With both our dogs joining the interview, I was able to sit down with New Jersey native, Mia Giovina and talk to her about her newest single “Time Machine”.
“Time Machine” was released on July 2, 2021, and according to Genius.com it “captures the terrifying feeling of watching your childhood fade and the fear that life will never be that simple again”, which couldn’t be a more accurate description of this emotional piece.
We’re here to talk about your newest single “Time Machine”, so tell me about that.
“Time Machine” I wrote back in April. I felt like it was one of those songs that wrote itself almost. I wrote it at 1 o’clock in the morning and I was crying the entire time I was writing it. Just feeling super nostalgic and in my feelings. So, I finished the song in fifteen or twenty minutes, recorded a little voice memo of it, and sent it over to my producers, Nate and Noah, and told them I needed their sad boy magic on this. They were like “we love this and we’ll get right to work on this”.
They had the first demo sent to me not even a week later and it was exactly what I wanted, and I didn’t even really know I wanted the song to sound like that. When I sent the song to them I told them that I wanted this to be super stripped back and super acoustic and then what they sent me was not at all like that, but it completely blew my mind because I didn’t even know I wanted the song to sound like that when I really did. “Time Machine” was just one of those songs that everything just fell into place and I’m very proud of it.
What was your inspiration behind writing it? I know you specifically mentioned the age of thirteen and the age of thirteen isn’t usually one that most people would want to go back to, so why did you choose that year to mention in your song?
The inspiration behind the song, or actually what caused me to write the song was actually a TikTok that I saw. The TikTok was about a girl crying and realizing that she had texted her best friend asking if she was coming home for the summer and that’s when she realized that home was just a place that her friends visited now, it wasn’t necessarily their home anymore. That’s kind of what sparked me writing the song.
When I think of the age of thirteen I think of my friends, eighth grade, and where you definitely are not an adult but you have a little more of those adult responsibilities. You could go to the movies by yourself or go out to dinner with just your friends. I think because of the inspiration behind the song, coming from a place of longing for those simpler times with my friends, I think that’s why the age of thirteen kind of stuck out to me. It was the age that was just filled with a lot of friends.
Thirteen-year olds-today are not the same as when we were thirteen and I feel as though social media has a lot to play into that. Do you feel like now that age means something completely different to you than it does to a thirteen year old now?
I think that it is such a different thing to be a thirteen-year-old now, or just to be a kid today. When I was thirteen, social media was obviously a thing but it was just a fun thing. I don’t think anyone took social media super seriously. Even platforms like Vine, nobody was really trying to go viral. It was just people making funny videos with their friends and posting them, and then accidentally going viral. I feel like now, especially for younger kids, social media is just the number one thing. It’s on a pedestal. Social media has played a huge part in kids growing up faster than they should. Even though I grew up with a lot of social media, I still had a childhood without it. It’s a lot different now.
On the flip side, I’ve heard that you got your start on TikTok. I saw you did a video on the opposite perspective of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” and that kind of blew up. While social media can be this burden, it seems like it really helped your career.
I say it all the time, I wouldn’t be sitting here doing this interview if it weren’t for TikTok. I started posting TikToks a little over a year ago and there are some negative factors to social media but as I’ve gotten older I can recognize those and be more aware of what people are posting and know it isn’t their real life. It’s more of a highlight reel. It definitely has those negative factors, as everything does, but I definitely owe a lot of credit to TikTok. It’s given me so many opportunities and I’ve met so many amazing musicians and friends through TikTok. So I have to credit TikTok a lot for the majority of my success.
@badgirlmiimii driver’s license from the other pov @livbedumb ##fyp ##driverslicense ##pov ##rewrite ##LiftandSnatchBrow ##NFLPlayoffs
♬ original sound – Mia Giovina
I noticed on your own social media platforms – TikTok, Instagram, etc. – you have a lot of bits of Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, and Olivia Rodrigo, are they inspirations for how you write? Is there anyone else you would credit as an inspiration?
Yeah, Harry, Olivia, Taylor, they are all definitely people I would credit as people I take inspiration from. I think Taylor Swift is probably my biggest inspiration musically; I just really look up to her as a songwriter. Her lyrics are so smart and so intentional.
I also really look up to Phoebe Bridgers. Once I started listening to Phoebe’s music, that really changed my perspective on songwriting. Her music is super haunting because it’s conversational and casual, but it’s about heartbreak and other devastating things. My top two inspirations would have to be Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers.
What would you say are your favorite songs from each of them?
Oh my god, from Phoebe it’s definitely “I Know the End”, maybe! I don’t know, that’s a hard one. From Taylor, I have so many. I love “Peace”, “All Too Well”, “Happiness”, “Clean”. Honestly, for Taylor, I could go on, and on, and on with my favorite songs of hers. There are too many for me to pick.
What are your short-term goals or long-term goals for your career?
My goal right now, and always, is just to be able to make music that I’m proud of and that I love. I think that when I was younger I had this mindset of being super focused on the success that would come with being in music. As I’ve gotten older, it’s become strictly about the music for me. At the end of the day, what will make me feel the most fulfilled is making music that I love. That’s always a goal of mine.
Some long-term, big dreams of mine, are to work with artists like Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, and Phoebe. I think Taylor Swift is my biggest dream collaboration, but not even a collaboration. I would be happy sitting in the corner of a studio just watching her work. That would be a dream come true to work with any of them in any way.
Taylor Swift tends to credit her hometown as a place where she landed a lot of opportunities. How do you feel like your hometown in New Jersey has given you certain opportunities or has made you out to be who you are today?
How I started out with performing was in musical theatre when I was nine years old. I was in a production of “The King and I” at the high school that I ended up going to. Then I continued to do music theatre throughout middle school and high school and that gave me my love for performing. I definitely have to credit the schools I’ve gone to for having such great theatre departments. I don’t know that I would have started performing so early on without them. There’s a coffee shop that’s five minutes away from my house. It’s the first place I really performed as an artist.
For a lot of my life, I thought musical theater was the direction I wanted to go with my career. I always thought ‘oh yeah, I want to be on Broadway’. When I was about fifteen, I decided that Broadway wasn’t for me and I wanted to try to be my own artist. I went out and performed at an open mic night at a coffee shop a couple minutes away from my house and I continued to do that all throughout high school – at bars, restaurants, everywhere. That’s what I would do on my weekends. Instead of going out with friends or partying, I was at gigs, at bars and restaurants doing my gigs. I definitely have to give credit to my hometown for a lot of my performance experience.
What do you do to prepare for your gigs and for being in front of an audience of people?
Before the pandemic, gigging was my entire life. I decided to do music full-time, so I wasn’t going to school. Gigging was something I was doing every single week. I used to put a ton of pressure on the gig; I would practice for hours and hours, I would only let myself eat certain foods, I couldn’t have dairy, and I would have to drink hot tea. There were all of these weird things. Once I got to the gig, I wondered if people would like this song, if I could hit that note, if people were actually listening to me.
As I became more confident in myself as a person and as an artist, I think that I’ve gotten to a point where I can take the pressure off of these gigs and have them just become more fun for me. I have realized that it’s better for me to take the pressure off and the more that I just go with the flow of it, the happier I am and the more I enjoy the gigs.
What can we expect to see from you in the future? Do you have any projects you can tell us about?
I am definitely going to start working on my next single. I don’t want to give away which song it is yet but I think a lot of the people who keep up with my TikTok will know which one it is. It is a very special song, a very vulnerable song. I’m nervous to put it out but it’s a song that needs to be put out. I’m very excited to be working on that and getting it out to the people who have been asking for it for so long.
Mia Giovina
Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | Listen to “Time Machine“
Cover image by Tori Sokalski
