Nightbirde (born Jane Marczewski) chatted with Digital Journal’s Markos Papadatos about her musical journey, her inspirational song “It’s Okay,” and earning the Golden buzzer from Simon Cowell on the American reality competition “America’s Got Talent.”
In her powerful song “It’s OK,” she sings about her journey over the past year where she has been battling cancer, but thanks to her indomitable spirit, she reassures herself that things will be okay. The song has been a commercial success reaching No. 1 on the US iTunes Song Sales charts, and rightfully so.
On earning the Golden buzzer from critical judge Simon Cowell, she said, “It was completely shocking, and it felt incredible. In the moment, I was totally speechless. I did not expect it at all, and I am still trying to wrap my mind around it, to be honest.”
Regarding her music and songwriting inspirations, Nightbirde said, “The song ‘It’s OK’ was written about the story of my life in 2020. In the beginning of 2020, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I was given three to six months to live. Then, I went through a divorce not long after that. In that time, I never felt so lost, disconnected, and confused. This was the song that I myself needed to hear so I wrote it for myself.”
Following her superb “America’s Got Talent” audition, Nightbirde shared that she was thrilled to hear from one of her favorite celebrities, Chrissy Metz from “This is Us.”
When asked if there were any moments in her career or her life that helped define her, she said, “In my career, there hasn’t been one defining moment. I struggled a lot to move forward because I have been dealing with cancer so much. This golden buzzer moment was a defining moment.”
Her powerful quote on the show struck a chord with millions of viewers that were tuning at home. “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy,” she told Simon Cowell.
She listed Jack Antonoff of Bleachers as her dream collaboration partner in music. “I’ve always wanted to work with Jack Antonoff. That would probably be my No. 1 choice, to do something with Bleachers,” she said.
Nightbirde also opened up about the silver lining that she sees during the pandemic. “Any struggle is really just an opportunity to learn and to grow. For this past year, so many of us were kind of locked away with ourselves. Many times we can rush through life because we are on the run from something, and we use our work and our busy lives to distract us from the deeper issues that we are running from,” she said.
“So many people that I know came to terms with themselves and were able to see themselves clearly and we all grew so much,” she said about the positive outcome during the silver lining in the quarantine.
On the title of the current chapter of her life, she responded, “Triumph.” “The word I keep thinking of when I reflect on this past year of my life is the word ‘triumph’,” she explained.
She also discussed how she came up with the name Nightbirde. “It’s a special story,” she admitted. “It’s a name that came from a dream that I had three nights in a row. I dreamt that there were birds singing outside of my window in the middle of the night. The first few times it happened it really was just a dream, and the third time when I woke up, I went to my window and there was a tree full of birds singing at 3 a.m. It just struck me to be really poetic and this was something I wanted to embody.”
Nightbirde defined the word success as “doing what you can with what you have.” “Success is doing the right thing,” she said. “A lot of times people think that money and fame equate to success, and they really never do.”
For her fans and supporters, Nightbirde said, “Thank you so much for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself. There are so many people that have rallied behind me and they believed that a moment like this would someday come. I am so grateful. This is such a triumph moment for all of us.”
She offered the following inspirational message for people: “The bad things that have happened to you will always be a part of your story but they don’t have to define who you are, and I hope everyone can see that in my story.”
To learn more about Nightbirde and her music, check out her Facebook page, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
