On “Nicole”, NIKI Wanted Us To Feel It All

For the latest Reissues Project story, I look back at “Nicole”, an album that NIKI wrote for her younger self. But it’s themes of of self-worth and heartbreak resonate far beyond teenage years.

Gabriel Chiu

In October 2021, NIKI asked for some studio time to record music she had written as a teenager. 

The singer was a year out from the release of her conceptual debut album “Moon Child”, and had already been hailed a rising star in Asian American circles because of viral singles like “Low Key”. But what had really elevated NIKI’s status was her label 88Rising. The musicians signed or selected to perform at the label’s festival Head in the Clouds were expertly curated. Former idols like 2NE1’s CL or GOT7’s Jackson Wang found a home at the label. Hikaru Utada, a superstar in Japan, was tapped to perform at the label’s Coachella set, her first performance in the States in nearly 20 years. They were stylish, brash and refreshingly pushed back against the “model minority” stereotype. Artists on 88Rising wrote music that frankly explored sexuality and mental health. They unapologetically sought out pleasure, and moved against the binary. NIKI, with her smart, observational songwriting, stuck out to me as the one with the most underappreciated potential. 

NIKI was still a relatively new artist in 2021, but she was already, admittedly, itching for re-invention. She was still young, only twenty years old, and had only just begun to understand what kind of artist she wanted to be. 88Rising, she said in multiple interviews, gave her the artistic freedom to never be confined to one genre. So, to find inspiration, NIKI began to look back at her teenage years. 

“What’s funny about it is I had no intention of making an album, I just asked for a day at the studio and I didn’t tell anybody what it was for,” she told V Magazine a year later in 2022. She had been inspired by Taylor Swift’s re-recording of “All Too Well”, a song that she had written when she was a teenager, and NIKI wondered if she could do the same thing. 

“So I brought my acoustic guitar and sat in front of the mic and did one take of each song from when I was like 15, 16,” she continued. “Then when I went home that day with all of those one tape demos, I was like, “Maybe we have something here.

What evolved was “Nicole”, an album that collects the songs that NIKI wrote as a high schooler in Jakarta, as well as a handful of new tracks that honed the wisdom she gained as a young adult. The album traced a familiar theme for anyone growing older: the complicated feelings that young love brings, but perhaps most interestingly, what happens when you realize the guy you fell in love with turns out to be someone you don’t know anymore. 

Gabriel Chiu

The album was a departure for the singer because her fans knew her best as an R&B singer. “Moon Child”, the singer’s debut album, was a conceptual album that NIKI described as her “figuring out what I liked musically.” The most popular tracks, like “Love”, were dark slow-burn ballads that blurred lines between alternative music and R&B. What connects both works, NIKI’s co-manger Ollie Zhang told Billboard, is her songwriting. “People want to feel those feelings and not pretend like everything is OK right now,” he said. “I think that kind of songwriting, that type of emotional depth in music, is timeless.” I’d add that drama also connects “Nicole” and “Moon Child” – NIKI’s emotions on a search for love drive both albums.

But “Nicole” is a concept album too, albeit a quieter one. It was, she said in several interviews, a way to honor the teenage version of herself who felt too damn much. Those emotions, she found years later, still felt truthful to her. “I had this realization that I still very much relate and resonate with all of this old music,” she told GRAMMY. “It represented me in a way that the music I put out thus far has not, in a way.”

I was taken by “Nicole” from the very beginning. “Before”, the album’s opener, is a devastating ballad that starts at the end of the story. The song opens on Halloween weekend when NIKI flies to see her ex-boyfriend in his small college town south of the Mason-Dixon line. In the lyrics, she writes about hiding out in his dorm room where she barely fits on his twin size bed. It’s here, in his college town half-way across the globe from her home in Jakarta, that she wonders whether she still has a place with him. “It had been a year since I saw you/ Since we ended things,” she sings. “Had a chance to grow into the girl you always wanted.” 

At the heart of “Before” is a question of worth. The longer NIKI spends with her ex, the more she begins to doubt how much she matters to him. “Did anything ever really count,” she asks in the song’s biggest emotional punch, her voice rising with pain, “or was I just a two year practice round?” 

In the song’s music video, which is part of a short film titled “But I’m Letting Go”, NIKI’s ex is played by Peter Adrian Sudaraso, a charming “nice guy” who can’t commit. He hides her from friends and does little to welcome her into his world. Often, she stays up late in his dorm room staring off into space. He has no idea, it seems, how much pain he’s causing her. 

In “Before”, NIKI reckons with the question of whether her boyfriend loved her as much as she loved him. A darker, meatier question that the song and film taps into is whether he cared – or if her love was simply supply for him to boost his ego. 

On the album’s second song, NIKI rolled back the clock to when they first met for “High School in Jakarta”. For this song, NIKI’s songwriting is at her most clever. She namedrops friends as if we’re on a first name basis with them too, and references events with the same familiarity. By doing this, NIKI gives us an “in”: We are right there with her, feeling it all, in high school. “Now there’s drama/ Found a club for that,” she writes with some humor. “Where I met ya/ Had a heart attack.” 

They burn fast, she writes. “Made a couple of U-turns,” she remembers, “You were it till you weren’t.” But then her smartest songwriting comes in as NIKI uses wordplay to hit poignancy. She writes about their arguments and the times he’d hurt her feelings and concludes, “But I couldn't have you sit there and think/ That you're better 'cause you're older.”

“Are you better,” she asks with some trepidation, “Now that we’re older?” It’s in these lines where NIKI is at her most heartbreaking and relatable. “I’m so sad I can’t tell you shit anymore,” she sings, and as she looks back on the relationship as an adult, she admits, “And even though you bring me to tears/ I’m still glad we gave it a go.” 

“Nicole” is at its best when NIKI dissects the intensity of a relationship that she can’t let go of. On the most devastating song “Facebook Friends”, NIKI wonders what kind of future she could have with her ex. “In the rare case that I do cross your mind,” she sings in a tender line, “I hope you know you always cross mine/ You better know, you always cross mine.” She insists that she’s trying to find better “but there’s no one better.” 

The drama on “Nicole” ramps up on tracks like these, especially when emotional lines hit. The guitars crash in, her vocals become stacked, and NIKI, who performs her lines like an actress, transmits the sting of heartbreak that never fully goes away. “It doesn’t hurt as much to think about your ips on another,” she admits in the same song, “but I miss hearing you laugh.” 

Throughout the record, NIKI attempts to move on even if she keeps getting pulled back in. On “Backburner”, she suspects that she’s being used everytime he calls and acts pathetic. “How do you feel both lucky and appalled,” she asks. But at least he’s calling, right? 

But history keeps pulling them back. “Asian Calvinism,” she observes wryly, “We made it out of that.” When she does date again, as she writes on “Anaheim”, she only misses her ex more. “I’d give anything to drive around Anaheim at sunset and teach myself how to love you,” she sings to her new partner. But the roads don’t feel familiar. This isn’t a place she wants to remember. This isn’t a man she will ever fall in love with. 

There is an overwhelming sense of California’s crisp breeze throughout “Nicole”. And maybe this is by design: NIKI landed in Los Angeles after she dropped out of college in Nashville. It’s a somber, soft album that plays best on sunset as you drive down Southern California through quiet beach towns with palm trees lining the roads and mountains never far off in the distance. NIKI’s album requires a sense of adventure and, conversely, a comfort with intimacy. It plays best with someone you love in the passenger seat, or by yourself if you want to cry on your way through the rolling hills of the Golden State. 

Maybe it is fitting, then, that this record ends with a release at the oceanfront. In the interview with V Magazine, NIKI explained that “Oceans & Engines” comes at the midway point of her relationship. It’s the first time she tries to release her ex. Set the day before her boyfriend leaves for college and in the weeks that follow, the song’s music video connects the stories of “Before” and “High School in Jakarta” and offers a more definitive explanation to how the two fell in love. Time stops when they’re together; their connection is deep and tender. In one scene in bed as they watch videos on his laptop, the boyfriend tries to say “I love you”, but NIKI beats him to the punch. “I wanted to say it first,” he pouts. But he closes the laptop and cuddles her as they fall asleep. 

I have to admit this is the video that never fails to make me tear up. I relate to NIKI as she tries her best to move on, but her ex’s ghost is everywhere: laughing with her at the beach, accompanying her to a show, sitting outside a club as she lays her head on his shoulder. In moments of clarity, she snaps out of the fantasy. She is alone, and hurt. When her friends try to set her up with another guy, she imagines dancing with her ex. In this video, I’m moved most by NIKI’s elegant, understated performance. “But I’m letting go,” she sings in this song. “I’m giving up the ghost.” I don’t believe her – first love dies hard – but I understand why she thinks she can. 

Yet for all of its exploration of grief, “Nicole” ends on a note of hope. On “Take A Chance With Me”, the album’s final track, NIKI weighs what would happen if she and her partner finally told each other the truth. How, she wonders, did she get herself into a situation “with a boy who thinks love is overrated?” “In the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take,” she sings. “I’ll be your safety net/ So why not raise the stakes?” 

Often on “Nicole”, NIKI looks back at herself with the compassion of an older sister. That version of NIKI might have felt too much; maybe her lyrics were cringe at times. But as she learned with “Oceans & Engines”, sometimes the best way to heal is to put those feelings into a song.