SENAIDA’s “last night was the last night of my past life”

Allison Argueta Claros

Graphic by Juliana Kulak

SENAIDA does not skip a beat. At nineteen years old, the Toronto-born talent, sound architect, and entrepreneur is already carving out an illustrious career that boasts of founding a music software plugin that creates music from your imagination, playing at prestigious concert halls including Carnegie Hall, and studying at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music at the Tisch School for the Arts. However, amongst her most ambitious pursuits is releasing experimental music that takes inspiration from emerging technology.

Citing influences like Lauv, Halsey, and Norah Jones, SENAIDA’s music tends to fall into experimental electronic music, veering into neo-jazz at certain moments. Her sophomore EP last night was the last night of my past life exemplifies this as we see her venturing into the realm of a sonic dreamscape. The EP’s cover art shows an overlay of a solemn SENAIDA looking up, set against an apartment building, the window blurring into the side of her face. This image is the portal to a reflective state. 

Shimmery synths, dark ambient drones, occasional piano (an ode to her classical training as a pianist), and spoken word―this album is a departure from her previous work. It marks the development of a singer-songwriting producer searching for new sounds, her move to New York City from Boston, and all that she has left behind.

The EP opens in the same way that it ends—with instrumentals taking front and center. “in a past life” captures a faraway voice, perhaps that of SENAIDA, conversing and laughing amongst friends. The last song “i’m always going to love you” begins with the whoosing of a plane ascending and SENAIDA professing her love and gratitude for someone, despite not being in each other’s lives. 

“maybe i (miss you)” the first song she wrote for the EP, engages with the same person, and here we see she invests in sounds to relay her emotions, while keeping her lyrics more brazen and direct. “Maybe I never should’ve left you/Let you drive away/And maybe I never should’ve kissed you/Like it was a game,” she sings in a manner that is very reminiscent of Halsey’s Badlands era. 

The emphasis on instrumentals is intentional, SENAIDA told us. “I own a lot of instruments and it gets really expensive at some point,” she explains. “I don’t need lyrics to communicate. I would wonder, ‘how do I do this special effect? How do I add reverb?”

Sidewalk art that inspired SENAIDA's EP title. Photograph by the author.

The ethereal dreamy sounds in the EP underscore the nostalgia SENAIDA feels, especially in “strangers”: “They say all is fair in love/But it feels just like a war/Took so long for me to realize/You’re not what I was looking for.” Her voice dips in and out of fevered emotion, amidst a cacophony of unpredictable sounds. The futuristic creative only departs from this nostalgic tone in songs that need to be grounded in immediacy and newness. In “maria”, the twinkly hum-filled guitar ballad, her voice is clear and cuts through the shyness and yearning that comes from imagining what it would be like to ask a stranger out. Amidst a work of contemplation and grieving, SENAIDA brings us into the more recent happenings of her life. It provides great contrast for the more wistful tracks.

SENAIDA’s favorite off the EP, “stay on” with SHiE, is arguably the stand-out track, “I actually don’t sing on it! I don’t sing much anymore,” she admits. In this track, SENAIDA demonstrates her impressive production skills with her use of an increased tempo, funky synth beats, and a stronger bass. This track is distinctive not just in sound, but in content. Here we have someone taking themselves outside of a trance seemingly brought on by “chemicals” to focus on their ambitions by willing themselves to “wake up”. This track, perhaps, hints at the transitional phase SENAIDA is undergoing professionally from a singer to more of a producer. 

“I want to produce for other people. I want that to be my main source of work and then have my own projects,” she said, while assuring that she will still sing. 

SENAIDA points to another turning point of her musical career. The “someone” throughout the EP knew she would write a song about them à la Taylor Swift style from the get-go. “I wrote this last EP after a long creative block, it was really refreshing… I had just broken up with someone that I met from Bumble. My bio went like ‘if we break up, I’m gonna write a song about you.” 

The head of her own digital marketing service and youtuber creative expressed a desire to diversify the subjects she writes about, “I don’t want to write about love anymore. Love is an oversaturated market in a way. I find myself preaching these ethical concerns about technology.”

SENAIDA’s  last night was the last night of my past life is aptly named when placed against the title on her first full-length NFT album, The Nothing in Between. While music is undeniably her first love, technology runs in the family, making an NFT album the perfect lovechild of her passions. 

It also seems to suggest the liminal stage between SENAIDA as an artist, but also the state of technology that we are collectively undergoing. As SENAIDA explained, “It refers to the space in between light and darkness.”