Ziona beams with excitement from within our Zoom call. The Florida-born, Germany-raised singer has already been through trials and tribulations, and now, she’s ready to claim her seat at the table.
The 26-year-old, who simply goes by her first name, drops a debut EP, Stuck in Your Head, on March 19. And while tracks like “I’m That Bitch” radiate the Kardashian-esque confidence you’d expect from a cusp millennial, Ziona’s real-life demeanor says far more. She’s confident but approachable, bubbly yet possessing a serious work ethic. If it seems like she’s done this before, that’s because she kind of has.
“I took a step back from music for a long time,” Ziona says, referring to her years at the University of Tampa. At the time, comedian Chelsea Handler had picked up one of Ziona’s low-budget music videos and parodied it on her TV show, Chelsea Lately. “It destroyed me,” Ziona says, adding that her peers would find her dorm room and harass her regularly. “I felt so alone.”
After traveling to Las Vegas for her 21st birthday, Ziona immediately fell in love with the city. “I didn’t want to go home,” she says. “I was like, ‘I’m going to move here,’ and six months later, I moved.”
For a social butterfly like Ziona, Vegas was the perfect place to find her wings. “Everyone was like, ‘Why are you going to Vegas? This is the perfect place to destroy a 21-year-old,’” she says. “What people didn’t realize was, there’s so much else to offer, and you can have a normal life here.”
As Ziona approaches her sixth year in town, she has rekindled her love of pop music, releasing the vibey single “Do You Know” last year, followed by the girl-boss track “Get It Girl.”
“When the pandemic hit, I was so f*cking depressed,” she says. “I felt like I had no purpose, and I was just in a low, low place. I had to have an honest conversation with myself and get back into what’s going to give me life, and it was always music. Now I feel comfortable doing it again.”
Ziona recorded the six songs on Stuck in Your Head at Las Vegas’ Junxion Sound studios and enlisted Morgan Matthews (Alicia Keys, Miguel) of Addictive Music Group to produce three of the tracks.
“I want to be versatile,” Ziona says. “I have songs that have hip-hop vibes, R&B vibes and songs that have a little bit of an alternative sound. What I’m striving to do is to have something for everyone—except country,” she laughs. “I’ve never been so confident, especially coming from such a dark place.”
Ziona knows the importance of lifting people’s spirits—and it’s something she plans to continue doing, no matter what obstacles get in the way.
“Once you figure out what your purpose is and your passion and how much you’re willing to work and what you’re willing to give up, it changes you as a person,” she says. “With every song, I want to make the [listener] feel good about themselves.”
