NKD Mag - Issue #41 (November 2014)

NKD NAKED MAGAZINE FEATURES: 4 -THE HEIRS 8 - SADIE CALVANO 10 - ALEX & SIERRA 16 - CHLOE BRIDGES 20 -NIKKI YANOFSKY 22 - OK GO 26 - WILLOW SHIELDS 32 - VINYL THEATRE 36 -CHARLI XCX 46 - JOEL CROUSE 50 - JASMINE VILLEGAS 56 - MADI DIAZ

DESIGNER: CATHERINE POWELL

WRITERS:

TARA DEVINCENZO ALEX LANE STACY MAGALLON EDITORS: JORDAN MELENDREZ JORDAN MELENDREZ CHRISTINE O’DEA CATHERINE POWELL SHINA PATEL CATHERINE POWELL PHOTOGRAPHER: SAM ROSENTHAL CATHERINE POWELL RILEY STENEHJEM KATELYN THOMPSON JOSEPHINE TSE

THE HEIRS Words by RILEY STENEHJEM Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

If you’re a fan of America’s Got Talent, you may have noticed the gifted brother-sister duo Brandon and Savannah, who made it to the semifinals of the show in 2013. The pair has continued making music and gathering a fan base since the end of their time on the series, and have recently rebranded themselves under the name The Heirs.

The siblings showed an interest in music from a young age. Savannah, at just 5 years old, went to a voice studio to see about taking lessons. Brandon recalls the experience, “I remember actually going to the place where she wanted to take lessons and they said ‘We don’t accept anybody this young —’” “Then I sang for them, and they were like, ‘Okay!’” Savannah interjects.

Brandon’s beginnings in music were a little different, as he was always quieter than his younger sister. He taught himself guitar and would write music by himself.

“I would just write music in my room, when I was about 7 or 8, and just kept it to myself. We kind of brought the entertainment aspect out of each other.

She taught me how to perform and how to be outgoing and I taught her how to write music. We played off of each other,” Brandon says. It wasn’t until about three years later that the two began collaborating in music.

The two experienced their first big break into the music industry on Season 8 of America’s Got Talent. “It was a big platform for us,” Brandon says, “We initially didn’t want to do it. We were like ‘Oh, no, we can find another way to get a solid fan base’. My mom was the one who said, ‘No, this is great. A lot of people watch the show and you can gain a big following.’” Their spur-of-the-moment decision to audition for the show worked in their favor, as it allowed them to take their careers to the next level.

The show served as a learning opportunity, as the band began to understand the ins and outs of performing. “Being on that show, every week you have to do a selection from 12 songs. You have to learn all the songs, you have to practice performing [them] in front of the producers. It’s very pressuring. You

have to figure out how to make that stage work for your act,” Brandon says, “We were trying to figure out what to do, and I think we learned how to perform now.”

America’s Got Talent helped solidify and grow their fan base and establish their presence in the industry.

Leaving the show only continued their growth. “It’s funny, because even if you don’t win, you can come out with a new fan base,” Brandon remarks. And this is exactly what occurred for the siblings, as the fans they gathered from their time on the show are still with them. “[Leaving the show] almost made them more passionate,” Brandon says. “We have gotten so many fans from that and they stuck with us. And the people that loved us when we were on their TVs still love us today … hopefully they stick with us until we’re 80,” Savannah says, laughing.

The dedication of the bands’ fans speaks to one of their ultimate goals: longevity. Savannah believes this can be achieved simply through “good music” “If you have good music and you continue to have good music throughout NKDMAG.COM

5

6

your entire life, people catch on,” Savannah explains. “I think the first thing is that you have good music, second is personality, show, performance, all the things that come along with that. Your music is what catches [fans]. Having music that is likable and relatable, it sticks to people.”

Fans of The Heirs are already extremely dedicated. “These kids don’t have to do what they do for us,” Brandon says, “They don’t have to make little gifts, and give us cupcakes and stuff, but they do it because they like to be involved. It means the world to us.” The two agree that many of their “surreal,” and “is this really happening?” moments happen because of interactions with their fans. Savannah recalls a recent moment: “This girl was crying, and saying, ‘I love you so much!’

She was shaking. You imagine these things as an artist, but when you actually see them in real life and you feel the feeling of having someone love you so much … it’s the most amazing feeling.” “Everyday when we go out there and we see people that are so responsive to us, that in itself is a surreal thing. The fact that people can come up to us and say, ‘we really enjoy you’ means the world to us. Everyday, more and more, there’s different crowds and different people that have made our dream come true,” Brandon says.

Social media has added an extra element of interaction with fans that has now become an integral piece to finding success as a band. This is both a positive and a negative thing, as there is an added weight on artists to stay updated online.

“If you don’t have social media and you don’t know how to work within the new digital world, then you just aren’t going to be cut out for today’s music industry,” Brandon explains. At the same time, however, it allows for simple interaction with fans. “It’s a very important aspect with being involved, being relatable. We follow people, and we prefer the ones that we can somewhat relate to, that say things that have meaning to us,” he adds.

There are also higher, almost unrealistic expectations for artists today, as fans often seem to think that there always needs to be something new, be it a

single, an album or a tour. While this can be bothersome to bands, The Heirs don’t mind. “In other ways, it’s good for us because we always want to grow and mature and be better,” Savannah says.

The Heirs have been touring onand-off with R5 for just about a year and a half, and just wrapped up the second leg of The Louder Tour with them. “We’re one big family,” Brandon says of the two bands. “We’re all trying to do the same thing, just in a different way. We are more alternative, they’re more pop rock, and it’s a great thing because we’re all just doing this one thing where we get to go out and try to reach the same goal, just on a different page.” Opening for R5 has provided chances for The Heirs to grow as musicians, as well. “We did learn a lot, just in general, how to perform for an audience.

I mean, we understood it before, but after watching them do it, you tend to adapt to what you see,” Brandon explains.

Thankfully, the two bands’ close relationship prevents any competition, as many of R5’s fans have been introduced to The Heirs throughout the tour. “It means the world to us, and we’re so thankful. Every night we hang out in the bus after the shows and we sit here and we talk about how crazy this new life is,” Brandon says.

There are big plans on the agenda for the band, as they change up their sound and style. Brandon says to prepare for “lots of new music,” with a new EP dropping later this year. “This next EP is how the world is going to see us outside of our fan base. We have a professional team now, so we’re not doing it as amateurs.

It’s a different thing, it’s a different image, different music, and it’s going to be great,” Brandon remarks. In addition, the two hinted at a solo tour coming up somewhere in the future.

Savannah and Brandon have continued to engage their devoted fans, even as they their sound and style transform. “We have people that actually care.

They care about the music and the art, and we care about them,” Brandon says. “It’s definitely been an emotional experience, and we’re glad we’ve been able to be on this ride together.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

7

sadie calvano

Words by JOSEPHINE TSE Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair by JARRETT IOVINELLA Make-Up by MIN MIN MA Necklace by WASABI JEWELRY

“My mom has always told me to do something that brings you joy. And obviously anything you are going to do is going to have points where it’s not fun all the time, but it should be something you love. It makes the work that much more bearable.”

And that’s how actress Sadie Calvano decided that she didn’t want to 8

pursue gymnastics anymore.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Sadie is an only child who had the opportunity to dabble in various fields, including theater and gymnastics.

Eventually, she chose the latter and in the eighth grade, she reached the level of competitive gymnastics. Traveling to compete helped her learn the im-

portant lessons of discipline and time management. It also helped reinforce the “work hard at things you love” motto, which is exactly when she realized that she didn’t love gymnastics like that anymore.

But everything happens for a reason. Quitting gymnastics freed up her schedule and she eventually went back

into theater, focusing on musicals.

“There were always agencies and management coming up to the performers and handing out their business cards, but my mom was having none of it and was always very supportive of whatever I did, but she really didn’t want me working professionally as a child,” Sadie says. “You know, you hear all these crazy horror stories about kids who grow up in Hollywood and my mom wanted me to be normal and healthy and happy.”

When Sadie turned 13 (after begging for years) her mom finally allowed her to pursue the path professionally during the summer break.

What her mom thought was going to be a bunch of script reading, waiting and competition for Sadie was actually the opposite. Sadie landed her first gigs with NCIS and Eagleheart.

“Boy, was she ever wrong,” Sadie laughs. “Being on set was amazing. It was the first time I had a trailer, craft services with whatever food I wanted, and of course, the opportunity to meet all the cool people. I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is the life!’”

During her sophomore year of high school, Sadie was casted to be in an American sitcom called Mom — the rest is history.

In Mom Sadie plays Violet Plunkett, daughter of Christy Plunkett (Anna Faris) and granddaughter of Bonnie Plunkett (Allison Janney). The premise of the show is that Christy and Bonnie are both recovering addicts who had children when they were young and ended up messing up their lives, making every mistake they possibly could. At the end of season 1, Violet had her first child at 17 years old, following the path of her mother and grandmother. In season 2, Sadie assures us that we will see the family try to break the cycles of dysfunction and rehabilitate their lives in every way possible. “But we’re still starting the first episode of season 2 homeless,” Sadie laughs.

When asked about being on a set

where serious topics are mixed with jokes and laughter, Sadie pauses a while before responding. “I think this show is special because sitcoms don’t usually tell heavy and dramatic stories with a comedic twist. The show does that beautifully. It really opens viewers’ eyes to the universal themes that are so much closer to home than expected.” she says.

“But don’t get me wrong. I was concerned about that when I first started the show,” she adds. “Allison gave me some words of wisdom that I can wholeheartedly follow everyday at work. She said, ‘when stuff ’s getting difficult and you feel like you don’t know what to do, you have to remember that our show is all about telling a story that hopefully resonates with people and conveys a powerful message.’”

And Sadie had to learn something very foreign to her: being pregnant on camera.

“Let’s just say I was happy to be able to take off the bump at the end of every shoot day. The cast and crew are amazing to work with, and they really helped me get used to this extra part on my body,” Sadie says.

While this interesting appearance was a physical challenge, Sadie overcame mental challenges at the beginning of her fake pregnancy. “I had to try, to the best of my abilities, to truthfully tell a story about something I frankly had no clue about. It was really hard to imagine the severity and all the emotions Violet must be feeling because I’ve personally never been in such a position before,” she comments.

“However, the more I sat with it, I discovered that although I’ve never given birth to a child, I know what love, loss and fear feels like,” she adds. “So I drew from those feelings instead.”

When she’s not playing Violet, she’s going to school and looking forward to attending college. She currently has her eyes set on a liberal arts institu-

tion for her post-secondary studies.

“The cool thing about liberal arts is that you can dabble your feet in different ponds. I love writing, and I think it’s one of the most powerful ways to communicate with people on a universal level,” she explains. “I also find it very therapeutic; it’s just me and my page.”

Her dedication to writing causes her to push herself to improve her skills. “I try to write both nonfiction and fiction pieces because I think it is important to challenge yourself a bit,” she says. “I want to take a screenwriting class because I’d like to apply that to my career.”

“There’s not one perfect way to balance my job and school, but I think you can only take it one step at a time.

I’m more motivated to put in the time to do it,” she says when reflecting upon her ability to balance her job and her education.

Sadie says she believes that school is always important, and she cites Meryl Streep and Angelina as just a few actresses who are both intelligent and talented. She has an amazing teacher that puts in a lot of time and effort, so she has made education a top priority. “What people seem to forget is that actors and actresses are intelligent people,” she says. “I think you have to be educated in what you do, there’s no other way to improve.”

At this point, Sadie’s busy life caught up with her and we continued the interview on our way out of the building. Although she’s got a lot on her plate, she says that she wants to create a film during the summer, when her job as an actress is on hiatus. However, she believes that she’ll never know what’s really coming next.

“This field is so spontaneous. I love what I do and I think that’s the coolest part of it. I love having open dialogue with people and getting them to think in a critical way,” she says. “I want to do something that gets people talking, challenging the world and inspiring change on my end.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

9

ALEX & SIERRA Words by ALEX LANE Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

They do almost everything on a whim, and they owe everything to a rubber ducky shower curtain.

Alex Kinsey and Sierra Deaton have skyrocketed to fame after their debut on the hit talent show The X Factor just last year as the laid-back, indie duo Alex & Sierra. In the past 12 months, the couple have written, recorded, released and toured supporting their own music.

The pair, now 23, have also been dating for the better part of five years, which was part of their story that stole America’s hearts and ears on the show.

Growing up in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, Alex and Sierra learned to love the sea and everything that went along with the lifestyle of a beach town.

Alex was an avid surfer and had played piano as a kid. He started playing guitar in the seventh grade, but he never learned to read music because he “just learned the least amount” to pass. “It’s kind of my motto,” he says. “I don’t mind working hard as long as you work smart. And sometimes you can work smart without working hard.”

Sierra was the opposite. The child of a military dad, her family moved around when she was a tot, but they settled in 10

NKDMAG.COM

11

Orlando when she was around 2 years old. Her mom, who Sierra says is from a “traditional Asian family,” pushed her to learn everything she could and be the best she could be. As a kid, she was a dancer. In high school, she became interested in track and field.

They met when they were 17, in the place that suits them both: the beach.

After being friends for a while, they decided to start dating. While Alex had been playing gigs and playing music in the house all throughout high school, it wasn’t until a year into their relationship that music came into play.

Once they realized they had chemistry in music, they started to play a song or two for fun and post videos online. Sierra, who had been working as an intern at a local radio station, is responsible for their first real gig.

They played in a tent. Outside. At a Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran show in Florida.

Alex and Sierra agree that the show was an awesome experience, even if they did build it up to be more than it was to friends; the duo told friends they were opening for the pop stars.

That little gig encouraged them enough to submit a video to the online auditions of The X Factor.

“Honestly, we were bored in his dorm room and X Factor had online auditions,” Sierra says. “We kind of thought, no one probably watches these. But we wanted to send an audition tape anyways. The way we thought about it was someone could see it, something good could happen from it, and we didn’t spend any money on it. So why not take a chance?”

The video was filmed in Alex’s dorm room bathroom, in front of a rubber ducky shower curtain, that Sierra says, they owe everything to.

The producer from the show that saw their video told them later that the only reason she kept watching the video after the first few seconds was because she also had had a rubber ducky shower curtain in college. When she then heard that they had the same alma mater, she knew that she had to give them a shot.

She did, and Alex and Sierra went on to win season three of The X Factor, leading to a deal with Columbia Records and bountiful opportunities to expand their musical careers.

But it was never about the fame or fortune, which is probably why their fan 12

base loves them so much. “It was always for fun,” Alex says. “It was sort of like, ‘oh cool, we can actually play gigs now. People were actually responding well when it was the two of us.”

Sierra adds that she is glad for the easy, laid-back attitude that they have adopted for their career.

“I think that’s what has made it easier, is that we’ve been doing it for fun and not like ‘this is it,’” she says. Alex adds, “I think that’s how you have to do it. Whether you want to be successful or not, if you stop having fun with it, you should just stop.”

Now, the couple are on tour supporting their debut album, Its About Us. They love touring, because to them, this whole experience is really just a dream.

As for working with a significant other, Alex says, it feels natural. “Every couple of months we stop and go ‘oh crap, we’re working together.’ But we don’t think about it really,” he says.

Sierra, who is the only girl on the tour bus of seven guys, says there is really nothing for her to complain about, or for the couple to fight about. “There would be nothing to fight about because what we are doing is so much fun,” she says.

The fun has been going on for exactly a year. It was October of 2013 when the first episode of the third season aired and, Alex says, the response to their music was almost immediate.

“We were on the first episode, and I went — not that this is an indicator — but I went from 200 Twitter followers to almost 10,000,” Alex says. He also says this was terrifying because both of their phones broke within 24 hours of the episode airing from too many notifications from new fans.

Those same fans have supported them through all of their writing, recording and releasing in the past year, the pair says. But the idea that now their fans are enjoying music that they created, poured their heart and soul into is “just nuts.”

“It’s been a long time coming for both of us. It’s just crazy to think that we have stuff on iTunes,” Alex says. “You know people can go and listen, and words that we wrote and chords that we came up with … it’s crazy.

And it really comes to a nice apex when we’re playing a show, especially because we’ve been playing some headliners on this tour, and everyone knows the words.”

Being on stage and having people sing their songs back to them is something that

NKDMAG.COM

13

14

the rookie musicians are still getting used to, Sierra says.

“It’s weird to think that a few months ago, these songs didn’t exist to other people.

I mean we knew they existed because we wrote them,” she says. “But it’s crazy to see people caring enough about them that they know every word. It’s just especially weird because we know all the words to other people’s songs, and we go to their concerts and sit in the front row, and I know what that feels like.”

For Alex and Sierra, the idea that touring and being musicians is currently their full-time job seems surreal. Seeing their name in marquee lights is still a surprise.

Interviews with magazines, photo shoots and being able to play sold out shows is still new for this pair.

Alex says one of the best experiences over the past year was writing and playing with Jason Mraz. Jason is a musician that they both look up to, not only because of his music, but because he is also a good person who, they say, has not been jaded by fame.

The fact that they got to go to his home, hang out and write for a few days was just a great experience for the young artists.

More than anything though, Sierra says, its wild to see how fast the past 12 months have gone by.

Just a year ago, they had been playing in restaurants for a handful of people who were blasé about their performance. They had actually been tipped to stop playing one time, Sierra says. But now, they are traveling to cities they haven’t been to before, and they are selling out venues of 12,000 people or more.

“There hasn’t been much time to just sit and think like, ‘oh my gosh this is crazy’ because even when we had a month off, which was during the writing process, none of our original music was out yet,” she says.

As for the next few months, and the upcoming year, the pair says they are excited to record, write and tour as much as possible.

Of course they have goals, but they don’t know what their plans are, even if their management already set things up for them.

“We kind of live life not knowing exactly what’s in store,” Alex says.

But from their beach bum, laid-back roots, can you really expect anything less?

After all, their Facebook page says “We’re just a couple of kids trying to have fun, go on adventures and never grow up.”NKD NKDMAG.COM

15

CHLOE BRIDGES

Words by CHRISTINE O’DEA Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Make-Up by HEIDI SIGLER

Most 20-something Americans, like Chloe Bridges, can be found scattered around college campuses across the country. But unlike the majority of university students, Chloe can also be found on FOX, ABC Family and the CW, starring on various episodes of some of America’s most popular TV shows.

Chloe was born in a New Orleans suburb on Dec. 27, 1991. In school, she always chose elective classes that allowed her to express and explore her creative nature, including dance, gymnastics, art and piano. Chloe was born with a natural creative talent in addition to her obvious stage presence.

“I tried soccer for a minute,” she says, reminiscing about her short-lived sports career. “It clearly was not my thing. I made one goal and it was an accident. I kicked it so it would get away from me, and it ended up in the goal.”

While Chloe proudly tells the story of her fortuitous scoring in a childhood soccer game, she is more genuinely proud of the direction her life has taken.

When she was 11, she heard a radio advertisement for acting classes and was interested immediately. She describes her connection with acting as an instant “click.”

“When you take piano lessons, nobody really says, ‘You should move to blah blah city and really pursue your piano.’” Chloe laughs. “With acting, people encourage you to move to L.A. and audition.”

One year after enrolling in acting classes, she was convinced. Chloe moved to Los Angeles with her mother, began

auditioning and almost immediately booked her role as Zoey on Freddie Prinze Jr.’s ABC sitcom Freddie. At the time, Chloe was in eighth grade, and the filming schedule allowed for her to attend classes for one week each month, while doing the rest of the work on set.

“I wasn’t popular, and I didn’t have friends,” Chloe says in a lively voice that begs to differ. It wasn’t until her classmates began asking her why she always missed school that she realized that being an actress would mean being noticed. Still, it didn’t affect her much.

She maintained her acting career while attending Burbank High School, and she spent her senior year filming Disney’s Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam. Another moment of realization occurred when the movie’s cast was announced. “The moment I realized that people would know who I was, was when I had to turn off my notifications on Twitter,” Chloe says.

The characters that Chloe has played seem to follow a certain fandom phenomenon. It took some time for Camp Rock fans to warm up to Chloe, as there were certain expectations of her role as Nick Jonas’ love interest in the film.

Then, her role as Donna LaDonna on The CW’s short-lived Sex and The City prequel, The Carrie Diaries, was also held to high expectations by fans. More recently, Chloe confronted a very loyal Pretty Little Liars fan base, as she made her debut as Sydney Driscoll.

“This has been a theme in my notvery-long career,” she notes. “It seems to be a ‘thing’ that I do. It was a phenom-

enon that I was already used to, where an already-established fan base has to either get used to me or hate me.”

While Chloe has repeatedly faced the challenge of appealing to extremely devoted audiences of popular movies and shows, she does it with the best possible mindset. “There are different levels of optimism,” she explains. “It didn’t affect my character specifically, but it was exciting in so many ways to be a part of something that already had a built-in fan base.”

After all, Chloe’s confidence and down-to-earth personality makes it hard to be a hater. On many levels, she is very much relatable to the young girls who are fans of her work. Chloe’s roles have been mostly comedy, but with her role in a mystery teen drama like Pretty Little Liars, she’s beginning to showcase a greater variety of her strengths. “I don’t have a preference, but I do feel like I tend to end up in comedy more than in anything dramatic,” she says.

As a new college student, Chloe feels even closer to students, millennials and fans alike. “It’s a lifestyle change, but in a good way,” she says. On campus, Chloe is friendly, but focused. There are occasions where classmates and New Yorkers ask to take pictures with her, and while she is more than happy to pose and chat, she refuses to be marked as “tardy” in any class as a result. Chloe has mastered the “walk and talk” tactic when it comes to these situations.

The adjustment to the college life is not a traditional one in Chloe’s case.

Most campuses are not buried within the NKDMAG.COM

17

18

skyscrapers of New York City, and most social events in New York City are not hosted in fraternity houses or basements.

“Normally I don’t talk to fans about political science,” she says, laughing about her encounters with classmates and fans.

In the academic sense, studying political science at the college level after a five-year break from school has proven difficult, but Chloe is not one to be discouraged by a few exams and papers.

“The purpose in me going to college, other than always believing in education, is for me to get a job outside of a creative industry, or with a more stable position in studio or entertainment law, for instance,” she explains. Chloe has no intention of leaving the acting industry by any means, but she is well aware that it doesn’t hurt to have a back-up plan.

“If I’m going to do this, I better get in there now” she said as she talked about how all of her friends have already graduated from college. She describes being 22 as “young in life years” but “old in college years.” Regardless, Chloe has been enjoying her return to school. The subjects of her recent tweets are similar to those of the average college girl: writing papers, using Craigslist to find an apartment and Beyoncé.

Also driving her stay in New York is her love for the city itself. After spending two years filming The Carrie Diaries all over Brooklyn and Manhattan, Chloe has since been mesmerized. “I probably lost a lot of hair in the last few years from all the teasing to make it look ’80s-like,” she jokes. “But I had the best time and it obviously made me fall in love with New York.” In just the last few years, Chloe has lived in the Lower East Side, the Financial District and now in the East Village.

It’s clear that Chloe has a lot on her plate. Most people would not be able to balance a job in a competitive industry while also pursuing a college degree at an Ivy League school, but when it comes to both, she is passing with flying colors.

Whether her name is in textbooks or television, Chloe Bridges is a name to be remembered. NKD NKDMAG.COM

19

nikki yanofsk It started with her putting on concerts for family in her basement. Then she became the youngest person to open the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Now Nikki Yanofsky is ready to show the world a new side of jazz music.

The 20-year-old Canadian, has been a music lover her whole life, but she showed the world her love of jazz when she headlined the Montreal International Jazz Festival at the age of 12.

20

Growing up, Nikki has always wanted to perform and started by doing some shows around her hometown. She performed at charities and fundraisers at a young age to jumpstart her career.

Ella Fitzgerald, who was the first name she came across when started to research jazz music, inspired her and “introduced her to the world of jazz.”

The first time she listened to the powerful jazz singer, Nikki was “completely mesmerized” and became obsessed.

Nikki was invited to play at the Montreal International Jazz Festival for the second year in a row and decided to perform a tribute song called “Ella … of Thee I Swing.” She ended up recording and releasing it in Canada as a DVD and live album, which was nominated for two Juno Awards.

The public’s attention was now on Nikki and her fan base began to increase. Shortly after, she was approached by Phil Ramone, who was

ky

Words by SAM ROSENTHAL Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

producing an album at the time called We All Love Ella. Nikki was asked to sing the bonus track on the album called “Airmail Special.” This was Nikki’s first release in the United States, and it resulted in her doing her first studio album, Nikki, which Phil also produced. She states that he was “hands on and in the studio with me everyday” and that he helped her pick the songs and helped her come into her own as an artist.

Nikki’s parents sparked her love for music at a young age. Her father plays the piano, which is how she was first introduced to music.

“I’m really lucky. My whole family’s like super supportive, really, really, supportive of everything I’ve done,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what you do with your life, whatever you wanna be, just make sure that you give it your all.”

Balancing high school and her career was a little bit challenging, but her school was able to provide her a program that allowed her to do her schoolwork on the road.

“The biggest challenge in school was just like, I got bullied a bit through elementary school and high school, but I sort of ignored it,” she recalls. Her parents tried to keep her childhood as normal as possible even with her budding career.

After the release of her first album, she performed the national anthem at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics at age 16. With the 2.2 billion people watching the Olympics, Nikki stated that she was “beyond nervous” but mostly nervous about falling in her heels; it was the first time she had ever worn them.

“It probably would have gone viral or something, it would have been hilarious now but at the time it would have been devastating” she jokes. She released her second studio album Little Secret, produced by Quincy Jones, on Oct. 7.

“I’m really excited about this one,” she said. “He’s an amazing person and he’s so supportive.”

She has a high respect for Quincy and has wanted to work with him since she was 15 years old.

“He was a really great person to sort of start me off like that,” she says. “He made me feel super comfortable.” “He is just so great and so honest,” she adds.

Nikki’s first album and her

newest album are vastly different.

For her first album she went with the flow, whereas Little Secret “was more thought out.” She says that she has grown up a lot and she has a better sense of self now, which is reflected a lot in the new album. “I also feel like I’ve grown a lot as person” she added while speaking of the new album.

She says jazz music spoke to her even though others were not listening to that genre of music, which she has loved since a young age.

“I never really did things just because they were considered, you know, popular,” she explains.

Even now, Nikki faces difficulties trying to prove to everyone that she is a serious jazz artist.

“I think that there’s the two extremes,” she says, “there’s like the people in jazz that are really supportive of the up-and-comers that are trying to keep that music alive and there are the people that are kind of like oh you haven’t lived enough to sing that that song.”

If anyone were to tell her she shouldn’t be singing her songs, her response is usually that people don’t know her well enough to make the judgment of what kind of music she should be singing. “There is no way of knowing who is gonna relate to it and who’s gonna feel it, who’s not,” she says.

Nikki’s goal is to introduce young people to jazz music. Her favorite messages to receive on social media are the ones that give her the feeling that she is reaching that goal. She recently received a comment that said: “I’m so happy you’re singing jazz, my parents love it.” These types of comments make her proud and happy to be able to inspire younger people to enjoy the genre.

“You just have to do what you like, not trying to reach certain audiences,” she states about the stigma of jazz being for an older crowd. “To me, jazz is so timeless. It’s just one of the few genres of music that just encourages you to be free. There’s no rules in jazz.”NKD NKDMAG.COM

21

22

OK GO Words by JORDAN MELENDREZ Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

“The full story starts with Christmas holidays …”

This is the response you get from Damian Kulash when you ask him how it all started, but he isn’t referring to music.

He is referring to his parents and very intimate details.

The OK Go frontman and his best friend and fellow bandmate, Tim Nordwind, continue to riff off each other, joking that Tim was literally almost born in a concert stadium. Damian and Tim have been best friends for 27 years, so at this point they describe everything about themselves as “instinct,” especially music.

“As a band, it’s like, our instinct is to be excited about the people who like the things that we do,” Damian says. “We have been pretty actively engaging with our fans for a long time.”

A long time, indeed. After fully forming in 1998, with Damian on lead vocals and guitar; Tim on bass; Dan Konopka on drums; and Andy Ross on guitar and keyboard, the group has released six albums since their self-titled freshman debut in 2002. And then in 2006, when they released the famous “Here We Go Again,” NKDMAG.COM

23

treadmill video, people took notice.

“From day one we were making videos and little skits and movies and stuff with friends who are filmmakers,” Damian says about the world before YouTube. “That stuff is fun for us to make. And so it was just sort of like the world caught up with that.”

The world has caught up a bit: OK Go released a video for “I Won’t Let You Down” on Oct. 27, and it quickly went viral, garnering 4.4 million views on YouTube in just a few days. The band also dropped their fourth studio album, Hungry Ghosts, earlier in October. But Damian and Tim struggle to pinpoint the album’s sound. In a way, they can only differentiate the music from their previous work rather than describe their current sound.

“The last record was pretty ethereal and psychedelic,” Damian says, adding that the two albums are both adventurous, but in different ways. “The style of the songs is a lot more concise, and it doesn’t feel nearly as spacey and distant. It feels more up in your face to me.”

Tim chimes in about a song about bank robbery, while Damian says his favorite is “The Great Fire.” Damian explains that the song is a ballad, but Dave Fridmann, the band’s producer, wanted to “destroy it.” The band split up and each wrote their own version of the song, and when they reconvened, they laid the tracks on top of one another and started queuing segments in and out until they created a song.

“It doesn’t sound like anything I think I’ve ever heard before,” Damian says.

“There are very few organic instruments in it. It’s pretty electronic, but it feels —” “Almost like sound design,” Tim finishes Damian’s sentence.

“It just feels like it’s inside of one of those bikes from Tron. It feels like that but on a really sad day,” Damian attempts to describe the song by comparing it to the futuristic film. “It’s like one of those bikes having a breakdown.”

“Electronica?” Tim queries, slowly saying the word.

“It’s got a lot of ’80s in it, and I hope it doesn’t sound like we’re copying, like, it doesn’t sound like OK Go does their impression of the ’80s,” Damian says a bit more confidently about the album as a whole. “I want, when people listen to these songs, to feel the way I felt when I 24

listened to songs in the ’80s. So it’s less like making those songs, those sounds again, and more like trying to listen to the same emotions that we were listening to.”

Appealing to emotions has been the band’s inspiration from the beginning, and they have a year’s-worth of music to prove the process is successful. In January of 2014, the band announced that they would be releasing new music every month, partially, Damian says, because “We’re not going to worry about whether or not people will think this sounds weird coming from OK Go … We were like ‘Why wouldn’t you just put out the songs that you like the most?’”

With the band’s stream of creativity flowing continuously, they always try to give back to their fans by sharing the experience with them.

And the band has tried to emulate their own memories of growing up interacting with their idols. Damian, who is from Washington, D.C., and Tim, who is from Kalamazoo, Michigan, both recall seeing bands play in churches, basements, high school cafeterias or other random locations. That environment provided different access than large stadiums nowadays.

“After the show you would just walk right up to them and be like, ‘hey man, that was an awesome show,’ Damian recalls. “It just felt like, yeah they were 10 or 20 years older than we are — were, are — and they were our gods. But they were also just like, people.”

Tim adds that attending concerts at Wings Stadium in Michigan, a larger arena, was less satisfying than intimate settings.

“That DIY ethic, spread through the country, too,” he says. “The most I was ever moved by music and seeing bands was like shitty basement with a shitty sound system.”

Thanks to this work ethic, the band has garnered a significant fanbase — over 1 million followers on Twitter, over 600,000 likes on Facebook and over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. But the band says they fanbase comes in layers: some just watch a video or just listen to a song, some people buy their records, some people attend shows every once in a while. But then some go above and beyond.

“There’s the people who know more about our lives than we do,” Damian says.

“The band started to feel like we were shepherding a whole little community, like these are our people, because they support us.”

Tim and Damian agree that they used to spend hours in record stores, digging around for bands like Kite, Fugazi and Shudder to Think, which is Damian’s favorite band (and his dream came true when OK Go played with Shudder to Think in 2008). They enjoyed learning all about the bands, and now they are trying to preserve the connection with fans in today’s media-driven world. But as far as the band “running business,” sharing the music-making process with fans isn’t off-limits.

“It’s not supposed to be magic,” Damian says, explaining why the band only shoots one take. “We want people to watch it and be like ... ‘they curated this experience for me,’ whether it’s a show or an album or a video.”

“In terms of making music and videos and like, art in general, we tend to try to follow our own instincts about what we think is cool,” Damian says. “I try to think about what it was like when I was a fan.

I still am a fan, but like, especially when music was at its newest and freshest to me and was really changing my life at its fastest pace.”

This mindframe has become part of the band’s overall vibe; they instinctually create songs and videos that make them happy, which also makes their fans happy.

At the beginning of their career, they decided that they would approach songwriting with a similar mindset.

“You try to write something right now that the radio is playing, that by the time your record comes out 12 months from now,” Damian says, “you’d chase your tail forever if you tried to do that type of stuff.”

“I think we’re much more conscious of giving ourselves enough time to play with ideas that we have, whether it be musically or like visually,” Tim says. “I think we sort of did that instinctually anyways, but I think now we’re kind of conscious of knowing that we need to give ourselves time to play.”

“It felt to me, then, like the job of a band was to provide a jungle gym on which to play,” Damian says. “It’s sort of fun for us to build that jungle gym and [say], ‘climb up as high as you want.’” NKD

NKDMAG.COM

25

WILLOW SHIELDS Words and Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

“Primrose Everdeen!” a teenage girl shouts as Willow Shields makes her way through the chaos that is Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week. A few more teenage girls shriek and ask for photos, to which Willow happily obliges. The girls squeal about how excited they are for the next installment of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, due out Nov. 21. “Does this happen a lot?” I ask. Willow shrugs, “Kind of,” she says. “It’s pretty crazy.”

“Crazy” is an understatement.

The Hunger Games was a global success after its 2012 release, and the 2013 sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was even bigger. Not bad, especially considering the role of Primrose Everdeen was Willow’s first major role.

Willow began acting in her home

state of New Mexico at age 7. The state is an extremely popular area for filming, so movies and television shows were always setting up production near Willow’s home — and they always needed extras. “I started with just doing extra work, then one-liners, then supporting characters,” Willow says. At age 10, she got the audition for The Hunger Games.

Lionsgate was looking everywhere to assemble the perfect cast for The Hunger Games, so Willow sent in an audition tape. The team loved it and asked her to come in and read for them. Still living in New Mexico, Willow flew to Los Angeles, read for the role and booked the part immediately. Since then, life has been hectic for the now-14-year-old.

Willow was extremely familiar with the plot of The Hunger Games

before auditioning — she was halfway through the first book when the opportunity arose. “We got the email and I was like ‘I know exactly what this is! I’m so excited,’” she says. She wasn’t the only one excited — fans of the book were following the pre-production process for the first film extremely carefully to ensure their precious books would be well adapted on-screen. “There was a lot of critique for different things, but once the first film came out and [fans] got to witness all the actors doing their jobs and playing their characters they were all so excited,” Willow recalls. Willow feels like she got a fair amount of skepticism from hardcore fans, solely because no one knew who she was yet. “I had never even worked really!” she exclaims.

Willow’s character Prim was not NKDMAG.COM

27

28

very present in the first two installments, but she plays a huge part in Mockingjay: Part 1. “[Prim] and Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) have kind of gone through a role reversal in the film,” Willow explains, “Katniss is falling apart and she’s having a lot of difficult handling the situations she’s put into. Prim is really there for her and being really strong.”

For those who have read the books, there will be no spoilers surrounding Prim’s storyline. If anything, Prim will be even more important in the films than in the books, as her growth as a person and transition into becoming a nurse are highlighted in the film.

Getting into Prim’s mind when filming has been a simple task for Willow, as she feels like she can relate to Prim very easily. “I think a lot of people can relate to Prim, because she’s always going to be there for other people and always want to help other people,” Willow says.

Willow finds Prim to be a great role model for people because of how caring and selfless she is. She’s going to miss the character now that this journey is coming to an end.

Filming for the last Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay: Part 2, concluded this summer, and Willow thinks the hardest part for everyone was saying goodbye. “There was not one person on set that has not been incredibly kind and a joy to work with — both cast and crew,” Willow says. When the first movie began filming in 2011, the cast all made a point to get to know each other.

By the fourth film, there was nothing but love for everyone on set. “I couldn’t have asked for a better cast to work with,” Willow says.

Willow’s last day on set was emotional, to say the least. “Everybody was crying, even like, my makeup artist who’d been doing my makeup for four years,” she recalls. But wrapping up Prim as a character was equally as exciting as it was emoNKDMAG.COM

29

tional for Willow. She said she is extremely grateful for her experience — especially the chance to bond with her co-stars. “Getting to work with people like Jen, Josh (Hutcherson) and Liam (Hemsworth) has been the most rewarding thing,” she says. She’s learned quite a bit from her Hunger Games family, especially Jennifer, who has become a big sister to Willow. “She’s taught me a lot about acting, and she’s taught me a lot about life in general, and she’s just wonderful. I’ve gotten so much advice from her about just staying who I am as a person throughout all of this, but also just sticking with my love of acting,” she says.

Since Mockingjay: Part 2 wrapped, Willow has been auditioning for various roles in Los Angeles.

It’s been an interesting experience getting back into auditioning mode full-force, because Willow has had a job for basically the last four years.

“It’s exciting though,” she says. “I love auditioning because I feel like if you’re not working at the time, auditioning is really fun because it’s the opportunity you get to act again.” She says she would love to play a character completely different from Prim, just for a change of pace, but is open to anything that comes her way.

With Mockingjay: Part 1 hitting theaters in just a few weeks, Willow is anxious to see her cast mates again, but more anxious for fans to finally see the new film. Part 2 will be released in November 2015 and after that, Willow’s journey with Prim will come to an end. She’s excited to begin working on new projects and her goals are similar to those of any actor. “With every film I just want to do something different and exciting and fun, but also progress into bigger characters and bigger roles,” she says. She hopes to land a big leading role one day. At the rate she’s going, that seems like an easy goal to accomplish. NKD 30

NKDMAG.COM

31

VINYL THEATRE Words by SHINA PATEL Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

“This guy’s the glue of the band,” guitarist and singer Keegan Calmes states as he motions to keyboardist Chris Senner, “so take it away.” And so begins the story of how four Milwaukee natives came together to form the alternative pop band called Vinyl Theatre.

Chris met Keegan in high school, more specifically at a cross country meet and to be even more specific, a cross country meet where the two future band mates were racing each other. Chris approached Keegan about his music and suggested that the two of them should get together to play. So one day did just that. “Turns out the chemistry was immediately there for writing,” Keegan says. They were even able to write a song together that day.

When they first started writing and playing music together, they noticed that it was mainly acoustic, and they really wanted to dive deeper into their sound. During his freshman year of college, Chris sent a song to his friend Nick Cesarz to see if he could add drums to it. When Nick sent it back to with an amazing drum part, it only made sense to add him to the band.

After college, the band returned to Milwaukee and that was when Keegan met Josh Pothier. Josh was a mutual childhood friend of Nick and Chris; Josh also played bass. At the time, the position of bassist was filled but Keegan would have loved for it to be Josh.

“We just hit it off as people,” Keegan says. A few months later they needed to fill the position and the only person that made sense was Josh, which com-

pleted the Vinyl Theatre lineup known today.

But that’s not what they called themselves when they first started. When they got new management, they decided to change their name because they wanted something completely unique and different — not just a variation on generic band names. Calling themselves Vinyl Theatre was their way of making a promise to their fans. The “Theatre” is a tribute to the live show and energetic performances they put on, and it’s a testament to the fact that this will never change. Insight into the “Vinyl” gleaned the true promise being made. A fan’s love for a particular band or album can grow into a desire to own the vinyl records; people don’t buy vinyl records for music they listen to on occasion.

People buy vinyl records for music they are over-the-moon passionate about. “It doesn’t necessarily come straight to the sales idea, it’s just like that relationship itself is definitive in what we want in a fan and what they want in us,” Josh says.

“They want us to care so much about the music that we want to give them the vinyl, that we want to make it for them.”

The band wants that connection with their fans. They want fans that are as passionate about music as they are.

The band just released their debut album Electrogram in September. Unlike traditional album making, which consists of sitting down and writing dozens of songs in one period of time, the songs featured on this album were written during the many years that the guys have been playing music together.

“It’s not necessarily a compilation of our last two years,” Chris says. “We’ve been writing these songs now for a while, and we got to take some of the songs that were really close to us, that we truly loved writing, with us for this record.”

“Lyrically, the song ‘Gold,’ I’d say is the most close to our hearts,” Keegan adds. They also feel that the album as a whole is representative of who they are as people and is an accurate depiction of what they want to be known for as musicians. They note that they didn’t include any songs that could be considered slow because that’s not what the type of music with which they want to be associated. They wanted people listening to their band for the first time, no matter what the song was, to know that this band was all about high energy and synth pop vibes.

Signing to Fueled by Ramen was the manifestation of “the dream” as the band refers to it. “That’s the dream label we wanted to be on,” Keegan says.

Interestingly enough, even though the band considered Fueled by Ramen to be a castle in the sky, the label was one of the first to show serious interest in the budding indie pop group.

The label was so interested in signing Vinyl Theatre that they took it upon themselves to fly to Wisconsin to watch the boys play a basement show in the middle of nowhere. “They’ve become a really close family to us now,” Keegan says. “I couldn’t imagine anything else.

I couldn’t imagine another label and other people.” The thing that the band has noticed is that Fueled by Ramen NKDMAG.COM

33

34

is doing everything they can to keep things fresh and new, almost modern.

The group said they are grateful to be a part of this new movement and to be signed to the same label with acts such as twenty one pilots, fun. and Panic!

At the Disco. An added perk of being signed to Fueled by Ramen is the camaraderie that exists among label mates.

The guys of Vinyl Theatre note that, to them, twenty one pilots have become like big brothers and have helped them with touring and technical issues that seem to only be fixed with the wisdom of experience. This past October, Vinyl Theatre finished opening for twenty one pilots on their national Quiet is Violent tour and were able to absorb a lot just by watching their label mates perform every night. It is well known to most in the alternative music scene that twenty one pilots emphasize on-stage presence and performance, making each show an experience. Vinyl Theatre wants to raise the bar and make every show they perform just as memorable. “We play for 30, and we’re exhausted,” Josh says.

“And they go for 90 every night, and they go just as hard. And it’s honestly an inspiration.”

Although they skillfully avoid sharing any of their plans for the coming months, they were able to say that “big things,” which are still currently in the works, are gaining momentum. They note that the label seemed to be happy and supportive of the direction they were headed.

They couldn’t elaborate on these big things, but they know what their purpose, for the time being, was going to be. “We want to do these songs justice and give them a good lifespan. Twenty one pilots did justice to Vessel by giving it years of life and years of touring. We want to give this record years of life,” Keegan states as the most important thing the band could do. While making new music is a critical and crucial part of sustaining a successful band, a fallacy that many musicians fall prey to is thinking they need to constantly be making new music thus writing off the previous album without giving it a chance to come to life. Vinyl Theatre isn’t trying to write off Electrogram.

They want to give it the time and attention it deserves. NKD NKDMAG.COM

35

CHARLI XCX

Words and Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

42

Charli XCX has always been confident in her music and her talent, and the rest of the world is finally ready to let her be a pop star.

I meet with Charli in the restaurant section of the trendy Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on a cloudy, October afternoon. But the weather isn’t getting to Charli; she’s dressed in a fuzzy, baby blue sweater and her smiling lips are painted bright pink.

She has every reason to smile — in a few hours she’ll be performing to a sold out crowd at Webster Hall, and her name is all over the iTunes charts because of the success of her summer anthem, “Boom Clap,” and her collaboration with Iggy Azalea — the four-times-platinum-selling “Fancy” singer. 2014 has without a doubt been Charli’s year, but her success over the last few months has been a long time coming.

Charli’s story as a pop culture figure begins in a small town in England when she was 14. She was making music in her parents’ living room and

uploading the tracks to MySpace. She caught the attention of a promoter in London, who asked her to perform at a party he was throwing. One party turned into trips to London every weekend, and she eventually snagged the interest of Atlantic Records.

“They would come down to these warehouses at like 4 in the morning and watch me play on a crate,” Charli says.

She signed with the label at 16 while she was still in school. She began traveling to Los Angeles to write with producers who she “didn’t care about” and who “didn’t care about [her].” Charli fell out of love with music around this time. She finished school and enrolled in an art college in London.

“I realized I hated art school because everyone just wanted to fight all of the time,” Charli says.

She had still been making trips back and forth to America to work on music and met a producer named Ariel Rechtshaid. The two penned

“Stay Away,” Charli’s first release under her new performing name: Charli XCX. “It felt like the first song I had written that I actually liked,” she says.

She would listen to the song on repeat for a week and became obsessed with it. Once the song was released, people began to pay attention to what Charli was doing. She kept working with Ariel and ended up writing half her Atlantic Records debut, True Romance, with him and Justin Raisen.

True Romance was released in April 2013, and while it didn’t sell a lot, it received extremely positive reviews. “That was back when I still really cared about what people thought of me,” Charli says. Around the same time she wrote the pop-anthem of 2013, “I Love I.” Icona Pop ended up singing the song, but Charli’s vocal was accidentally left on the track, which caused “a big ruckus” between the two artists’ teams. “It made me really begin to hate the music industry because I felt violated,” she admits.

While the success of the song was NKDMAG.COM

39

great for Charli because it put her on the map as a songwriter, people expected her to just replicate “I Love It.” It was an extremely weird time for Charli because as she was touring for True Romance — a record her fans and journalists really loved — she was being asked to perform “I Love It” with Icona Pop in Las Vegas on off days. “I felt like I had two different lives and two different careers,” she says. She holds nothing against the girls in Icona Pop, rather she just declares the whole situation rather weird. “My vocal got left on the track, and then I heard it on the radio,” she recalls. “And I was annoyed about that because my voice is on that song a lot and I didn’t feel like I was getting the credit I deserved for it.”

When she was done touring and tried to begin working on Sucker, her sophomore record due out Dec. 16, she was still writing songs for other people as well. “I felt like I couldn’t really write a pop song anymore because it felt like I had been in a 40

hospital. People were just trying to force ‘I Love It’ out of me, and I began to really hate it,” she says. Charli went into the studio with Patrik Berger, with whom she wrote “I Love It,” and started making punk music to get aggression out. Once that was all out of her system, she “broke her internal silence” and started making music for Sucker.

Around the same time, Charli wrote the hook for “Fancy.” The song took a few months to catch on but when it did, it was everywhere. “I had to learn dance moves with Iggy, which was quite funny,” she says. The collaboration with Iggy was a much more positive experience for Charli. “I feel like we were both seen as underdogs prior to ‘Fancy,’ and now everyone is after us, and I think it’s funny,” she says. Charli doesn’t have a bad word to say about Iggy. Instead, she says has been nothing but respectful and supportive of her. The two didn’t officially meet until the video shoot for “Fancy,” but prior to that, Charli’s

mother heard Iggy speaking highly of Charli on the radio in the U.K. “She was just so fucking nice, and I had never had that experience before with a collaboration,” Charli says.

To bust out Sucker, which only took a couple of months per Charli’s intentions, Charli formed a writing camp in Sweden. Charli and her team went to a disused hotel in the countryside of Sweden to write and record.

“We were just barbecuing, drinking champagne, writing songs and never sleeping,” she says, “It was kind of awesome.”

Once the record was completed, her song “Boom Clap” landed a spot on the soundtrack for the film The Fault In Our Stars. “Then people seemed to think I was really important,” she says. Compared to the rest of Sucker, “Boom Clap” is an anomaly, and putting it on the soundtrack for the film was a gamble for that reason. “To me that wasn’t a safe move, because I knew that some people would be like ‘what?’” she says. But

NKDMAG.COM

35

38

she knew it was a good opportunity and believes it fit really well with the movie’s storyline. The song made its way up the Top 40 charts and thus began the early stages of releasing Sucker.

The recent fame is rather humorous for Charli, who always knew she was talented. “I always thought I was good, but now everyone’s like ‘We thought you were amazing all along.’

And I’m like ‘Well you didn’t, but thanks,” she laughs. But jokes aside she is enjoying the fact that people are recognizing her abilities. “I’ve always wanted to be seen as a serious songwriter, so it’s cool for me,” she says.

While she’s definitely writing pop music, Charli still feels a little out of place in the whole pop star world. “I feel like an alien in this weird machine and I don’t want to play the game, but half of me is and half of me isn’t,” she says, “And that’s what the record I’m about to release is about.”

Sucker was originally going to hit

shelves on Oct. 16, but Charli decided to push it back to December so she would have enough time to push a new single. “I don’t want people to just think that I’m ‘Boom Clap,’” she says. “I wanted to release another song before I put the album out so people didn’t just think I was ‘Boom Clap’ and done.” The song was “Break The Rules,” a sassy track that Charli believes is a great representation of the record.

“Break The Rules” came together in the parking lot of Quincy Jones’ old studio in L.A. Charli stepped outside for a cigarette and was singing ideas into her phone and thought “this is so bad it’s awesome.” She brought it into the studio and everyone was enjoying it. The backbone of the song was written during her writing camp in Sweden. “That makes it sound really constructed, but it’s one of the most naturally written songs I’ve ever done,” Charli says.

As a whole, Sucker shows exponential growth for Charli compared

to True Romance. She went into True Romance feeling nervous and worrisome about what people thought of her. Sucker is the result of Charli growing into herself and becoming a “confident young woman.” She was less focused on making “cool” songs and focused more on releasing songs that she believes in.

Pop music has transformed since Charli began writing songs, which is why people are just now starting to jump aboard her train. Her approach to songwriting hasn’t changed; she’s always just written music that she enjoys. “I don’t sound like the radio; I want to change what the radio sounds like,” she says of the recent mainstream attention. Charli is uninterested with building a brand around her and is just interested in having people hear her music. She wants to be a new breed of pop star — more like those in the 1980s. “I’m not just a bimbo with a microphone,” she says.

“I’m a brain with ideas, and I want people to know that about me.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

44

joel crouse Words by STACY MAGALLON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

46

Country artist Joel Crouse just recently released his debut album. But a year ago, he was on tour with Taylor Swift.

That’s usually how it works, right?

Joel has always loved music. His father, a pastor from Holland, Massachusetts, only let his kids listen to Christian or country songs. When Joel was 10, his love for country music deepened. His family took a vacation to Nashville where he became obsessed with the culture and music of the South. After begging profusely, his grandfather agreed to buy him a guitar and pay for his lessons. That passion followed him to high school when he founded a local band and then moved to Nashville to be more involved in the music scene.

Joel’s debut album, Even the River Runs, was released in August of this year.

The album’s production, however, was completed two years ago — even before he opened for Taylor Swift’s Red tour. “I’m forever grateful to her,” Joel says. “That tour gained me a lot of exposure.” But for the last three years, Joel had been on the road with country icon Darius Rucker.

“He’s a great mentor of mine,” Joel says.

Long ago, Joel would follow Darius on

the road in a broken minivan. Eventually, Darius let him and his band stay on their band bus. “He kept adding me to more dates, and that added up to over three years of doing shows together,” Joel says.

“Eventually we became family.”

Now 22, Joel finished producing Even the River Runs before he turned 20. “Since these songs are old, I get to relive each song,” he says. “Seeing fans excited about the album allows me relive the whole experience.” But it wasn’t his decision to hold on to these songs for so long. As an artist, Joel wants to get his music out as soon as possible to keep them relevant to what he’s currently going through. He went a little crazy, but he’s just happy the music is finally available for the public. “This makes me more excited for future records,” he says.” Since the release of Even the River Runs, it made the Billboard Top 200 and Top Country Albums at No. 20.

Joel refers to his past work schedule as “The Nashville Grind” — the 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. period in which an artist writes. “I took a break from that grind and started to write music in a different way,” he says.

“I’ve started writing off inspiration.” As of recently, Joel has been writing alone or NKDMAG.COM

47

with the help of his guitarist.

Out of 100 songs he’s written, only a few stand out to Joel. “You can usually tell right off the bat if it’s crap,” he says. And he won’t just sit down and write a whole song either. It often feels too rushed and not genuine. Joel can write a verse and a chorus but might not finish it for months afterwards. “It’s probably just me procrastinating,” he laughs. “But the most important part is making sure the story makes perfect sense.” If Joel can keep singing a tune, it’s usually a good sign. That means it’s catchy. But above all, he wants to create honest music.

Joel is aiming for his next record to be raw and blunt — two adjectives that rarely describe country music. But the fact of the matter is Joel is no longer a teenager. He’s older, wiser and wants that to translate through his lyrics. “I’m not perfect. I’m not trying to be perfect, and I think it’s better to show off my flaws,” Joel says. “I don’t want anyone to think I have the answers, because I don’t.” Clearly a lot has happened since Joel signed with Show Dog-Universal Music when he was 19. He knows he has changed as a person — and it should be reflected in all he creates.

With country music gradually collecting a more diverse fanbase, specifically a younger audience, Joel is excited to be a part of a new era for the genre. “I hope country music gravitates towards a younger audience because of the songs,” he says.

The growth of country music keeps him hopeful for the future, especially with new artists popping out of Nashville. Joel’s personal sound is an inspiration of The Eagles, Tom Petty and Keith Urban, but he wouldn’t limit himself to collaborating with strictly country artists. “I’d love to work with Ed Sheeran,” he says. “Genres just seem to be blending anyway.”

“Genres are no longer what they were,” Joel says. With the Internet at our fingertips, it’s easy to access all kinds of music and the sub-genres within them. “But you should love the genre of music you play,” he continues. “If you hate it, why should you play it?”

Joel fell in love with songwriting because music moves people. And he wants to continue to move people. As long as Joel stays focused, he’s certain he’ll be making music for a while. “I just want to stay true to myself,” he says. “That’d be a pretty good goal for myself. NKD 48

NKDMAG.COM

49

50

JASMINE VILLEGAS Words by TARA DEVINCENZO Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair by DENISE SMALLS Make-Up by NAM VO Styled by JASON BOLDEN

In an age of YouTube sensations, six-second stars and talent-hunting television, being discovered is both easier and harder than ever.

Almost anyone can share their talent, but not everyone can be the actual star.

Cue Jasmine Villegas. The justturned-21 starlet used technology as her ally and her talent as her secret weapon.

Born in San Jose, California, Jasmine, who sometimes goes by Jasmine V, got her first stint on stage at 7 years old when she went into her first beauty pageant and won. “Ever since then I got addicted to being on stage,” she says.

Her comfort in front of the crowd kept her returning to pageants, and eventually she was discovered by an acting and mod-

eling agency. With the help of her supportive family, Jasmine would sometimes drive from her home of San Jose to Los Angeles every other day, a five-and-a-half hour drive, to be able to participate in pageantry because she loved it.

Because Jasmine was so passionate about this career path, her mother quit her job so they could leave the San Francisco Bay Area and move to L.A. so Jasmine could pursue her dream. The two of them, along with Jasmine’s grandparents, headed to L.A. leaving behind her three brothers and father.

While in L.A., focused on acting and modeling, a walk down the street with her brother lead her right into a life-changing path. She was casually singing when she was stopped and noticed for her “big

voice” in her small 11-year-old body.

Initially, she wasn’t sure that singing was actually something she wanted to pursue. “I loved singing at an early age, [but] there’s so many people out there doing the same thing,” she says.

She took a chance and had herself recorded and consequently posted online. Before long she was heard by a colleague of producer Damon Dash.

By the time she was 12, she was signed.

Gabby, her manager then and now, helped Jasmine amass a mass of opportunities. She was flown to New York to record and was filming pilots alongside Selena Gomez.

Her pilot didn’t get picked up, and she lost her record deal, but her NKDMAG.COM

51

career was just starting to gain speed.

For the next few years, Jasmine’s voice was lighting up stadiums and arenas. She got the chance to sing the National Anthem for the Clippers on their court, the Dodgers on their diamond and even on the Professional Golfers’ Association of America golf tour. All of her those performances got her noticed, and she was presented the opportunity to sing the National Anthem for Manny Pacquiao, the professional boxer. He admired her style for the song so much that he had her go to the Philippines for a few months under his management. As a half Mexican and half Filipino performer, she was able to gain a huge fan base in the Philippines before returning home to make more waves.

She returned to L.A. with a new fan base on the map and a lot of drive to garner more. She was recording and shooting music videos for what she already had. This work helped her gain attention from another label, Sony Epic, who signed her at 16.

She continued to write and record, but released very little until she was featured in Justin Bieber’s video for “Baby.” This lead to her first major tour, which wasn’t even her own.

As an opener for Justin, Jasmine was able to gain a whole new, notso-easily won fan base. In front of crowds made predominantly of teenage girls, it was a chance for Jasmine to either sink or swim.

She performed three of her own songs, “All These Boys,” “Jealous” and “Werk,” from her independently released mixtape. Once the crowds of young girls heard these songs, she was able to open up as a relatable girl as well as a good artist. “Having to perform love songs to nothing in the crowd but girls was a little challenge but it 52

NKDMAG.COM

53

worked out,” she says. “I gained a lot of fans, and an equal amount of haters, but after a while I knew it comes with the territory when you want to be in show business.”

As soon as she started gaining attention, the online community jumped onto the opportunity to reach her both positively and negatively. “You’re not gonna be able to please everyone, it’s impossible.”

She didn’t let her new Internet buzz play a big role in her career.

“It’s definitely a choice. Either you want to look at it and take a lesson from it or something from it or sit back and laugh about it. After a while I think that’s what artists need to realize.”

The messages that Jasmine receives may not always be positive, but she wants her messages through her music to be loud and clear. “I want to be a role model for [not only] Latinas, but girls in general,” she says. As the only daughter in a family of four kids, she learned a lot from having brothers. But she says she always had a mother, grandmother and her manager for feminine guidance. “At the end of the day, you need those women figures to look up to,” she says. “And I think every girl needs that.”

In the industry, that woman for her was always Alicia Keys. “She doesn’t just show off her body to be sexy. She’s a woman, and that’s so important. You don’t have to be half naked to be sexy,” she says.

“We all have our own different routes, stories and messages to bring out to people. I think it’s really important to be a role model for young girls.”

Being on tour with Justin helped her to establish a solid place in the entertainment industry just by doing what came naturally. “I ended up learning how to perform for girls and be really relatable,” she says. “It’s about things that we go 54

through in our everyday lives.”

She relates to female audience in the way that, as she says, we’re all human, but she has done some things that she even says feel unrealistic. She went from touring with a teenage heartthrob to being one of the biggest and newest in the music industry, proclaiming in her official debut single “That’s Me Right There” — with Kendrick Lamar.

Now, with Interscope Records, Jasmine was finally putting in a lot of work for her songs, and Kendrick, who is also under that label, sat down with her to help her get the right vibe for her first single.

“All These Boys,” “Jealous” and “Werk” led the way for Jasmine’s newest songs “That’s Me Right There,” which features Kendrick, “One Night” featuring Jeremih, and “Change the World,” all before her EP even drops this month.

Of all the artists she’s worked with, she’s not ready to give her style a distinct label. She says that she teeters between pop and R&B, creating a more urban and balanced sound. “Music changes, the seasons change. It’s really great to be diverse.”

With Jasmine’s EP dropping this month and her album early next year, she is focusing on her music career but not leaving her acting and modeling in her past, and wants to branch out even farther than that. She has thought about all products, including clothing and even perfume, with her eyes still on acting, and the hope of a role one day alongside Channing Tatum. “I don’t just want to be a singer, I want to be a brand.”

Her brand as an artist is building with her album finally in view.

“As of right now, I really like the pace,” she says, referring to her progress. “It’s slow, but it’s building after a while, and I feel like it leaves me room to grow.” NKD

NKD

NKDMAG.COM

55

MADI DIAZ Words by KATELYN THOMPSON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Madi Diaz knew from a young age what her passion in life would be. “I started playing music when I was really little, and just kept playing throughout high school,” she says. “But I really thought I was going to be a large animals vet until I was 17.” It was at that age she knew she needed to follow her heart. “I started following the music thing, and I never really realized I was following my gut until how ever many years later and I was in Nashville, Tennessee, actually making money and music.”

“Everything shifted for me. I still loved horses, and I still loved being in the middle of nowhere but there was something pulling me somewhere else,” she says. “Nashville just sort of happened.”

After attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Madi knew she needed a change of pace. “I dropped out about three years in,” she laughs adding, “classic Berklee story.” After this realization, she took to Nashville. “In 2008, I ended up doing some writing out of Nashville for about a month and I just fell in love with it. There was just a really warm environment,” she says.

She lived in Nashville for four and a half years, and got picked up by a small, indie label along the way — one that was financed by Sony. “They were supposed to put my first record out and folded while I was out on tour.”

This seemingly disastrous event was followed by another change of pace. She ran into an old friend at a show in Los Angeles. He said he was looking for a roommate.“I just knew that I needed a big shift and a big change,” she says, “so I wrote him a check and moved out to L.A.” “I am still really proud of all of my work, I just think this writing now is a little bit more experienced,” she adds.

“I’m super grateful for Nashville, so grateful for Boston, really grateful for L.A., but I don’t see it as my last stop.

Probably going to end up moving somewhere else, who knows.”

Although the past has been constant-

ly changing, Madi enjoyed her time before her album Phantom came out Sept.

30. “This new record has been a work in progress for about a year and a half,” she explains. “During the recording process some songs fell out and helped round the record a little bit better.”

In terms of the album title, Madi was very aware of of the meaning and how it relates to the songs and theme. “Phantom is the book definition of the word, it follows the idea of a place or a person or a thing and kind of when a person leaves you or when you leave a place or when you’re feeling a loss how to kind of pull apart those memories and pull apart those emotions and kind of explore the moment or the memory or what you’re left with,” she says. “I knew what the common thread was, and I was walking by myself in weird, creepy California beach areas super late one night and was just thinking of this thing I was just haunted by, and the word phantom kind of tied it all together.” “‘Ghost Rider’ is a really crazy track,” she says about one of the songs on Phantom. “I worked with a different producer on that one specific track actually than the entire rest of the record.”

“There’s a track called ‘Pictures’ that I produced myself,” she says. “I’ve coproduced all my records, but that song is very much mine.”

“The rest of the record is produced

by Nick Ruth and I think that my favorite sound that we made together is probably ‘Tomorrow.’”

Madi is currently spending her time on the road; right now, she is touring with Dale Earnhardt Jr. “I love their music,” she says. “I’m a huge fan.” After that tour, Madi plans to tour with Echosmith. “Echosmith just seem like really good people,” she says. “Tour is going to be really fun.”

“In some ways I prefer my live show to records. You get to recreate the story every single night rather than have the one set thing that you do,” she says. “My performance changes from night to night. It’s different vibrations. Different cities. Different people. Different

rooms. Just totally different.”

When she’s not on tour, Madi is constantly working and growing. She and her friend Emily Green started Riot Horse, another musical venture, and they are currently finishing an EP. “We played a couple shows in L.A., and that was really exciting. It just a totally different brink but I have a hard time stopping, so it’s nice to be able to jump into a different world,” she says. “We started writing around the same time I started really, fully digging into my record. We just started casually writing as friends and really found kind of a sister in the other.”

The Riot Horse duo wrote for the upcoming EP for about five months, and Madi says they are still writing.

But they plan to release their mostly self-produced album by early 2015. It is just Madi, Emily and another friend producing the album. “Very organic.

Very slow. Very pure,” she says about the production style. “It’s a very different world from this music. It’s very dark, very moody, but kind of two front women. It’s fun.”

“It’s the music I didn’t really know was in me,” she explains.

Who knows what the future has in store for this dynamic artist. “I keep pushing myself with my own music and try to search for my next stepping stone,” she says. “And with Riot Horse, it really feels like it’s just in there and kind of where I go to be purely artistic and not really care what anyone thinks of it.”

“I’m not really looking for Miley Cyrus skyrocket to the top stuff, I’d just really love to stick around for a really long time,” Madi says. “Obviously everyone has their rock star dreams. I’d love to play festivals and I’d love to tour for forever.”

“I want to continue to make things that are going to scare me and push me as a performer and as a musician and as an artist,” she adds. “I can’t not be writing. I’m really lucky to continue to have an avenue to release my music and really have it go somewhere.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

57

WWW.NKDMAG.COM