“You know, it was about two days ago that I was in tears just like: ‘Oh, I don’t feel like I’m doing very well, I feel like I’m failing.’ I remember, at the end of those tears, I said: ‘I have to pick myself back up and try again tomorrow.’”.
When the initial attention hit, rather than diving headfirst into fast-burn pop singles tailored for the charts, Nao instead leant back into the weirdness she’d surrounded herself with as a young artist uploading demos to Soundcloud — filling her 2016 debut For All We Know with voice notes and silky, synth-loaded funk, and working with the enigmatic Jai Paul and his sibling AK Paul.
There were a lot of question marks and worry and stress, rather than just being like, well: this is really awesome and fun, and I don’t care what happens tomorrow.”.
Having emerged in a time when algorithms had not yet taken hold, does Nao think things have become harder for new artists today?.
“Well, I don’t want to talk about the BBC,” she laughs, “but those sort of worlds and establishments, like radio, or a predictions poll, or the Mercury Prize, or whatever … they must be in a constant battle at the moment.”.
