Paris-based Italo-Nigerian artist Morenike draws us into the seductive glow and quiet reckoning of the night on her spellbinding second single “Mysterious and Wild” – a genre-bending, rhythm-driven meditation on curiosity, illusion, and the fragile beauty of stepping into the unknown.

Stream: “Mysterious and Wild” – Morenike

Night has a way of rearranging us.

It sharpens desire, blurs intention, and invites us to follow feelings we don’t yet have language for – curiosity, longing, fear, freedom – all braided together under dim light. Morenike’s “Mysterious and Wild” lives inside that threshold, where attraction feels like initiation and wonder carries a shadow. She doesn’t rush to explain or resolve the tension; she lets it breathe, lets it glow, lets it unsettle. Her voice moves freely through the song – swaying to and fro, unmoored, achingly expressive – as if guided by instinct rather than gravity, beckoning us deeper even as the ground shifts beneath our feet.

Spellbinding and nocturnal, “Mysterious and Wild” is a darkly enchanting meditation on curiosity and illusion – a song that seduces with rhythm and atmosphere while quietly revealing the vulnerability beneath the allure, introducing Morenike as an artist unafraid of ambiguity, movement, or the beauty of stepping into the unknown.

Hi, you’re looking so fine
Mysterious and wild
I don’t need to get high
If I see your smile
My world is on fire, suddenly

Hi, you’ll be my guide for the night
I follow you down
I see the reflection
of you by my side
The sweat on your skin shines
And I wonder if I
Could ever be
so mysterious and wild
You say “don’t be shy”
I guess I can try

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Mysterious and Wild,” the hypnotic and brooding second single from Paris-based Italo-Nigerian artist Morenike. Released January 22, 2026 via Kwaidan Records – the cult French independent label home to Nouvelle Vague – and  recorded at producer Marc Collins’ legendary Alphaville Studios, the track follows her striking debut “Nobody Knows My Name” and deepens her early artistic world: One where genre dissolves into feeling, and storytelling arrives as atmosphere as much as narrative. “Mysterious and Wild” also ushers in Morenike’s forthcoming debut EP, due March 13, 2026. It’s a pivotal early statement from an artist still in the process of being discovered, and deliberately leaving space for that becoming

Built around a grunge-leaning guitar riff and Indian-influenced percussion, “Mysterious and Wild” unfolds as a nocturnal narrative, tracing the emotional arc of a first descent into the night – its seductions, its performances, and the illusions that inevitably fracture by morning. “Storytelling is at the heart of this piece, which follows a narrative in which the protagonist ventures into the night for the first time, guided by a mysterious figure,” Morenike tells Atwood Magazine. “The music traces her emotional journey throughout this experience.”

It’s my first time
I see stars in the light
My body is shaking
and my heart is racing
and I feel so wild
Until a moment of silence
Comes through with violence
And feeling of darkness
grows in my soul
And I’m all alone, I’m all alone

For her, the guide at the center of the song isn’t meant to be taken literally, but felt – an embodiment of the night itself, with all its promise and peril intertwined. It’s less about a single person than the atmosphere they embody, the feeling of being drawn toward something you don’t fully understand. “The mysterious figure I talk about in the song is an imaginary one that, in a way, represents the world of the night, both its bright sides and its dangers,” she explains. “I’d say it’s a mix of many people I’ve known, but ultimately it’s more of a metaphor.” That duality – attraction and unease, invitation and warning – pulses through every layer of the song.

The song opens almost gently, deceptively so – a soft invitation delivered in a voice that feels warm, close, and unmistakably human.

“Hi, you’re looking so fine / Mysterious and wild” lands less like a pickup line than a moment of recognition, a spark caught mid-air. Morenike sings as if she’s leaning in, her vocal hot on the mic, intimate without being exposed, carrying a sense of wonder that borders on awe. There’s no rush here – the guitar hangs back, the percussion murmurs rather than strikes – allowing the curiosity in her voice to set the pace. As the verses unfold, that initial fascination deepens into motion: “You’ll be my guide for the night / I follow you down.” Each line pulls us further from certainty, the rhythm tightening almost imperceptibly, the drums growing bolder, more insistent, as if the night itself is closing in. What’s so tantalizing is how gradual the escalation feels – urgency doesn’t arrive all at once, but creeps in through repetition, through breath, through the way her voice sways and stretches against the beat. By the time she sings, “I wonder if I could ever be so mysterious and wild,” the question feels less aspirational than existential – not just about becoming someone else, but about surrendering to the moment, and the risk that comes with it.

Genre is never a boundary here, but a meeting point. “I think we all have an inner archive,” Morenike shares. “For me it wasn’t intentional, it came naturally from listening to a lot of different genres. My music ended up being a hybrid of what I love most. The riff is more grunge-inspired, and I added Indian percussion because I liked how they worked together. My work explores how genres that seem far apart can share common roots, which also reflects who I am.” That philosophy manifests not as collage, but cohesion – folk, soul, jazz, trip-hop, and grunge moving together with a sense of ritual and flow.

Rhythm, in particular, takes center stage. “For me, this track represents a focus on the rhythmic side of my research, which I’d like to develop even further in the future,” she says. “What sets it apart from the others is that percussion plays a truly key role: The song was conceived with a strong rhythmic identity from the start. It’s also something I’m excited to explore more, especially in a live setting. At the same time, it’s the most ironic and satirical track on the EP.” That irony surfaces in the song’s lyrical turn – from intoxication to disillusionment, from being guided to being left alone – a quiet reckoning that lingers long after the final beat fades.

As the song reaches its final stretch, the spell begins to thin – and that’s where “Mysterious and Wild” cuts deepest.

The drums remain insistent, but Morenike’s voice shifts, revealing the cost of surrendering to the night’s illusion. “Because I’m just a child / And I’m scared of my mind” feels like a sudden confession, tender and destabilizing, puncturing the earlier fantasy of control and coolness. The guide disappears; the crowd noise falls away. What’s left is vulnerability in its rawest form – the ache of realizing you’ve stepped somewhere you weren’t ready for. When she sings, “You have to fake it sometimes,” it feels less like commentary than self-reckoning, an acknowledgment of how often performance replaces protection. The irony she names comes fully into focus here: The night promises freedom, but what it reveals instead is fragility, solitude, and the quiet fear of being seen too clearly.

Because I’m just a child
And I’m scared of my mind
I’m losing control, I’m not having fun
By the end of the night
You say that I look fine
You have to fake it sometimes
You’re not gonna die
By being so cool
Mysterious and wild

This song is quietly brave. For a second release, “Mysterious and Wild” resists the instinct to mythologize experience or smooth over its fractures; instead, it lingers in the moment where fascination curdles into self-awareness. Morenike chooses to write not from the high of discovery, but from its aftermath, naming the unease, irony, and emotional cost that follow the thrill. In doing so, she sidesteps easy narratives of empowerment or arrival, offering something rarer: A portrait of learning in real time. It’s a risk to complicate desire this early, to let the illusion fall apart on the page, and that honesty is precisely what gives the song its staying power.

Such dramatic depth and emotional clarity is part of what makes “Mysterious and Wild” so arresting. Morenike doesn’t flatten contradiction or rush toward catharsis – she honors complexity, letting pleasure and unease coexist in the same breath. Her sound resists easy definition not because it’s elusive, but because it’s expansive, rooted in instinct rather than category. Folk intimacy, grunge grit, jazz fluidity, and trip-hop atmosphere move together like shared memory rather than separate influences. At the center of it all is her voice – molten gold, glowing and heavy, capable of warmth and danger in equal measure. It’s a voice that doesn’t just carry melody; it carries feeling, bending around rhythm and silence alike, making each line feel lived-in and immediate. “Mysterious and Wild” doesn’t ask to be decoded – it asks to be felt, fully and without defense.

This depth didn’t arrive out of nowhere – it was earned. When Morenike first stepped into view last November with her debut single “Nobody Knows My Name,” she introduced herself not through declaration, but disappearance – offering anonymity its own form of freedom. The song unfolded slowly and deliberately, its hypnotic vocal lines circling inward, drawing from Arabic harmonies, blues chants, and spiritual song forms that felt ancient and intimate at once. Rather than anchoring herself to a genre or a fixed identity, she let motion do the talking – the music oscillating between stillness and release, introspection and ritual, like a tide moving in and out. It was an arrival defined by restraint, by trust in atmosphere and feeling over explanation.

Conceptually, “Nobody Knows My Name” framed anonymity not as absence, but as possibility. As Morenike has shared, the song reflected a moment where being unknown felt liberating – a way to move, transform, and exist without being boxed in by expectation. That ethos extended beyond the lyrics and into the structure itself: A voice-led first half that feels suspended in time, followed by a subtle acceleration where hand-played percussion introduces a more physical, grounding presence, before easing back again – “like a wave moving back and forth between introspection and release,” she says. The effect was deeply human and quietly compelling – a debut that asked listeners not to label or decode her, but to simply listen and let the music carry them wherever it wished.

In that light, “Mysterious and Wild” doesn’t replace or abandon that first statement – it expands it. Where “Nobody Knows My Name” lingered in interior space, anonymity, and inward freedom, this new song turns outward, stepping into the night and testing what happens when curiosity meets consequence. Both songs share a refusal to be contained by genre or certainty, and both center Morenike’s instinct-led approach to creation – music without barriers, without limits, guided by feeling rather than formula. Together, they sketch the early outline of an artist in motion, one who understands identity not as something fixed, but as something you enter, exit, and renegotiate in real time.

The song’s invitation feels especially potent now, in January – one of the darkest months of the year, when night comes early and feels ever-present. There’s something quietly cathartic about a song that mirrors that seasonal state of being: The pull inward, the heightened sensitivity, the sense that time slows once the sun disappears. “Mysterious and Wild” understands that darkness isn’t only something to escape – it’s something to move through, to listen to, to learn from. In that way, the song becomes a companion rather than a spectacle, offering reflection instead of resolution. It glows softly in the dark, reminding us that even disorientation can be meaningful – and that sometimes, the most honest journeys are the ones that don’t pretend to know where they’re going.

With “Mysterious and Wild,” Morenike doesn’t chase resolution; she honors what remains unresolved.

The song leaves us not with answers, but with awareness: The knowledge that curiosity can both open and undo us, that growth often begins where certainty dissolves. As only her second release, it’s a striking statement of intent – music that values emotional truth over spectacle, and instinct over polish. Morenike emerges here not as an artist rushing toward definition, but as one already fluent in nuance, writing from inside experience rather than above it. Her world feels wide, dimly lit, and deeply human – and we’re only just stepping into it.

Stream “Mysterious and Wild” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and step bravely into the night with Morenike.

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:: stream/purchase Mysterious and Wild here ::

:: connect with Morenike here ::

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Stream: “Mysterious and Wild” – Morenike

MEET MORENIKE

Morenike: What I’d like people to know about my music today is that, in my opinion, there’s nothing you really need to know beforehand. It’s simply about listening and letting the music carry you wherever you want it to go. It’s a project without barriers, without limits. I don’t want to place boundaries on how people experience it by explaining too much.

Morenike: You know, in the internet era we have access to music from all over the world, so I don’t really think the cities I lived in before today influenced my sound that much, except for giving me the opportunity to study music. but if I had to choose one, Paris is probably the city that inspired me the most there are so many live shows, artists from all over the world, and it allowed me to discover new and unexpected live experiences.

Morenike: Yes, I agree that my sound could fit within the genres you mentioned, but describing it is sometimes difficult for me because I don’t write with the intention of staying within a specific genre. I try to let my creativity guide me as freely as possible. I also make a conscious effort not to get too attached to the artists I listen to, in order to create something that feels as original as possible.

Morenike: Thank you so much. For me, this was the perfect song to start with, also because the title is quite descriptive of the moment in which I’m releasing it. “Nobody Knows My Name.” It’s my first single, so I liked emphasizing this sense of anonymity, not in a negative way, but in a liberating one. It feels like a new beginning that allows you to be whoever you want to be. I also see it as a good map of the different elements that will be present throughout my project.

Morenike: For me, this song is actually very satirical. It reflects an experience I had when I first stepped into the mysterious world of the night, where you often meet fascinating characters but also many illusions that, inevitably, collapse over time.

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Stream: “Mysterious and Wild” – Morenike

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