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Just over two hours before, they pulled in a large and loud mainstage crowd despite being early in the day,
“I wish I’d had a water bottle onstage” Nxdia says, a bold move considering the 29 degree heat and the complete lack of shade in the Milton Keynes Bowl; “the crowd was amazing, I can’t believe how many people were there I was shocked…They showed up, and they were singing. I loved it.”
Nxdia has been making music since they were twelve. What’s to blame? Their mum and a love for journaling - “I started running out of paper, I had to immortalise it”. They recollect on making their mum watch “theatrical, freestyle song performances” as a child with tickets made out of “glitter and stickers”. “She had too much patience with me, now I want it to be global”, Nxdia says with a grin. Their love for music is evident, not just by them darting around the festival in their ‘Boy Clothes’ to catch their favourite artists between press commitments, but also their appreciation for Yungblud’s latest album ‘Idols’. After a glimpse at the track list - it has only been out a day - Nxdia locks in their favourites; “I love ‘The Greatest Parade’ because it felt very My Chemical Romance to me, ‘Monday Murder’, and I f*cking adored ‘Fire’, I feel like I can see the fire when I was hearing the song”.
Performing on the very same stage as Yungblud, this festival appearance is fresh off the release of ‘I Promise No One's Watching’, Nxdia’s 10-track debut mixtape and largest piece of work to date. Immediately gaining attention from fans old and new, the mixtape made number six on Spotify UK’s Debut Album Charts. “I was so scared before, but as soon as it came out, I was like, yo, this feels like the right thing, it feels so natural”, Nxdia shares, “the reason its a mixtape and not an album is because it wasn’t even written with a specific purpose of being together, I was just writing songs about how I felt in the past year, and then I was like you know what this is the mixtape this is all together”. Clarifying that the artwork for the mixtape is a self-portrait, “not a demon”, it is clear that this is music written with authenticity and on real experience; “I need to remind myself that no one is watching and no ones watching you…for all the anxious people you gotta do what you wanna do.”
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Having built a community of fans with a discography exploring their experiences as a non-binary artist, the conversation turns to what brings them queer joy and gender euphoria, their answer an emphatic; “having my titties out on stage”. Nxdia candidly shared their top surgery journey on TikTok last year, and now speaks about its impact for them as a performer; “it made me so happy to actually just be there in a lace top that I bought before my surgery, it feels so euphoric to sing these songs that I wrote like ‘Boy Clothes’ and ‘Body On Me’”. The music video for ‘Body On Me’, which premiered on 13th June, is every trinket lover's dream as we see Nxdia inspecting crystals, globes and broaches. What trinket represents Nxdia? A “Rubik's Cube”, they always carry one around; “it’s all these different colours, all these different situations, but you put it together and the whole picture makes sense”.
A mention of the recent announcement of joining the Reading & Leeds line-up prompts a “Hell yeah”, just one of many festival appearances to follow Bludfest, including Lollapalooza, Dork’s Day Out, Latitude and TRNSMT. They sold out their first headline show earlier this year: 2025 is Nxdia’s hottest year to date; “I’ve never travelled this much in my life, I was in Prague yesterday and I flew back the same night, it’s crazy, I feel like an actual artist… I’m within the circuit I get to see people I get to sing with them, it’s fucking magic man.”
Maisy Neale
Images: Aśya @orchi_day
