Singer/songwriter Theia is getting ready to release more new songs from her upcoming album. Photo / Nas Nixx
This year is shaping up to be a big one for critically acclaimed singer Theia, who tells Felicity Monk she’s never been more happy.
Theia is wearing a bubblegum pink zip-up hoodie with a large picture of Angelina Jolie on one side and Brad Pitt on the other.
The word “Brangelina” is emblazoned above the former couple’s ridiculously attractive heads. The singer-songwriter is conflicted. She taps Jolie’s face with her long, manicured fingernail.
“Angelina is my girl,” she says. No longer a fan of Pitt, especially since the messy divorce, she thought about blacking his eyes out but didn’t want to ruin the hoodie. For Theia, Brad Pitt is on thin ice.
Born in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Em-Hayley Walker (Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Tipā) gave herself the name Theia when she launched her music career.
Theia is the Greek goddess of divine light. It’s also the name of an ancient planet said to have smashed into Earth. She enjoys the dual meaning.
“The name brings together everything that I tend to do with contrasting dark and light, whether sonically or aesthetically. I just felt like it would be perfect for me to take on. And she’s done me very well.”
Theia has just released single Pray 4 Me from her forthcoming full-length album (she has previously released three EPs). It’s a total departure from her socially conscious, edgy and infectious alt-pop songs. With stripped-back electronic production and ethereal vocals, it is a haunting, beautiful, brutal ballad.
“Sonically it’s very different. I wanted it to feel like an angelic choir. Usually, I tend to just throw everything at it, but I exercised some restraint. I wanted to feel every single quiver of my reo, because the subject matter is quite tender, I wanted the vocal to reflect that.”
It is a deeply personal song, the lyrics alluding to her experiences growing up in a conservative Christian community.
“I was sold in the spring, I was a little child. A demon released. They wanted meek and mild.
A misfit, this sickness. I wanna die. Resist it, you did this. Eye for an eye. Don’t pray for me,
or put me under your spell. I’m just a girl. Living in a savage world.”
“The subject matter is definitely something that I’ve not shared or explored before in this way,” Theia says. Until now.
She is worried about how it might be received and it’s clear to see the tension she feels between not wanting to hurt her family, who are still active members of their church, and exercising her right to express herself.
“Almost every single thing in my life, and the way that I look at the world, is opposite to how I was raised. And I’ve always felt that way. I still, and always will, have absolute love for my family but you know, we clash on certain things, and points of view.
“At the heart of it, I still adore the freedom to be able to believe in whatever you want to believe. And believe in that earnestly. But sometimes I feel like just me existing is extremely contentious in the context of my family. We’re still living with the consequences of actions that have been taken because of those belief systems. And that’s really important for me to talk about, because it still affects myself and my people.”
As a child, Theia says, she struggled to express herself. “To the point where report cards would say she doesn’t speak. I had a lot of anxiety and there was bullying and things like that.”
She used writing as an outlet and began composing poems – “about ponies and self-esteem” – and put a tune to them.
After high school Theia attended the University of Canterbury, completing a double major in te reo Māori and Māori and Indigenous Studies. By the end of her degree, she was fluent in te reo and deeply grounded in her Māori identity.
When Theia speaks about her Māoritanga, it is with reverence and awe, like a fire is ablaze inside her.
A devoted proponent for the revitalisation of te reo, she teaches basic reo Māori to musicians, businesses, and record executives in Aotearoa and abroad.
During her time at university, she continued to make music, recording herself wherever she could, uploading her songs to Facebook and SoundCloud and sending tracks to student radio and iwi radio stations.
Theia signed with Warner Music in 2016 and released her first official single, Roam, which clocked more than a million plays on Spotify in just six weeks and became the most-played Kiwi song on the airplay charts for seven consecutive weeks. The following year she was nominated for three Aotearoa Music Awards (AMAs).
“It was mad, absolutely bonkers. Those first few years were just chaotic and hectic and manic because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I adored composition and the art of recording things in the studio, but aside from kapa haka at school, I’d never performed. When Roam took off, it was bigger than I ever imagined. And then there’s this onus that you’re to perform.”
She says the first shows were awful. “I really didn’t know what I was doing, I wanted to shrink away, but you have to try to push yourself. I just wanted to be like Kate Bush and literally perform once every 25 years.”
Instead she kept going and wound up opening for international artists like Sia and Charli XCX, and was a headliner at Sydney Mardi Gras 2020, as well as playing at festivals and gigs around Aotearoa.
Through the Covid lockdowns, she says, her confidence around performing grew. With music venues closed and shows cancelled, musicians from all over the world took their performances online. There they found hungry audiences, and each other.
“It was this remarkable moment in time when all of us had shows and then they all just got cancelled. We wanted a way to be able to perform, and it ended up being better than we could have imagined.”
Theia was invited to perform in underground cyber-club line-ups of international artists, and wound up doing around three shows a week, which were hosted from places like Montreal, New York and LA.
“Everything all in cyberspace over Zoom, really sick backgrounds, amazing festival lineups. It was wild. I met my DJ and some of my closest friends just through doing online club shows.”
Those online friendships migrated to real life once the world began opening up and Theia now collaborates with many of the artists she met online.
“That community has helped me so much. Now I feel like I’ve finally found my feet. I genuinely look forward to shows. I still have absolute raging anxiety. Truly, so bad. But, you know, that just kind of comes with it.”
Theia left Warner Music in 2020 and decided to go it alone.
“It’s just opened my entire world up because I’m able to do whatever I want in my own time, myself.”
Like releasing her te reo Māori album TE KAAHU O RANGI earlier this year, to critical acclaim – here and overseas.
She received nominations for Best New Artist at the 2022 Rolling Stone NZ awards, Best Alternative Artist in the 2022 AMAs and was a finalist in the APRA Maioha Awards for the dreamy waiata E Hine Ē. The album was also nominated for Best te reo Māori Album in the 2022 Waiata Māori Music Awards and was a finalist in four categories at this year’s Student Radio Network Awards. TE KAAHU O RANGI was also up for consideration for a nomination at the 2023 Grammy Awards in the Best Alternative Album category.
Theia says TE KAAHU is inspired by her tūpuna wāhine (female ancestors) and in particular honours her kuia (grandmother) who played a central role in her life, introducing her to her hapu and iwi, and speaking reo with her.
“She was just the most remarkable, full of love, gracious person ever.”
Theia also wanted to capture the traditional craft of Māori storytelling and songwriting.
“I wanted to make sure that sonically, it sounds like the music that I grew up listening to with my kuia, which is rather timeless and nostalgic and calming.”
Was she anticipating the incredible response to the album? “When spoken correctly, and when sung, our reo is just so exquisite. So, I’m not surprised that people love it and connect with it.”
This year is shaping up to be a big one for Theia.
She’ll be releasing more new songs from her upcoming album, which she’s fizzing about.
She will also be headlining the Big Gay Out next month, will play on the main stage at Splore after that and will make her debut at Wellington’s Cuba Dupa festival in March. Life is good.
“I’m so, so happy. I’ve never been more happy in my life. I’ve also never been more busy, but I feel like I’m in the best space to be able to make the most of it. It’s awesome.”
And dad Clarke Gayford may have delivered his best birthday cake yet.