“Fusing English with the Spanish language that she grew up around, having spent a period of her formative years in a small mountain town absorbing the country’s rich lexicon and culture.

Learning piano from a young age before teaching herself to play guitar aged 11 with the specific aim of translating her stories and ideas into songs, Nina spent her subsequent early teenagehood exploring a more traditional singer-songwriter route, influenced by the likes of Taylor Swift and Corinne Bailey Rae and encouraged by her sound engineer-turned-pastor father and a house that had always been filled with music.

Completely devoted to her craft, Nina speaks of there being “no Plan B” other than music since her teens. Around this time, Nina had also begun to upload early demos to Soundcloud, however when she went back to Spain that summer, the old friends and relatives she’d grown up with had a bone to pick. “They made a joke about how I only make songs for my English family and not for them,” she explains. “It was a joke, but it had definitely come from somewhere. Because of that, when I got back I wanted to include them, because some of them are from an older generation that don’t speak English. That was the point when things changed.”

2019 debut single proper, ‘Te extraño, pero…’, marked the beginning of this shift, moving musically into more soulful, nocturnal territory whilst deftly segueing between Spanish and English lyrics. Of this trait, Nina – fluent in both – explains that her mind naturally tends to think in both languages. “I like it when the two flow and weave in together – especially because my brain flits backwards and forwards. Sometimes I’ll write a line in English and realise a line in Spanish rhymes with it and would sound sick,” she says. “Also it allowed me to write parts in Spanish that I didn’t want my English friends to understand; it made me feel like I had a place to express myself that felt almost private.”

“For a long time, Spanish artists have incorporated bits of English into their music, whereas in England it feels like maybe people have only been receptive to things like that very recently. But if the music is good then it translates beyond the language,” she says. “I’m hoping by the time EP3 comes out, there’s a running line that it all just sounds like Nina.”
Found From:

Nina Cobham * Red Light Management

—
Red Light Management

Fusing English with the Spanish language that she grew up around, having spent a period of her formative years in a small mountain town absorbing the country's rich lexicon and culture, 21-year-old Nina Cobham's broad-reaching, bilingual storytelling feels like the natural next step for UK alternative pop.