Tamar Kaprelian has spent years writing songs that filled arenas without her name on the ticket, shaping defining moments for other artists and earning multi-platinum credits, including a global hit with Rosa Linn’s “SNAP,” which has surpassed 4 billion streams. From there, she built her own path with Nvak Collective, a company that has helped educate more than 5,000 women. Right now, though, she is building for herself.
Her new single “The Only” traces the contours of first-time motherhood. She wrote it with Ali Tamposi (Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, and many more), a fellow songwriter and new mother whose child arrived two days apart from Tamar’s. That closeness threads through the track. But the song also carries old bones. The chorus first appeared on a 2011 Interscope release. The label still holds those masters. Tamar decided to tear it down and rebuild it, claiming what was always partly hers.
We asked her about the difference between writing for others and writing for the woman in the mirror, what motherhood strips away and what it gives, and why she no longer waits for permission.
Having helped educate over 5,000 women through Nvak, has that work changed what you want your own songs to do?
In some ways, yes—but not in the way people might expect.
That work hasn’t made me feel like my music needs to “teach” or carry a message. If anything, it’s clarified that honesty is enough. The women we’ve worked with don’t need more instruction—they need more examples of people telling the truth about their lives, without packaging it or softening it.
Being in close proximity to so many different stories has deepened my sense of responsibility—not to educate through music, but to be precise in what I’m saying. To not generalize. To not perform an idea of what a woman, or a mother, or an artist is supposed to sound like.
If anything, it’s made the work quieter. More specific. And, hopefully, more useful in a different way.
When you write a hit like “SNAP” for another artist, do you ever secretly wish you’d kept it for yourself?
No—because that song was never mine to keep.
“SNAP” came from Rosa’s lived experience. It was her story, her perspective, her emotional truth. My role in that process was to help shape and clarify it, not to claim it.
What I’ve come to value most is that collaborative space—helping an artist articulate something that feels fully their own. There’s a kind of precision and care required in that, and when it lands, it really lands and feels complete.
You reclaimed a 2011 chorus for your new single “The Only” because Interscope still owns the masters. What part of your younger self did you have to let go of to make that work?
There was a version of myself I had to release in order to revisit that work.
She was confident, instinctively so, but she was also moving through an industry that didn’t protect her. A lot of what she experienced—particularly early on—was disorienting and, at times, deeply, deeply violating. And I don’t think I fully processed that then.
Coming back to that material wasn’t about returning to who I was—it was about creating distance from it. Letting that version of me evolve, rather than stay fixed in the conditions she was shaped by.
In writing “The Only,” I found myself, in a way, mothering that younger version of me—offering her the care, the clarity, and the protection she didn’t have at the time. It became less about reclaiming the past and more about recontextualizing it through a lens of understanding.
The song sits somewhere between those two selves—not as nostalgia, but as integration.
Did you feel like motherhood would challenge you as a creative, where your identity would be altered unexpectedly by it?
I didn’t worry about it in an abstract way—I felt it very concretely before it even happened.
There was a real fear around what would shift—my time, my body, my marriage, my sense of self. And creatively, I think the question wasn’t would it change me, but how much of me would remain intact on the other side of it.
What I’ve come to understand is that it didn’t diminish anything—it clarified it. It stripped away a lot of the excess, the noise, and the need to perform or keep up with a version of the industry that never felt fully aligned to begin with.
Motherhood didn’t take me away from my creativity—it narrowed it. Made it more precise, more honest. And in some ways, it gave me access to a deeper emotional range than I had before.
So yes, it altered my identity—but not in a way that felt like a loss. More like a distillation.
On that same note, did having a child make you more protective of your old work, or more willing to tear it apart?
If anything, it made me less precious about it.
There’s something about having a child that recalibrates your relationship to permanence. The work matters deeply—but it’s no longer the only place where your identity lives. That creates a kind of distance that I think is actually healthy.
So I’ve found myself more willing to revisit, to reshape, and to take something apart if it serves the song as it exists now. Not out of disregard for what I made before, but because I understand it differently.
Motherhood has made me more protective in one sense—of my time, my energy, my voice—but less protective of the work as a fixed object. It’s allowed me to treat it as something living, something that can evolve alongside me.
What does re‑recording your own old masters feel like emotionally?
It feels less like going backwards and more like closing a loop.
You’re working with something familiar, but you’re not the same person who made it. There’s a separation there that’s hard to ignore. The emotions are still embedded in the song, but your relationship to them has shifted.
In some ways, it’s quieter than I expected. Less about reclaiming and more about understanding—being able to hold that earlier version of the work without needing to protect it or resist it.
It’s not about rewriting the past. It’s about letting it sit differently.
“SNAP” could have cemented you as a songwriter working comfortably behind the scenes. What compelled you to step to the forefront of your own music?
“SNAP” did, in many ways, solidify my place as a songwriter. It created credibility—both within the industry and within the business I was building behind the scenes. It gave me a foundation I could stand on.
But stepping forward as an artist wasn’t about filling a creative gap. It was a strategic decision.
At a certain point, I realized that visibility carries its own weight. Being in front of the camera, releasing my own work, and engaging directly with an audience—it adds a different level of credibility to what I’m building. Nvak is a company built by artists, for artists, and there’s a distinct difference between advising from a distance and actively participating in the process.
It allows the philosophy behind the company to be demonstrated in real time—not just articulated. And I think that kind of alignment, between what you build and how you show up, matters.
Nvak Collective challenges the old industry model. What’s one lesson from the major‑label system you think is helpful now?
For all of its flaws, the major-label system understood (and still understands) scale.
There was a level of rigor around how records were positioned, how stories were told, and how moments were built that I think is still instructive. It wasn’t always artist-friendly, but it was deliberate.
What I’ve taken from that is the importance of discipline—of not treating releases casually, of understanding that how you frame something matters just as much as the thing itself.
The difference now is that artists have more control. So the question becomes: how do you apply that same level of strategy without giving up ownership in the process?
That’s the part worth carrying forward.
What’s next for you?
What’s next feels less like a pivot and more like a continuation.
On the artist side, I’m releasing a body of work that’s been developing over the last two years—songs centered around motherhood but more broadly about care, responsibility, and the relationships that shape us. It’s quieter, but more precise.
At the same time, I’m focused on expanding Nvak—particularly the Collective and the artist services we’re providing. The goal is to scale thoughtfully: to reach more artists while maintaining the level of care, strategy, and specificity that defines the work.
I’m less interested in doing more for the sake of it and more focused on alignment—ensuring that the music, the company, and the ecosystem we’re building continue to reinforce each other.
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