Chennai indie artiste Aira’s ‘Hurricane’ explores heartbreak

Heartbreak is a journey into itself: a journey through turmoil that this teenaged musician captures adroitly

Two lines into Hurricane, Chennai-based Nidhi Srinivasan aka Aira paints a stark picture of complex heartbreak. As the song progresses, the music gets as compelling as the lyrics, building gently with an eased deliberation. The teenage singer-songwriter’s depth and clarity of thought refuses to waver, as she weaves more details into the picture of two estranged lovers who are at completely different stages of breaking and healing.

Released recently, Hurricane is Aira’s second single, after Golden Hour in 2021. Both tracks have been produced by Michael Timothy. A low, soft, pop number, Hurricane describes turmoil, numbness and quiet sentimentality with the same degree of matter-of-fact acceptance. To 18-year-old Aira, who has been writing songs since the age of 12, this track also represents a shift in her creative process: “Unlike my usual writing process, Hurricane is a song I have been putting together for months on end. Over the past year I have been constantly revisiting it, going back and forth before sitting down to record it. So when I finally sat down, I was very decisive about what I wanted to do with the track sonically and lyrically. I knew what I wanted it to embody.”

It helped, of course, that she was freed this time from all the doubts and anticipation that come with putting a song out for the very first time.

This ease and clarity shines through in the final track, aided perhaps by the fact that the project is entirely Aira’s own. From the act of songwriting to shooting creative cover art, she has done everything by herself. 

This has been intentional from the very beginning, from the days when “I used to write songs about the difficulties of being 12, and how hard school life is,” she recalls with a laugh, describing the numerous diaries she still has with her, filled with songs she penned years ago. 

“Even then, when I had no real intention of putting my songs out there, I knew that in case I ever wanted to, it would have to be with my own music. I did not know that there was a concept of other people writing music for you. So, I did,” she says, simply.

There is, however, one exception. Aira remembers the first song she ever wrote: “It was a song I had written with my best friend back in the day, in middle school. We wrote about how we were going to spend our summer vacations.”