Ninajirachi’s Digital Revelations
2025 was a gluttonous year for pop music. From alternative pop to classic radio hits, there seemed to be a generational album releasing every few months. FKA Twigs’ trip hop, electro-clash Eusexua thrashed listeners to new sensations whilst artists like Addison Rae and Oklou were debuting to the pop scene with experimental production and earworm lyricism. In my Odyssean pursuit for more, I found a song that nobody knows, “Fuck My Computer”.
Image Credit: EDM.com
“Fuck My Computer” by Ninajirachi landed in my lap like EDM heaven’s most beautiful gift, evoking Cronenbergian images abound, the title was more than enough to entrap me into it’s bass boomed haven. Bleeding into its prior track, “iPod Touch”, “Fuck My Computer”’s giddy energy regarding Ninajirachi’s apparent arousal to her computer was both provocative and invigorating. “I wanna fuck my computer/’Cause no one in the world knows me better,” Nina cooly says,“It says my name, it says, ‘Nina’/And no one in the world does it better.” These 4 lines make up the world that is Ninajirachi’s I Love My Computer.
Ninajirachi, née Nina Wilson, wanting to create some distance between her former girlEDM branding, crafted an album equally nostalgic as it is forward looking, both sonically and narratively. An ode to her computer, technology, and music, I Love My Computer chronicles an Australian native’s passion for the spaces EDM and her eponymous computer have taken her. The album starts with this thesis in “London Song.”Over an addictively exciting baseline, Wilson eulogizes a computer’s possibilities. She’s never gone to London and that's the truth yet “Anythin' is possible with fingers, eyes, a mouse and a screen.” The feasibility of escape is graspable, it’s a mouse click away, and this is something Wilson understands. The necessity of a virtual escape is as vital to her as it feels to the listener.
Image Credit: Heisei Democracy
This is a theme she explores throughout the album. In “iPod Touch,” Wilson joyfully touches on the idea of music as memory. How one song can stain a time permanently, how technology lays its stamp on you from a young age. “I've got a song that nobody knows/I put it on when nobody's home,” she sings like if a song is a hidden Kik boyfriend.“It sounds like I've got a song that nobody knows/And I heard it in a post when I was twelve years old/I didn't know it would score the 64-bus home/Turn a Monday to a memory and change my world.” This track transitions into the one that started it all, “Fuck My Computer” where Wilson’s relationship with technology becomes metamorphisized into eroticism. Spending all day with your computer, it does become a partner of sorts, it does hold all your information, your likes and dislikes, and changes for you, it’s the ultimate partner in a sense, and this is a perverse idea that Ninajirachi both knows, admires, and finds humor in through “Fuck My Computer.”
What’s most striking about I Love My Computer is its relatability. Born in ‘99, Ninajirachi documents an entire generation's experience growing up as the children of technology through her music. There’s a coming of age aspect to the track list, first loves both virtual and real, first arousals, first companionships, first hobbies, what makes up a person in the new millenium is based on what they like and how they express those likes. On “Delete,” Wilson laments an embarrassing Instagram post - “I only posted it so you would see it/I was so deep in my late night feelings/Didn't mean it, it was stupid/I chose a song you like in case you saw it.” The same song also touches on technology’s rush of online risque sexual behavior, posting thirst traps at 15 on Snapchat - “The shortest skirt in my drawer/Just enough to show it off and leave 'em all wantin' more,yeah/I'm exposed to my core/Modern, mega, digital, meta, matin' ritual, yeah.” These are endearing lows, ones I know I’ve visited, ones I know all my friends have visited, are we programmed to embarrass ourselves, is that just part of being human, Wilson asks.
Image Credit: Everythingisnoise.net
The album is a celebration of the concord between man and screen, yet it’s not always a harmonious coupling. On “Infohazard,” Wilson trenches on scrolling upon dangerous, violent content at a young age. “In my dream, I saw him/The man without a head/On my screen, I saw him/When I was four and ten/I didn't mean to see him/It all happened so fast,” Wilson sings. ISIS beheadings at 8 am, running The Gauntlet with friends after school seeing which one of us could stomach the internet’s vilest videos, these are foundational stumblings. I took it too far, the internet betrayed me, yet it showed me exactly what I wanted to see. Who gets the blame? On “Battery Death,” Ninajirachi places it upon herself.
The album’s final 3 tracks are a reflection of music’s impact on Wilson. “Sing Good,” Ninajirachi’s most personal song to date, covers her ruminations on her lack of “technical” singing ability, but how through the use of electronic music, she still expresses her innate sense of creative creation. “It’s You” takes a step away from the computer and sees Wilson have doubts over her fame, it’s an eruption of love, complicated, sharp, joyous - the symbiotic relationship between artist and listener. “All At Once” has Wilson back at her computer, she has acknowledged the good, explored the bad, and confronted the ugliness that technology has brought her, but it’s been the one constant in her life - “Fell into the screen like a star/ As a girl found a world there and gave it my heart/Now, we're soul-bound”.
Before the start of my senior year, I traded in my Mac for a PC - it was a monumental choice at the time. A choice that had an unusual amount of emotional weight attached to it. I mean, my Mac was with me for more than half of my life at that point. My Mac was the first sign of adulthood in my eyes. The first symbol of independence, scrolling at my leisure, my own private 14-inch wide island, it saw versions of me no one else has seen and will never see, only existing in dissolving digital spaces, backroom archives, and deceased photobooths. I keep all my old iPhones, use my screens ‘til the cracks become hazardous, my laptop feels like my closest confidant and a hunk of metal, all at once. And yet, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Strike Out,
Ariel Rivera
Miami
Ariel Rivera is a recent Florida International University graduate specializing in media communications and English. With a sharp, curious eye, Rivera writes about overlooked and underseen subjects, bringing them into focus and turning them into pillars of discussion. A self-described film nerd, Rivera spends his free time watching and reviewing movies, reading, and lounging with his dog, Neo.
