Hikikomori

Album: Conatus (2011)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Zola Jesus is the stage name of the Russian American singer/songwriter Nika Roza Danilova. She was raised in Merrill, Wisconsin on over 100 acres of forest and started singing early on, buying voice lesson tapes and opera sheet music at the age of 7. Danilova started performing opera when she was 10 years old, and in her teens she started to experiment in a more rock-orientated format. She said that by adopting a stage name after Jesus Christ and the French writer Émile Zola, she consciously wanted to alienate her peers. Danilova released her debut full-length album The Spoils in 2009, while studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  • This track from her third album, Conatus, is named after the Japanese phenomenon of young people who can no longer cope with the demands of the outside world, and so go into self-imposed exile by shutting themselves in their apartments for years at a time. Danilova told NME: "It was about how, if I never left my house or my room, that'd be just fine by me."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Little Big Town

Little Big TownSongwriter Interviews

"When seeds that you sow grow by the wicked moon/Be sure your sins will find you out/Your past will hunt you down and turn to tell on you."

Millie Jackson

Millie JacksonSongwriter Interviews

Outrageously gifted and just plain outrageous, Millie is an R&B and Rap innovator.

Don Dokken

Don DokkenSongwriter Interviews

Dokken frontman Don Dokken explains what broke up the band at the height of their success in the late '80s, and talks about the botched surgery that paralyzed his right arm.

Martyn Ware of Heaven 17

Martyn Ware of Heaven 17Songwriter Interviews

Martyn talks about producing Tina Turner, some Heaven 17 hits, and his work with the British Electric Foundation.

Sending Out An SOS - Distress Signals In Songs

Sending Out An SOS - Distress Signals In SongsSong Writing

Songs where something goes horribly wrong (literally or metaphorically), and help is needed right away.

John Lee Hooker

John Lee HookerSongwriter Interviews

Into the vaults for Bruce Pollock's 1984 conversation with the esteemed bluesman. Hooker talks about transforming a Tony Bennett classic and why you don't have to be sad and lonely to write the blues.