NIKI talks NME through her ‘Firsts’

NIKI is a big fan of Taylor Swift. So much so that Swift pops up in the opening two answers of NIKI’s Firsts interview with NME, where she looks back on a host of her musical first times.

“I saw [Swift’s] True Hollywood Story documentary on the E! channel one day after school,” the Jakarta-born, LA-based singer/songwriter and producer, who is signed to the influential label 88rising, recalls about how her love for Swift was first sparked.

“And after that I was like, ‘I’m gonna be a songwriter!’ So I asked my mum to get me a guitar that year.”

• READ MORE: Five things we learned from our In Conversation video chat with NIKI

NIKI, who has just dropped her second solo album ‘Nicole’, also recalls in the interview her “emo phase” when she was in the fourth grade (name-dropping such bands as My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Avenged Sevenfold), her first job and the first song she ever finished writing.

“It was probably [when I was] in eighth grade when I first wrote a fully fleshed-out song that made sense,” NIKI tells NME. “I’m pretty sure it was called ‘If We Were Together’… it was very Jack Johnson vibes, very happy-go-lucky and very eighth grade.”

Does NIKI remember how the chorus went? Of course she does – and you can check that moment out, and watch the full Firsts video interview with NIKI, above.

Check back at NME soon for more Firsts interviews with some of music’s biggest names. For now, though, you can revisit our recent Firsts interviews with the likes of Liam Gallagher, Interpol, Lucy Dacus, Måneskin and Pabllo Vittar.