An Interview with Nuuxs, Nikou Jahanshahi Alemi

an interview with nuuxs

“We had no contact with the outside world… We weren’t allowed to listen to music… I didn’t really knwow anything about anything”: alternative singer-songwriter NUUXS opens up about her experience growing up in a cult, and how music has been part of her healing process.

NUUXS explained that she had grown up in Hackney with her single mum, describing it as: “as tough as it can be when you’re sort of struggling with life”. Her mum then moved them to the rural north and remarried a very religious man, who bound them into a Christian cult when she was just ten years old.

NUUXS describes growing up in a cult as “weird”; she was not allowed to stay in contact with any friends or family, not even her biological father. She told me that her new stepdad changed all their numbers, and even made them move house, so that no one could find them. When I asked her to describe her life in the cult, she outlined that the small and intimate community allowed her stepdad to take control of everything.

She told me it was tough to leave, as there was a lot of mental abuse and control, but, eventually, she started asking questions and then finally ran away from it all. Even once she managed to escape, NUUXS told me that, due to the embedded rhetoric of the cult, “I always thought in the back of my head that the devil was going to get me”. But, she reasoned that growing up in this strange environment is “just my story, I guess it’s made me who I am today”.

NUUXS tells me that being cut off from the outside world meant that when she finally left the cult she felt completely detached from pop-culture, and we discussed whether she had a reactionary response to the years of musical absence in her life. She explained that: “I was just inspired by everything… I learnt from a lot of session players, so I got into bands and they’d teach me all about jazz and funk and I was just like ‘oh my god, I can’t believe I don’t know any of this’. You know a lot of people thought I was joking when I didn’t know who... I don’t know... Aretha Franklin was. And, I’m like, I’m serious! I don’t know who she is. In a way it’s been fun learning at a later stage I guess.”

Her wonderfully idiosyncratic brand of pop fuses soul and cinematic elements with classic pop beats, and when I asked her about what genre she would place her own music into, she replied: “I’d definitely place my stuff into pop for sure. My earlier stuff is more piano and dark bass. I think I was going through a healing process through those songs.” She went on to note that “because I learnt about music a bit later in life, I’ve just got a different quirk to the way I do things, I guess.”

Touching on music as a means of healing, she said that “a lot of my songs are based on my own experiences, some of them are based on friends’ experiences, so I try to write from the heart as much as possible. When I felt like I couldn’t speak about things I’d find myself understanding what the artist meant by listening to their lyrics and I thought if I can give that to someone else then that’d be my job done.”

Her new mixtape Red Tape, Vol.2 launched on August 31st, and her single ‘Safe’ launched on May 17th. “I was up until just after midnight waiting for the single to come out. I’m really so excited about this song and for everyone to hear the whole mixtape together. I didn’t want it to be an album because I felt I was still experimenting with my sound but, it’s definitely the lead up to my first album so I’m really excited.”

“THE ONLY PERSON WHO’S ACTUALlY GONNA MAKE YOU FEEL THE BEST IS YOURSELF“

She broke down physically and mentally while writing her singles: “The first single ‘No Good For Me’ is basically about me cutting toxic people out of my life and I think that’s how the rest of Red Tape Vol.2 came about. So many times, you just put up with things and you just think what am I putting up with all this rubbish for? The anthem of Red Tape Vol.2 is about just having fun, being you and doing what you need to do. Not just me personally but everyone in general.” Her single ‘Options’, she explained, is about having giving yourself ‘options’, no matter what: “There’s been times that I couldn’t get out of bed feeling so down you just think you’re never gonna get out of that place, and then you do.” Finally, ‘Alive’ “is about celebrating yourself ”, thus concluding her process of struggle and healing with a message of hope.

To the reader and listener, she wanted to convey, “without sounding preachy”, that “the only person who’s actually gonna make you feel the best is yourself so you’ve got to be willing to change certain aspects of your life to get to that point. I still do that every single day… When you love yourself, the rest of the world will love you too, and even if they don’t, at least you have yourself.”

So, what’s next for NUUXS? “I wanna get back into the studio and finish this album project I’ve had in my mind for a while which I’m really excited about. But I also have lots of gigs coming up and I wanna do some more shows up and around the country and in Europe for now, and then see where it goes from there...” 20