Q&A: Emerging Pop It-Girl Wafia Talks New Single “Crystal Ball,” Musical Inspirations and More
THE NEXT BIG IT-GIRL IN THE 2024 POP RENAISSANCE SCENE IS — Wafia. The Australian singer-songwriter, now based in LA, has been making music since 2013. While her music style has evolved throughout the years, it has always leaned toward pop. Wafia recently released her new single, “Crystal Ball,” along with its respective music video.
Luna had the chance to sit down with Wafia to explore the recent releases. With an aura as ethereal as her music, she gave insight into the new song, the visuals, and the lore of it all. Read below as Wafia shares musical influences, how she writes her songs, and what shooting the music video for “Crystal Ball” was like.
LUNA: Can you tell me a little more about your new single, “Crystal Ball,” and what inspired it?
WAFIA: I had just moved in with my partner. I think we were both kind of freaking out a little bit. It's the first time we had made this sort of move in a relationship before, and I found myself not wanting to be ruled by fear. I found myself really being like, “What if we break up? I don't want to not get too comfy in this house, because what if we break up.”
So I wrote this song… I was just like, “I don't want to sit here and try to predict the future of how this ends. I really because I feel like that'll take away from the present.” So this song… I feel like I wrote it in my most secure place… It’s like where I want to be at all times in a relationship.
LUNA: Can you tell me about this music video too? I'm excited for it.
WAFIA: Well, the video features Sabrina Claudio, and I knew I wanted to have her involved because she had just done some vocals [and] heard the song as well. And I was thinking about how I get her and me in a music video that isn't just us all over each other and on the verge of making out. I feel like it's cool, that's a vibe, but I feel like I'm really intentional. What can I create that's something different [from] that?
And I [thought] it'd be really funny if she was just trying to kill me. And I was like, in every scene it should be Sabrina trying to kill me, and obviously she's so sweet … she would obviously never do that. But I really was like, what's the other side of that? It's death. And also, when discussing the song, the song about not knowing what's gonna happen, [it] sort of did honor the song without it being on the nose.
Plus it really can be silly. I haven't had that much fun making a music video because I feel there was so much of our personalities in it, and I never acted in the music video before, and I was really giving it my all.
LUNA: Are there any standout experiences or silly moments you remember from shooting that music video?
WAFIA: There's one scene where … I'm fully on the ground being dragged. So that was pretty [funny] — we did our own. It's like we actually did fight, like the girls tussled, and she actually hit me at one point. And I only had to stop filming because I was like, “Okay, I see how it is.” And I just started punching back a little harder.
LUNA: Did Sabrina influence the song at all?
WAFIA: Well, actually, that's one song that I had done before I met Sabrina… It was a situation where I sent her a bunch of songs, and this one almost wasn't going to make it. Her influence came in that she really put her foot down on the song. She was like, “You have to put this song out. It's so good, it's so catchy.” And I was just like, “Okay, what do I know?”
And of course I loved it, but … the things I tend to gravitate to are more ethereal. But she's just like, “This has such good tempo, you have to put this out.” And we did, and so then we revisited it with her in the studio. She came in and she was like, “I feel like you should bump up the drums a little more. We should speed it up a little bit.” She was super influential to this song and where it ended up, and also it coming out... I don't know that it would have come out if it wasn't for her insisting.
LUNA: Side note, I did notice you switching up your sound. At one point your songs are almost haunting. They are consistently good, but there's two different vibes, you know what I mean?
WAFIA: Yeah, thank you for picking up on that. I mean, I love it all. My favorite albums are the ones [where] the vocalist just does whatever they want to do and it goes into all these different pockets. So I don't know, I've allowed myself to have all these different spaces to exist in.
LUNA: I like that. I like that it shows range.
WAFIA: Thank you!
LUNA: I wanted to ask if you have any musical influences. And how would you describe your music? I know you mentioned “ethereal”…
WAFIA: Stuff that I listened to when I was like 14 to… Oh, no! I would say 17 to 19 are so important to me. I don't even know that you can really hear them so much [in my music], but they are my biggest influences. Like the Bon Ivers of the world, and even Sufjan Stevens. I just was such an indie kid at that age, and I love the lore. I love the, “Oh my gosh, this person went away to the woods and wrote this whole album by themselves.”
I love Kasey Musgraves. I love SZA, of course. Lauryn Hill is a huge one for me. Honestly, I don't know that I would be singing if it weren't for Ms. Lauryn Hill's appearance and Sister Act 2. That's like, the best movie. It's how I learned to even speak English. So I yeah, I think that really was very defining, also.
LUNA: If you could describe your “lore,” if you wanted to write someplace or have a crazy story about your writing process, what would it be?
WAFIA: Oh, that's a good question. Honestly, maybe it's going back to my roots. I wasn't born in the Middle East. My parents are Iraqi and Syrian, and I wasn't born there. I would love to go back. I visited Syria, but obviously with everything happening I haven't been in a while, and I also have never been to Iraq. I would love to go write an album there and utilize the musicians there. My family in Iraq was a nomadic tribe. And I'd love to write an album traveling through Iraq in that way. I feel like that could be really fun.
LUNA: I love that.
WAFIA: I think it's special.
