NIA NADURATA Talks “Some Changes,” Writing Honestly and Figuring It Out in Real Time

For NIA, growing up has meant getting more specific, trusting the song, and becoming a little less afraid of saying exactly what she means.

There’s something fitting about NIA’s newest single being called “Some Changes.”

Her music has always had room to move. Indie, pop, R&B and soul can all show up without any one of them completely defining her, but lately, that freedom feels a little different. Less like searching for the right lane and more like trusting that she doesn’t necessarily need one.

When NIA joined Everyday Jams over Zoom from Toronto, we ended up talking about everything from songwriting and getting older to Amy Winehouse, Avril Lavigne, late-night studio drives and why she’s making more decisions with the live show in mind.

At the center of it all is an artist who seems increasingly comfortable admitting she’s still figuring things out.

Growing Up Without a Map

NIA’s debut EP, Still Living With My Parents, arrived in early 2025 as a six-song snapshot of the strange in-between years of early adulthood.

Looking back now, she remembers making it at a time when the lives around her seemed to be moving in much more obvious directions.

“It felt like everybody’s lives were moving forward, and my life was just kind of moving in a circle around music.”

Friends were graduating, starting jobs and entering new stages of their lives while NIA was heading into rooms day after day to write songs.

She knew music was what she wanted. That didn’t make comparison disappear.

“There was a part of me that felt a little bit stagnant watching everybody do different things and trying to convince myself that what I’m doing was equally as important.”

Writing became somewhere to put the thoughts that didn’t necessarily need to become real-life conversations.

“There are certain things that never need to be said to a person,” she says. Instead, she can put them into a song, spend a few hours fully inside the feeling and eventually leave some of it there.

That freedom has become central to the way she writes.

Getting More Specific

NIA describes her process as starting with something close to “word vomit.” She lets herself write first and make sense of it afterward.

Over time, though, she’s become more interested in finding the balance between simply saying what happened and leaving enough space for someone else to find themselves inside the song.

“Souvenirs” helped change the way she thought about that.

The song felt almost too specific to release. The objects she wrote about were real things left behind by real people, and part of her worried that making the story so personal would make it harder for anyone else to connect.

Instead, the opposite happened.

After its release, a listener told NIA the song made him think about his late brother and the things he still had from him. He eventually had words from the song, written in NIA’s handwriting, tattooed.

“I wouldn’t have even thought to make that connection, or that anybody would have made that connection from the song.”

It became proof that specificity doesn’t necessarily close a song off. Sometimes it gives someone else more to hold onto.

“Some Changes” Almost Changed Again

That lesson followed NIA into “Some Changes.”

The chorus felt right early on. The verses didn’t.

With the deadline for the song approaching, NIA was still questioning whether the writing actually captured where she was. Her collaborators were spread between London, Los Angeles and Texas, but she pushed for another conversation anyway.

“I was like, ‘Guys, it doesn’t feel right.’”

They ended up rewriting the entire second verse.

The original version had deliberately stayed broad, partly because NIA worried that getting too specific could make the song harder for listeners to enter. Eventually, she realized that wasn’t what the song needed.

“I feel like part of being 25 is not being timid like the way I was when I was 19,” she says.

That difference might be one of the clearest signs of where NIA is creatively now. She isn’t necessarily interested in making herself look cleaner inside a song. If something felt uncomfortable, messy or like a step in the wrong direction, she would rather say that than flatten it into something easier.

“Some Changes” ultimately arrived July 31 as her latest single.

Start With the Song

For all the layers in the finished track, “Some Changes” started simply.

NIA and her collaborators wrote it campfire style, leaving the laptop and drums alone while they focused on whether the song worked with little more than guitar and voice.

“If you make a good song, it’ll sound good with just guitar and vocal. If you have a story to tell, it’ll be good.”

Production came later.

That separation gave them room to figure out what the song actually wanted to become instead of committing too quickly to a specific rhythmic pocket or sonic direction.

The result feels consistent with the way NIA talks about genre in general. When we described her current world as some combination of indie, pop, R&B and soul, she agreed.

“That’s a pretty good trifecta right there.”

Her own references stretch just as widely. Amy Winehouse has been particularly influential on her writing, while Avril Lavigne was another major part of what she grew up listening to. Her mom brought R&B into the picture, her dad brought rock, and Glee apparently filled in quite a few of the gaps.

It makes sense that the music coming out the other side doesn’t feel particularly interested in choosing one reference point.

Making Music for the Stage

There is, however, one thing NIA keeps returning to when making new music: playing it live.

“My only goal when I make a song is to perform it.”

That mindset has started shaping everything from production choices to keys and vocal range.

Producer and touring guitarist Cole Wilson is part of that process. As NIA has become more comfortable playing guitar onstage herself, she’s found a different kind of connection with the musicians around her.

For someone who grew up doing musical theater and still describes herself as having the “performance bug,” the shift feels natural.

The internet might help people find the songs. NIA wants to meet them in the room.

Figuring It Out

As for what all of this is building toward, she isn’t rushing to turn the newest songs into a neatly packaged era.

For now, singles feel good.

“I think I’m enjoying doing the singles. I think a project feels like something I want to go into with a little bit more intention.”

She’s also been spending more time collaborating and stepping into other artists’ sonic worlds, taking whatever she learns in those rooms back into her own.

And after spending part of the summer feeling pressure to constantly turn experiences into material, she’s giving herself permission to actually live some of them first.

When we asked her to describe the music she’s making now in three words, she didn’t need much time.

“Figuring it out.”

Then she said it again.

“Figuring it out is my thing. That’s my big three.”

It might be the clearest description of this chapter.

NIA isn’t presenting change as some dramatic arrival at a completely new version of herself. She’s writing more honestly, trusting her instincts a little sooner and letting the music shift while she does.

Some changes, exactly.

Stream “Some Changes” and the rest of NIA’s music now.

Photography by Sahil Kumar.