A labor of sitting on her toilet until dawn, Lucy’s (廖信寧, real name Liao Hsin-ning) debut single Cactus quickly shot to number one on Streetvoice, one of Taiwan’s largest independent music Web sites — think Bandcamp or Soundcloud — after its release in late October.
As of yesterday, the song remains 37, with comments requesting more from the enigmatic singer-songwriter, and fan covers of the catchy, dreamy tune have also appeared on Instagram. Lucy says she’s even received requests from businesses asking if they can play it in their store.
The 20-year-old, who just discovered her songwriting talents last year, seems unfazed by her sudden fame.
Photo courtesy of Cheng Chung-yao
“I never expected this,” she says. “Just going with the flow.”
Lucy learned classical piano for many years, but says she quit because she had a hard time keeping to the sheet music. She was taking a break from school and had just taken up the guitar, when she decided to let loose and improvise a little.
“I discovered that I could write songs,” she says. “I uploaded them to Instagram and people liked them. Almost all my songs are improvised.”
Photo courtesy of Lucy
She asked her former music teacher for advice, and the teacher passed on the demo to producer Deja Fu (海大富), who says: “I was simply stunned.”
“There are many singers with that kind of vocal texture, but there’s something warm and pure in Lucy’s,” he adds. “It just hit a certain frequency in my head.”
The laid-back, mellow, psychedelic-tinged tune and accompanying music video has drawn comparisons to Thai singer Phum Viphurit, who also started writing in his bedroom. But Lucy cites Beabadoobee, Girl in Red and Dayglow as some of her favorite current musicians. These acts make up sort of a genre called “bedroom pop,” which Lucy says makes their sound “very natural.”
Photo courtesy of Lucy
Young artists making lo-fi, budget music out of their home is nothing new — there was a proliferation of them in the early 2000s — but streaming platforms and increasingly accessible audio technology has allowed this new crop to get their work out and hope that it goes viral.
Deja Fu laughs that Lucy’s demos were so “natural” that he could hear her younger brother crying and her mother yelling in the background.
He says they billed Lucy as a “mysterious newcomer” with little promotion to preserve the current casual, instinctive quality of her music. With two more years of school left, Lucy says songwriting is just something she happens to do on a regular basis — her many goals include being a yoga teacher, flight attendant, piano teacher — but first she needs to graduate on time.
“We’re not intentionally trying to create mystique,” Deja Fu says. “She isn’t even sure if she wants to pursue this path, but she just keeps producing material — that’s her natural state right now, and we don’t want to over-package or hype it. She’ll just keep doing what she’s doing, and we’ll throw the songs out there. I’m afraid that if we change the dynamic, the result won’t be so pure anymore.”
However, Lucy laughs that “mysterious newcomer” has become her nickname at school.
Deja Fu says Lucy will release her second single next month, and hopefully they will have a full album done by the middle of next year. Then they’ll take it from there.
Lucy, on the other hand, seems to really take her “go with the flow” mantra to heart; she doesn’t even need to know what she’s showing up for sometimes, whether it be recording in a studio or participating in a video shoot.
“I have time to try different things, and I’m not losing anything from it since it’s all things that I like to do,” she says.
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