A Creative Visionary, I Bring to You - Onyi Moss
Multi-talented, qualified chartered accountant, professional photographer and short-film maker living in Manchester, Onyi Moss has ensued a new creative endeavor into the music industry. Although Onyi released her debut single ‘In Your Eyes’ on 22nd January 2021, she’s not new to creating and writing music. Onyi had written her first song at the mere age of just 12 years old. Having been sent the press release I was eager to learn more about Onyi, and the tale behind the song of ‘In Your Eyes’. During the interview we discuss the inspiration behind her debut single, the songwriting sensation that is Tracy Chapman, Onyi’s bad experience with religion, her new EP in the works, opening up about a friend who is still missing, and her life path starting from becoming a qualified chartered accountant to becoming unemployed, then securing a job in finance whilst simultaneously ensuing a hobby in photography, soon turned professional photographer and short-film story teller to now entering a career in singer/songwriting. What a ride.
Career Before Music
Onyi has a huge online presence with a whopping 164k Instagram followers and 35k Tik-Tok followers, so her creative risk of changing career paths really paid off, and it gives her a good standing when releasing her music to a large following (that she already has). We delve a bit further into her career before music, Onyi jokes, “I would say that my career is a bit of a funny one.”
Moss expands, “So my background is in finance - I’m actually a chartered accountant. I used to work for the co-op as a financial accountant - at the co-op bank.” However her creative urges began just before she got the job - whilst unemployed - Onyi expands, “I stumbled upon photography whilst watching one of these reality TV shows, but that was before I got a job; because I was struggling to get a job. After I completed my qualification - so when I was unemployed - I was watching all of these reality TV shows and one came up and it was a show about women who taught themselves photography and they took these amazing pictures and would tell really beautiful stories with them and I said ‘wow! I think I’d like to do that.’ Rather than pay the rent that month, I decided to order a camera and then I started teaching myself photography and before I knew it, I was able to get a job in the bank but I carried on doing photography on the side. Then I started getting brands contact me and ask me to shoot campaigns for them.”
When a hobby that you love could potentially turn into a great career prospect you have to take those opportunities. “Eventually I quit my job at the bank and I set up a creative business where I create content for brands. I do a lot of videos and I try to tell stories with them; make short films if you will. And I realised the music is quite important, and it kind of reconnected me back to my love for music.”
Onyi expands, “Now I’m 34 and during the lockdown I said ‘oh, you know, since not much is happening now might be a good time to start working on my EP' and that’s how it all came about. And I have booked a studio session with a local producer in Manchester and we’ve just been trying to work on some songs for my EP.”
Inspiration Behind Debut Single ‘In Your Eyes’
I noticed Onyi spoke a lot about story-telling, so it seemed that it was rather important that she had a narrative behind her songs - a story to tell. ‘In Your Eyes’ is an endearing acoustic track with some ominous sentiment to it, it was obvious there was more to it - a deeper narrative than appeared on the surface. When asking Onyi if she agreed, and felt as though a narrative behind her music was important she agrees, “Yes. I feel it’s quite important, like the work I do, I make it quite personal to me. So I would say in my creative work, I would try to describe it as an introspective lifestyle editorial because it’s something that relates to me in my life and my own personal experience and that shaped my view as to the way I see things - so with regards to my music; the song ‘In Your Eyes’ was inspired by loss. It’s basically about the hope that is sometimes found in loss.”
Moss opens up, “Because I had a friend, a close friend at uni, who went missing and we have not found her from up until today, and her parents are still looking for her, of course, but no one’s found her.”
A tragic story lays beneath the surface of ‘In Your Eyes’ but the song was completed through the eyes of someone else’s story, Onyi started writing ‘In Your Eyes’ in March 2016 but explains, “ I was only able to finish off the song last year, so that was when a really close friend of mine had experienced a really tragic loss - so from their own experience I was able to like get the words to finally finish off the song.”
Debut EP in the Line-Up
“I was raised in a religious background and sometimes it would be used to kind of like, guilt you. It was used as some form of control to get you to do something - so I lived with guilt for a very long time.”
With talks of Onyi finding inspiration for her new EP, it would be rude not to question it! So what can be expected? Following her inspiration of Tracy Chapman she wants to continue a reflection of her own personal experiences and key moments of her life through song.
Onyi says, “I would say the EP would be about key moments in my life that brought about significant changes; so me losing my friend” However she also goes into detail about another track off the EP where she reflects on her bad experiences with religion, sin and the religious lifestyle, “and there’s another one about - so it’s not a gospel song - but I was raised in a religious background and sometimes it would be used to kind of like guilt you. It was used as some form of control to get you to do something - so I lived with guilt for a very long time. I battled with my lifestyle, even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I just constantly felt guilty. So this song is about just coming out of that basically and almost releasing the guilt knowing that, yeah I keep hearing this - but I’m not going to remember it or stick to it. So that’s one aspect.”
Onyi’s music has a very emotive aspect and really will hit home for some, leading to Onyi’s music being incredibly relatable to a lot of people, “Then there’s another one of me almost finally coming out of a very toxic relationship and being able to let go of someone who wasn’t quite right for me at the time. It’s almost like key moments in my life - yeah.”
Release date of EP
Despite the whole covid lockdown scenario over here in the U.K., Onyi still has hopes to get her debut EP released in 2021, “The way things are going, you know with the lockdown. I’m hoping I can get back into the studio. I would say probably in October? If all goes well. We say aiming for October because I don’t want to release anything around December, because around Christmas, it’ll get lost.”
Music Influences
Interested to know more about her music influences aside from her creative influences Onyi expands, “I don’t know if you will be familiar with her, but her name is Asa (pronounced: ash-a) she’s a Nigerian singer-songwriter - so same background as me but she’s Nigerian-French so her music is very similar of the style of Tracy Chapman as well so that’s one person I also like. I actually quite like Dido - not many people talk about her these days but I still like her.”
Why Onyi? What’s Different About Onyi Moss?
The music industry can appear to be a carbon copy blueprint of a band from the 90s or a world full of one hit wonders, artist after artist. Longevity and consistency within success is becoming more of a distant memory in the music industry. Those in the music industry want to be refreshed, they don’t want something that is already out there, despite how good you may be - we want something DIFFERENT. This can be a tough question to ask a lot of artists, as they stew on their thoughts for a moment but Onyi was prompt with her answer, quickly saying, “I would say what’s different is my creative background because it enabled me to use it to tell a better story. I noticed that a lot of artists tend to follow a script, that’s why a lot of songs sound the same even though it’s different songs because they’ve followed ‘this is the way it needs to be done in order to like sell records’ or something?”
Onyi isn’t concerned about fitting into the confined norm in order to sell records, she continues, “Yes. So I’m not worried about that. I’m an artist who’s willing to experiment. Even my producer says to me “I’ve never seen anyone arrange a song like this.” and I say, “I want to” and “I don’t care if no one’s done it that way and it doesn’t do well, but this is the way I feel like it should be arranged.” A strong business woman and creative vision who knows exactly what she wants and doesn’t want to be shackled by the chains of creative restriction within the music industry, she continues about her being different from other artists, “And because I’m actually not looking to be signed. I don’t want to be signed. I want to maintain this creative freedom where I create something that I know is true to my soul and who I am because I do not want to conform to what the norm is in a sense. I want to be independently produced, just keep making music and just doing more of what I love.”
What The Next 5 Years Has in Store for Onyi
A lot can happen in five years, heck, a lot can happen in 12 months in the music industry but Onyi has the focus more on her work as to opposed selling millions of hits. “So in the next five years I do hope that at least I will have two albums out there. And one that allows me to share more of my journey.” Onyi is still yet to perform live as a solo artist but has ambitions to perform in the future, “But what I would like to be able to say is to perform my songs as well, and get to meet people who love my songs too, and just connect on a more intimate level. I would love to do an open show for I don’t know... maybe Tracy or someone? Maybe I’m going too big!” Dream big Onyi, dream big.
Follow Onyi on Instagram @mossonyi
Listen to ‘In Your Eyes’ below
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