Get to Know: Tiara Thomas

“I don’t even really consider my music just straight-up R&B cause it’s got mixes of hip hop, pop, and alternative”, says Indianapolis singer-songwriter Tiara Thomas, who is not only an artist herself but also writes songs for other people.

Writing songs for other musicians has been the hallmark of her musical journey until now, arguably. But for her, that hasn’t deterred her success as a solo singer, evidenced by a handful of singles and an EP on her wall. However, a Grammy Award and an Academy Award later, she’s finally set to release her debut album sometime by the end of the year.

“This is going to be my debut album. I’ve put out EPs (before), but this is going to be my first actual album, which is crazy but exciting”. Tiara says at the start of her interview with New Wave Magazine. She reaffirms that it has been a dream of hers to drop a debut album and win a Grammy, even if people might feel she has gone about it in reverse.

“I’m not mad about the order in which things happened in my life, but I would have just guessed it would be in a different order”, Tiara contemplates.

“I always thought that things would happen a certain way, but I guess God or the universe had different plans. I’m extremely grateful for my journey."

As an established songwriter, Tiara has written for renowned musicians in the likes as Mary J. Blige, John Legend, H.E.R and Kaytranada. She finds songwriting for others as “cool” and enjoys writing from their experiences, rather than her own, during the process.

“For example, I just did a song with Nigerian-American artist Lekan. I wrote a song with him titled ‘Make It Right’. With that song, he just went into the booth at the studio, and he just mumbled a bunch of melodies. 

“When he came out, I wrote the lyrics exactly to the melodies that he did. Like, we kind of collaborated on those lyrics. He did all the melodies he wanted to do—mumbles, there were no words, and I made out what he was saying in the mumbles. I didn’t do any of the melodies for that song, but I did most of the writing for that song. 

“I like writing like that. I want the artist to go in and sing. Like, what do you want this to sound like? And then they come out and I say, ‘okay, what do you wanna say?’ It’s kind of like a game for me cause I’m like ‘okay, now I have to write lyrics that match exactly what melodies they are singing.’”

A lot of intentions and expressions accompany an album, much so, a debut one. And despite past releases already existing in the world, no one really knows what to expect. For Tiara, however, she capitalised on a chance to reintroduce herself and put vulnerability first. 

Speaking about what she wanted fans to take away from the project, she said, “I think a lot of people don’t know a lot about me as a person, so I tried to open up a lot about myself as a person. You know, my love life, my certain traumas, and definitely experimenting with different sounds and my voice.”

Experimentation and fearless self-expression were another one. Speaking about the creative process behind certain tracks, she reveals, “I sang with like three different voices on ‘A Hug’, because that’s how I felt at the time. It was a weird tone and I liked it, I was like ‘I’m just gonna sing in this weird tone that I’ve never sung in’. 

“I did that some more on the album. I sang in my falsetto for a lot of the songs. Just trying a lot of things and showing myself, you know. There’s no release date set in stone yet, but the album is coming very soon this year.”

Growing up Christian in the predominantly-white suburbs of Indianapolis, through which people often told her that she “talks like a white girl”, Tiara wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music, but admits to sneaking to go listen to the sounds of “all the girls from the ’90s” including Lauryn Hill, India.Arie and Brandy.

2Pac, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony were also in heavy rotation, but she credits her dad to putting her on to “lot of old school music, which is still kind of incorporated” into her music. When promoted, she lists Elton John, Prince, David Bowie, Eagles. 

“I just listened to a lot of different music and I’m inspired by a lot of different artists,” Tiara says.

She is also a lover of gospel music. Tiara first started singing in her church’s kids choir when she was 8, and in her teenage years, she began to play musical instruments. She heavily leaned towards the guitar because of John Mayer and India.Arie.

During college, she wrote her breakout song ‘Bad’ in her dorm room, and despite being a thriving artist, she still has long-term plans to put her degree to work.

“I got my degree in production, communications, and directing”, Tiara explains.

“So somewhere in the future, I would like to get into film. But I have to get this task done first. I have to be fully committed and focused on the music and my album. Because I can be very all over the place, and I don’t need to be trying to do a bunch of different stuff.” 

This makes sense why there are so many “moods” on her forthcoming project. “I think it’s just me being me in the ebbs and flows of life. Sometimes, you feel upbeat and it’s like ‘oh, I want love’ and sometimes, it’s like ‘maybe I need to be by myself’ or ‘maybe I just need a hug’”. 

Speaking about two lead tracks in the build up to the album release, she says, “‘Move’ is more of an acceptance of ‘A Hug’ because in ‘A Hug’, I’m kind of complaining. 

“With ‘A Hug’, I felt like putting out something where I’m just snapping. ‘Move’ is kind of the realisation that life is what it is, things are the way they are, people are the way they are, and I just gotta watch how I move. It’s coming from a place of more empowerment than just being mad like in ‘A Hug’. 

She also reveals that the same creative process comes into light when she’s writing her own songs.

“I mumble for myself as well. For my recent single ‘A Hug’, I had that beat for about six months. I went in the studio and I laid down a mumbled track. And I mentioned somewhere in the mumble that ‘maybe I just need a hug’ or something like that. But I mumbled all the lyrics, then I went in, just listened to the song with the mumbles for a few weeks—off and on.

Explaining further, she said, “You know, I would go to the mall with my headphones on and write lyrics while I was walking through the mall or while I was driving in the car. Once I come out with all the lyrics, I will go record the final version of the song. But sometimes, I naturally write something really fast. But for ‘A Hug’ and some other songs, I mumble the song and I also match the lyrics exactly to my mumbles.”

Turning to the wider project, she explains, “There’s a lot of other moods where I’m just being vulnerable and going through the ups and downs, and the accepting of life, and learning. I think people are just watching me go through life. I’m just explaining my life, through these songs that I’m dropping, based on my mood.”

“Sometimes, I forget I have them”, says Tiara, as we eventually get back to the elephant in the room. And by this, we mean winning both a Grammy Award and an Academy Award prior to her debut album.

“When I first got the Oscar and the Grammy, they felt a little heavy—not physically—but people were immediately asking me, ‘What’s next? What’s next?’ And I was like ‘I don’t know?’”, She admits.

“I didn’t expect to win an Academy Award. So I felt like there was a lot of pressure because, now that I’m known as a songwriter, I have the two biggest accolades I guess you can achieve as a songwriter. But as an artiste, I’m still hustling and grinding.” 

Both of those big victories she couldn’t have done without H.E.R., the pair collaborating to earn the former the two biggest awards in Tiara’s career, alongside a Golden Globe nomination. 

Concerning her work relationship with H.E.R., whom she has known since the latter was 15, and at one point shared a manager.

“We have been creating together for many years, so it’s very organic when we get in the studio”, Tiara explains. “We just be talking. The song that we won a Grammy for, ‘I Can’t Breathe’, we wrote that on FaceTime during the pandemic. 

“The song that we won the Academy Award for, we just watched the movie “Judas and the Black Messiah” in the studio, then we listened to a bunch of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye to get in the vibe, and we just wrote something. 

“That’s the same thing with my new single ‘Move’ that I just put out with H.E.R. We actually did that song a couple of years ago when we were in the studio, vibing, and we were just bouncing lyrics off of each other, and we just recorded that song. It’s pretty organic because she’s like my sister.”

Tiara Thomas is focusing on her artistry right now, but nevertheless, she still looks forward to writing a song for Beyoncé in the near future. “If Beyoncé wants to put out rap, country, pop, whatever, I would love to write any type of song for her. I would also like to write for Rihanna. I’ve actually submitted a couple of songs for Rihanna’s previous albums years ago but…”

Rihanna remixed ‘Bad’, which is categorically Tiara writing for Rihanna; “yeah, but I would like to do a submitted song that I sang for her to put on her album. Honestly, it really depends. If somebody hit me up and said ‘Hey, do you wanna go write a song for Mariah Carey?’ I would be like ‘hell yeah!’ and go do it. Above all, I like working with people organically, something that feels natural.” Placing genuine connection and timing above anything else, it's only natural that Tiara's debut album only comes at a time that's right for her.

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