When 26-year-old Niia Bertino, known mononymously as Niia, was a child her family – a classical pianist mother, opera singer grandmother, Juilliard-educated aunts, jazz piano prodigy for a cousin and so on – would hold family concerts. Often Niia would sing with her back to them, crippled by shyness and intimidated by her musical lineage. “That’s why there are singers who I admire who just own their extroverted behaviour,” she says on the phone from Los Angeles, where she is preparing for the release of her debut EP Generation Blue, a suite of intricately crafted, swooning pop that brings to mind a more symphonic Jessie Ware (its first single, Body, has had more than 30,000 Soundcloud plays in two weeks). “I started singing because it made me feel better but I didn’t realise people would want to see me do that.”
Raised in Massachusetts and educated in a strict Catholic school, Niia describes her younger self as a “weird 13-year-old listening to Sarah Vaughan” who’d spend lonely summers at “big band jazz camp”. Inspired by Vaughan’s vocal dexterity she fell in love with female jazz singers, eventually winning a place at New York’s New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. “In New York I realised I could be comfortable being a bit more extroverted with my strangeness,” she says. “Suddenly I’m with these kids who have green hair and they’re 18 and I’m like ‘your mum let you dye your hair green?’ and they’re all ‘I don’t care what my mum thinks’. I embraced that freedom.” So much so that she dropped out after a year, spending her time organising and performing at Bond-themed pop-up gigs and paying the bills by singing advertising jingles.
It was the ad work that led to her meeting Wyclef Jean when she was 19, a serendipitous turn of events that saw her singing on his 2007 hit Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill) and touring the world. “I really think every artist should have this pop star boot camp,” she says. “He mentored me so I could visualise my own way of doing things.” While most artists would have used any sort of industry contact to strike while the iron was hot, the still unsigned Niia released a dripfeed of covers – Tears for Fears’ Mad World and Jai Paul’s BTSTU – before her debut single proper, the elegantly sinister piano ballad Made for You (opening line, “today is my beginning, my eyes are finally seeing”) in 2013.
“I’m sort of fighting myself to be more noticed and seen,” she explains. “We live in an age now where you have to stand on a table and shout to be noticed and that’s still a hard thing for me.” That’s not to say that she’s afraid of getting what she wants, stalking American History X director Tony Kaye and persuading him to direct the creepy video for Made for You, featuring a cast of silicone sex dolls. “I still have my one,” she laughs. “She lives here with me in her big crate coffin.”
After moving to LA to work with Rhye’s Robin Hannibal, she found herself reflecting not only on her own insecurities, but those of her generation. “I’m from Generation Y where we’re very lucky but we’re also spoilt and narcissistic,” she says. “I’m guilty of it too and that’s an extension of my neurosis. My problem is ‘oh, I don’t want to be famous’.” She lets out a knowing giggle, perhaps aware that it’s a problem she’s going to have to learn to live with.
