Spotlight: EASHA and the World of Manufactured Melancholy
SAT IN HER FAMILY HOME IN PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY — Easha Nandyala, or EASHA, as she is professionally known as a musician, lounged in the bedroom where she wrote her first song when she was just 12 years old. Her freshly washed long ebony hair dripped onto her white T-shirt, leaving a wet patch. She was 40 minutes late for our call, confusing EST for PDT, the time zone for her online classes at Stanford. She is an English major, choosing not to study music in school because she wants to keep her education separate. She nervously smiled and profusely apologized for the silly mistake.
“I can’t believe I did that!” the 20-year-old said, straining her face in embarrassment. I laughed. I had been following EASHA’s career ever since I saw her TikTok in late 2020 for her breakout hit “Dying is a Beautiful Thing to Do.” The song recently hit over one million streams. EASHA has since released an EP titled Fact of the Fiction, and a single titled “Far Away,” both of which are available to stream on Spotify alongside her 151,254 monthly listeners. EASHA smiled brilliantly as I congratulated her on her latest release, beaming.
“Thank you! Thank you!” Her bright energy radiated off the screen — a direct contrast to the somber emotions and sentiments her music often elicits. Even the bio of her Instagram profile has an emoji with a stray tear by her name and the thought-provoking phrase: “Welcome to this world of manufactured melancholy, I think you’ll like it here.”
EASHA says she has always gravitated towards melancholy sounds and music. While she has been categorized as singer-songwriter, indie pop, or pop, she doesn’t like to be put into a genre. She would rather let the music speak for itself, and in this case, the dulcet acoustic tones of her guitar paired with her smooth melancholic voice make for hypnotizing music. It is the type that just might transport you somewhere else — somewhere far away.
EASHA’s songwriting often reflects her own life as well as movies and books. “Some of my songs are almost, like, introspective,” she explained. “So it's not necessarily things that have happened but more, you know, a feeling or [a] vibe — or whatever. Whatever I need — I try to take it from different places.”
EASHA has wanted to sing ever since she was a little girl. Her parents, who immigrated from India in the ’90s to their home in New Jersey, raised EASHA in a musical household.
“My first introduction to singing was because my mom teaches Indian classical music,” EASHA said. “She would round up the neighborhood kids, and we'd all sit and have class every Sunday.”
“I started teaching Easha when she was four years old,” her mother, Divya Nandyala, said. EASHA and her sister started learning North Indian classical vocal music at the same time. “Easha, right from that age, was very competitive and wanted to be better than everyone else.” Divya learned music from a very young age, receiving training in North Indian classical vocal music. Divya has been teaching music for 20 years in the U.S., with more than 100 students.
As EASHA grew up, her interest in singing developed into songwriting. “I always loved singing, and I was, like, kind of good at it,” she recalled. “That's where my musical inclination was. And then I realized at 12 that you could write your own songs, so I wrote my first song. The feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction I got from it I've never gotten before in any other way. I think it just gets addicting.”
Following her graduation from high school in 2019, and a gap year in Nashville — in which she spent gigging and establishing connections with producers — EASHA joined Stanford’s class of 2024. EASHA also made an account on TikTok, and in November 2020, she decided to use it to try to reach a whole new audience.
“I was like, ‘Let me post a song a day.’ That was my thing where I was like, day one of posting original music until it blows up,” EASHA said. On day 31 — November 30, 2020 — her original song “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” blew up, receiving 195.9k views.
EASHA then posted her video of “Dying is a Beautiful Thing to Do” on TikTok and Instagram Reels — which she credits as part of the reason for the song's success. She now has over 75k dedicated followers and viral videos that range from snippets of her music to light comedy. TikTok has also been a place of inspiration for EASHA — especially the comments section. She even keeps a whole folder of comments she has screenshotted or saved from TikTok that give her lyric ideas, which is what helped her write her hit “Dying is a Beautiful Thing to Do.”
It all began with a TikTok creator responding in a video to a comment that read: “You’re the type of girl that people write songs about.” At that point, EASHA knew exactly what she wanted to do: she wanted to write a song from the perspective of the muse. She made that TikTok comment her hook and wrote the chorus based on that. The rest of the song came from EASHA having just read Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman.
“It's like a collage of a comment, and then also this book, and also artists that I really love,” she explained. “So I'm so happy that it translated well to different types of people. And everyone kind of took it in their own way.”
The song title comes from the lyric: “I think dying is a beautiful thing to do, by your side.” EASHA explained the song is about the idea of complete surrender and applied it to her experience writing songs and getting personal responses from fans.
“I've just never in my life had that volume of people from all around the world, telling me their stories, or interacting with my music or even listening to my music,” she said. “It's crazy because it's always been, like, my songs, because I haven't released them. And then as soon as you release them, it becomes this totally different landscape where it's not even yours anymore. It's for people — and that's been really amazing.”
EASHA’s music has touched many people, but her latest release “Far Away,” hits close to home. The song is an ode to the feelings that she experienced when she was stuck at home around the time of her high school graduation. Many people experienced a similar feeling with the COVID-19 pandemic. The lyric “if this is home then why I am homesick” sums up the theme of the song, and is also EASHA’s favorite lyric.
“That one was very true to my life. I wrote that after high school graduation, because I live in suburban New Jersey, which is great for like 35-year-old moms, [but] not great for, you know, young musicians,” EASHA said with a laugh. She explained that her time in high school felt like she was living in a prequel; she was ready to go out and live her actual life.
“So I wrote that song; I did a gap year in Nashville, kind of got it produced, then the pandemic happened. And then it just felt more and more pertinent to my life. And not only mine, but everyone else's, because everyone was stuck at home.
But as much as EASHA understands the value of exposure and getting her name, brand, and music out there, she prefers to let her music speak for itself. Hence why her album and single cover art do not show her face. Her debut song, “I Can’t Breathe,” an ode to the Black Lives Matter movement and tribute to George Floyd, was a black square cover. “Dying is Beautiful Thing to Do” shows a picture of her sister from behind, wearing a grey hoodie, beside a brick building and fallen autumn leaves.
Her cover art for her EP Fact of the Fiction is similar, but this time there’s a picture of EASHA from behind, standing in front of a grand castle-like building, with snow falling around her. Her latest single “Far Away” featured a reflection of EASHA in a mirror, but only her body and the sky behind her are visible.
“I like the pictures that don't have my face in it — just personal preference,” she explained. “I always like those, and it seems more artsy to me. I like that element of mystery because ... I don't know ... I feel like I am the least interesting part of my music. I don't want you to see my face because that's not what the song is about.”
EASHA has now settled onto her bed in an attempt to get closer to her laptop charger. Her bed is coated in a crisp white windowpane-patterned duvet. A rattan bed frame sits under a collection of colorful images that are plastered on her wall. An electric guitar is mounted on her wall beside a Stanford University crimson red pennon — all of which can be seen in the music video EASHA recently dropped for “Far Away.”. Her wall is a reflection of everything going on in EASHA’s mind, school, music, her life, and art. But despite the hectic schedule that is online school, songwriting, TikTok content creation, and the general activities of a 20-year-old college student, EASHA is not in any mood to slow down. Her current priority is releasing as much music as she can until she can release an album that represents her body of work. And then when it’s safe, EASHA hopes to tour and do live shows.
“I do have singles that are recorded. So definitely more coming soon. And some that I'm excited for. I have ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ recorded, which I know people have been waiting for. So I'm just waiting for the right time and also finishing up “Far Away” — like the music video and everything like that — and giving that some space to breathe and do well. But people shouldn't worry, because I definitely have music on the way.”
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