It was hours before The 1975 would bring Good Vibes Festival to a screeching halt, incensing what felt like the entire country of Malaysia – but Lunadira was already pissed off.
The date was July 21, 2023 and the singer-songwriter was making her return to the Kuala Lumpur music festival, five years after its programmers had booked her on the strength of just one song. The greenhorn securing a coveted festival slot – playing her first-ever set with a live band, to boot – had ruffled some feathers in the local scene. So when she stepped onto the Good Vibes stage for the second time, Lunadira was ready to stage a comeback. But her set ended up riddled with technical difficulties, and though they’d reached the last song, she still couldn’t hear herself.
So Lunadira started screaming.
By howling the conclusion to ‘I’ll Be Alright, Right?’, the title track of her debut album, Lunadira turned a UK garage-inspired track into a cathartic punk rager and threw everyone for a loop. “Something just took over me,” the singer, real name Nadira Diah, recalls to NME six months later. “This performance took me by surprise, took the band by surprise, took the audience by surprise. I decided from then on that this has to be it: this has to be the only way to perform this song.”
It made such an impression that fans now approach Lunadira asking when she’s going to release a live version. The answer? Never. “You gotta come to my shows. I’m not putting that out… I feel like it should be protected. I would like to keep that for myself and for the people sharing that moment with me.”
Lunadira’s music is nothing if not intimate, and in ‘I’ll Be Alright, Right?’ she has her most vulnerable work yet. Its tentative title hints at the uncertainty that colours the entire record, from the thrumming anxiety of the title track to the circular, self-aware rumination in ‘Overthinking’. And when she’s not uneasily treading water at the surface, Lunadira dives into the depressive depths of fear and loathing, idly entertaining thoughts of self-harm in ‘Bitter’ and baring her broken heart to an indifferent ex-lover in ‘Birthday’.
Lunadira’s main memory of making the album is one of dread. “I was very scared to move forward with music. I had analysis paralysis. It was hard for me to make decisions. At one point I questioned my whole career.” Exacerbating the persistent imposter syndrome was a nagging feeling that she had put herself into a box “labelled ‘depressed sad person’” – the type of person everyone was trying not to be during the pandemic. “I thought, ‘What’s the point of writing this whole piece of art?’ Because I knew that people are probably not going to want to be in this mindset.”
But she realised that she had no choice but to honour her own creative process: writing slow-burn songs that are a reflection of what she feels inside. “That’s the only way I can make music – through that honest connection.” And Lunadira discovered songwriting was a useful “mental exercise” to free herself from her stasis: “Because now I’m in a position where I can safely say, ‘OK, you have those thoughts, you’re paralysed – but you also have the choice to get out of it’.”
NME asks Lunadira for her thoughts on the label ‘sad girl music’, which in recent years has been applied to indie singer-songwriters like Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Clairo and Julia Jacklin. Some have felt seen by the term, while others (including some of those musicians) have criticised it for flattening the scope of their artistry or reducing their labour as songwriters and lyricists to mere emotional release.
“Because of what happened [with The 1975 at Good Vibes Festival], it was hard for me to visualise myself as an artist, as a female artist, in Malaysia”
Lunadira has felt that flattening: whether by dismissive netizens and sexists in KL’s band scene who mocked her origins as a YouTuber making ukulele covers, or listeners who only know her breakout single with Reddi Rocket, the bedroom pop love song ‘Hoodie’. So her response is surprisingly diplomatic: she can’t invalidate the way others perceive her, even if that’s a loaded label like ‘sad girl’. “The only way I can counter that is for them to come to my shows and basically see for themselves. Being a sad girl is a whole spectrum, you know? … I don’t think of it as an insult. OK, that’s how you perceive me. Let’s talk again after you watch me perform.”
‘I’ll Be Alright, Right?’ is bound to surprise those who thought they had Lunadira figured out. Its production – spacious yet hermetic, placid yet textured – evokes The xx’s early work and even a little of Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’. Lunadira explores an impressive vocal range, going from ASMR whispers to deadpan talk-singing to a husky lower register. And the record isn’t all emotional doom and gloom either: ‘Wish U Were Dead’ contemplates romantic betrayal with cool disdain, while ‘Go Slow’ is both sensual and prickly (“You told me to go slow / Watch out or I’m out the window / Since when do I do what I’m told?”).
Performing the latter song on Colors last year was a “pinch me moment” for Lunadira, who had considered a showcase on the European YouTube channel a goal she’d achieve in ten years, maybe. Two months after that, she and Reddi Rocket flew to SXSW in Austin, Texas to perform at a showcase of Asian talent curated by Balming Tiger.
These were incredible achievements, but Lunadira couldn’t shake a sense of unworthiness. “I started off having a platform at a very infant stage of my career, so the learning curve of that was something else. Especially getting Colors and then SXSW, and not even having an album out yet, I felt a lot of imposter syndrome. I did a lot of comparing myself to others.”
The 1975 plunging Malaysia’s live music scene into uncertainty did Lunadira’s wavering confidence no favours, either. The debacle had a chilling effect, she recalls: “A lot of the events that were supposed to happen that month were all cancelled. Everyone was giving up. It was a very dark moment.” She worried about her queer fans, and her own freedom of expression as an artist. Even as she tried to make career moves at SXSW in the US, the question lingered: what was she going back to? “I couldn’t even see Malaysia as a growing point for me anymore. Because of what happened, it was hard for me to visualise myself as an artist, as a female artist, in Malaysia specifically.”
“Whatever Lunadira you knew before – she’s still there. She’s just carving out a different piece of the puzzle”
Being surrounded by a supportive team and connecting with other Malaysian musicians while at SXSW in Sydney, a few months on, helped Lunadira out of the doldrums – and rekindled her motivation. “I realised that everyone’s struggling the same way and it’s more of a checkpoint: ‘This is where I’m at. Am I living up to my own expectations? Yes – let’s bring that energy back to Malaysia’.”
As her thoughts turn towards sustainable career progression, Lunadira continues to find promise and hope in community. She voices gratitude for her long-running collaboration with ‘I’ll Be Alright, Right?’ producer Reddi Rocket and the tastemaking producers he surrounds himself with. With them by her side, she’s emboldened to explore “experimental ground” – and take her new record as a “building block” for her next direction.
“Whatever Lunadira you knew before – she’s still there. She’s just carving out a different piece of the puzzle, and trying to expand on that story.”
Lunadira’s ‘I’ll Be Alright, Right?’ is out now via Lowly. She performs live at Joyland Bali on March 3