Nardia’s New Single “Is It You” Marks a Turning Point
There’s something ghostlike about Nardia ’s new single “Is It You.” Not in the spectral, Halloween sense—but in the way certain feelings return to us, uninvited. The Melbourne-born singer-songwriter, who recently landed in the Top 5 at the 2025 International Blues Challenge in Memphis (the only woman to do so, no less), delivers her latest track like someone who’s been keeping a secret far too long.
“Is It You” is the first glimpse of Own Every Scar, Nardia’s forthcoming album—and it already feels like a career pivot. Her sound, a heady mix of R&B, blues, soul, and jazz, has never been about technical tricks or flashy production. It’s been about presence, pain, and truth. But here, we’re hearing a new kind of risk: emotional nakedness.
The song moves like a memory. Smooth keys, deliberate percussion, and that unmistakable voice—a voice that carries years in its phrasing. “There have been times when I have felt unhappy and trapped,” she admits in a recent interview, and you can feel the weight of that lived experience woven into every verse. This is less a song and more a confession set to melody.
Nardia’s journey so far has been winding but steady. She fronted Rambal, took them to the top of the Australian Blues & Roots charts, and starred in tribute shows honoring the likes of Ray Charles and Etta James. She’s played soul sets in VIP lounges for Beyoncé and Adele, but she’s no lounge act. She’s a lioness in velvet.
Where others lean on genre as identity, Nardia treats blues, jazz, and soul like rooms in a house she grew up in—she knows where the floorboards creak and how the light falls in the kitchen. “I feel most dangerous in blues,” she says. You believe her. Her performance doesn’t just borrow from tradition; it claws at it, reshapes it, demands it make room for her story.
Own Every Scar was born between Nashville and Memphis, and it shows. There’s a reverence for craft and legacy here, but more than that, there’s bravery. Nardia doesn’t just sing about her wounds—she gives them a name and then dares us to look at them with her.
