USC’s Asian Pacific American Student Assembly (APASA), International Student Assembly (ISA) and Speakers Committee hosted their annual speaker event with NIKI on Thursday, Apr. 16.
At only 15-years-old, singer-songwriter NIKI opened up for Taylor Swift in her hometown of Jakarta, Indonesia. Seven years later, at the age of 22, NIKI released her breakout single “Every Summertime” for Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings.” What began with singing covers on YouTube has transformed into a long, successful career.
Moderated by USC Speakers Committee’s Director of Operations, Josh Kim, and ISA’s Chair of Professional Affairs, Yungyee “YY” Chia, the interview followed NIKI’s journey to the United States and her rise in the music industry.
She said, “There are genuinely no right decisions…there are only decisions that you make.”
NIKI recounts the pivotal conversation with her parents: telling them she wants to drop out of school and move to the United States. Rather than completely dismissing her ideas, her parents wanted to understand her dream and why she was making this decision.
“It takes a lot of courage to be uncomfortable, to be disliked…and to disappoint whoever, but discomfort is where you grow,” NIKI said.
Moving to the States, all NIKI had was the reference of high schoolers from the TV show “Victorious” and the dream of pursuing music. Although she constantly experienced homesickness for her life in Jakarta and culture shocks in the States, she took this as an opportunity to grow.
During the Q and A session, sophomore Tara Su described how college is one of those times where everyone around you seems to have it figured out, but a lot of students are also quietly lost.
Su asked NIKI, “When [she has] those moments of uncertainty, what [does she] turn to?”
To remedy the uncertainties and troubles of life, NIKI would lean on her friends and her art.
“Art celebrates uncertainty,” NIKI said. “Nothing can really save you from yourself…but [art] celebrates our ordinary lives and ordinary experiences and makes them feel extraordinary.”
Whether that is her chosen craft of songwriting, reading books while on the road or tending to her home garden, NIKI uses her creativity as an outlet.
NIKI reveals how the bees in her garden were one of the main inspirations for her latest album, “Buzz.” She described how, when gardening, “sometimes it’s not the seed’s fault that it doesn’t sprout when the environment’s wrong…It’s beautiful because in nature you can’t plan anything, it just takes or doesn’t.” These pivotal life lessons she learned throughout her journey are reflected in the prose of her latest album.
When a student asked if NIKI could give the audience any hints on the upcoming album, the audience erupted into applause and excited cheers. NIKI teased that she is “definitely working on new music” and that fans “have seen many different versions of [her] in the past musically and whatever’s next is going to be a marriage of all of those things.”
To end the night, NIKI performed an intimate, acoustic set in the brimming auditorium. Her first song, “Take Care,” details the lingering love after a breakup, set to a melodious guitar riff. With inspirations from “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” NIKI performed her second song, “The Apartment We Won’t Share,” about grieving the possibilities of what life could have been. As a dedication to the city of Los Angeles, the audience sang in chorus with NIKI to close the event with “La La Lost You.”