Malaika Hollis Releases New Single ‘The Stranger’
Malaika Hollis probably sang before she could talk – “I’ve always been doing it,” she says. The daughter of acclaimed children’s musician Levity Beet (two-time winner of Best Children’s Artist at the NZ Children’s Music Awards), she is also “super confident on guitar”; plays piano and ukulele and, “if you needed me on the drums, I could keep a beat”.
Her latest single The Stranger is online on January 19th across all streaming platforms. The title comes from the novel of the same name by Albert Camus “and certain elements within the book”, she says. “I wrote The Stranger to acknowledge a disconnect within my relationship at the time. There had been this big conflict between us and my trust had been really betrayed. For a long time I’d thought that if I could prove to myself that this person still wanted to be with me, I’d be content. But when we finally reconnected I realized I simply didn’t have the same feelings for them anymore. Ultimately this song came from a place of embarrassment at having let myself be treated poorly and ashamed that I couldn’t find a good way to look after myself.”
Hollis, from Golden Bay, describes her music as Indie Pop – “that’s probably the best fit and what I’m most inspired by. Dad hooked me into Taylor Swift and she’s probably been my biggest influence. Lyrically, Phoebe Bridgers and Lorde.”
She draws inspiration from her own life and experiences. “I go through writer’s block but as soon as something happens to me emotionally I can just write and write and write. It’s always from my own feelings and experiences, but occasionally it will be something I’ll hear about on the news or a poem I read. But it has to be something that makes me feel an emotion in witnessing or hearing it.”
“I write the songs in my own time and then if I’m feeling extra creative or I want to have complete creative control I’ll get out Garageband and make a simple little demo on my computer.” But with a musical father who is also an audio engineer “most of the time I take the song to my dad, show it to him and then tell him exactly what I want to do, what I want to add and how and where and what I want it to sound like and then we work on it together.”
“At the moment I do all my marketing on Spotify because it’s such a big streaming platform and I haven’t set myself up on the other platforms yet.” Hollis has two previous tracks Keep a Hold of Me and Low Light available online.
2024 marks her final year at High School, and she’s still unsure where her future lies: “I definitely want to go to University but I’m a bit afraid to study music because I really don’t want the education to kill the passion and it become like a chore or a job, rather than what I just want to do. But I’d be really interested in studying English Literature.”
“As a little kid around 6, I was driven by fame and wanting to be a pop star. Now I hope that when I make music, people hear it and they want to listen to what I’m saying; that it resonates with them. I want my gigs to be for people who are genuinely interested in my music and not the idea of me as a famous figure. I’d rather have people who understand what I’m doing.”
