there’s still a long way to go and I’m not saying the work is done, but we’re getting there every year. Things keep happening and it’s awesome.”
NIKI concerts roar with fans singing every single note and lyric to her songs—from the ringing chorus of “lowkey,” the swoopy “Ahs” in “Vintage,” to the incandescent and endless outro of “Every Summertime.” Her Live at the Wiltern album—recorded on October 2022 during the first North American leg of her Nicole Tour—cemented her legacy as an involved and engaged performer, and she can’t wait to do it all over again on her world tour. I talked with NIKI about the full-circle moments in her career, her favorite memories on tour, and slowing things down for her future album.
Performing at the Wiltern was a full-circle moment for you, for someone who lived in LA and walked by the venue all the time when you were first starting out. What has that been like for you?
It gets even more meaningful because I think the nostalgia and the sentiment build with each year and each performance. Honestly, I’ve had a lot of full-circle performing moments that I’m so very grateful for. Yeah, each time it gets more sentimental for me and it’s awesome.
How do you feel when you’re on stage when all those people are calling out your name and singing along to your lyrics?
I keep coming back to the word surreal. It’s also just incredibly rewarding and fulfilling as an artist and a writer. Music has always been this safe space for me where I get to really feel my really big feelings without any judgment. That’s always the kind of art and music that I aspire to create for others. It’s this space for people to feel their feelings and to feel stuff because I think that’s what makes us so human. Anytime I see that happening, where my audience and my fans see themselves, recognize their own stories, their own pain, and their own joy in my music, it’s just awesome and it’s magical. It’s an unspoken handshake between me and my fans where we’re all in this together and there’s that camaraderie there too. Our relationship feels like we grew up together in a way because I started when I was 18 and a lot of my fans are around the same age.
When I was in Head In The Clouds New York, you hyped up the crowd during “La La Lost You” since most of the song references New York staples, and in your Wiltern recording, you say “LA does it better!” when it comes to singing and cheering. A lot of your songs are geographical such as “High School In Jakarta” and “Anaheim.” Why is it so special for you to perform these songs in these cities that mean a lot to you?
It’s really funny and I feel like you’re probably one of the first people to ever ask me that. I think I placed a lot of sentimental value on places in the world that I’ve been and I think I romanticize a lot of these places a little too much. But there’s something to be said about the energy in New York that you can’t really replicate anywhere else. An English teacher of mine in high school once told me “The more specific you are, the more interesting the story is,” and actually the specificity makes people feel like it makes the story even more relatable. I’ve always been clinging on to that. It bled into my songwriting where I care about little details. I feel geographic location adds to a certain feeling or emotion that I’m trying to convey, When I’m singing “La La Lost You” in LA or in New York, it’s always so so special. Because in my head, I know that these people live in LA, and these people live in New York, so the song probably feels even more real to them.
Do you have any memories of seeing a performance from an artist that impacted the way that you perform now?
A lot of people inspire me, but I will say my very first stage inspo will probably be Taylor Swift because I opened for her when I was 15 in Jakarta. That was the very first big show that I’ve attended as a concertgoer. That was very formative for me at age 15, seeing how she carried herself on stage and the movements that she did, what she would say how she would interact with the crowd. I also went on tour with Halsey in 2018 and I got to see some of her shows too. I had known her songs, but I had never seen her perform until that tour. That was the first time I was touring and I was a little baby. I was 19 and I saw her when she was 23 or 24. She was killing it and she’s also a really incredible performer, Those two are the ones that I had in mind and the very early women that I looked up to performing.
Were there any sentimental memories that you made on your last tour?
I had never played Nashville before that tour. I went to university in Nashville and I actually had my college best friend open for me, which was one of the best full-circle moments for me. Her name is Valories and she killed it. Because both of us were playing, all of our other college friends showed up to the show. We just hung out in my green room afterward and reminisced about all the fun shenanigans that we got into in college and all that stuff. It was so sweet to see all my college friends again. I hadn’t seen them since then.
What’s your favorite part about touring?
My favorite part of touring, apart from meeting the fans and playing my songs, is just honestly getting to see the world. I was definitely one of those kids that had an atlas when I was growing up. I would use a pink marker and just mark all the places that I had been and places I always dreamed of traveling the world someday. I think touring is a really cool and niche experience where you get to travel while also performing. Not everybody gets to say that they’ve done that in their lives. I love getting to see the world and obviously eating my way through places, that’s also a big plus.
How would you say that your songwriting process has evolved since you first put out music?
I had always played guitar growing up throughout my childhood and then I discovered my love of producing which was also simultaneously around when NIKI was born, It just felt like being exposed to a completely new world when I figured out how to start producing When I first started NIKI it was just with my laptop, headphones on and that was my setup for a really long time. And now, I’ve made my way back to playing more instruments, especially my guitar because I set it down for a while, not intentionally. So recently I’ve started to just go back to my roots. Honestly, my songwriting process is different every single time. So I feel it’s hard to acknowledge some pattern because there isn’t one. Sometimes it’s like a melody in my head. Very recently, I was on a plane from Jakarta to Labuan Bajo, which is an island in Indonesia. I was on vacation with my friends and I just had this melody in my head, the whole plane ride. So I wrote a song in my head, that whole plane ride, and I didn’t have any instruments, my computer or anything. I just had my imagination and then when we landed I immediately just started singing it into my phone. When I got home later, was when I produced it out so the process is always different sometimes. I would straight up write a song in my head on the plane or be in the studio with, say, seven guys and just where everyone’s jamming at the same time.
What can we expect from any of your upcoming projects?
I’m definitely working on new music. It’s kind of a slow burn. I think with Nicole, my last album, it was very much fresh out the gates. I immediately was like, “Yes, this is what we’re doing. I know all the songs that I want on the record, let’s go!” It was all guns blazing and I immediately knew what I wanted. That was a pretty relatively quick turnaround for that record. For my future stuff right now, I’m just kind of living life a little bit and slowing down—which I need to get better at anyways. So yeah, it’s making music and living life right now and touring.
NIKI tickets to her Nicole World Tour are on sale now. Get tickets here.
Lea Veloso
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