Every now and then, a pop phenom appears seemingly out of nowhere. In early 2014, music fans across the globe took notice of a giddily upbeat video featuring a flame-haired singer sporting a ’90s-throwback wardrobe as she and her posse of dancers vogued their way through the alleyways of New York. That video’s catchy house-inflected anthem, “Hideaway”, not only introduced Calgary-born Kiesza (neé Kiesa Rae Ellestad) to the masses, but also catapulted her to Number 1 on the U.K. single charts—not a bad way to bow onto the world stage.
“The day I wrote ‘Hideaway’ I was about to fly back to L.A.,” the mononymous singer recalls of the serendipitous moment that led to her monster hit. “As I was leaving for the airport, my producer Rami [Samir Afuni] started making the beat and I instantly connected with it. I laid down the melody as it kind of just popped into my head, and I ended up writing the whole song in under an hour. I immediately identified with the track in a way I had never felt before—I knew when I wrote it that I had found my sound as an artist.”
If her success with ”Hideaway” seemed all but instantaneous, Kiesza’s path to pop stardom was anything but, though just as compelling as her exuberant tunes. Her backstory almost seems tailor-made for a TV movie: after studying dance before a knee injury ended her ballet career at 15, she then joined the Canadian navy as a reservist alongside her brother, honing her guitar and vocal skills during crew jam sessions. “The military taught me that a lot of my perceived limits were in my head, and that I had a lot more in me than I thought I did,” she muses of her naval experience. A scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston followed, then an eventual move to New York, where her songwriting shifted towards a more dance-pop direction. “I actually started as a folk musician but went through several different genres before arriving at my sound now,” Kiesza explains. “I grew up loving acts like Whitney Houston, Aaliyah, Robin S., and Michael Jackson, so my album explores the sounds of my favourite era of music, which was the early ’90s.”
While working away on her own songs that would eventually make up her debut album, Sound of a Woman (2014), Kiesza’s pop instincts and sharp songwriting caught the attention of other collaborators, including red-hot electro producers/DJs Skrillex and Diplo. She’s also written songs for chart-toppers like Rihanna, Swedish songstress Loreen, and was recently featured on rapper Joey Bada$$’s dance-rap single “Teach Me”. “I realized when I write songs, I should just write the best material I possibly can and let the song find the artist,” Kiesza says about her approach to making music. “I wrote my album with Rami and a few songs with some close friends of mine who are also really great writers. I’m a strong believer in collaboration and I think different people bring out different sides and strengths in us.”
As it happened, the rising songstress needed to summon all her own strength—both mentally and physically—just to make it through the dexterous choreography of the clever one-shot video for “Hideaway” (which has logged over 197 million views to date) that catapulted her to fame. “I actually injured my rib during rehearsal the day before we shot the video, but it wasn’t until two days after we shot was when I found out how serious it was,” she admits. “I was bedridden for a month after that!”
The triple-threat singer, songwriter, and dancer certainly isn’t planning to let that memorable incident keep her down, however, 2015 is already shaping up to be busy, with a nonstop tour schedule that kicked off across Australia and the U.K. The whirlwind itinerary includes several dates in Canada and a performance at the Junos. Something old, something new; Kiesza’s fresh spin on some classic sounds.
