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26 February 2024

Every Monday I will be bringing you an interview with an independent band, duo or music artist. This week, I caught up with Oxford based artist Zahra to find out more…

Where are you from and how did you first get into music?
I was born and have lived in London my whole life! Growing up I remember always being surrounded by music, whether it was MTV music videos playing on the TV or looking through my family’s seemingly infinite CD cupboard to choose something to play (usually Madonna’s ‘Hard Candy’). Since I was little I would put on performances for my parents, making up unstructured songs and rhymes. I do not really remember how I first ‘got into’ music, I feel like music has always been a critical part of my life, my creative and emotionally expression. Maybe it could be when when I first properly started practising music when I was six and started to learn the piano, and later when I was ten when I decided to learn the guitar because Taylor Swift could play both instruments so I wanted to as well. With these foundations, I understood music and composition enough to have the skill to start to write my own fully formed songs.

Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
My musical influences growing up purely consisted of my parents’ CD collection! As mentioned, Madonna (specifically her single ‘4 Minutes’ featuring Justin Timberlake) was a huge pop influence for me. The more soul and funk pop of the Black Eyed Peas, Jennifer Hudson and Alicia Keys made me realise not just the importance of melody and production but of how you sing a song, your emotions. I can reflect on how classic bands such as U2, Take That and Snow Patrol (definitely more my Dad’s influence) have crept into my songwriting style as well.

My current influences are those of, I would like to think, most twenty year old women! Taylor Swift’s genre defying lyrics have, throughout my life, always been a huge inspiration. The punk-rock-pop of Olivia Rodrigo helped inspire the production of a song on my upcoming EP, ‘Not Your Type’. Snoh Aalegra, Olivia Dean, Blondeshell, the list goes on and on! I think the beauty of listening to so many genres is that I can pull inspiration from many different areas for all things, production, composition, vocal style.

How would you describe your sound?
I would describe the sound of my upcoming EP as, ‘groovy summer pop’. While I skirt around different sub-genres of pop, lyrics remain an important foundation in all of my songs. Jazzy seventh chords build the base for airy and bright synths featured in many of my songs. I often like to go for stacked, maximalist production creating big and open final choruses with catchy hooks many have told me get stuck in your head for days!

What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
My latest single is called ‘Sweet Summer Girl’ and was inspired by the book ‘Road Trip’ by Beth O’Leary that I read two summers ago. There was one paragraph in the book where the main female character is having a conversation with the boy she is dating and she has to clarify to him that she has a life outside of their romance, that dating him is not the focus of her life. She had a complete and fulfilling life before she met him, and will continue to after they go their separate ways. This gave me the idea of the concept of the song, the problem of being the manic pixie dream girl, of a girl becoming who she thinks she has to be in order to fulfil an unspoken romantic role, all for the wonder of a summer ‘love’. I ended up writing the chorus on a beach in Greece as I was finishing reading the book, which definitely helped to push the summery and beachy tones of the song, before finishing the song when I got back home!

What’s your local music scene like?
My local music scene at university in Oxford is great! There are often student open mic nights and supportive societies which I have loved. In London as well it is super exciting, having performed my debut headline gig in early January at the historic music venue The Half Moon in Putney. There is so many opportunities and possibilities – it seems never-ending !

What do you have planned for the next 12 months?
I plan to release my third single, ‘Oh To Be A Girl’ at the end of March before my EP comes out on the 26th of April. After that I hope to record and release some different versions or renditions of some of the songs featured on my EP to shed a new, more lyric-focused light onto such personal songs. I hope to celebrate all these new releases with more performances and gigs in both Oxford and London.

Having written lots of new songs since the songs featured on my EP I am hoping to get back into the studio and start producing some more!

Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
I would love to collaborate with MUNA. As a huge fan, I think our song and production styles would really compliment each other, but we would also be able to bring out different parts of each other’s music.

Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
Before starting my first song at my first every performance I completely forgot the opening line, which I had to admit to the audience… luckily my friend who I had played the song to before managed to remember it and prompt me!

What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
Oooh… that my favourite song of the week is ‘Tell Your Friends’ by the Weeknd – go listen if you have not heard it before!

You can find out more about Zahra via Apple Music, Instagram, Spotify, TikTok or YouTube.