INTERVIEW: Netta releases debut EP 'Goody Bag': "This whole fusion of EDM, pop, avant garde and jazz were combined into this something I like to call myself."

Interview: Jett Tattersall

Israel’s Netta first came to the world’s attention in 2018 when she won that year’s Eurovision Song Contest with the irresistible electropop song ‘Toy’. One of the most memorable Eurovision songs in recent years, it had a powerful feminist message wrapped in sweet melodies and quirky vocal effects: “The Barbie’s got saying to say…wonder woman don’t you ever forget, you’re divine.” The track became a big international hit, reaching number one in her home country, charting across Europe and even cracking the US market, hitting number one on the Billboard Dance Charts.

Last Friday, Netta released her debut EP Goody Bag, featuring her first four singles and new song ‘Cuckoo’, with an additional track in the form of an intimate, acoustic version of ‘Cuckoo’ performed by Netta accompanied only by a handmade music box. The EP represents Netta’s eclectic musical style with the electropop of ‘Toy’ sitting comfortably beside the R&B of ‘Nana Banana’, the hip hop of ‘Ricki Lake’ and the lush synth ballad ‘Cuckoo’.

With her powerhouse vocals and remarkable talent to create music that is completely left of field while remaining very accessible, Netta is proving to be one of the most intriguing musicians in the industry right now and has a lot of incredible music still to come. To celebrate the release of Goody Bag we recently spoke to Netta about the creation of the EP.

Hi Netta! First off the mark, how are you keeping these days?
I'm actually okay. I'm doing a lot of music from home and just trying to stay positive and creative. 

Trying to stay positive. This is a good message for the world. First of all, I'm very excited about your new EP Goody Bag and I'm so glad you called it that because it is such a pick and mix of songs. I feel like I've just gone into the candy bar.
Yeah, it's like it’s the leftovers. It’s a party leftover kind of thing. Whatever's left. I packed it real nice and brought it in for you.

It is so brilliant and such an eclectic mix but despite the fact they're all so different they all just go really well together. It’s beautiful, it’s really really well done.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you saying that. It makes me feel fuzzy and warm inside. 

Let's talk about ‘Cuckoo’. It's beautiful purr of beats and music box and your incredible voice. Can talk me through the inspiration behind this really quite beautiful and personal track?
Three months after writing the song, we built a music box with a dancer in it. ‘Cuckoo’ talks about being in a rut and being stuck inside a cage, a loop which you are trying desperately to get out of and can't. Just like a little dancer caged inside our music box, twirling and twirling forever doing the same thing. So the inspiration behind choosing that was actually the cage. When we wrote it, I was in LA and I met this girl, Krista, who is a song writer and we wrote for about a week. We wrote really bad songs in really big important rooms with big producers. Everything felt like work. And then she invited me to her apartment and we sat together with her three dogs and I told her what's going on in my life and how I doubt everything. I doubted my relationship at the time, I doubted my friends. I didn't know if my music that I'm doing was what [I should be] doing. I’m caged in other people's perceptions of what I should be and what kind of a relationship I should have and why I should be happy and I'm not. The word cuckoo was a left over thing from another song and I said ‘listen Krista, I really like the word cuckoo in the title and it's kind of really what I feel right now and I'm waiting for my ballad, I don't have a ballad now.’ And then it just came out in 10 minutes, it took 10 minutes to write that song. It describes a really strong feeling that I had and I'm still battling with. I think everyone is battling with their own cages and their own doubts and I just want to say it's okay to feel that way. 

I think that's incredible and also the fact that you said that I’m waiting for my ballad. I think that needs to be on a bumper sticker. I think so many people are waiting for their ballad. On the flip side of that, I my favourite track on the EP is ‘Ricki Lake’. It is so fun. Aside from this insane ability to get anybody listening to stop what they’re doing and dance immediately, you’ve then got these really punchy lyrics. Where did this song come from?
Well, when I was a little girl in Israel [The Ricki Lake Show] was the first piece of reality/trash culture we got. It was at its best and at its worst. Ricki was the amazing hero everybody looked up to, all the really colourful characters. I was amazed and shocked and I started immediately imitating them and I was really hooked on the show. But the most important thing was the kind of ‘life hackey’ thing that the show had. Since then, we are all really searching for life hacks. How do we get happy in five days? How do we solve all of our problems? How do we get Kim Kardashian's ass in five days? Everybody's quick fixing. It's a cliché, but ‘how do I get my neighbour’s lawn? I bet he's happy his grass is really greener’. The song is really silly because the answer to that is really silly. I'm not going to teach you how to bake a cake because people have been asking me thinking I am very confident being the way I look. A couple of months ago, I posted a picture of me in my bathing suit and people have been calling me brave. Why are you calling me brave? It's the last thing you want to hear when you post a picture in your bathing suit that you're brave. The whole concept of this video I attribute to America and American pop culture and food. When I was 13 years old, I took a trip to America on a student exchange program. My brothers were really pressuring me to bring home the canned cheese we'd been seeing for so long on TV. We actually grew up on American culture, but we were never American. I told my guidance counsellor ‘listen, I really need to go to a supermarket. I have to buy like 30 cans of canned cheese’. And he was looking at me like I came from the moon! When I came home to Israel, my brothers were so thrilled and we finished that cheese so quickly. I'm embarrassed to tell you that. So that whole video was me celebrating and criticising that [culture].

Can you talk me through your years going up and particularly your exposure to music and how and if it affected you as the artist you are today?
When I was a 12-year-old, I was given a Walkman. I walked around with headphones and all the stuff I knew up until then was African music and Israeli music because I grew up in Nigeria. I grew up on African gospel which is really weird for a Jewish girl to grow up. When we returned to Israel,I was listening to the radio and when i listened to music, it really brought me to life. There was a remix of ‘Think’ by Aretha Franklin that was played. I immediately stopped because I heard something that was a show stopping thing for me. That big gigantic voice took over my body and I didn't know what came over me. I was waiting for the broadcaster to say her name [but] it didn't say the name and it broke my heart. And I went to my mother and I was sobbing, I was a hysterical little 12-year-old. I tried really hard to memorise the way she sounded but it was awful, it was a disaster So my mother took me hand in hand to CD store, and the poor saleswoman was opening CD after CD and playing me all the R&B singers because that's what she thought I was listening to. And then after like 26 CDs I recognised Aretha and then we bought all her discography. And from that moment I knew what I was going to do. I knew how I wanted to sing. And I discovered the blues and the R&B world, Ray Charles and Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald. It brought me to jazz, Lauryn Hill… all these characters had such a big influence on me when i was in high school. Then I figured out there's a bit more to me than blues and I found out that I really enjoy pop, but really avant garde pop, like EDM and Diplo and Flume, and then obviously Rihanna and Beyoncé and all that. And this whole fusion of the EDM and pop and avant garde and jazz were combined into this something I like to call myself. 

You're clearly no stranger to experimenting with the many facets of sound, both production wise as well as your vocal. You know, I’m even thinking of artists like Björk.
I'm embarrassed and honoured by the comparison to Björk every time, but I think if we don't evolve as an artist and we don't evolve as a person, we’re not very interesting and also we're not very brave and we're not really living. If we're staying put, then what's the fun in that? Where's the risk? So I have to keep on going. I have to keep on researching. I have to keep on finding. I still feel like the best and my whole musical career is ahead of me. I feel I've done nothing. I feel I've said nothing. I feel I've found nothing. I found something in myself but I’m just like at the tip of the iceberg. I'm digging in and there's more and more to come.

When you do mix up your sound, do you intentionally go out with that brave notion of ‘I'm going to keep trying new things’, or are you just doing it because of whatever is inspiring you at the time?
To think ‘let's be brave, let’s be brave, let's be brave’ is very toxic thinking because it really disturbs the creative process when you're pushing yourself to be creative and brave and innovative all of the time. The real emotion doesn't come out of you. I usually try to make my stupid producer laugh, that’s like my go to. I try to channel the inner child inside of me. The inner child has no one to impress, there’s no one to prove to. They're just enjoying their inner world and just saying stuff with no filter. So I'm trying to get as comfortable as i can and say what I want with absolutely no filter and then take a couple of days to free myself from it. And then look at it again and I convince myself that I should be brave and release it. 

Is that part of the reason why you started your YouTube channel Netta's Office so you could get that direct interaction with people?
Yes, and I also wanted to see what happens when I'm free and I improvise and what hits people, what affects them, what do they resonate with. I’m so lucky to have this channel with my audience and to be very playful and very censor free. I can say what I want. I can be what I want and they're there. It's great when there’s a show and people are like ‘hey I'm just going to check out your material’. If you're going to like it you're going to like it and if you don't then I'll know if you don't mind. This is my place to check what other people like. I’m very grateful.

I think it's wonderful and I'm not sure how it is in Israel but I know particularly in Australia, there's a real problem with venues closing down and emerging artists struggling to be heard because they're not being able to play anywhere. But of course with YouTube they can try out raw songs before they even consider doing anything with it. Have you found that quite liberating?
It is, but I haven’t yet found the real courage to actually debut a new single or something that I want to release on Netta's Office. There’s my music and there's Netta’s Office, it’s like two different things. It is liberating to know that I can reach my audience whenever I want. Social media is such a powerful instrument if you know how to use it and I am still struggling and learning how to use it. 50 per cent of my audience are Hebrew speakers and the other 50 per cent is worldwide. So I'm trying to find the language and the common grounds of everyone. Social media can be a real big gift to a musician, but if we're talking about making a living, then you can't at this time live off social media. You can't really really sell. Nothing beats a real live show. Nothing beats it. When you are actually performing on Zoom or you're doing the Netta’s Office thing, it feels isolated. Usually in a lot of my shows, I do a lot of improvisation with my looper and now with my band. I took time from corona to build a band show. I took a drummer and keyboards and and I have like 3 fat men behind me playing and usually we take inspiration from the crowd. I take their words. I take their lyrics literally and I improvise out of them from all of this format. I miss it. I miss the energy. I miss taking control and taking the responsibility of the energy in the room.

It's because you're a performer. You need to perform. But you know everyone's going through it even the audience, so we’re there with you regardless. Lastly, you've got your delicious delicious EP Goody Bag out now, but what else is on the horizon for you? 
I have a new album, I’m working on it right now. I can't really guarantee a release date because mostly when I do that, I end up lying because I'm a perfectionist and any deadline that I put to myself, I eventually break it. So I just want everyone to know that it's coming, and brace yourself and be patient and I thank you so much. 

Goody Bag by Netta is out now. You can listen here

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