What does a Cornell student do when they are trapped in a sweltering, humid Ithaca summer for three months? Conduct research, explore the outdoors — or maybe become an avid dating app user?
For singer-songwriter Tochi Ezidiegwu ’26, who studies Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, the answer was all of the above, plus one more: turning a summer of dating into music.
Last summer, when Ezidiegwu wasn’t pipetting PCR reaction tubes or checking bacterial plate streaks in the Barton Lab, she was exploring the sinuous chaos of early-20s dating. There were regrets, misunderstandings and, like any doomed summer fling, heartbreak.
“Because it’s Ithaca, there’s nothing to do,” she said, laughing, “so I was going on a lot of dates, and I would keep writing songs about all the different experiences I had.”
Those experiences eventually became the foundation for Ezidiegwu’s upcoming debut EP, set to release this upcoming summer — five songs, each written about a different boy she met.
Ezidiegwu singing at an open mic event. Courtesy of Tochi Ezidiegwu '26
But songwriting did not begin that summer.
For years, Ezidiegwu wrote songs the way some write diary entries. Instead of filling notebooks, she filled her Notes app, Voice Memos, TikTok and eventually Spotify with lyrics and melodies.
“It’s almost exclusively a diary,” she said of her songs. “The point isn’t to tell a factual story. It’s about how I felt. That’s what people relate to.”
Ezidiegwu’s decision to take music seriously came after listening to Taylor Swift’s Midnights in 2022.
“I’ve always known Taylor Swift, but I’d never really listened,” she said. “I realized I’d been missing this my whole life. I decided then: I need to be serious about music. I need to try to be as good as her.”
Pursuing that ambition, however, meant colliding with family expectations.
Raised in a household of doctors and lawyers, Ezidiegwu taught herself piano and guitar in secret, studying TikTok live performance videos of musician Gracie Abrams to mimic finger placements until she understood how each chord sounded. It was through this process that she began blending her love for musical theatre and Hot 100 hits into her own indie-sad-girl-pop style.
“I’m the black sheep disappointment of the family,” she joked. “My parents disapproved when my brother did music, so when I started, it was a big secret. To this day, my dad doesn’t know I even own a piano.”
But a dark horse is often just a black sheep that decided to run.
In early 2025, Ezidiegwu galloped into the digital music world through TikTok, posting under the handle @girlwhowritesthings — now renamed @tochiwritessongs.
“I blocked everyone I knew so only strangers could see,” she laughed. “They’d leave a few comments, nothing crazy, but it felt like this tiny fandom waiting for me.”
After just two posts, a small cohort of listeners asked where they could hear more. Without access to a producer or recording studio, Ezidiegwu recorded songs straight into her iPhone’s Voice Memos app and uploaded them to Spotify.
“People would comment, ‘Oh my god, I can’t wait for June 6 when your voice memo thing comes out,’” she recalls. “It was like 12 people, but it was amazing.”
69 voice memos later, the encouragement pushed Ezidiegwu to reach out to Cornell Music Production, a student organization that helps aspiring Cornell artists with music, and record her first official single, “to be loved by you,” in March 2025. Its release party in May also became her first live performance.
“I was the first one up,” Ezidiegwu recalled. “For the first half of the song, everyone was just chilling and eating pizza. Then, right before the final chorus, someone in the back cut all the lights and put a big spotlight on me. It was like a movie, and I felt great.”
From then on, Ezidiegwu began performing at every open mic she could find in Ithaca, from women-in-music showcases to local bars. Along the way, she met the producer and marketing manager she now works with for her upcoming EP, and went on the five dates that later became its songs.
When asked about her five-year plan, Ezidiegwu said that she is not chasing becoming the next “small-town girl”— only the chance to be heard.
“I know it’s a one-in-a-million thing,” she said. “But now that I know people think my music is good, it would make me sick not to do everything in my power to be heard by as many people as possible. It’s something I have to do.”
Now, as Ezidiegwu navigates the process of applying for music marketing jobs, she has realized that her STEM background uniquely equips her for music data analysis and trend observation — a strategic doorstep into the music industry. She hopes her ongoing journey will remind others that they never know how many notes they are capable of playing until they dare to try and to stay open to the unexpected.
After all, somewhere between a humid Ithaca summer and five Tinder dates, Ezidiegwu found five songs, started her music career and learned how to gallop.
Follow Ezidiegwu’s journey and upcoming EP on Instagram at @tochi_704, TikTok as @tochiwritessongs, and Spotify under Tochi.
