Officially released on June 13th, 2025 with 10 songs and a runtime of 24 minutes, Nxdia’s I Promise No One’s Watching is not an album that should be missed. I’ve been a fan of Nadia since January 2024 when “She Likes A Boy” came out. I was lucky enough to be invited to their early listening session for IPNOW, where I got to meet Nadia, tell them how much I love their vibes and music, and hear the entire mixtape before it was released. It was truly a phenomenal experience that I will cherish forever — and now I get to share this beloved album with all of you!
This mixtape is full of self-discovery and queer liberation. It’s bold, with heavy bass, guitar and drumlines that sync your heartbeat to them. Fair warning: my pervasive love of Brit rock and lesbians is really gonna pop out in this review. IPNOW reminds me of a more punk version of American Hero by Towa Bird, the fuck-off attitude of YUNGBLUD (which makes sense since they were invited to BludFest), the vibes of Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power with the same religious undertones as Prelude to Ecstasy by The Last Dinner Party (just swapping religions from Catholicism to Islam). As much as I love the American pop lesbian renaissance summer, my heart will always belong to rock and roll — and no one does rock like the British.
This entire album feels like stumbling out of a club with smeared eyeliner at 2am, getting soaked from the rain, grabbing a takeaway, and running for the last bus before pressing your too-hot forehead on the cold window and turning the volume on your headphones up. It’s a love letter to being gay, not quite fitting in, feeling helpless, faking it till you make it, discovering new things about yourself, experimenting, feeling too old and too young at the same time, and saying, “fuck it, let’s go.”
Nadia mixes English and Arabic throughout IPNOW, and the Egyptian and Arabic influence on their music is most notable in their use of quarter tones. This doubles the tones of most Western music, and it’s especially obvious in the synth if you listen closely. Honestly, I think all music should have quarter tones — but I’m definitely biased.
Feel Anything is a WILD opener, but it also thoroughly sums up the vibes of the album. It perfectly encapsulates the feelings of depression to mania and choosing to live. Not only choosing to live but choosing to live authentically and take up space. Pure escapism.
“I feel my lungs give up
Before I’ve even started living yet”
“I’m not living for the moment
I’m just living for the minute”
Jennifer’s Body is up next and it’s CAMP. I love the nod to the cult classic queer movie Jennifer’s Body starring the iconic Megan Fox. I <3 lesbians. Do NOT follow the advice of this song. It’s about wanting someone hella toxic, but sometimes the sex is so good you make terrible choices. I was listening to this while making breakfast and my roommate told me if I was ever that stupid again, she would hunt me for sport.
“She is so evil
I know I’m just a thing to sacrifice
She’s so lethal
Corrosive but I’m gonna stay the night (ah)”
“She’s the kinda girl that eats your heart out
If you let your guard down
Oh, there’s no surviving her”
Boy Clothes is giving a cockier Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko. I’m gonna start sending this song to people who slide into my DMs with “so how did you know you were trans?” My transness has over a dozen years on this track, but regardless, we love a non-binary masc lesbian. Honestly, all that’s missing is a line about cropping shirts.
“I know everybody wants to see my silhouette”
“I threw my dresses on the street
Used to smell sweet
Now they smell like gasoline (haha)”
Puppet isn’t explicitly about making poor choices but it is explicitly kinky and I love her for it. It directly calls out all the chronic non–first move-maker gays. Excellent strutting music with classic lesbian panic and anxiety being covered up with overcompensation. I’m obsessed with the way they incorporate synth into this song — I want it injected directly into my veins.
“Do what you want girl
I’ll be your puppet
Got no strings but I know you’re into
Tying a knot only you can undo”
She Likes a Boy is starter lesbian rage. Nadia perfectly highlights the insecurities, panic and jealousy that come with a crush on a girl before you realize you’re queer. The song nails the feeling of being the right sentiment in the wrong font — an outsider looking in.
“I’m not a boy, I’m not a–
Accustomed to making a move”
“Why am I hurting?
ما تفوقي شوية
She’s not your girlfriend”
“Fuck that guy”
Nothing At All — honestly it feels the most authentic to just give y’all my ADHD notes I scribbled at 3am:
- ADHD core
- No body, no problems
- Does anything ever really matter?
- Immediately disassociating
- Very on the outside looking in
- WACK
Body On Me is also riddled with ADHD, but it’s more about the addictive personality traits. It’s horny, but in a lovesick, chaos way. The kind of song you blast running down the street at 2am after a breakup or while waiting in the STM queue after a first date that ended in a kiss.
“Kiss me til
My lips are bruised
I promise no one’s watching you”
“You’re not just a body
You’re somebody
What a body
You’re somebody to me”
More! and Boy Clothes are tied for second place in my heart — for VERY different reasons. More! is overtly horny and full of that adrenaline rush you get when falling fast and hard. I <3 lesbians x2. Listening to this on repeat might just convince me to redownload dating apps.
“Soon as I saw your face from that moment I knew
I want it more
First date, Brick Lane, I went walking with you
I wanted more
You said we’d take it slow, now it’s go go go, and I want more
When you made the first move, yeah, I already knew, I wanted more
Lovestruck like a kick in the head
I’d have a
Hard time kicking you out of bed
(Let’s do it) non stop, gimme a hundred and ten
I feel it down to my core
You’re what I’m looking for
(I want you) on the table, on the floor
I want you more and more and more and more
Because I’ve never felt like this before
I want you more and more and more and more”
Boo, Nevermind is for your hot mess crash out era. This is my favourite song on the album. I got to be one of the first people to listen to this song and I told Nadia that this was gonna be my song of the summer — and so far, I am keeping that promise. It’s giving down and dirty working class queer solidarity. This song smells like a British smoking balcony (which we are sorely lacking here in Canada).
“Mama don’t look right now
Stumbling through the crowd
Get to the front
I’m sticking my elbows out
I kinda miss my people
Ah
Ah ra7ou feen?
You got another invite?
I’d rather rip off my skin”
“Oh you bite your tongue
Any harder and
You’re gonna explode
You say you’re above it
But you love it
3 drinks down now fuck it”
“They’ll drag you down
Like crabs in a bucket
I say you say we say fuck it”
Tin Man. Trust a lesbian to end an album on the saddest song after riling you up. It’s all about heartbreak, avoidant attachment style and the uncertainty over whether you’ll ever recover. It’s also when you delay coming out because you think you aren’t missing anything — only to find out you’ve been missing everything, only to have it ripped away. What do you do with everything you learned about someone you used to love when they leave you behind? You write a song.
“Oh I’m
Learning
Learning to stop running
Easy to feel nothing
Guess the Tin Man was onto something”
“ACTING INVINCIBLE
I FIND IT KINDA FUNNY NOW
LOVE WAS JUST SOMETHING
FOR SOMEBODY ELSE TO FIGURE OUT
RIP MY CHEST OPEN
YOU REMIND ME I CAN FEEL AGAIN
CAN’T CLICK MY HEELS
NO I’M SITTING RUSTING IN THE RAIN”
Tracklist:
- Tin Man
- Feel Anything
- Jennifer’s Body
- Boy Clothes
- Puppet
- She Likes a Boy
- Nothing At All
- Body On Me
- More!
- Boo, Nevermind
Review – Ashtyn Turner
Photo – Ryan Jafarzadeh
