NAGYEDi (real name Edi Nagy) moved from Hungary to London two years ago, and is something of a defining figure in the alternative music scene in her home country. Although her music could be loosely described as an elusive, unique mix of alternative pop, she finds it hard to pin down just what it is that inspires her experimentation with jazz, pop, trip-hop, downtempo and tribal rhythms.
“I have always felt a little bit embarrassed because I actually stopped listening to music, because there's always some kind of music – be it vocal melodies, lyric ideas or even beats in my head,” she confesses with a laugh.
“To be able to focus on those, I need silence. So when people ask me, ‘what music do you listen to?’ I'm like, ‘well, actually, nothing!’ I still like music, of course, and I listen to other stuff, but when I'm writing something or if I'm waiting for some idea to pop up, I prefer staying in silence because for me, there's always music somewhere in my head.
"So I'm kind of inspired from the inside! Those unique vocal melodies I write, those come from the silence, actually. I’ve stopped feeling embarrassed now, because that's me,” she shrugs, grinning.
“I used to listen to jazz,” she volunteers. “I was a big fan. I still am. I like Portishead, Nine Inch Nails, Nina Simone, big pop classic divas like Whitney Houston, and when I was a teenager I totally fell in love with Alicia Keys. When people usually ask, ‘what kind of music do you play or create?’ I'm like, ‘have you got half an hour?’ It's a mix of everything!”
Since moving to London a lot has changed for the singer-songwriter, meeting her now husband and welcoming a baby boy into the world in May of 2020.
Joking that she’s “a witch” after sharing that she once wrote a song about being tired of being alone, only to meet her now-husband two days later, (“I think my words can be super strong, or my thoughts!”) NAGYEDi says that the circumstances that saw her move to London also seemed to stem from her putting the right energy into the universe:
“I was like, ‘maybe I should go to the UK, but there's no jobs’. I'm not kidding, in 10 minutes I received an email from an agency in the UK offering jobs. I'm sitting there like, ‘oh my god, that was fast!’ I thought that maybe this was a sign that this idea was something to follow. I actually always had a feeling that London is a calling for me, and that I had to come here.