Q&A: Crystal Chen

Put the ‘top down’ and take a sip of Crystal Chen’s latest summery single which is a must-add to your playlists (yes right now, go on - we’ll wait). Giving us a taste of her EP that’s on the way, the soulful genre-bending artist known for her glossy vocals tells us all about her new song, her musical journey and more.

Crystal! We'd love to know about your musical journey so far from when you first started singing & making music!

I was heavily committed in a high school choir and got bored of singing classical scores. No hate to choir music, but some of the repertoires we had to sing were in Latin, German, Italian etc. of scores that were made hundreds of years, if not centuries ago. You had to follow everything precisely including the note, where you breathe, each consonant, each beat, tone, vowels and even which part of the mouth you use. I felt like there was was no creative freedom or room for me to grow no matter how good of a singer I was.

One day I got so bored in choir, so I started harmonising and the conductor told me off. That was the moment where I decided to quit and since then, I've written my own music. That was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I quickly fell in love with the process, exploring all these ways of making music, going to gigs as soon as I turned 18 and collaborating with different artists, and diving head-first into the industry really inspired me through this whole process of self-exploration.

I met my now boyfriend Aidan Fine who's a very talented artist through music and it's very refreshing to hear his opinions and discover music together with him. It's such a beautiful way of bonding - I've met/become closer with friends who share this love of music with me, and it's even more beautiful when you get to be creative together. Music has become such an important aspect in my life that if I don't write for a week or so, my throat get's itchy.

I'm at a place now where I am beyond excited to show everyone what I've been working on. It's the freedom of singing and creating whatever I want without any boundaries for me. The thought that I don't have to stay within one genre or sing from a score is so liberating and allows for infinite exploration and inspiration. I've spent the past year developing my sound whilst experiencing growing pains, my musical journey has been a rough ride, but without the bumps, I would've never gotten to where I am now.

Amazing! And congrats on your groovy jazz-soul track 'top down' - we're so obsessed with it! Can you tell us about the meaning of the song and the inspiration behind it?

Thank you! The inspiration actually came from the purchase of my convertible blue Fiat right before summer. I desperately needed a car to run around town with after the last one failed on me, and it was conveniently a convertible which I had been anticipating since I was a little girl!

That time of the year was extremely busy, stressful and overwhelming, desperately trying to finish off the long hauled work before the year ended. I wanted to represent that feeling of anticipating summer all year, combined with the deadly summer heat, was all going to be worth it - as soon as us girls let our hair down, put the top down and sunnies on, all that stress will simply blow away as you cruise into summer and 2022.

The inspiration behind the music side of things will always come from my love for the blues and jazz. I instinctively apply little bits jazz elements to my music, but for 'top down' I went all out. Played by Forrest Thorp, the trumpet is one of my favourite parts in the song. When I'm free-styling melodies, I pretend like I'm playing a trumpet solo. I've noticed one of my biggest inspirations, Amy Winehouse sings like a trumpet when she's scatting, it feels so freeing when she's going up and down the scale. I was listening to her album 'Frank' a lot during that period, so I think that album definitely inspired 'top down'.

In the lil instrumental section I had, I wanted it to almost sound like we were performing this live. All the instruments had their little solos and complimented each-other to create this call and response moment with the guitars in the first break. I was lucky enough to have my friends Annika Sethi as well as Noema Te Hau on this track who are extraordinary guitar players, Noema also had the idea of adding a touch of bossa-nova style gat in the second pre-chorus which was splendour.

What were your main highlights working on 'top down'?

Definitely the session, it was the best session I've ever had. Prior to that, I was actually in a session by myself working on another project named 'not another love song' (coming out next month). I decided to take a break from that because I felt overwhelmed so I just started writing without any aim just for fun, that's why the first verse is kinda random, I was writing really loosely just for practise really. I do this a lot, I have a lot of these random demos that don't really go anywhere. Then, Annika came in and we finished writing all the melodies and lyrics together. She's my favourite person to write with, it was genuinely so fun. We wanted sound effects of rolling a joint so we went to the kitchen in Parachute studios and got a salt and pepper grinder and sampled the sound of it.

We then took it to Noema and he really added his sparkle. In the middle of the session we went to one of the emporiums (which is a crafts store) because why not? And we bought some really random things including googlely eyes and flash tatts. When we got back to his home studio, we sampled the sound of the googley eyes as a shaker and I think that's one of my favourite parts of the song. You can kind of hear it on it's own in 2:33, it sounds like actual sparkles to me and it also sounds wet, which I love haha.

We also sampled other random things like these drinks from lunch, the amount of liquid in the bottles makes a note when you blow on it and it was so fun drinking till the note was in the key of the song. We made a kick drum from banging on the wall and speaking in unison for the chorus, which sounded wall too cool Noema used it in the outro. I think the fact that no one knows about these random samples make me love the song even more, as it's connected to all these little memories.

The energy we had in that session was so wholesome. We didn't have any expectations for how we wanted it to sound, we really just had fun with it and was super experimental. We had some mad 'deep meaningful conversations' that day about the music industry and Noema told us so many stories, but in the mix of that was the music making aspect of it, and us nerding out to these cool sounds was so fun.

Love it! Plus we've got to quickly mention one of our absolute FAVE songs of yours - the magical 'where will they go ?'. Can you tell us about the concept of this track and what the writing and production process was like?

Thank you again!! The concept of this track is to put listener's in the mood if you know what I mean. I would call it, a sassy yet haunting, and sweet yet sultry delight. I have always wanted to write a song in 6/8, it just so happened to be a sensual song as well. My boyfriend Aidan and I wrote this together and he produced this track, we were stuck in lockdown at the time and this track actually reflects aspects of our relationship so it was interesting to write about with him, about us.

The writing process was interesting - it was the first time where I basically wrote the entire melody of the song from one massive freestyle where I threw in some lyrics here and there but I was mostly singing oohs and ahs. Aidan and I then picked out our favourite parts and mushed them into different sections of the song, fine-tuned the melodies and re-recorded lyrics onto those melodies. We then got our talented friend Elijah Mcpherson to play guitar on this track and he really brought the vibe.

We're so excited to see you have an EP on the way! What can we expect from this upcoming project?

I'm excited too! It's a lot of exploring whether that be portrayed stylistically or lyrically, my personal life has gone through a lot of changes and so has my music.

Each song is taken from a part of my life whether that be big or small, a feeling, a person, an object or a movie? I guess you'll just have to wait and see! But it's messy, like the person I am. It's growth and realisations I've made whilst growing up, and it's a lot of fun and quite colourful production-wise. You can definitely expect some groovy tunes and cool visuals.

Who would you say are your biggest inspirations in music?

Soooo many! And it changes every month, but for now, these artists have and will always inspire me - Outkast, Erykah Badu, Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean, Terrace Martin, Solange, Kali Uchis, Steve Lacy, Tom Misch, Mac Miller, Daniel Caeser, Amy Winehouse, Q ... the list goes on!

Who are some of your favourite NZ artists right now and are there any songs in particular that you especially love?

There's so much NZ talent coming up right now. Recently I've been jamming Adam Snow, Paige, Avantdale Bowling Club, Thorington, Tory Kingi, Nganeko, Len Blake and Aidan Fine's unreleased music, just wait for it!!

Sam V's album "I MADE THIS WHILE" will always be one of my favourites as well as Casual Healing's "First Born" EP, the production is incredible and I've been having Nikau's voice on repeat.

What do you love most about New Zealand? Do you have any favourite places to travel to or local spots that you like to visit?

I love that you can drive an hour or two out of Auckland and disconnect from society and ground yourself with the earth. Whenever I need some mother nature's healing, I've got a secret spot along in the West Coast I go to. There you see the last bit of sunshine and how the ocean forms over the curvature of the earth. I love lying in the grass there and watch the stars come up, I've seen quite a few shooting stars there!

What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learnt as an artist, and what advice do you have for other artists out there?

The other day, Aidan and I met Zane Lowe at a cafe and I was completely star struck. Aidan told Zayn I released a 'top down' that day and he said that "creation is not the hard part, it's the execution that's hard. Cherish that, the feeling of releasing a song never gets old!" So that happened! And hearing it from him was encouraging in every way. But a personal growing pain stemmed from unfair treatment as a Chinese female artist starting out in the New Zealand music industry and film industry. I saw a lack of representation and was often made to feel misunderstood and uncomfortable, hoping to be accepted in a setting where I thought I was allowed to be creative.

An example would be that it felt weird being in a studio session surrounded by mostly white men who undermined me and was "mansplaining" to me. This also made me feel small and that my voice wasn't heard. However, my perspective slowly shifted as I became confident in proving people wrong and that excited me. Especially as a person of colour, embrace that aspect of you, don't let that be your weakness and don't let that weakness define you; although it can be easy, giving into the social hierarchy and become self-sabotaging due to a history of ingrained discrimination. We are at a time of change and the creative industry is one of the firsts to make that change and showcase representation.

I started working with a lot of female and people of colour artists and producers who related to me and empowered me. It is so important to find people who truly hear you out, develop ideas together and share the same artistic values as you, most importantly - people who vibe with you! I feel like the most authentic music come out of those sessions.

So my advice to artists is to do what feels authentic to yourself even if you have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations. I encourage everyone to work with a diverse range of creatives as everyone has something unique to bring forward. With people who don't make you feel heard or invalidate your opinions, use your creative energy to prove them wrong!! You must work with people to respect you, otherwise - don't work with them again, it's their loss!

Lastly, we end all our interviews with this question - if you could say one thing to every person in the world, what would it be?

Dip your toes in every ocean, lake and river until you find the right one to dive head-first in!

THANKS SO MUCH CRYSTAL! MAKE SURE YOU KEEP UP WITH HER ON INSTAGRAM, SPOTIFY OR APPLE MUSIC.

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