Singer and songwriter Zia Victoria is making plans as she is freshly off her tour in support of Seal. Zia is eighteen. She is young, but not new to performance, having debuted on NBC’s Today show when she was eleven years old. She recently returned to NBC for a follow-up performance on Today in support of her E.P. 05 Baby.
She has a wonderful mixture of hope and exuberance powering her quest to follow the path defined by other female singer songwriters. Zia has been writing her own songs all along, although she has also covered Seal’s Crazy in a creative fashion, changing the tempo and feel of the song. That cover was part of what led Seal to bring Zia onto his tour.
Live entertainment is a truly difficult space to conquer. It requires a mixture of talent, drive and personality. For young women other factors also come into play. There is an unspoken requirement of personality in a way which creates community, navigating the perilous path between sexuality and creativity.
I spoke with Zia recently. She possesses an ambitious desire to gather arena level star power balanced by a work ethic and personality which demonstrated her willingness to endure the twin difficult paths of songwriting and building an audience. Seal said: “Whenever you come across that gift, that talent, that voice – it has the power to heal a generation – and I believe that Zia Victoria is such a talent.”
Part of the path to success is preparation. Zia did the work in Santa Monica at LAAMP, the Los Angeles Academy of Music and Artist Production. That’s a commitment. Zia did the work, studying the mechanics of how to build a song, perform and be credible as an artist with learned skills in addition to talent.
The seductive nature of success in live entertainment is that the reward exceeds the price of the journey. That price is an endless wheel of hustling, traveling, writing, performing and always hoping the next song or appearance is the one which breaks through. In a Tik Tok world of fractured attention, where 40,000 songs a day get uploaded to the internet, the odds are ever longer to get attention, much less hold it. The most likely path combines several factors: personality, talent, and a breakthrough song. It is not an even playing field. Chances of success rise notably once you have a video or two in your history, and two appearances on the Today show can’t hurt.
Talking with Zia reveals both the scope of her ambition and the breadth of her personality. Zia Victoria has the tool kit and drive to break through. It’s still a steep climb to fame, but she’s building the network. Keep watching, there is little reason to doubt that very soon she can seal the deal and move up in the public conscious.
Read the full article here