INTERVIEW: UMI on her music and finding her power: "It’s good to ruffle people's feathers, that means you're changing something, you're changing the norm."
Seattle born, LA based UMI (real name Tierra Umi Wilson) is one of those artists who creates music that burrows effortlessly into your heart and leaves you wondering how the soundscape of your life managed without her in it.
First releasing music in 2017, she had a major breakthrough in 2018 when her track ‘Remember Me’ went viral, with a cool 155 million Spotify streams to date. With her music a gorgeous blend of neo-soul and R&B mixed with touches of pop and folk, she has since gone on to support major artists such as Conan Gray, Sam Smith and Jhene Aiko on their US tours and last year she teamed up with V of BTS on her single ‘wherever u r’ which has 80 million streams on Spotify and in February was released in multiple different versions.
Her 2022 album Forest in the City marked a new creative chapter for UMI and was met with universal praise for its genre fluidity and lyricism. Alongside her music, she has also built up a community of fans with who she often holds guided meditation sessions and mindfulness practice via social media, as well as in her Full Moon YouTube series.
UMI recently completed her first ever headline tour of Australia, and between shows sat down with Women In Pop to discuss her music, career and
Hi UMI, so lovely to chat to you today. Before I get into anything, I want to go all the way back and talk about your 2019 song ‘Ordinary’ first. I love this track. Lyrically hilarious, and beautiful. "‘I'm in love with you off brand shoes and your daddy issues’. I was like, what?
Oh, it was very personal, a personal example!
It's so good. And you know what, those always make the best ones because the amount of people that will still go ‘uh-huh, yeah!’ And then we get the aerobics video! It's so fun. You have creativity just pouring out of you, ut what I love is your music is so eclectic, while at the same time being very much your own. Quite often I feel when people go deep and transcend, sometimes the humour gets lost, but it's always there with yours, which I really, really love.
That is an intention I have for sure, to just honour my inner child and to remind people of that inside of themselves as well.
I love that, just never take yourself too seriously. That just pours across the visuals for your music. It's really beautiful. I’m interested to know because your visuals are so strong, have you always ‘seen’ your music?
I love this question. Yes, I do. When I close my eyes, I can just see so much. I can see a music video, I can see a performance, I can see someone listening to it. It really helps me. Even when I make songs, it's a very visual process. I hear something and then I see a colour, and then I pull a memory experience that is the same colour. That helps me create this cohesiveness throughout the art, so it's a very visual experience for me.
You can hear it and see it in the music, it’s beautiful. I know you've got a musical background through both of your parents, but it sounds as if even your application to making songs was your own style from the get go?
That’s definitely so. I've always been a big imaginative person. It's so cool talking about my inner child because I was just watching videos of me as a kid today and I am such a world builder, even if I'm playing, it's always world building. Music for me was always play, my sisters would play, you know, dress ups or cars, but for me, I was like playing music, and singing with my mum and sisters as the audience. It's always been a playful experience for me. And I think that's why I love to make music because I just get to be very free. I get to tap into what an authentic version of myself and pull in art like that. It always feels like when I create it's a channelling experience where I'm this vessel, and I can tune into a colour of a song, but then when the melody comes in, it's like I'm remembering something that I've always known before and I'm just bringing it into Earth!
I love that, and it feels like the way you approach the composition and the way you approach your songs, it feels like play.
Thank you, I feel that way too. I don't really agree with song form all the time, or just the norms of making music. To me, if it feels right, then it's right. I don't really use my logic to make sense of my music or to direct it.
This is the thing, isn't it? It resonates with all of us, and I don't know where these initial ideas of what that structure needs to be came from. But I always love hearing when it's not necessarily completely thrown on its head, but kind of like the stuff you're doing, where maybe we won’t have a chorus, or maybe we'll start over here, or maybe we'll switch up the languages in between. It's really beautiful.
I agree, I feel like it's what's gonna push music in a new direction. I think it's that feminine energy too, the producer I work with is a female producer and the way we approach and feel music is really different from the norm. I think that's going to be what the next generation of art is going to be, it's going to be more non-binary people, it's going to be people with diverse backgrounds, more women making music, and it's just going to add and amplify more voices. And just perspectives and feelings that have never been able to be touched on.
That's so true. I imagine a lot of that is down to the way that we as an audience receive music now, because we're able to hear so many people like yourself, so many amazing songwriters from the get go with their own lyrics, without all the direction.
Yes, very much so. I've been also really feeling like the era of an artist just being an entertainer is coming to a close, because we can entertain ourselves so many ways. You just turn on the TV or turn on Netflix and be entertained. So we're not looking to artists just to entertain us, but really expand us and inspire us. I'm excited for what's going to happen because I think real true artistry is going to become the norm in a new way that it hasn't been before.
And do you feel like that's because genres have just completely shifted? Until recently, it was very structured and stayed within its camp.
Yes. I feel people are bored of it. They're like, ‘I've heard a variation of this song so many times’. And I even think artists are bored of making that kind of music. I feel this free for all freedom, energy, in myself and in other artists bubbling up.
I love that. And what a beautiful moment to talk about your single ‘wherever u r’ with one of the ultimate entertainers of pop, V of BTS. Vocally, both of you together is just exquisite. Talk to me how this track came about, because it's everything.
I started the song over the summer before sending it to V, but I don't even know it was gonna go to V. A couple of days before I went into the studio we were going through old photos, and I saw these photos of me and my grandma from when I was little and I was thinking about how I haven't called my grandma in a while, I hope she's well like, I wish I could see her. And with those feelings in my heart, I went into the studio and I didn’t even know what I wanted to write about but the thought of my grandma was really heavy on my mind. So I just channelled the song into sending her love no matter where she is. My goal was just to send her the song, I wrote the song just for my grandma and I didn't really think much about it. And then a couple months later V reposted my music online. I was with my mum and she was like ‘you should do DM him and see if he wants to make a song with you’. So I DM-ed him and then threw my phone across the room, like ‘oh my god, what if he thinks this about me, or that about me!’ I picked up my phone a couple hours later, and he's like, ‘I'm a fan of yours, I would love to make music.’ So I sent him a couple songs and he really resonated with ‘wherever u r’. We finished the song over text, just sending ideas back and forth. And that's the story!
That's adorable, and actually sounds like the opening scenes of a film, this is the romantic comedy I want to watch! I also love that your mum played a part, I was reading about your mum and how she bolstered your career beginnings. Can you talk to me a little bit about this shero because she sounds amazing.
Oh my gosh, I love my mum, she is one of the most bravest people in the world. She moved to America when she was in her early 20s because she wanted to live a different life from people around her. She's Japanese and Japan can have a bit of a conformity culture to it. And my mum just does whatever she wants. My whole childhood she just really encouraged me to be myself and she’s always told me ‘just do what makes you happy, don't live a normal life, live a life that is brings you the most joy’.
She was a single mum of three kids and there's so many moments where she could have just given up or limited us but instead she still let us take dance classes and found a way to afford for us to explore all our interests and never pressured me to go to school or do anything that wasn't what I wanted to do. We went through our own healing journey together too, because growing up she was very stressed. She was not the nicest mum when I was growing up and then when I moved to LA, she moved to LA and we had this really big healing moment where she was like, ‘just tell me all the things that I've done that have hurt you’. Since then, we’ve been closer than ever. She comes with me on tour, I bought a house and she lives there with me and we have dogs. It's like a sanctuary when I go home. She’s my friend and my mum but we just respect each other as people, and I think that's what makes our relationship so healthy and so beautiful.
That’s beautiful. I heard that the reason that your started releasing your music was because of an incident with YouTube just telling you shouldn't release covers anymore! Tell me about that.
Yes, I got a copyright infringement email. It was on SoundCloud actually. I would put YouTube covers up, then I would download the mp3 and put them out on SoundCloud. I had a good like 2,000 followers on there and I was like wow, I cannot lose my account right now, I'm on the up right now! So that's what pushed me to put my original music up. I don't know if that didn't happen if I would have done it, because I had a lot of stage fright at that age. So I'm grateful for the email that I got.
How do you find navigating that now, because you create a whole thing you create a whole evening, or whole day for your performances. That's not really how we think of someone who really had to overcome a whole load of stage fright, who not only gets up and performs but has in depth conversations with their audience and also leads them through meditation before.
Yeah, oh my gosh, it's been a journey. For me at the beginning, I just had to practice. I would do open mics, every single week, and I would start with my eyes shut so tight I couldn't even breath, and I would get a couple words out. Then the next time I could do half the song. And I just kind of forced myself to get used to it and break down the illusion of the fear that people are judging me or that if I do bad, something bad's gonna happen. Now when I perform, I feel very aware that all I have to do is be myself, that's why I'm there. I'm not here to impress people. I'm just here to showcase who I am. Now I'm uncovering another layer of putting my voice even more on stage. I still get a little scared, I'm noticing that come up with this tour, so I'm really challenging myself to not be scared and understand where the fear is coming from more. I think that just means I'm evolving, my shows are just going to become even more immersive, the more I can be free in my own body.
Absolutely. And I imagine also, the music you create both lyrically and sonically is a very, very welcoming space and you must have such an amazing connection with the people that are having such an incredible connection with your music, and that must help as well.
Oh my gosh, yes. All the people who come to my shows, I sometimes feel weird calling them fans, because to me, they're family, like soul family. Just the way people resonate, the stories they tell me about the music, this is why I'm making this. Sometimes I'll make stuff and I don't know why I'm making this but I know it needs to be out in the world. Then people tell me a story and I'm like ‘it was for you! It was literally made handmade for you.’ So I love to experience that with my listeners.
I love that! You've been songwriting since you were a small child, which I'm so sure were wonderful songs! On that, what was some of the songs that you listened to growing up that you really felt were for you?
I really loved Sade growing up. My dad played so much Sade and something about her voice is really nice for me because I was like, ‘oh, you can have a unique voice’. As a child being exposed to that was really important for me to own my own voice. I also really love Erykah Badu, I love D’Angelo. I love the way their music makes me feel and it doesn't matter if I've listened to it 100 times it kind of feels like I've never heard the song before. So that's inspired me to want to create songs that feel that way. And artists like SZA, Jhene Aiko, Frank Ocean, I love their songwriting and they made me realise that in my songs, I could feel that way, express it and people will resonate. So hearing their music freed me as an artist.
I think that's such a good point and that's what I hear in your music. There's a contrast in delivery and melody and composition with the lyrics that don't take any power away from the lyrics just because they're delivered with a softness and a kindness.
Thank you, it means a lot to me that you said that.
Nothing is ever achieved from shouting. Sometimes you just have to Sade a voice into it.
That's my whole philosophy, how can I be a leader but still be soft and kind. I can lead from my heart. That’s the feminine energy
100%. Lastly, just on that feminine energy, coming as we are from Women In Pop. You talked a little bit before about just seeing the rise of that, but on the darker side of that, coming up in this industry have you ever felt his pressure to hold back on this very feminine energy and childlike delivery that you have? Did you ever feel that someone was trying to squash you into something else?
Yes, definitely. I had an era in my career where I was with a label, and I have nothing against labels, I think it's more of a synergy thing. I just don't feel like I was with people who really understood the art I was making, and people were saying things like, ‘you need to wear more pink’ or ‘you've got to stop using film’. It was just this experience a lot of artists have where they feel misunderstood. I was coming up at the time, so I was like, am I supposed to make more songs like this? It's a very subconscious thing, you don't even realise it's affecting you until you're like ‘I feel very far from myself.’. There were some things where I was very stern about, and I was disappointed because I feel like then I became a ‘difficult artist’. I had to step back from all that and I've been independent for a year just to refresh my mind and to find my own value and the way I speak, the way I create, the way I lead. Now I feel way more aware of the type of people I need to keep around me to keep that nurtured. I went through a whole team shift, I changed my managers and I realised in order for my feminine energy to be able to be shared, I needed to surround myself with people who nurture it. And now that I have, I feel so naked in a way, like so raw and open, but I don't feel scared to be that way anymore, which is really nice.
You've really hit the nail on the head there, as soon as you stand up for what you want they're like, ‘she's a bitch, she's a diva’.
Yes! She's difficult, no! I just know what I want, and I'm not raising my voice when I say it, but I'm not going to compromise on these things. Younger me was like, ‘oh my god did I ruffle people's feathers?’ But now after the experience, I look back and I'm so proud of myself, I'm like, ‘It’s good to ruffle people's feathers!’ That means you're changing something, changing the norm, you're just different. So I'm all for ruffling feathers if it comes from the right intention.
