Nikki Dae

The 23-year old from Alkmaar is ready to rock and take on the powers that be: “I want to communicate a message through my music”. Nikki was discovered during a performance at Jazz & Sail, a festival in Bergen, The Netherlands. “After the gig, someone came up to me”, Nikki explains with a smile on her face as she recalls the moment. “She worked at the record company Cloud 9, and was very impressed with my performance”. They exchanged numbers and Nikki got a phone call the next week. After a visit to Cloud 9, guitar in hand, she was in, and signed a record deal (her first!) in October. After that, things moved quickly. The record label put Nikki in touch with songwriter/producer Jantine Heij. The two young musicians clicked and immediately got down to work. The result: her first single Rebellions, a catchy, poppy dance song. The track was mixed down in England by Cenzo Townshend, known for his work with U2, Snow Patrol and Florence & The Machine. “The song is about how we’re expected to live a perfect life and act a certain way”, Nikki explains. “It’s about being fed up with stereotyping, and wanting to break free.” The lyrics ‘Dancing like rebellions’, ‘This is the riot that we’re aiming for’ and ‘Left-right-left, we are in control’ bring across her ideas loud and clear. Communicating a message is important, according to Nikki: “A song has to be about something, otherwise it doesn’t do anything for me”. Bands like The Script, also have messages in their songs, and are big influences on her. “Every song of theirs has a story”. But also artists like Lorde and Ellie Goulding, and “raw sounding artists where you can hear their personality come through”, like Adele and Selah Sue, are major inspirations for her, she says. Nikki’s sound can be described as pop, but definitely with electronic elements as well. “I love music that everybody can understand, music with a beginning and an end. Yet at the same time my music is a little mysterious, a bit dark and with an edge. I don’t know any Dutch artist who are doing anything like this.” Meanwhile she was working hard on producing her own songs, with Jantine and with other songwriters. She wrote songs with Martijn Spierenburg from Within Temptation and Ashley Hicklin. Ashley Hicklin was responsible for Me And My Guitar, a song that Belgium competed with at the Eurovision Songfestival in 2010 with Tom Dice. It was also a number one hit single in The Netherlands. Jantine Heij was responsible for all production duties. Nikki was actually never meant to end up in the music industry. According to her, her family isn’t musical at all. It wasn’t until high school that she discovered her passion for music. She chose music as her major and together with four friends formed the girl band Pure. “Because nobody could play bass, I started doing that”, she says. “I sucked at it in the beginning, but I liked it.” She had an old guitar at home which her father had picked up at a flea market, and with the help of instruction videos on the internet she taught herself how to play. And with that same guitar she wrote her first song. The fact that she also is a good singer, was clear after the positive feedback she received from her music teacher, when she performed her song for him. When she graduated from high school, the girl band also broke up. Together with the guitar player, Nikki continued as a duo. Meanwhile, with a “we’ll see what happens” frame of mind, she decided to audition for the Dutch conservatory. She got in, but didn’t stay long. Due to differences, Nikki left the school and decided to go it on her own. “After all the mandatory stuff at the conservatory, It took me months before I found the joy in making music again. When I gradually started writing my own material again, the love for music came back with a vengeance.” The video clips of Nikki singing cover versions of different songs while playing guitar, are still on YouTube; it’s performances like these that made an impression on the people in Bergen, and the reason for her discovery. She also performed several times at the Dutch soccer club AZ, where she still works at the moment, and is known as ‘the singing waitress’. Now that Rebellions, her first single, has been released it’s just the beginning of a long musical adventure according to Nikki. “I have no idea what will come next, it feels like I’m stepping into the great unknown. But I also see it’s a big opportunity.” Although, at the moment, she’s not picky where her performances take place, she’s dreams of bigger venues: “Someday I hope to perform in a large stadium. That would be so cool, to look at all the people who came for me and want to listen to what I have to say through my lyrics.” ‘Left-right-left, we are in control’