Fearsome American Dream: Rocker KAYE Explores Religious Freedom and Artistic Breakthroughs in “Neon God”
“I think that it takes an enormous amount of integrity, bravery and willingness to disappoint people to be your truest self,” says KAYE. The independent singer and songwriter, Charlene Kaye, used this saying as divine inspiration to prepare for her upcoming “Neon God” single and EP release. “Neon God” came as a spark of inspiration to KAYE while attending a Pulp concert and witnessing a heavenly congregation of “misfits” who didn’t quite fit the mainstream standards of society. The song also serves as a manifestation of the songstress’ personal beliefs against worshiping false idols in the music industry, social media and influencers.
“Neon God” arrives after KAYE’s personal experiences growing up as a Chinese American first generation woman and yearning to embrace her instincts of becoming a singer. The songstress reclaimed her family journey and what it meant to follow the American Dream as an artist. “The raw truth of that is that I'm an artist, performer and a songwriter. It would be a waste of my spirit if I were to deny that and do anything else and pursue a nine-to-five job,” KAYE says.
After breaking out of traditional Chinese cultural structures, KAYE ushers in an era of storytelling centered around the conservative household she grew up in where rock music was considered blasphemous.
KAYE was the former frontwoman of the critically acclaimed New York-based group San Fermin, and has toured with St. Vincent, Arctic Monkeys, alt-J and has earned praise from Rolling Stone, NPR and FLOOD Magazine. Since releasing her critically acclaimed debut Album, Conscious Control in 2020, she is flourishing in her Neon God era. But the universe demands balance; KAYE arrives post-healing and fully embracing the darkness of rock n’ roll, the songstress fearlessly shreds on her guitar while adorned in black angel wings.
“Neon God” shimmers with eccentric funk, rock and disco undertones, interlaced with the songstress’ personal flair of her signature guitar chops and personal storytelling. KAYE invites listeners to her world of technicolor and weirdness, and it’s an exhilarating journey to be a part of nonetheless.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Our Unpublished readers would love to get to know you and your music more. Can you tell us about what type of music you make and how you first got started in the industry?
[KAYE]: I make rock music. I started out as a folk musician and I have such an innate love for storytelling and for organic instruments. I think in a lot of ways, listening to folk music developed my love for songwriting. The first artists that I ever really fell in love with were Sufan Stevens, Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple, like those early 2000s stalwarts that I discovered when I was in college. I grew up playing classical piano, like a good little Asian, and I eventually became so frustrated with the sight reading elements of it and that ended up being more more work than expression and it wasn't until I discovered my mother's nylon string it's hard that I turned it down to drop D and I discovered that I could play Blink-182. So there began my wayward journey into punk and rock music much to my parents' chagrin. I still have that guitar and I still write a lot of music on it. I went to high school in Arizona in a very conservative, white bubble and I played during those years, and I got really into emo and loved Taking Back Sunday and bands like System of a Down and Third Eye Blind. Then as I got older, I went to the University of Michigan and found my people there and discovered that I wanted to pursue music as a career. That was when I discovered this thriving folk scene in Ann Arbor and all these bands that I still listen to and love, like Chris Bathgate, Lightning Love, Misty Lyn and Matt Jones. There were all these people who supported each other in this scene and played these local bars and venues I would go to all the time. It gave me such a sense of community and support to continue my own work. After that, I moved to New York with a bunch of my musician friends and all my bandmates. We caravaned in a u-haul and we got our first practice space before we got our apartment, which seemed like the natural order of things. I got a restaurant job and cut my teeth playing gigs. My first tour was when I was 24 and I opened for this theater group that became known for creating a three hour musical parody of Harry Potter, it was like a condensed plot of all seven Harry Potter books. I went on tour with them for a year and I went to school with all of them. The group is called Star Kid and I was lucky enough to play guitar for them and their backing band and open for them. We toured all around the country playing huge venues and every night we felt like a Justin Bieber concert kind of because people just lost their minds over it. We were so passionate about this show. We sold out Roseland Ballroom twice and those were like 3000 capacities. It was such a baptism by fire going in there and I think there was no turning back at that point.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You mentioned listening to Fiona Apple growing up, she’s one of my favorite artists of all time, and I was wondering if you’ve listened to her Fetch The Bolt Cutters album?
[KAYE]: Yeah, I love “Shameika,” “Fetch The Bolt Cutters” itself and “I Want You To Love Me.”
[UNPUBLISHED]: You're an independent singer and songwriter. Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
[KAYE]: I do, it was called “Red Wine in the Subtlety.” It makes no sense. I was trying to be Alanis Morissette and put as many words that I didn't understand into my songs at the same time, but I wasn't using them in the way that the English language intended.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Your latest single “Neon God” just released. Can you talk to me about the inspiration behind the song and what the creative process looked like for you?
[KAYE]: This is one of my favorite songs that I've ever released. I actually wrote it in 2016, it's been a long time coming and I’ve written it so many times. I really think that in its truest form now, it came to me so subconsciously. I think that when I first had the idea for the song – this just goes to show for any artists out there – if you have a seed for something, it's going to bloom when it wants to and you can't really force it into any shape before it's ready to be its truest version. This initial spark of inspiration for the song came after an experience I had when my sister and I went to Coachella in 2012 and I got lost by myself. I went to the main stage and saw Pulp, the British band. Jarvis Cocker, incredible frontman, he literally had this panel of neon main panels behind him that were flashing and the way that he was commanding the stage and the way that he was working the audience was so evangelizing and it made me think so much of how rock stars are their own cult leaders. The way he was gyrating up there and shaking his hands and shouting to the heavens and the way that everybody was moving as one mass, losing their minds and stuff. It was like a conductor playing an orchestra or Moses parting the Red Sea. I thought of all this biblical imagery and it made me think of the ways in which I was raised Christian and never really resonated with the textbook definition of religion and I never ascribed to organized religion. I always had a problem with it, but the thing that I did gravitate towards and felt extremely converted by and devoted to was music. Everytime I would go to concerts, I would sneak out and go to these shows, that was where I really felt the divine. I felt like I was in church, and I felt like I'd found my people, all these groups of misfits and people who didn't quite fit in and were on the fringes of society. It made me feel like I had a home for the first time, and then the other elements of the song’s meaning, kind of poking fun at this idea that what we grow up to worship and how this industry is, worshiping these false idols – social media and the news and these these cults of personality that you find on YouTube. I love it [music industry] and I know that there's a dark side to it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you feel like you broke out of conservative restrictions that were placed upon you? Did you find that through your storytelling and music?
[KAYE]: A huge part of that was growing up in an immigrant household. As a Chinese American first generation woman and wanting to please my parents, but also wanting to break out and embrace myself and not wanting to deny myself these instincts of wanting to be an artist. It almost felt like I was betraying them by pursuing my own path, blazing my own trail, because it had never been done in my family before. My parents sacrificed so much for us to be in this country, and for us to thrive as Americans and follow the American dream and brought up this really interesting question; what does the American Dream truly look like for me? I have all the opportunities that my parents have sacrificed for me, and all of my ancestors have sacrificed for me to come to this place. The raw truth of that is that I'm an artist, performer and a songwriter. It would be a waste of my spirit if I were to deny that and do anything else and pursue a nine-to-five job. It's been a struggle, and every single day I think about the journey that my mom and I have been on over the course of my life and seeking her approval and seeking to break out of that structure of expectation and duty and diligence, and that's wrapped up in in religion, but it's also wrapped up in Chinese culture as well.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The “Neon God” music video contains a lot of political imagery. What was the main inspiration behind the music video and what did the filming process look like for you?
[KAYE]: I'm so proud of that video. We worked so hard on it. I think that in 2016, there was a lot of political upheaval at that time. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the main color is orange in the video. I was thinking about how Fox News has become this cult of personality and it's sucked in so many of my family members and has made them extremely paranoid and fearful – yet, it's still the God that they worship. I think that religion gets propped up as this moral backbone for a lot of decisions that are made politically to oppress these marginalized communities. I was thinking about that so much with what kind of imagery I wanted to put in the video. I knew that I wanted it to be mildly creepy. It starts with this sample of this preacher who is just talking and giving the sermon which seemed very reminiscent of how I grew up. The dialogue coming from the church that I grew up in was very judgmental and punishing, so I wanted to reference that while also flipping it on its head a little bit and having fun with it. I interweaved these scary elements in with images from pop culture that are familiar to us, like the twins from The Shining. We decided to make those two reminiscent of my sister and I growing up seeing all these people on MTV, desperately wanting to be a part of that culture and be a part of that conversation.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you choreograph your own dances for the music video?
[KAYE]: I didn't, my wonderful beloved friend, Voltaire Wade-Greene choreographed it. He was in the original cast of Hamilton as the dance captain and he did such an amazing job creating the imagery of myself as this future cult leader, and everybody revolving around me and taking the lyrics to heart in such a thoughtful way. I'm so grateful that he did such a good job.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you think you've grown as an artist in your “Neon God” single and upcoming EP since your first project “Conscious Control?”
[KAYE]: I think that “Neon God,” the EP is the necessary 180 from “Conscious Control.” Conscious was a very morose, thoughtful, internal grief record, and I needed to write that to process that very particular phase of life that I was in of choosing myself and letting go of this long term relationship, discovering what it meant to be un-partnered and loving myself in spite of it and letting go of all these societal expectations. I think that it's [Neon God] a necessary boomerang response to it because the universe demands balance. I wanted to have a lot of fun with this record. I wanted it to be bombastic. I wanted to jump out of the speakers and make people dance. There's a song “Respect Me,” that's the most irreverent song that I've ever written. It's really wacky, and the music video I'm actually shooting this week has more of this very off-beat, absurdist feel that I haven’t explored in my music yet. Then there's an emo song on it that I did not expect to write, but it ended up on the EP and it's very different from anything else that I've made and I'm excited about it because I want to keep pushing myself into these spaces that I have not explored with my music so far. I always always want to keep doing that and challenging myself to find areas of my craft that have been unexplored.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you hope listeners can take away from your upcoming single and EP?
[KAYE]: I'm really proud of this EP, because it's distinctly not an album. I think each song within itself is its own world. There's a tie between the song “Neon God” and the last song which is called “Keep On Going Til It's Over.” “Neon God” I think is more sarcastic, like leaning into this capitalist, cartoon version of myself. “Keep On Going Til It's Over,” it's the very soulful sister of it and when I write about it, it's almost sort of like a prayer to myself, whereas “Neon God” is making fun of prayer. “Keep On Going Til It's Over” is actually a sincere devotional prayer to myself to continue to not stop being an artist and to continue no matter what no matter what. There's a line in the song that says, “you're not getting old,” which is something that I went through this past year, thinking that I was too old to make pop music. I think that song was harnessing all of those insecurities, bringing them back, owning all of it and transmuting it – it's not over till it's over. It's a commitment to myself.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the hardest lesson or biggest realization you made when you broke into the music industry?
[KAYE]: The world doesn't owe you anything. You can work as hard as you can, you can work as hard as you want, have the best ideas, have the best team and you have no control over what people are going to respond to. You have no control over how the industry welcomes you or doesn't and that's okay. There's actually an enormous freedom in making things for yourself and allowing whatever happens all chemically out there to happen. I say this in almost every interview, but I think it's been such a foundational work of my career, it's called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and it's one of those books on creativity that has helped me have the perspective that I have to not worry so much about the outcome and to relax and to have fun with the process and to make sure that you're doing it for yourself and not some sort of external validation.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What musicians have you been listening to recently?
[KAYE]: I'm going to shout out my podcast which is called “Golden Hour,” and it spotlights Asian musicians. I spent my whole life trying to collect these Asian musicians on TV and in the media, that I could look up to as proof that I could also be one – and there weren't very many of us. I wanted to create a space that people can intentionally go to discover Asian artists that are in one place. I've discovered so many incredible artists, made friends with them and they become a new community for me. The artists that I want to shout out are SuperKnova and EMIA. SuperKnova is this badass producer, singer, shredder and songwriter. She’s a trans woman from Chicago and she started her career as a doctor and abandoned that to be a singer/songwriter. EMIA is another singer/songwriter I interviewed for the podcast. She’s a Vietnamese American who produces her own work.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have any advice for first generation immigrants who want to break into the music industry and aim to defy expectations from what their immigrant parents have placed on them?
[KAYE]: I think that now is a better time than ever to look around and see people who look like you doing what you want to do, and it's way different than it was when I was growing up. We still have such a long way to go. But I think that it takes an enormous amount of integrity, bravery and willingness to disappoint people to be your truest self – it's not going to be easy. I have to shout out this quote by Joseph Campbell who says, “You have to give up the life that you think you want, for the life that's waiting for you.” You just have to trust that you're being pushed in the right direction, stay with the path and recognize that it's a process.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your wildest dream as an artist? If you can have one thing happen to you, like a milestone or dream collaboration you want to accomplish in your career, what would that look like for you?
[KAYE]: Playing SNL.
