Social Media Maven Pia Mia Dishes on Her New "Christmas" EP (EXCLUSIVE)
Published Dec. 13 2021, 1:04 p.m. ET
Singer and actress Pia Mia has been in the spotlight since she was young, starting with her covers going viral on YouTube. From there, her career grew as she signed with Interscope Records in 2013, collaborating with artists like Chris Brown and will.i.am before starting her own label in 2017.
Her top track, "Do It Again," did numbers when it was first released and has since found a new home on TikTok, where users have been setting their videos to clips of it.
But behind the songs, who is Pia Mia? She talked exclusively with Distractify about her long road to fame following the release of her holiday album "Christmas."
Who is Pia Mia? She's been dabbling in new genres since she started making music.
"I think all the concepts of my songs can touch back to experiences I've had in my life ... I really think that everyone goes through the same stuff," she says of making music. "I love making music because, no matter what you're talking about, somebody has been through it at one point, or will go through it, and so it's nice to feel like you're relating to everybody."
Having grown up making music and being a figure online, Pia says it's been her family who has held her down throughout the years — no matter who she's collaborating with or how popular her music becomes.
"My family has always held me down and kept me very grounded," she says.
Pia's resume now includes a few acting gigs under her belt, with roles in After, its sequel After We Collided, and an upcoming role in Issac. But despite her multi-hyphenate title, she says the key to it all is remaining as authentic as possible.
"I think I've learned that the most important thing is to just try to be as authentic as you can," she says. "When you're your most authentic self, that's when the biggest rewards will come and you'll feel the most full and satisfied."
Pia Mia's Christmas album was recorded during quarantine in 2020.
Despite releasing her holiday EP, Christmas, at the beginning of November, she says she actually recorded it in October of 2020, getting into the Christmas spirit early in the middle of quarantine.
She and her team temporarily moved to Miami, where things were slowly beginning to open up, to work on music since it was one of the only places where they could secure studio space amid all of the shutdowns.
"We actually dressed the entire studio with nutcrackers and Christmas trees, [lights], ornaments, and just everything," she says. Pia even had a friend design and tailor "Christmas-vibe clothes" for her to wear while recording to really get her into the spirit.
The EP includes four songs, "Intro," "Home," "Unwrap Me," and "NYE," each with a very different feel to them. This, Pia says, was intentional.
"I really wanted there to be something for everybody," she says about the EP. "I thought it would be fun to put something new out. So that's why I tapped into different vibes with the different songs, just because everybody is going through their own stuff. I want each person to have their own song that they could relate to."
Pia has long been a fan of Christmas music, and even recounted a time when she was 11 singing Mariah Carey's classic "All I Want for Christmas is You" at her dad's holiday party.
It took just over a year before the holiday EP made it to streaming services, but it's just one project Pia has been working on.
"I made three or four other songs that were not included on this project," she recalls. "I was kind of testing the waters to see where I wanted to go. And so for this project, I ended up just putting out the four songs, but maybe next year or sometime, I'll expand the project or maybe drop a different body of work with a different genre."