Interview of Ny Oh by Freya Bennett
With her luminous new single Aperture and the raw, tender documentary Becoming Ny, Ny Oh is stepping into a new chapter of artistry that feels both expansive and deeply personal. After years of playing massive stadiums on Harry Styles’ Love on Tour, the New Zealand-born singer-songwriter has found sanctuary in Topanga Canyon, where she’s been creating music rooted in healing, self-acceptance, and playful honesty. We caught up with Ny Oh to talk about her new music, the magic of stillness, and what it means to move through life in a constant cycle of becoming and being.
Hi Ny! Congrats on your new single, Aperture! The song has such warmth and positivity. What does it mean to you?
Hi Freya! Thank you!! It does hey, I feel it still, on my 2000th listen – ha. This song really encompasses the last few years of growth for me.. realising that I didn’t have to change things about me, just change the way I viewed things in my life, past, present and future. It’s a real self acceptance tune!
Your new documentary Becoming Ny by Fraser Mackenzie is beautifully unpolished. Just you, your space, your thoughts. What was it like having someone capture you in that raw, uncurated way?
Oooof, it was scary, especially because at the time Fraser came to film, I was still deep in my recovery from Love On Tour (HS). I didn’t feel ready to have the world see me… But I thought, ok, well it’s just Fraser right ?! I’m so stoked now to have this little time capsule of that moment in my life. I was learning to be really kind and forgiving to myself and really prioritising healing above everything. I already feel a different person from who that person was in the doco, but I love her and I love that I gave myself that time.
You’ve described Topanga Canyon as a creative sanctuary. How has living there shaped your music, your rituals, or even the way you think about time?
It truly is. It’s a place where my ‘work/life’ has finally come into balance. It’s a place of spiritual refuge and healing… I think you’d be hard fetched to find someone here who disagrees. Living here has brought so much peace to my inner world. I didn’t realise how much the sounds of a city were affecting my sleep and nervous system. Being here has helped me see how sensitive I am, and get to know myself better. I now know that mornings are sacred for me, and if I can get my favourite things poppin’ in the morning, then I’m setting myself, mind, body and spirit, up for a happy day. To wake up and be with trees and water are something I’ve realised are pretty non-negotiable to me… I didn’t think that I could have the proximity to a city (music work/songwriting) and live in an isolated cabin in the woods. So grateful. As for my relationship with time, it’s always expanding and contracting, much like time itself hehe. I am the keeper of my own time (mostly), if I can nurture that timeless space within myself (stillness, meditation, creativity) then I am existing in a space beyond ‘clocks’. There is of course the way a body tells time, that I am bound to.. surrendering to that feels like putting a ‘golden hour’ filter on the time I have here on earth.
In both your music and film, there’s this thread of self-discovery, but also self-acceptance. Do you feel like you’re in a season of becoming, or have you landed in a place of being? Or both, somehow?
Will we ever land? Life feels like a cycle of becoming and being, going around and around. I feel like the documentary caught me in a time of becoming, the Album I made during that time chronologizes that cycle I was in. Finishing this body of work was a real assessment point to look back at this cycle and appreciate that I now feel different from those feelings I was moving through… I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to do this with my time on earth. ‘Both, somehow’ is the perfect summary here. I like to imagine it like stepping through a doorway, becoming on the left foot, being on the right, always in motion.
How do you balance cosmic ideas with everyday reality in your art?
Life tends to do that kind of work for me! Everything is speaking to me, am I listening? Everything is a message if you’re looking!
After years of huge stadium tours, how does it feel now to stand more firmly in your own spotlight?
It feels like me: intimate, raw, silly. At times it feels scary, at other times it feels like Love on Tour was another life completely. That history will always be with me, those memories shape who I am as a person and artist. Would I even be able to be an artist at the age of 31 without that experience? Who knows – I am grateful for it all.
If Aperture is the doorway we’re walking through into this new chapter of yours, what do you hope we’ll find on the other side?
Ha – funny you used the doorway image too – we’re in sync sistahh! Well, I hope you’ll find a playful honesty. This music is serious at its core, but also silly around the edges, much like myself. I hope the doorway is for people exactly what they need, a frame of reference in which to look at the world through. A chance to release anything holding them back from loving how beautiful they are.
