Singer Songwriter Nina Lynn Photo Credit Nicole Forsythe
A morning coffee gave Nina Lynn a lot more than caffeine. She was at home brewing her first cup of the day when a melody and a beat arrived fully formed. She tapped the rhythm out on the kitchen counter and caught it on a voice memo before it could slip away. That little moment of inspiration has bloomed into “Daisy,” a shimmering, enchanting new single from the Guelph singer and multi-instrumentalist that marks the start of a dreamy new chapter in her music.
"I wrote the melody and drums for Daisy while waiting for my coffee one morning," Lynn says. "The rhythm breakdown in the middle of the song were drummed out on the counter in the original voice memo and later drummed on the underside of the piano bench in the recording, along with layered snaps. We used a standup acoustic piano, guitar, and drums in Derek Downham's studio in Toronto, Studio Cardinal, to add to the intimate sound at the beginning before the whole thing opens. It was a fun one to record. If you listen closely there something that almost sounds like an airplane overhead just after the drum breakdown, and lots of little sound moments that feel ethereal and fairy like. The entire thing feels like falling into Wonderland to me."
Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4DyVLkfKwXDQU2HUntHlhl
That sense of wonder is everywhere on the track. Lynn handles piano, vocals and percussion, and producer Derek Downham adds guitar, drums and bass. The song opens close and hushes, then unfurls into something wide and luminous, full of tiny sonic surprises that reward a second, third and fourth listen. Longtime collaborator Rick Hutt mixed and mastered it at his Cedartree Recording Studio. "The track was mixed and mastered by Rick Hutt, Cedartree Recording Studio, (Tom Cochrane, Northern Pikes), who I've been working closely with for the past 10 years and produced my last two albums," she says.
Beneath the fairy tale shimmer sits a song about healing. "The song itself is about the process of figuring out how to move on from something painful that has in some ways defined a large portion of your life," Lynn explains. "It's about figuring out how to just be, without constraint." The lyrics paint Daisy lying in the fields with her face to the sky, reaching out a hand and asking for guidance: "She said 'show me the way / I lost something I love / And now it's all around me.'" By the final verse, she has lifted her head and found her footing: "She's facing half a life away from something / And half a life to let it go."
Music has been part of Lynn's life for as long as she can remember. The Streetsville native enrolled at the Ontario Conservatory of Music at six to study classical piano, joined choirs two years later and was playing flute by 12. Guitar came at 14, and she was soon writing and performing her own songs at her arts high school. In her teens she studied with a jazz vocalist and went on to the Royal Conservatory of Music for piano. All of it feeds a genre bending sound that is intricate and emotive in equal measure, drawing from indie pop, folk, art pop and chamber pop.
Her debut album, 2018's gorgeous, jazz infused '2am Kinda Night,' was produced by Hutt, whose credits include Tom Cochrane and The Northern Pikes. She followed it in 2023 with the lush, layered 'Let Go.' Now she's working on a new batch of songs with a more ethereal hue, and "Daisy" is the first of them to arrive.
If this is where she's headed, the next stop looks magical.
https://ninalynnmusic.com/home
