It’s June 5th, 2019 just another average summer day- or so you think- you decide you want to go for a drive. You’re sitting in the passenger seat your mom’s driving and your best friend’s sitting in the backseat, you’re listening to the radio and the next song starts to play. You hear a very familiar voice singing the lyrics, “you make me wish…” The beats of the song are hitting your eardrums and sending an impulse to your brain to make that connection. You go into a sudden shock. It finally strikes you, that’s your song playing on the radio.

Only a few people will be able to utter the words,” I was on the radio,” well East Leyden Senior, Pawla Odjakova is one of those few. She reacts to that pivotal moment in her musical debut, “it didn’t feel real to me” at the time Odjakova thought that at any moment someone was going to pinch her and wake her up from this dream, but nobody ever did. She turned her dream into a reality. Being on the radio meant “how far my music came” to her, she never thought an “album that started from scratch” would get her this far.

Odjakova always had a passion for music, a passion that grew from hearing her musical inspirations such as Lana Del Ray, Billie Ellish, and Lil Peep. The words these artists sang connected with Odjakova and inspired her to write her music.

Odjakova released her first EP in April of 2019, composed of 5 songs: Heartless, Ice Cold, Bullets, Anti You, and Faking it All. She worked on this EP for about 6 months, months consisted of restless nights in the studio, as well as in her room trying to figure out the right words that’ll be crafted together to produce a meaningful EP.

Her EP stemmed from life experiences, a life experience that specifically inspired her EP was a life experience many of us are too familiar with; heartbreak. We all have our coping mechanisms, well Odjakova wrote and sang the painful heartbreak away. But it wasn’t just heartbreak that led to a successful EP it was life as a High School student. The difficulty of AP and Honors classes, SAT, and work took a toll on Odjakova, but she just used it to her advantage and turned her stress and pain into art.

Like every artist, Odjakova wanted to put her best art forward. She didn’t want to disappoint herself or her listeners. “ I didn’t know how people would react… so my mind was full of negative thoughts,” She was terrified to release her music to the public not knowing if her “ singing wasn’t good enough” or “ lyrics not being right” but she still took the chance and pressed “release.”

She reflects the release of her EP as, “warming”, it was a “vulnerable” and “personal piece” to her that she was “really scared” to release, but “people told me they loved my music” made all her dedication worth it. Ultimately, Odjakova writes to connect with others, just as her favorite artists did through their music.

Odjakova was driven by this passion of music that led her to the release of her EP, although she isn’t in the works of releasing another one anytime soon she is “constantly writing new songs all the time”, she intends to continue music while she attends an art college downtown next fall.

If you want to stream “heartless” search for “pawla” or “pawla heartless” on musical platforms such as Youtube, Spotify, Itunes, and Soundcloud. And if you want to stay up to date on Odjakova’s journey to success follow her on Twitter @ppawlaaa and Instagram @ppawlaa