Watch Neffy’s Tiny Desk Concert

Neffy is the 2021 winner of NPR Music’s recent Tiny Desk Contest. And as host Bob Boilen explains, she is also the first artist to perform at the actual ‘tiny desk’ since the pandemic.

“We had filmed almost 1,000 Tiny Desk concerts before we abandoned the office in mid-March of 2020. What was then exciting yet routine now felt somewhat like a hallucination.”

“For Neffy, it too was a dream: — a dream come true. Her joy during the recording was contagious. Neffy is Mecca Russell, a young singer who grew up around Arlington, Va., just across the river from NPR. Her Contest-winning song “Wait Up” is about living in New York, most recently during the COVID-19 outbreak, but yearning for home. In fact, Neffy did return to her childhood home, where she recorded her winning song with just her heartfelt voice and her guitar.”

Related; Meet Neffy, winner of the 2021 Tiny Desk Contest

Neffy speaks about the song “Wait Up” that won her the Tiny Desk Contest: 

“I wrote ‘Wait Up’ like many other songs I’ve written: sitting on the edge of my bed. But I didn’t know it would be the song that would change my life. I got to sing lyrics I wrote in the privacy of my room late at night to a vast and loving audience is beyond my wildest dreams. For that, I am incredibly grateful, and quite frankly, still in disbelief.”

Read the full story on NPR Music.