From Studying Software Engineering to Music, 20 Minutes With: Natassja Kelly
Natassja took the time to sit down and have a chat with me a few weeks ago about her new single and what’s next! Photo credit to her music Facebook page.
Recently, I got the opportunity to sit down with Hamilton local, Natassja Kelly, over Zoom to have a quick chat with her about her newly released song, Don’t Say Goodbye, potential collabs in the future with her friends and how she became viral on YouTube during the 2020 lockdown.
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Hey Natassja, how’s it going?
Natassja: Great thank you, how are you doing?
Yeah, not too bad, thank you! First of all, I just want to say congratulations on your new release ‘Don’t Say Goodbye’, such a wonderful song. How have you found things since it has been released?
Natassja: I think it’s less popular than the first one, but I think it’s because I was a little bit slack with the marketing for this one. It’s all good!
Give it time, it will pick up a little more. What would you say the creative process behind creating Don’t Say Goodbye was?
Natassja: I recorded Don’t Say Goodbye at Porch Recording Studios in Hamilton with Regan. I won this competition here in the Waikato where I got to record two songs for free in a studio, which is really cool. Writing the song, I started it at Uni and I saw a piano and I was like, “ooh, I have an idea” and I recorded something on my phone and then I went home and I had these lyrics down already and I was like, “maybe I’ll put a tune to these” and I wrote it thinking of Disney, that kind of vibe. That nostalgia kind of thing. I wanted something that felt like a hug to people. When we were recording, we recorded the song live, just me and the piano and then Regan added a bunch of strings and all that. I was like, “ah, this is it!”
Wow, that’s awesome and you said you got to record two songs at the studio? Was your first single also recorded at the studio?
Natassja: Yep.
You’d be pretty excited to have two songs out there are the moment.
Natassja: For sure, yeah. It’s surreal, honestly. Just having music out there for people to hear, just anyone.
I bet it’s pretty crazy imagining it in your head and then it being a reality. So, you mentioned you’re from Hamilton, how do you find the music scene up there?
Natassja: Well, during High School, a bunch of my friends always did gigs and all that because they were all in bands, but since I had friends up in Auckland and down in Christchurch, I feel like the music scene isn’t as big as it is in those cities just because it’s smaller. It’s just more local, which isn’t too bad, it’s nice to build a smaller community with your music. It’s definitely different to the bigger cities.
If you can build a base in your hometown, even if it’s small, you can move on to the bigger cities, that’s a really cool thing to say you have done.
Natassja: Yeah, for sure. There’s heaps of artists that started out, especially in Hamilton, like Stan Walker is from Hamilton.
What led you down the creative path, especially music?
Natassja: I always grew up around music, just everyone in my family is able to sing or play an instrument… I kind of just grew up having that be all I knew. Then, in High School, I was thinking of doing going into more of a stem career, I started doing software engineering last year, but I was like… “I don’t think this is for me!” and I switched this year to music, which is so good. I feel like having that creative part just always felt like home to me. I always went right to it, no matter what I did. I want to do this for the rest of my life.
Good on you, that’s amazing. So, I’ve seen a few posts with yourself and our local musician down here, Harry Burt! You’re pretty good friends?
Natassja: Yeah, we met at a barbershop competition a few years ago and that is quite different to what we actually produce in music. It’s just really cool to have people in other cities that make the same music as you. It’s nice to have someone there as well, going down the career path that you are. It’s really cool.
Is there going to be a Harry collab any time soon?
Natassja: Ah, hopefully! I was down there a few weeks ago and we did a few writing sessions, so hopefully sometime soon.
Both your voices gel very well together, so that would be really cool to hear that.
Bit of a random one! What are five things that people wouldn’t be able to find about you on the internet?
Natassja: One would be that I have quite the collection of pop vinyl figures. I’ve always collected them. Probably the software thing. Doing software engineering first and then switching to music. That’s something a lot of people don’t really know unless they know me personally. I’m a big Marvel fan. I went to watch the movies with my family and [I watch] the new Disney+ shows, I’m obsessed with those. I like to take polaroid’s and have taken them since I was 12. Three years ago, I won the national barbershop quartet competition with my quartet back in High School. Same as Harry, as well. We won the same year, which is really cool. That’s five things people probably wouldn’t know about me.
Amazing. Going back to the Marvel thing: do you have a favourite superhero?
Natassja: At the moment, just because it’s new, I think Moon Knight is my favourite. Out of the movies, probably Spiderman has always been my thing.
I love Spiderman as well!
How do you feel that the New Zealand music industry could be improved?
Natassja: Probably have more opportunities for local artists, I think in High School there were a lot of competitions like Rockquest and Play it Strange, but there’s not much once you leave High School. I think something for people that aren’t in school anymore, but who still make music would be really cool, even if it was something like a small competition, just more of those would be really nice.
That would be really beneficial.
Have you got any other songs in the pipeline?
Natassja: Nothing confirmed. Hopefully an EP sometime soon because I’ve got a friend in Auckland, Noah Page, he’s so cool, he’s a producer up there that works in a sound studio. I’m hoping to record an EP with him. I’ve done a few collabs with him on my YouTube channel, which is really cool. Nothing confirmed-confirmed that I’m working towards. Hopefully just building a fanbase off the stuff that I have out right now.
I read that you gained a little bit of a following from your YouTube channel during the early pandemic? What kind of covers did you post?
Natassja: I used to post really often back in High School. I used to post a lot of covers, that was my thing. I wasn’t really comfortable with sharing my original songs because they were really personal back then. During lockdown, I noticed that one of my old covers of As the World Caves In by Matt Maltese blew up. It has 44k views now! I’m like, oh my gosh. I got like, thousands of views every day and so many people were commenting and I was like, “wow, what is this?” and I realised that the song was trending on TikTok. Heaps of people must have searched it up on YouTube and that was only one of the covers and it was like “oh, let’s check out this person…” so grateful for that! It really shines a light on how powerful apps like TikTok can be in the music industry. It’s insane.
That’s massive that you became viral because of that!
Going back to your two songs that you’ve got out, Easier and Don’t Say Goodbye, what are each of them about?
Natassja: Easier was written probably two years ago now, I was going through a break-up and it was just like, the awkward stage right after a break-up where you don’t really know what to do and it’s the kind of break-up where you stay friends. So, you still hear about them and it doesn’t really get any easier. It’s really cool hearing other peoples’ interpretation of the songs. Don’t Say Goodbye was a love song. It’s kind of just past the honeymoon stage where you’re kind of like, settling in with your person and you don’t ever want to leave them, you always want to be around them no matter what, that kind of perspective on love. Nothing else to it, I just wanted a Disney vibe to it really. Like, a princess singing it to their love interest in a movie, yeah. It’s interesting because a lot of people were like, “wow, Easier is supposed to be a sad song, but it’s so upbeat” and then, Don’t Say Goodbye is slow and sad, but it’s actually a happy song, which I really love doing, juxtaposition is really fun.
Now, I know that this is a commonly asked question to musicians, however, who inspires you to create music?
Natassja: At the moment, I listen to a lot of independent artists. So, people like Bruno Major and Lizzy McAlpine. It’s so cool seeing them start out with a really small fanbase and then they blow up on things like TikTok, I feel like it’s just so inspiring to see someone who makes the same music as I do gain that kind of following and have so many people like their music as well. That really inspired me and really motivated me to be making music. Of course, all my friends as well, Harry especially and Noah, they constantly inspire me with their music. I get a lot of demos from Harry and we exchange demos of original songs and we’re always hyping each other up, like “you should release this! This is so cool!” and it’s so nice, so lovely to have that support system as well.
Thank you so much for talking to me and for your awesome music! I think you are super talented and an inspiration for other up-and-comers as well.
Natassja: Thank you!
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