On 3 September 2022 a twelve-year-old walked out at Wembley Stadium, sat down behind a drum kit in front of a crowd that had come to mourn Taylor Hawkins, and played "Learn to Fly" with the Foo Fighters. The sticks in her hands were a pair Hawkins had given her the year before. Dave Grohl introduced her as "the biggest rock star on the bill", which, on a bill that included Paul McCartney, was generous and rather close to the mark.
Her name is Nandi Bushell, and anyone who has spent time on YouTube since 2019 has probably met her already, usually somewhere in the middle of a drum fill. What fewer people know is what she has been doing since, which is writing music of her own, and music that deserves a far wider hearing.
Her site: https://nandi.art/fan/prea-prime
Her channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/NandiBushellMusic
A drum kit in Ipswich
She was born in Durban on 28 April 2010, and the family moved to Ipswich when she was two. At six she started lessons with a local drum teacher, and she has described the first week with admirable honesty: it was "really hard, but then I just got it." Her father filmed the results, and the internet did what it does. In June 2019 Lenny Kravitz asked her to join his sound check at the O2 Arena; that December she was a guest on Ellen DeGeneres's show, and went home with a bass guitar.
Then, in August 2020, with the world indoors, she posted a cover of the Foo Fighters' "Everlong" and challenged Dave Grohl to a drum-off. Grohl, fifty-one at the time, answered with a song of his own band Them Crooked Vultures, lost the next round, and conceded it in public. He then wrote her a theme song, which is a proper rock star's way of asking for a rematch.
The rematch came on 26 August 2021, at the Forum in Los Angeles. The stage crew wheeled out what Variety called "a small-but-mighty pink drum set", and an eleven-year-old closed the Foo Fighters' show by "absolutely shredding" "Everlong" whilst Taylor Hawkins put his feet up. The same review noted that she "didn't miss a beat and sounded like she'd been touring with Foos for the past 26 years", although the two had met in person for the first time that night.
Every part herself
The drum battles made her famous, and they have a way of hiding the rest. Her instruments are drums, guitar, bass, piano, saxophone and her voice, and on her own recordings she plays the flute as well. These are working instruments: in her covers she records each part herself and lays them over one another, and the arrangements are hers.
One of those covers had a consequence worth following. She recorded Muse's "Plug In Baby" on every instrument, Matt Bellamy saw it, and he sent her one of his signature guitars. The original "Plug In Baby" was produced by David Bottrill. Her site now credits David Bottrill as the producer of her own songs, which is the sort of coincidence a novelist would be told to cut.
Her first single, "The Shadows", came out on 30 September 2022, written for her father and performed entirely by her. Guitar World heard "a slow march, building momentum with a snare roll" on "a collision course with pummeling electric guitar riffs", with her influences audible and "a nuanced Nandi flair" in the melody and the arrangement. "Sweet Nightmares" followed in October 2023, with Josh Brolin, of all people, on backing vocals. In March 2025 she started a band with two friends, Blu Reflection, whose first original song, "The Only One", is a dreamier thing altogether.
The profession takes note
Viral fame tends to be measured in views. The recognition that matters to a drummer comes from other drummers, and she has rather a lot of it. In June 2021 she was on the cover of Modern Drummer, the youngest cover artist the magazine had had. In February 2022 the teaching platform Drumeo gave her its first Tony Williams Award, named after the drummer who was seventeen when he played on Miles Davis's "Seven Steps to Heaven" and presented to a young drummer who has "made a memorable impact"; the citation says she "truly embodies the spirit of this award." Cartoon Network had already made her its first musician-in-residence, and in October 2022 the BBC's Blue Peter gave her its Gold badge, the programme's highest honour, whose earlier holders include Ed Sheeran and the Queen.
The Queen was also the reason for the most improbable gig of the lot. On 4 June 2022 Nandi played drums for Jax Jones at the Platinum Party at the Palace, in front of a crowd of more than 22,000 on The Mall and a television audience that ran into millions; she told her followers, with entirely forgivable capitals, "I can't believe I just performed at Buckingham Palace LIVE on TV to MILLIONS of viewers!" The next day she was back for the Jubilee Pageant, drumming outside the palace again.
Her own stage
The album is being built in an unusual way. Nandi is gathering its audience on a site of her own, where fans can hear the songs in full and talk back to her. The credits on that site are plain. The songs are "written, arranged and performed" by Nandi Bushell. The line for each track lists vocals, drums, guitars, bass, piano and flute against her name, with the string arrangements hers as well. She puts it more simply herself: "I've written and performed pretty much everything you hear with the help of a few session musicians on violin, cello, trombone and trumpet." The sessions took her to Universal's studios in King's Cross. The producer is Bottrill, whose records include Tool's "Lateralus" alongside that Muse single. The condition for release is set out in one line: "I need 10,000 fans before my music comes out." At the time of writing she has 1,103.
There is no title and no date yet. The songs on her site are what there is to go on, and they are plenty.
I have followed her since she was eight, and she has not stopped surprising me. Perhaps she will fascinate you as much as she fascinates me, and perhaps you will find her own music as good as I do. The songs are on her site, and joining costs nothing.
Dave Grohl conceded round one to her at fifty-one; the rest of us can at least concede a listen.