Atlanta native and IMA “Vox Pop” winner, Nadia Vaeh found her way into artistry through modelling and joining a local Atlanta circus. Vaeh loves to pull inspiration for her music through many genres and sounds from all over the world with much of her musicality rooted in her family's time in Curaçao and her father's homeland of Lebanon.
With shades of the artist and songwriter Sia, Nadia has a very strong vocal with a luscious tone and technical ability that’s hard to come by. This is a very conscious, dark pop song at the core, which has been beautifully remixed by Vence Ray for this latest version.
Nadia’s life took an unexpected turn at the age of 17 when she lost her mother to suicide. Her mother was a poet who passed on her love of words, which later fueled Nadia’s talent as a lyricist. Words cut very deep through Nadia’s songs, as the title of the song suggests - ‘A shimmering sin, I only love you when the lights dim’ hints at a troubled and toxic relationship. The oxymoronic interplay between light and dark, playfulness and sin gives this track a real depth. The strings in this track really build up suspense and tension, and match the drama of the song’s theme. The original more stripped-back, jazz version of this song has been reinvented here with a new epic rhythm section, and a dance vibe.
After her tragic loss, Nadia recalls going down a path of self-sabotage and destruction, using relationships and partying to ignore her pain. When she finally decided to begin again with artistry, which would ultimately save her life, she was a shell of a person and looking to anyone and anything for answers to deal with her heartbreak: “I made a lot of missteps in the beginnings of my career and had to learn a lot of things the hard way.”
For Vaeh, songwriting is not only personally healing but is also a platform to help others heal and make waves with social matters. Here, a song that is highly personal becomes relatable - the way in which Nadia delivers the vocal resonates with the listener as it is coloured by so much heartache. At once vulnerable and strong, this is an artist who showcases the kaleidoscope of human emotion that we all feel. In this way, we might draw comparison to Lana del Ray or to BANKS, yet Nadia remains in a league of her own. Watch this space.