About PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Niki is thrilled and relieved to announce her fifth album, ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ released across various streaming platforms in early September 2024. The album includes a total of 15 tracks, and all made it to the charts from No.1 to 50 on StreetVoice, Taiwan’s local indie streaming platform. The entire album is inspired by and dedicated to her ex, expressing all the up and mostly down emotions that occurred throughout the 15-month relationship.
The boy, a narcissist, sexist, materialistic and patriarchal, pretended to be a man and ended up creating a heart-break album. It covers topics that often occur in the post-relationship period, and she hoped that her lyrics would strike a chord with her listeners and act as a haven for some. Pride and Prejudice is Niki’s side of the story and her farewell and last romantic gesture to the inspiration himself. (It is definitely not a revenge album.)
Unlike the previous albums Niki has released, Pride and Prejudice consists of a collection of tracks made and recorded within two weeks using an entry-level USB microphone, as she hoped to document the authenticity and feelings for her break-up. Even though the lyrics themselves are direct, irritating and gut-wrenching, Niki has teamed up with Casper Yang, a famous and talented Taiwanese producer/singer, to add elements to the arrangements to create a variety of genres, including country, RnB, folk, soft rock, and more.
The album evolves around several topics, including how people nowadays often ‘replace broken items instead of fixing them to last,’ how men frequently choose ego and pride over something real to hold onto, how promises are often made just for sex, and how goodnights turned into goodbyes.
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About Niki
Niki grew up in Hong Kong and is now based in Taiwan. With her piano at two, Niki quickly became familiar with notes and rhythms and started writing originals at twelve by scoring on the back of exam papers during class. While going through her teenage period, she decided to turn drama and trauma into music. Initially, Niki mainly used piano to create songs as they were accessible at home, and she had not yet been exposed to the world of DAW and midi arrangements. At age 20, she released her first self-produced, original demo album, Late Therapies, which mainly contains piano-based works supplemented with raw emotions.
As a songwriter, Niki later started experiencing different elements and instruments by self-learning online tools. Influenced by Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, Niki still drafts her songs based on the style of country folk, but since her second album, Through the Shades, she started infusing a bit of this and that from various genres to create immersive experiences, recreating the feelings during creation while retaining the essence of playing the keyboard.
Niki’s discography witnessed the growth of her personal life and perspectives, as well as her maturity in music creation. For the latest album, Pride and Prejudice, Niki insisted on using the original recordings she recorded using Snowball instead of going into studios. After experiencing different elements to enhance the richness of her songs throughout the years, she wanted to bring back her original intentions of creating music, which is to document on-point emotions while composing. Looking into the future, Niki plans to continue turning her broken heart into art (and hopefully draw new inspiration from positive events) to record her life and engage with her listeners with solid and deep thoughts as a girl.
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