LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: What were you doing when you were 15? I was a bad volleyball player and still growing out my unfortunate bangs. My next guest was winning a contest in her home country of Indonesia to open for Taylor Swift.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEE U NEVER")
NIKI: (Singing) 'Cause I'll be seeing you never.
FADEL: That is NIKI. After she got that amazing opportunity as a teenager, she moved to the United States, and now, at the grizzled age of 25, she's releasing her third album. It's called "Buzz."
NIKI: I decided to call it "Buzz" 'cause I garden, and I would hear the buzzing of bumblebees, essentially, every spring, and then it sort of became the signal that, like, oh, spring's just right around the corner. The promise of harvest is right there, and I think it just turned into this beautiful symbol of being on the precipice of something great.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BUZZ")
NIKI: (Singing) The song's about to start. The door's about to open. The flower's about to fruit. I'm about to fall for you.
And yeah, as you mentioned, it is my third album, but in a lot of ways, it really does feel like I've only just started.
FADEL: How come?
NIKI: I feel awake, I think, for the first time. As a person, and as an artist. I think it took a while - I started very young in this industry, and it took a while to kind of find my sea legs and figure out what makes me tick, what brings me joy, and I think this is the first album that I've made with just total and complete conviction.
FADEL: You talked about how "Buzz" came from gardening and spring, and those are all kind of happy-sounding things, but there's a lot of sadness and heartache...
NIKI: (Laughter).
FADEL: ...On this (laughter) album.
NIKI: Totally.
FADEL: Is sadness the main emotion that inspires you writing here? I mean, what's inspiring what we're hearing?
NIKI: I think this album was a synthesis of sort of the last two years of my life, and generally my early 20s, and so, yeah, I think it's - "Buzz," I would say, is a spectrum. I think ir's sadness and joy and all the moments in between, and I think that's just - it's very normal to feel lost in life, especially in your 20s, I think.
FADEL: You've said this record is about identity crisis. What songs sort of describe that?
NIKI: I guess a specific track would be, like, "Nothing Can" - the last one.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NOTHING CAN")
NIKI: (Singing) No one'll ever save you. No one and nothing can, but you still smile at a stranger, and you still make your weekend plans.
I feel that one is the most accepting of things feeling uncertain, and things feeling irresolute.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NOTHING CAN")
NIKI: (Singing) No one and nothing can.
Life can be really difficult and feel out of control often, and yet there are still these very tiny, micro moments in between that make it all worthwhile.
FADEL: I hate to break it to you - that's a message that still resonates with people in their 40s.
(LAUGHTER)
NIKI: Amazing.
FADEL: So (laughter) you wrote these songs while on tour, and I know touring can be exciting but also lonely, exhausting. How does writing on the road affect what you're writing?
NIKI: It provided a lot of very, very new experiences for me, just kind of, like, new feelings of being uprooted over and over again, if that makes sense, and I'm definitely somebody - like, you know, I have a dog. I have a garden. I like to be at home (laughter).
FADEL: You're a rooted person.
NIKI: I am. I like to feel rooted, for sure, and yet it's this paradox of just my life, I think, constantly uprooting me over and over again - just, you know, moving from Jakarta to the States, like, all that stuff, and so I feel like being on the road - I think, in a way, it injected that buzz. Maybe it's the adrenaline or something, or just, like - it can be quite energizing in some way. At the same time, it can feel really exhausting.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEIRLOOM PAIN")
NIKI: (Singing) Walking around with heirloom pain, Dad's temper and Mom's mistakes, and always afraid to fall flat on my face, but doing it anyway.
FADEL: One of your songs, "Heirloom Pain" - there were a few lines that struck me.
(Reading) Walking around with heirloom pain, Dad's temper and Mom's mistakes, and always afraid to fall flat on my face.
How would you describe this song?
NIKI: "Heirloom Pain" is absolutely about that feeling of being lost in your 20s and not knowing the answers, and also a little bit about - I mean, this is kind of a heavy word, but I would say intergenerational pain and trauma that just kind of, like, gets passed down like ghosts. Your great-grandmother lived a hard life, and that gets passed down to your grandma, and so on and so forth, and it sort of adds to your - like, whatever baggage is unprocessed definitely informs the way that you carry yourself through life, and so that's kind of what it's about - feeling lost and still taking a step forward into the day anyway.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEIRLOOM PAIN")
NIKI: (Singing) Walking around with heirloom pain. Grandma left, but her heartache stayed, and now I'm always afraid to take up space, yet doing it anyway.
FADEL: When did you know you wanted to pursue a career in music?
NIKI: I guess the honest answer to that was probably, you know, for as long as I can remember, but I saw an E! channel "True Hollywood Story" documentary...
(LAUGHTER)
NIKI: ...On Taylor Swift when I was like, 9, and that kind of propelled me to ask my mom for a guitar that Christmas or that birthday or something like that, and I remember having thoughts then of, you know, wow, she makes a living writing songs. That's really cool.
FADEL: And then you opened for Taylor Swift in Indonesia at 15.
NIKI: Yes. That was insane that that happened. I can't believe that that's part of my lore, so to say.
(LAUGHTER)
NIKI: And then eventually, I think it was just this thought of, like, could I see myself doing anything else? And the answer was, honestly, always no.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLUE MOON")
NIKI: (Singing) Four full laps around the sun. We wouldn't admit that we were done.
FADEL: NIKI - her third album is called "Buzz" - thank you so much for being on the program.
NIKI: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLUE MOON")
NIKI: (Singing) Burn like noon. Was it hidden in the cards that I'd lose you? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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