If you’ve heard the sweetly mournful pop tunes of trans, nonbinary, and Finnish-American artist Miki Ratsula (they/them), then you understand the hype. And if you haven’t, it’s your lucky day: You get to experience their music for the first time.
“As cheesy as it sounds, I’ve always been into music,” Ratsula says, explaining how their career as a pop artist began. “Music has always been a part of my life. Ever since I was little, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.” Surrounded by music as a child, they began writing their melodies as a middle schooler and made their online debut a few years later with pop song covers about the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. Ratsula affectionately refers to this period as their “Disney Channel days.”
“It was a very middle school, angsty feeling to be like, ‘No one knows I can sing; that’s embarrassing,’ and that’s what I told myself,” Ratsula says, clearly amused at their childhood antics.”But I would write these really dramatic ballades about boyfriends I never had and didn’t care to have.” When Ratsula was a senior in high school they met their current wife, and that queer connection opened a floodgate of musical inspiration—inspiration based on their life, and not the dramatized, heteronormative daydreams of their youth.
But Ratsula began refining their distinctive dreamy, indie, and lo-fi-inspired sound after learning how to produce music. They took a foundational production class while attending San Diego State for psychology and used what they learned as a springboard, refining their new production skills with instructional YouTube videos and hands-on guidance from other producers.
“I’m such a visual, hands-on person,” they say. “So I just listened and watched people (produce) and played around with stuff until I liked how it sounded. And if I wanted something else, I would look up how to do it.”
Their artistic ethos, while seemingly simple, is infused with the authenticity of someone who experienced the struggle of discovering their identity alone: Ratsula wants to be the queer artist they needed as a child. And with music that’s honest, intimate, and boldly and proudly queer, their dream is quickly becoming a reality. The song “second” on their debut album, i owe it to myself, is arguably one of their most revealing singles. It shows Ratsula’s dedication to sharing the queer experience and discusses their deep anxieties surrounding top surgery.
Their sophomore album, i’ll be fine if i want to from Nettwerk Records, drops on October 6, and continues the introspective, acoustic tones of their first record. And the collection’s name is meant to portray exactly what it says—Ratsula is choosing to be fine. “I think there’s this pressure, especially as queer people, to get to this end goal of ‘I’m healed and I’m done,'” they explain. “And I’m in this space where I feel just fine. It’s this neutral, but not neutral feeling. But it’s also my choice—I want to be here. And I have the power to choose to be in this space. I have the power to feel everything else that I want to feel. But just for this sake and time, I feel fine.”
I’ll be fine if i want to is confrontational and empowering. The lyrics reveal Ratsula’s internal battles and confrontations with people in their life, and they hope the album can be a release for listeners. “I hope that people can sing the lyrics and feel like, fuck this person, whoever it is,” Ratsula says.
It even touches on the unique challenges Ratsula faces in the music industry as a queer, nonbinary artist. They have trauma from being labeled as an overly sensitive queer person and often think people see them as a “weird girl, or this third gender, which is not true,” Ratsula says. “It feels like they look at me as a trend. Or this image, instead of actually listening to what it is that we are trying to break down.”
Ratsula is using their thoughtful lyrics and honest presence to tackle an immense societal structure—the gender binary. “People can be very open to the idea of nonbinary people existing, but they will only go as far as their comfort levels,” Ratsula says. “I want you to go past your comfort levels because I think that’s how we truly understand each other… I think we can truly create more inclusive, proper spaces if we are actually taking the time to unlearn the gender binary.”
Miki Ratsula and G Flip come to Boulder on October 17 at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., at 9 p.m. Tickets start at $20 and are available here.
Photo courtesy of Miki Ratsula
