Nikki Yanofsky has accomplished quite a lot during her music career. She’s a multi-platinum selling singer-songwriter in Canada. She’s worked with many talented producers, artists and songwriters over the years including Quincy Jones, Wyclef Jean, Jacob Collier and someone she holds near and dear to her heart, the late Rod Temperton. She’s also had the nerve-racking task of performing in front of an estimated 3.2 billion people during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Nikki was chosen to perform the theme, I Believe, during those Olympic Games. She’s done all of this and more and she’s only in her mid-twenty’s. Pretty impressive.
For today’s musician interview, she’s back with new music and a full length album. Black Sheep – Due out May 8th – is filled with incredible vocal performances, crisp production and pop sensibilities that touch on prior decades of the 1980’s and 90’s. It’s all by design and she is confident and sassy as ever. What do I mean? Go watch her new video for the song Forget.
Another song that immediately grabbed my attention was the song ‘Bubbles’. Vocally, this album showcases Nikki’s amazing vocal control and tone. On Bubbles, there was something else that captured my ear. The harmonies in the songs chorus. I literally did a double take and had to back up the song to get another listen as I was too impatient to wait for another chorus.
I asked Nikki about that chorus and she tells Sound Vapors, “That’s all Rod. He was such an amazing writer and so detailed. I think the songwriting from his era, I feel like it included every element. It was all about, even just arranging a song and that goes down to the vocal arrangement. Whereas now songwriting is: people top-line, write the chords, they produce and someone comes in a puts a melody over it and you kind of write as you go. But he was so thought out that every part was accounted for and that was very deliberate. The chorus harmonies, sometimes I didn’t even know where he was going with it. He’d be like, okay now sing this line, now sing this line. And I had no clue how it would sound when all put together and he hit the playback and I was like.. Whoa! :laughs:”
The other thing that exudes from Nikki, aside from her immense talent is her passion for making music. You can hear it in the way she describes the recording process or when she talks about working with producers Zach & Roger (Fabolous, ASAP Rocky, Whethan). Nikki says, “Zach & Roger did all of the production. They’re insanely talented. Whats so great about them is that they’re so open. I’ve worked with producers in the past, not on full projects, more like if I go into a writing session. I work with my handful of people. You either jive with them or you don’t. There are some people that are really open to suggestion and into making it a collaborative thing. Then there’s people that are just in their screen and just go for it and build the track up themselves. And those are totally cool, depending on you are with but what I loved about Zach & Roger was how collaborative they were.”
So with all of that passion, confidence and love for the music, how does she feel about this record? This pretty much sums it up. “I’m really proud of this record. I feel like it’s the hardest I’ve.. It’s the farthest I’ve come musically, I think, so far.” Seriously, that’s saying something, given her journey thus far. I don’t think Nikki Yanofsky will ever stop evolving but it’s hard to imagine it gets any better than this. But it would not surprise me if she takes it to an even greater level in the future. She has what it takes.
Nikki also shares some of her favorite things in life including T.V. shows, movies and music. She also shares a chance encounter with Mark Ronson that led to a pretty amazing story. The only thing that needs to happen now is for those two to collaborate on a song together.
It needs to happen. For all of us.
One last thing that Nikki has used as a driving force, not only this album but in life, is a quote by Jim Carrey: “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love…”
You can hear my entire conversation with Nikki Yanofsky as well as her brand new single ‘Nerve’ by clicking on the link to your favorite place to listen to podcasts or you can watch the video version on YouTube.
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