Nessa Barrett

Janesa Jaida “Nessa” Barrett (born August 6, 2002, in Galloway Township, New Jersey) is a Puerto Rican-American singer and songwriter signed to Warner Records. She converted one of TikTok’s biggest followings (peaking past 16 million) into a real catalog: the RIAA Gold, Travis Barker-produced “La Di Die”, two studio albums (Young Forever, 2022; Aftercare, 2024), three EPs, nearly 3 billion global streams and more than 27 million followers across social networks, two Billboard “21 Under 21” placements, and a run of tours that have quietly functioned as the dark-pop scene’s farm system. In 2026 she released the EP Jesus Loves a Primadonna and opens for The Neighbourhood, one of the bands that raised her generation.

Early life

Barrett was born in Galloway Township in South Jersey (some biographical sources place her more specifically in neighboring Absecon), and was raised largely by a single mother after her parents’ divorce, with a younger brother, as the only Puerto Rican kid in a predominantly white community, an experience she has said left her feeling alienated through adolescence. She grew up inside an intense strain of Latin Catholicism she found terrifying rather than comforting: “my family would just start speaking in tongues in the middle of the whole service and collapse on the floor... They would get ‘possessed’ by the Holy Spirit.” Her mental-health struggles began around six and were read by family as spiritual failing (“they just saw it as the devil, the demon. And I felt like I was very invalidated”); therapy started at six, followed by years of misdiagnoses before a borderline personality disorder diagnosis at 18.

School was compounded by ADHD and dyslexia, and a national-level soccer career, her original Division I plan, ended under eight or nine concussions that required vestibular and ocular therapy to relearn balance, tracking and reading. She says she’s been “writing songs since I could walk and talk.” At 17, over her parents’ objections, she moved to LA, describing it in one early interview as something close to running away from home.

TikTok & the Sway House era

Barrett created her TikTok account in early 2019, during her senior year of high school, as an outlet for fun, dance and lip-sync videos. A dancing video posted with friends in late 2019 went viral, and the account exploded into one of the platform’s fastest rises, reaching roughly 15.5 to 16.7 million followers by 2020-21, with particular resonance whenever she showed her real singing voice. She was signed by LA talent agency TalentX Entertainment, the management umbrella tied to the Sway House creator scene (Bryce Hall, Jaden Hossler, Griffin Johnson and others). She was never an official resident of the house itself, but she was closely embedded in it, and she later described its nightlife with clear eyes: “I saw a lot of people lose themselves to a lot of crazy stuff. It almost feels like a loophole. If you get sucked in, you have to be so careful.”

The era’s relationships played out in public: original Sway House member Josh Richards from November 2019 to a final split in March 2021 (some sources report an earlier breakup in mid-2020 with the two seen together intermittently afterward), then musician Jaden Hossler (Jxdn), a relationship that began in 2021 after their “La Di Die” collaboration and included a brief secret engagement and moving in together in January 2022 before ending that spring under heavy public scrutiny. A documented snapshot from the middle of that relationship: in February 2022 the two were in the crowd at Christian Gates’s Roxy headline show, the night Landon Barker made his live debut and Travis Barker sat in on drums behind his son. Her frustration with the “TikTok girl” frame was constant: “I’ve always wanted to be a musician, a singer, my entire life. TikTok just happened to fall in my lap.”

Becoming an artist

Warner CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck and A&R EVP Jeff Sosnow found her singing clips on TikTok and signed her once they heard the original “Pain”, a deliberately simple piano ballad (released July 31, 2020) “so I could explore any direction with my music afterward.” COO Tom Corson is also cited as an early backer, and her day-to-day management sits with Bree Shepherd under the broader oversight of Larry Rudolph (ReignDeer Entertainment/Maverick). Sosnow: “It was evident she was an artist whose voice would resonate far beyond social media platforms.” The follow-ups tested lanes fast: the breakup anthem “If U Love Me” (October 2020) and a dark reinterpretation of “Santa Baby” (December 2020).

The proof came with “La Di Die” (February 19, 2021, feat. Jxdn), produced by Travis Barker alongside Leo Mellace and Sam Roman, a song about the “dark and evil” downsides of fame: No. 11 on US Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, No. 2 on Billboard’s CIS Airplay chart, 150 million+ streams, RIAA and Music Canada Gold, and back-to-back TV slots with Barker on Kimmel (April 7, 2021) and Ellen (April 12, 2021). “There was a moment around ‘La Di Die’ when I recognized how incredible it was to have an artist who had never walked into any label. And she was just a teenager! During COVID!” (Sosnow). Rudolph was blunter: “She’s light years ahead of many artists who are just starting their careers.”

The albums

Pretty Poison (September 10, 2021, released on World Suicide Prevention Day, recorded in about two weeks with producer Evan Blair) opened the confessional lane with seven tracks and a No. 4 peak on the US Heatseekers chart; its concept traced her own skin: “I went through a phase where I got a lot of dark stuff tattooed on me... I was really going through it mentally.” Lead single “i hope ur miserable until ur dead” (August 2021) debuted at No. 88 to become her first Hot 100 entry and went Gold. Around the EP she kept releasing one-offs: “Counting Crimes” (June 2021, about “moving on from something toxic”), “I’m Dead” with Jxdn, and, in February 2022, “Dying on the Inside”, the song through which she first disclosed her eating disorder publicly.

Young Forever (October 14, 2022, Billboard 200 #80, US Rock Albums #13, UK #89) was produced track-for-track by Evan Blair and written across “the hardest year” of her life, a 14-16 month stretch that included a psychiatric hospitalization she disclosed to fans directly. Lead single “Die First” was originally written about her mother and was rededicated to her friend Cooper Noriega after his death mid-cycle; “Madhouse” (September 9, 2022) took on mental health, slut-shaming and bullying, and “Tired of California” opens the record. The 13-track standard edition grew to 18 on the extended digital edition, adding “Deathmatch,” “God’s Favorite,” “Noose,” an interpolation of Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and a cover of Arctic Monkeys’ “505,” a direct homage to one of her foundational bands.

The Hell Is a Teenage Girl EP (July 14, 2023) took its title from the opening line of Jennifer’s Body and its subjects from beauty standards, slut-shaming and Roe v. Wade, rolled out through “Bang Bang!” (February), “American Jesus” (April, a song about BPD “favorite person” idealization she had already been performing acoustically on tour) and “Lie” (June). The back half of 2023 brought the Whethan collaboration “Sick of Myself” (September 8), “Club Heaven” (October 6, her second tribute to Noriega) and “Girl in New York” (December 8).

Aftercare (November 15, 2024, with producers CJ Baran and Arthur Besna) turned toward the body: “Sex is something that has always been taboo and uncomfortable for me, but making this album healed that.” The rollout ran from “Passenger Princess” (July 26, 2024, produced by Aaron Shadrow and Kevin White) through “Dirty Little Secret” (September) to the Tommy Genesis feature “Disco” (October 18): Genesis and Barrett met around Barrett’s guest appearance at Lana Del Rey’s Hangout Festival headline set, where she joined her most-cited influence onstage to sing “American Jesus.” Its 15 tracks also include “Mustang Baby,” featuring and co-produced by Artemas (with Evan Blair returning as co-producer); the album reached No. 98 on the Billboard 200 and No. 16 on the Scottish Albums chart, and r/popheads read it as the arc of a toxic rebound, infatuation (“Pornstar,” “Heartbeat”) through doubt (“S.L.U.T.”) and heartbreak (“Babydoll”) to healing (“Pins and Needles,” “Stay Alive”). A deluxe edition (February 7, 2025) added six tracks including “Does God Cry?”, “American Beauty,” “Breakfast in Bed” and “Love Looks Pretty on You,” which reached No. 11 in the UK.

The 2026 EP Jesus Loves a Primadonna (March 20, 2026, eight tracks, produced and co-written with CJ Baran and Arthur Besna) extends the Catholic-iconography thread that runs her whole catalog, from “American Jesus” to “Dear God.” “High On Heaven” arrived January 16 (performed on Australia’s Triple J the day before), “Stay With Me” announced the EP on February 27, and the record (“Buffalo 66,” “West Coast Prayer”) reached No. 41 in Australia. It launched with sold-out intimate shows in LA, Chicago, New York and Toronto under a “Vamp Romantic” dress code, staged at Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s Masonic Lodge and Brooklyn’s St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church.

Grief & faith

In June 2022 Barrett’s best friend, fellow TikTok creator Cooper Noriega, died of an accidental drug overdose at 19. She dropped out of a scheduled Summerfest performance and was hospitalized again in the aftermath; “Die First” and “Club Heaven” are both dedicated to him, and his loss threads through Young Forever. She has said she keeps voice memos of Noriega praying for her before his death, and she has described the grief as the hinge that pushed her back toward the Christian faith she had rejected as a teenager: “Once you lose someone so close to you you’re pushed into a corner, where you can either take two routes in life. And I just chose that [religious] fate.” In her 2026 Zach Sang Show interview she cited that faith as central to how she copes with her mental health and with Noriega’s death.

Mental health, on the record

Barrett’s candor is structural, not promotional. She has spoken publicly about depression, BPD, suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt at 14 that led to psychiatric hospitalization, ADHD, dyslexia, and eating disorders including anorexia and bulimia. The record includes a dedicated Call Her Daddy episode on her BPD; a first-person NYLON essay disclosing her eating disorder dating back to middle school (“I’ve never spoken about this before... Right now, I think my eating disorder is probably the worst it’s ever been”), in which she also credited Hossler with helping her get sober from a secret substance habit tied to appetite suppression; a November 2024 TikTok announcing recovery after online body-commentary triggered a relapse (“I’m recovering. I’m getting better... I’m going to deal with it for the rest of my life,” adding “I’m a 22-year-old woman. I have my shit figured out”); and a treatment history that spans, in her telling, “a decade and a half of bouncing around different therapists,” dialectical behavior therapy targeting the eating disorder, and hypnotherapy she credits with real movement (“I was uncontrollably crying... because I was in front of my younger self”; “it honestly changed my life”).

She frames the openness as a mission: “I know a lot of people struggle with BPD and I know it’s insanely hard... I feel just sharing everything that I’ve been through would help a lot of people feel understood and not alone.” And, to Seventeen: “I’m trying to break the whole standard of how life is perfect, when it’s not,” describing phone-free mornings and “fact-checking” negative comments in therapy. She now protects herself from her own platform: “Social media is insanely toxic... Everything I post is still me, but my team handles posting so that I don’t have to look at anything.” Of her fans, the self-styled Nessa Nation: “they’ve saved my life.”

Visual identity & fashion

Dark hair, heavy liner, tattoos with ledger meanings (“pure” on her neck, “heavy soul” across the ribcage, butterflies, a spider, 777, 11:11), and horror-literate visuals: she had producer Evan Blair study A Nightmare on Elm Street and Death Becomes Her to understand the Pretty Poison vision; Blair described the sound as Bring Me the Horizon textures meeting The Neighbourhood’s atmosphere, adding “Nessa doesn’t aspire to be like anyone else.” By Aftercare the register turned neon and empowered: the “Passenger Princess” video cast her opposite Love Island USA’s Rob Rausch as Bonnie-and-Clyde lovers, a clip she described as “the world of AFTERCARE.” Her Puerto Rican heritage surfaces less as overt visual signaling than as the source of the Latin Catholic imagery, the guilt, saints and possession, that runs from “American Jesus” and “Dear God” to Jesus Loves a Primadonna.

Fashion became a formal lane: she is the face of Cheap Monday’s relaunch under H&M Group (debuted September 5, 2025), whose design lead Alice Shulman called her “salty and such a goddess at the same time; she’s just up for it, up for the real thing,” and she has a co-branded Nasty Gal line. Her own framing: “Fashion has been something super important to me as an artist because it’s an extension of my world.” She is openly bisexual (out via TikTok, November 2020) and lives, by her own cheerful description, in an all-white LA high-rise “ivory tower” with a Persian cat named Kitty, rarely leaving except for the studio, tour, or a small circle of close friends.

The scene-builder

Barrett’s tours read like a map of this wiki. Isabel LaRosa got her first major run as direct support on the sold-out 20-date Young Forever Tour (February-March 2023), including a stop at NYC’s Terminal 5; Barrett followed it with the Church Club for the Lonely Tour later that year. Ari Abdul opened the 50-city Aftercare World Tour (2025, with Sombr, later extended to Australia). Between her own headline runs she played the UK’s Bludfest at Milton Keynes (2024) and joined Lana Del Rey onstage at Hangout Festival.

In 2026 Barrett herself supports The Neighbourhood’s Wourld Tour, the band’s first major tour in over five years behind (((((ultraSOUND))))), across the Europe/UK leg (Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Cologne, Manchester, Glasgow, London, Paris, Madrid and Lisbon, August 24 to September 12) and select US arena dates (Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, Nashville, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit, Brooklyn, Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, November 10 to December 4): the scene meeting its source, since the band is cited as a major influence on her decision to pursue music. Her named influences complete the circle: Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish, Melanie Martinez, Lil Peep, and The Neighbourhood. Her stated hope for the whole cohort: “I hope that with time, more women feel empowered to be loud, be hot, and be successful all at the same time.”

Recognition

Barrett has been named to Billboard’s “21 Under 21” twice, plus Ones to Watch’s “25 Artists to Watch in 2022,” Uproxx’s Next Hitmakers list and People’s Emerging Artist list. She won International Best New Artist at the 2022 BreakTudo Awards and has been nominated for iHeartRadio’s Social Star Award, the MTV VMA Push Performance of the Year, and the MTV EMA Best Push award. Certifications: “La Di Die” is Gold with both the RIAA and Music Canada, and “i hope ur miserable until ur dead” is RIAA Gold.

Audience & reception

Her fan community, the Nessa Nation, is organized and vocal: fan accounts run coordinated campaigns on Instagram (“2026 the year of nessa barrett!”) and Reddit’s r/popheads tracks every release with extended threads, from Hell Is a Teenage Girl through Jesus Loves a Primadonna. The Aftercare release thread produced track-by-track lyrical theory, framing the album as the chronicle of a toxic rebound and, per some fan readings, the emotional stages of BPD in romantic relationships. Warner and tour press by March 2026 put her footprint at nearly 3 billion global streams and 27 million-plus followers; her Instagram (@nessabarrett, bio: “baby cowboy”) had already passed 5.1 million followers back in 2021, and her Spotify catalog is tracked continuously on Kworb with monthly listeners fluctuating in the multi-millions around release cycles.

Charts & certifications

Timeline

Frequently asked

What is Nessa Barrett’s real name?

Janesa Jaida Barrett. “Nessa” is drawn from her first name; she has performed as Nessa Barrett since her 2020 debut.

How old is Nessa Barrett?

Born August 6, 2002, she is 23 as of mid-2026.

Is Nessa Barrett signed to a record label?

Yes: Warner Records signed her in 2020 off her TikTok singing clips and the piano ballad “Pain,” and every project since, from Pretty Poison to Jesus Loves a Primadonna, has been released through Warner.

Was Nessa Barrett in the Sway House?

Not officially. She was signed to TalentX Entertainment, the agency tied to the Sway House, and was closely embedded in that scene through friendships and relationships, but she was not classified as a resident of the house itself.

Are Nessa Barrett and Artemas dating?

Never confirmed. Romantic speculation circulated in fan and tabloid coverage across 2024-2026 and was reportedly denied or contested by both parties. Their confirmed relationship is creative: Artemas features on and co-produced “Mustang Baby” from Aftercare.

What genre is Nessa Barrett’s music?

Dark alt-pop. Producer Evan Blair described it as Bring Me the Horizon textures meeting The Neighbourhood’s atmosphere, with lyrical threads of mental health, toxic love, grief and Catholic imagery.

Why is Nessa Barrett opening for The Neighbourhood?

The band is cited as a major influence on her decision to pursue music, and in 2026 she is direct support on their Wourld Tour across Europe/UK (August-September) and select US arena dates (November-December), their first major tour in over five years.

Further reading

The artists her story runs through, all covered on this wiki: The Neighbourhood, the band she cites as an influence and now opens for · Artemas, her “Mustang Baby” collaborator · Ari Abdul, who opened the Aftercare World Tour · Isabel LaRosa, who got her first major support run on the Young Forever Tour.

Discography