Romance is in the air this December, and turning up the thermostat with her rich vocal is none other than the gifted vocal sensation Nya, whose new single and music video “Side Effects” is raising quite a few eyebrows on either side of the northern border this season. Nya’s voice is a cross between roaring 20s jazz crooner, 40s vocal pop temptress, and mid-90s pop throwbacks ala the A/C side of the dial, and when this combination takes a spin on the agile machine that is the slow-churning beat in “Side Effects,” what happens next is powerful enough to get anyone in the mood for melodic unwinding.
Though it’s pretty obvious that this singer/songwriter fashions herself after players from another time, I don’t think there’s anything recycled about her actual sound. The aesthetics are retrospective and friendlier with the simple side of pop than they are anything in a universe where synthesizers and samples are the standard ingredients in a recipe for success, but I don’t think this makes her a novelty in the least.
Contrarily, her quirks are accompanied by a focused lyrical style that is wholly millennial, alluding to a greater passion with the pen she’s only slightly depending on in this latest release.
Producing the latest song in a very distinguished discography is always difficult and often a high-pressure situation for the artist in the studio – being that, in most circumstances, this is a do-or-die moment for the career you’re just starting to get off of the ground – but you’d never know as much simply by listening to Nya in “Side Effects.” She’s a confident singer who doesn’t want to blend in with the other underground pop songstresses stylizing their aesthetic with a classical vocal pop-type of attitude, and I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing what she does next.