Music

Nea is Ready for the Spotlight text Natalia Muntean photography Sandra Myhrbergfashion Alicia Hurst jacket Beyond Retroshirt Nümphearring Charlotte Bonde “It’s been the busiest spring ever. It’s been very hectic, but also really, really fun”, says Nea about where she finds herself in 2023. A well-established name in the songwriting community, Nea is the pen behind hits such as “Lush Life”, a song that represented her breakthrough. “With that song, so many of those doors opened, and I felt like I became somebody that people reached out to, instead of always being the one knocking on doors. That was a really big moment for me,” says Nea. In 2019, she stepped into the spotlight and took on the role of an artist. This year marks a special one for Nea, as her first album, “TRANSPARENT”, is expected to be released in the autumn. Nea remembers singing in the car with her family as her first memory of music. “I don’t have any family in the music business, but I feel like everyone in my family has musicality. I grew up in South Africa until I was four, so we sang a lot of South African gospel songs.” Her musical journey took her from writing songs as a child after her family relocated to Sweden, to writing songs for her band as a teenager, to travelling to Cuba to learn guitar and Barcelona to record her first demos, to basking on the streets of Stockholm, to eventually lending her penmanship to singers like Zara Larsson, Tove Styrke, Sabina Ddumba and many others. She credits artists from the early nineties as her main sources of inspiration when she creates, drawing from sounds created by Alanis Morissette, No Doubt, and Lily Allen, but also from bands like Fleetwood Mac. Her transition from songwriter to artist happened by chance when, as she pitched “Some Say”, she was told she should sing and release it as an artist. “At first, I was unsure if it was the right move because I love the process of being a songwriter. As a writer, you’re trying to put the light on somebody else and make it real for them. And as an artist, you have to take that light to yourself, and you’re a bit more exposed,” says Nea. What started as a play on Eiffel 66’s “I’m Blue” melody eventually became Nea’s debut single, being released in the autumn of 2019. “Some Say” managed to top the charts in more than 20 countries and gathered over half a billion plays only on Spotify. At the beginning of 2023, Nea released “A Lover Like Me,” a feisty self-love anthem peppered with ironies and born out of dissatisfaction with the selection of lovers. It was followed by the dreamy “YES”, a song Nea wrote years ago but took her time to find the right sound to match the lyrics, to mature and grow into it, mirroring in some ways the trajectory of her career. “It’s the oldest song on the album, and it’s the song I’ve always come back to,” says Nea about the piano-heavy number. In addition to dedicating herself to fine-tuning the last details of her debut album, Nea is also mentoring young songwriters as part of Songland, a TV show on national Swedish Television SVT from March to May, where experienced songwriters mentor newcomers in the field and help them pitch their songs to established artists. “My heart is really in the songwriting community, and I felt like it was such an exciting idea to help these up-and-coming talents finalise their songs and turn them into something perfect for the artists.” Natalia: You mentioned in one interview that the first years after moving to Stockholm were very difficult and that it felt like it was constant hustling. What made you want to continue?  Nea: Coming from a small town and not having any connections in the music industry was hard because you hope to be found by somebody who can open those doors for you. But it wasn’t that easy to know where to start because the music business is pretty small and closed before you’re in it. I feel like I was knocking on every door and nobody cared for many years, but at the same time I knew that I wanted to do music for a living and, for that reason, I continued. Also along the way, I always got support from friends and random people telling me that I’m great, and not that it made any difference to connect with the industry, but it strengthened that feeling that if I want it, I should keep going. N: How do you approach writing?Nea: It’s always different, but I feel like for me, melodies come very naturally and intuitively. Lyrics too of course but sometimes it’s harder work to find those exact words. So I spend a lot of time typing down lyrics, always trying to have a bank of ideas to work from. And if I watch TV, I will pause many times during a show to type stuff down and pay attention to how words are used. I also read books in English and the latest one I liked was Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah. N: Tell me more about the transition from being somewhat in the shadows as a songwriter to stepping into the spotlight as an artist? Nea: Some Say had its peak during the pandemic, so it was very special to have such a big song and big opportunities coming in, such as playing festivals. And then, one by one, everything got cancelled. At the same time, I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing back then. I hadn’t been planning on being an artist and when things got cancelled, it was a bit of a relief, to be honest. I didn’t feel ready to get up on that stage and meet an audience yet, but I did a lot of TV and radio interviews when I didn’t have an audience during the pandemic.