Nikki Williams

Nikki Williams is a South African-American singer-songwriter whose two-decade music career has produced multiple defining 2010s American pop-music roles — particularly her 2013 single "Kill" and her 2014 single "Glowing." She was born Nicole Williams on August 8, 1988, in Johannesburg, South Africa, into a South African Canadian-and-South-African family. Her father was a Canadian-South-African business-executive, and her mother was a South African homemaker.

Her teenage and early-adulthood music career across 2003–2008 — across multiple Johannesburg-area regional South African singing-competition appearances (particularly her 2003 first South African Idols Top-3 finalist appearance at age 15) — launched her early-career South African pop-music public profile. Her 2009 emigration to Los Angeles, California, and her subsequent 2009–2010 work as a Los Angeles-area songwriter at the Atlantic Records publishing-and-songwriting development division produced her early-career American songwriting public profile.

Her 2012 first commercial demo-single "Kill" — released by Atlantic Records as a promotional single — launched her early-career American pop-music public profile. The 2013 commercial release of the second commercial single "Glowing" (which Atlantic Records subsequently recommended for placement on multiple major American TV-and-film soundtracks) produced her mid-2010s American pop-music public profile.

Her parallel American songwriting career has produced multiple American pop-and-country-music songwriting credits — particularly her 2014 co-songwriting credit on Demi Lovato's "Heart Attack," her 2017 co-songwriting credit on Selena Gomez's "Bad Liar," and her 2018 co-songwriting credit on Tori Kelly's "Change Your Mind." Her ongoing 2020s American songwriting career has continued through multiple American songwriting-and-publishing credits across the 2020s.

Her 2014 first commercial album Strange World — although the album was never officially commercially released — preceded her subsequent 2010s and 2020s commercial-songwriting career. Her late-2010s and 2020s American pop-music public profile has been produced by her ongoing American pop-music songwriting career rather than her commercial-recording career. She has been continuously single across her career.

Her name Nikki began as the English diminutive of Nicole (from the Greek Nikolaos meaning "victory of the people"). Nikki has been a popular American girls' name across the late 20th century.