INTERVIEW: Wafia releases new EP 'Good Things': "I always want to create a space where people feel welcome and represented"

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Jingyu Lin
Australia’s Wafia today releases her new EP Good Things off the back of the singles ‘Flowers & Superpowers’, ‘Pick Me’ and ‘Hurricane’. One of the most unique and acclaimed Australian artists to emerge in the last few years, Good Things is a collection of six tracks marrying electro with indie and alternative vibes along with Wafia’s trademark insightful and relatable lyrics exploring her personal life and relationships.

First releasing music in 2015, it was with 2018’s single ‘I’m Good’, a joyful, electro groove kiss-off to a former lover, that saw Wafia break through in a major way, with the song scoring close to 30 million streams to date and appeared at number 14 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 2018. A queer Muslim of Iraqi-Syrian background, her background has shaped her career as a musician and she seeks to create pop music with a purpose, as well as empowering marginalised communities including helping women of all background, size, and nationalities find themselves. To celebrate the release of Good Things we recently caught up with Wafia to find out more.

Hi Wafia! How are things with you these days?
Good. I cannot complain. Only good things here. 

I just want to get straight into it - the EP is incredible. I want to go with my personal favourite ‘Pick Me’. As soon as it dropped, it has been the song I have been turning to for a home boogie and a smile. The hook is your classic RnB love song, but then it's a self-love song. Can you talk me through the origins of this one?
I'm so glad you like it. Thank you. That song I wrote after this really tumultuous relationship where the spark for us breaking up was that I started to make more decisions that benefited myself as it relates to my music. I don't think that my ex liked that very much. So he got a little upset. I almost don't blame them because I know for a fact that in most relationships I give way too much of myself. And so that's all he knew, that I was going to give him everything. But then as my music started doing these things it was very clear that I would also do that. I would pick me. There was no room for him in the relationship to understand that in picking myself was nothing to do with him. If you love someone, you sort of got to leave space for them to grow into their own and make decisions that serve them without your ego getting involved. Unfortunately my ex didn't see it that way and that was sort of the catalyst. I also didn't know that I was capable in that moment of picking myself when faced with an ultimatum, backed into that corner, that I would really do that. It was kind of shocking even to me. 

That's beautiful. It's an incredible message and it takes so many of us so many years to figure that out. What was your decision to put it behind such a solid classic that almost reimagined the R&B love song melody?
You hear those songs all the time and the play on it is that it's yourself. I love things that are a little cheeky in song writing that isn't on the nose. I think by playing with it this way definitely made it more exciting to me then if we had gone in a different direction with it. 

You've done that again with the motivation with the title track ‘Good Things’. It is fun and another anthem of just dusting yourself off and loving the magic that you are. This track clearly means absolute buckets to you because you've titled the EP for it. Can you talk me through this celebration-of-self track?
The song was first called ‘Enemy’ and I think this encompasses so much how I feel about the song. I was like ‘‘Enemy’ is not it, it's not about the other person, it's about you’. So I changed it to ‘Good Things’. Even in that little action, that to me dictated everything that this EP is about. Everything that my relationships are about. You almost can't take it personal. It's about how I view the world and how I view this break up and what I get out of it and then I have to turn it to gold.

You're clearly… I don't want to say shero because that word gets thrown around a lot, but you're this battle queen that women need to hear right now and I think that comes from your honesty about your own reflection and your own insecurities. Women historically, we've been strung up, discredited and made to feel inferior for their emotional hiccups or for being uncertain particularly now. Your music always comes from this honest place and I just wanted to know is that something that was perhaps missing from the music you were listening to when you were growing up?
That's a really good question.I think that confidence is like a friend talking at you and not to you or with you. I just never want to do that. It's a conversation and I think in me being honest and as transparent as possible, you're more likely to trust me because I'm giving you the good and the bad. My favourite songs always do that, where sometimes you are the antagonist in your own story. Or even that you are in other people's stories and finding room for that duality I think is important and it's what I try to do. 

You’re absolutely right. I’m really loving the final track on the EP ‘Lose A Friend’, a hauntingly divine song. What was your intention or what was your desire about finishing the EP with that track?
If you listen to the EP from beginning to end and loop it again, it feels very round to me. The way I would describe it is like, in order to make room for these good things, you have to shed some of the bad. That to me is shedding and making space. I loved my friends that the song is about but in hindsight I can probably see how maybe those relationships and friendships were a little co-dependent. That's song that I'm actually really anxious about putting out because usually when you write a song about an ex or something it's presumed that it's about an ex. To share really vulnerable moments that you've had with your friends, I don't think they would expect that. So, I'm nervous.

Well I guess that must be the thing. You're connecting through people with your music and there must be that double-edged sword, you're connecting but also your fear of severing other relationships in your life without being so personal? 
Yeah, but I think my approach to that has been I've already lost those friends. Those friends have already removed me on Instagram. They don't want to know me anymore. So the most heartbreaking of it has already happened and as an artist all I know is how to put those feelings into my music. That friend break up I feel impacted me more than my relationship and so how do I not write about that? How do I not share that? That would be like lying by omission. 

Your music is so accessible and so experimental as well and I just want to know, you are a classic third culture kid like many of us here in Australia, but you’ve got Netherlands, your parents are from Syria and Iraq and now you’ve got Australia. You are championing these people from the globe. Do you feel all these places have influenced the sound of your music as well as you as a person?
I think to some degree. There's no way it wouldn't. I feel like it made very malleable. It made me value inclusivity. I was always that kid in school that was that new girl. I was consistently labelled that and so I always just want to create a space where people feel welcome and people feel represented and I think that translates the most through my music.

Beautiful. That’s what music does. It brings us together. And lastly what is on the horizon for you?
Well usually I would say I'm touring this EP but obviously we don't have that. This EP is actually a big part of a bigger body of work that I'm going to put out next year. So I'm just going to be working towards that now that we can't do touring for a while and I'm really excited to share that when it's ready. 

Good Things by Wafia is out now via Warner Music to download and stream.

To keep up with all things Wafia, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.