Tanya Chua, the winner of four major Golden Melody Awards categories of this year including the Best Female Singer, Best Mandarin Album, Best Vocal Recording and most importantly, Album of the Year by her latest full length DEPART.
As a Singaporean expat residing in Taiwan for 16 years, Chua emotionally expressed how receiving her first GMA trophy in 2016 motivates her to carry on her music career while there was a period of time she almost wanted to give up.
The following interview will guide you through the mind of this astonishing singer/songwriter and the story behind her first NFT release “Loulou”.
- Since the debut album “Tanya” in 1999, you have achieved many musical achievements, and kept infusing new musical styles and different story narrations into your music. What does music mean to you now?
"From my debut release to now, music has only become more and more important to me, the effect of music on personal aspects has become more extensive as well. At the beginning, I was merely a rebellious girl who wanted to prove herself through music, so I tried to seek a way out through writing songs. I was a very angry girl at the time (laughs).
Later on, my interest turned to analyzing life through writing, especially love songs, so for many years I have been writing about relationships. Now, I want to achieve more things through music. Extending the view from my own world to the outside world and documenting what is happening at the moment through music. Music does a lot of different things for me.”
- Can you elaborate on your first NFT release? According to the description, it is a demo song dedicated to your pet cat.
“I used to hope that the songs I wrote would have some kind of effect, but sometimes when my inspiration surges, it urges me to write something that is irrelevant with the theme of the album, but then I just want to finish it. The song I wrote for Loulou this time was based on the experience of locking myself up at home for a long time during the COVID pandemic. In the past few years, everyone could see the life of my cat and me on social media, Loulou is an important part of my life.
So I wanted to contribute a song to my pet cat. Although I’m not good at such a cute musical style, eventually I sampled Loulou’s snoring sound and made it work. And I felt like this demo befits the NFT form of release.”
- You have won several Golden Melody Awards, what urges you to release your demo in NFT form?
“I didn't think too much at first, I just wrote the demos. Later, I wanted to use NFTs to share demos that people don't have the chance to listen to... I'm a person who doesn’t rest at all.
I've been observing the NFT markets recently. I Had no knowledge about it at first, but I was later attracted by the concept.
Since it allows us to share something to the virtual world, I just thought that maybe sharing my demos through the NFT platforms, hoping it would resonate with people in a new way.”
- Last question, could you share your thoughts on NFTs to other musicians that haven’t taken a chance yet?
“If you want to do it, then do it, music is full of potentiality in the modern cyber world, if you are interested in this topic, let yourself play before considering anything.
You couldn’t know if you’ll love or hate the form until you really do it, who knows whether it will inspire you and bring you new musical ideas or not. I’m making this NFT with a “naughty” mindset as well, I hope you will like this NFT dedicated to my cat Loulou.”
