Embracing Messy Nights and Chaotic Lifestyles in Su Lee’s “Messy Sexy” Debut Album
Photo by Sela Shiloni
The ultimate love letter to radical self-acceptance and healing, Su Lee lets loose and embraces her chaotic-ness in dream-pop debut album, Messy Sexy.
Loving the imperfections and messiness of it all, Su Lee captures the ups and downs that she’s faced – emotionally and physically – through the last few years. “I felt like I wanted to make an album that embraces these ups and downs, the messy nights and the chaos of life and then turn it into something beautiful, hence the term Messy Sexy,” Su Lee says.
Sometimes, crying is the best self care we can do as humans. Navigating the ups and downs has made Su Lee realize that she doesn’t have to put up a certain image to confine herself to societal and masculine pressures. “How we're designed is to just feel and be the human being that we are,” Su Lee says. “I think the best self care method for me is to just let myself cry, let myself boil, let myself be angry, let myself say what I want to say without feeling like I'm suppressing myself. That's my way of self care.”
The album’s title track “Messy Sexy” is a love letter to one’s imperfect self. Dreamy synths, subtle horns and sampled sounds like the crackling noise of a freshly opened bag of Cheetos converge into an addicting invitation to dance and embrace the beauty of unfiltered individuality.
“Sonder” closes out Messy Sexy by venturing away from Su’s typical cheery bedroom-pop tone. The track carries an air of deliberate stealth, leaning on minor notes to convey the way she covertly moves through life. Su Lee says the track is about how “being a fly on the wall can be a therapeutic experience for those who are lonely yet scared of social interaction.”
Unapologetically fun and high energy, Su Lee validates all the imperfections that we have as humans who deal with anxiety, stress and internal chaos throughout Messy Sexy.
Photo by Sela Shiloni
[UNPUBLISHED]: For any readers who aren’t familiar with your music yet, how would you describe your music?
[SU LEE]: A music library. I like all my songs to be catered towards whatever you want to listen to depending on your mood. Also, I have commitment issues. I can't commit to one thing and one style.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What artists inspire you – either lyrically or instrumentally – whether that's just music you love to listen to or music that you pull inspiration from into yours?
[SU LEE]: I would say soundwise, I always end up adding nice acoustic piano sounds. Looking back, I get a lot of that influence from Tom Odell, who’s thing is his piano. I like Joji, just because his music is amazing and I feel like his library of music is the library that I aspire to be, so I love him. I like Ghibli soundtracks as well. I just listened to funky things. I like anime songs. I let that seep into my subconsciousness and pull that out whenever I'm about to make music on my own.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have a specific favorite song that's your go to or your most listened to for Ghibli’s music?
[SU LEE]: There's a track by Joji named “Pretty Boy,” and that song is not necessarily in the style of it, but the approach of the production makes me feel more at ease. You can tell it's one of those songs that the people who are producing it – probably including Joji – were just having fun, and from that comes this really playful, quirky, fun, stupid but also very exciting and candid. Whenever I listen to that song, I feel fired up and I don't feel like I'm caught up in the rules of production.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Moving on to talk about your debut album, a huge congratulations is in order. Can you tell me about the inspiration behind Messy Sexy?
[SU LEE]: Going back to my library full of some finished some unfinished songs that I have just made over the years without an album in mind. Then I sat down with these random songs and was like, ‘What does this come down to?’ ‘If this were to be a body of work, what would it be?’ I realized that it's just an encapsulation of some of the ups and downs that I've been going through emotionally, physically and everything in between the last couple of years. I felt like I wanted to make an album that embraces these ups and downs, the messy nights and the chaos of life and then turn it into something beautiful, hence the term Messy Sexy.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Messy Sexy is an ode to self worth, care and acceptance. What are some ways that you show self care to yourself?
[SU LEE]: I think allowing myself to feel shit because I think nowadays, there's so much taboo around people trying to suck it up and white knuckle through things. There's the whole thing about feminism and it can give empowerment to women, but, I think the double edged sword of that is that it gives this certain expectation for women to give into certain pressures and expectations for people to put up an image and that's not how we're designed. How we're designed is to just feel and be the human being that we are. I think the best self care method for me is to just let myself cry, let myself boil, let myself be angry, let myself say what I want to say without feeling like I'm suppressing myself. That's my way of self care.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Messy Sexy is an invitation for listeners to step into your world of self care and radical self acceptance. Can you talk to me about what the creative process looks like for you? Do you have a specific songwriting process you follow, or does it change with every song that you produce?
[SU LEE]: Very much depends on the dynamic of the song and if I'm working alone on the track, or if I'm collaborating with other producers on it. I have vast and different approaches, but one thing that I have found that is a coherent element with all the songs is it always begins with a little nugget. So that nugget can be in an audio form, where it's just like me walking down the street and humming, so I would just record that on my phone. It could be an image on Pinterest or something, and that just becomes an expansion that eventually turns into a three minute track.
Photo by Sela Shiloni
[UNPUBLISHED]: Messy Sexy closes out with your track “Sonder,” and it just stands out to me from the rest of the body of work because it's not like your usual bedroom pop. It's more stripped back and vulnerable. As a listener it sounded very therapeutic, so I can only imagine what energy and meaning it has to you. What was the inspiration behind that track?
[SU LEE]: I'm actually really glad that you mentioned “Sonder” because I would say that's my favorite track of all songs. I personally think it's the strongest track and I'm quite proud of it. It's kind of like my new way of working outside of my bedroom studio. We would set up and go into a recording booth and me playing the cello for a couple of hours recording all the strings, and then we had an external mixing engineer who would deal with all the hundreds of takes and figuring out which takes to keep. We had a producer on board who would refine things and add that body of sound to it, and then songwriting-wise, it was kind of like a new thing I experimented with. I've never written a song in a third person perspective. That was like a really fresh thing. It was just a new experience for me, and I'm very proud of it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How is it different for you to write from a third person perspective, compared to your usual objective?
[SU LEE]: I think it was just the perspective thing that was simply not something that I even considered an option because the way I approach songwriting has always been very straightforward. My producer suggested that I should use “she” as a metaphor of whatever emotion I was trying to capture. I was like, ‘Oh, that could be a really interesting way of telling a story about a familiar feeling that I have without me being actively in it.’ So it's a weird, cathartic experience where I'm looking at my own personal experience from an outsider person.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You mentioned that “Sonder” was one of your favorite tracks to write from the album. What was your favorite lyric or message that stands out to you the most? Why do you love “Sonder?”
[SU LEE]: It would be the first line of the song which is, “She sat there blinking / She's a fly on the wall / Staring into the hall like an idiot.” I feel like that kind of sums up how I've always felt growing up, people think that you're zoning out or you're airheaded, or you're just not into things when, in fact, what's going on in my mind is the polar opposite. I'm just so in the moment watching what's going on around me and processing it internally. That's what's going on in my head, but I think for a lot of people who's watching from the outside, it looks like I'm just zoning out.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Messy Sexy has a music video alongside the track. How was your experience filming that and what was the inspiration behind the video?
[SU LEE]: I'm very proud to say that this is the first ever funded music video that I ever directed myself and wrote myself. It was kind of surreal actually, like having what I had envisioned in my head actually come to life and be turned into a video that just perfectly suits what I had envisioned. It was magical. It started with why don't we just get really messy and start from there. It became a bit of an ambitious project where I wanted to incorporate some storyline which is like breaking the fourth wall. The process of making and finishing the video was very messy too. It was quite onpoint with the theme of the music video in the sense that everything was so rushed, and we finished the video an hour and a half before the premiere of the video. Everybody was staying up till three and four in the morning to finish the edits.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the hardest song for you to write, either lyrically or emotionally?
[SU LEE]: I would say “Mayfly” hit me really hard at the time of the writing, but also as I speak right now about it, basically the song is about how much I hate saying goodbyes, but goodbyes eventually seem to come. I think also having been brought up in a very nomadic household, it's always been like a reoccurring thing that I just hate doing, but it happens over and over again. I was feeling very fucked up when I was writing it. We're gonna fly away someday.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You’ve collaborated with Ariza and Miki Fiki on Messy Sexy. How have those collaborations been like for you? How was your experience with that?
[SU LEE]: Collaboration with Ariza was actually pretty interesting because I've never met him in person to this date. Everything was done purely on an email thread. No phone calls, no zoom sessions. It was at times a pain in the ass and there were some janky elements to it, but it was an interesting way of working. It started with a simple nugget of my audio recording of the chorus. The collaboration with Miki Fiki was fun. I actually got to just play my first headline show last night and Miki Fiki flew all the way from Nashville to perform with me. It was just surreal, because that last night was the first time that I actually met him in person as well. Our song came together purely online as well, but it was also very surreal just performing the songs that we made together in person in front of a crowd.
Photo by Sela Shiloni
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have any post-show or pre-show rituals to help ensure that you play your best show and to get in a grounded mindspace?
[SU LEE]: I usually drink a little bit of alcohol every once in a while and remind myself none of this matters. We'll just have fun and all that matters is that I have fun and I give a fun time to the people in the crowd.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the energy of the crowd like yesterday?
[SU LEE]: It was surreal. Having people sing along to the songs, like every word, is kind of weird in the best way possible. I really love the meet and greets afterwards to where I get to actually hear people's stories on how my music has impacted and helped them go through some things.
[UNPUBLISHED]: If you can assign a color to Messy Sexy, what color would it be and why?
[SU LEE]: Probably burgundy. Not fresh blood red, but just a little bit dried blood.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What's a message you hope your listeners can take away in terms of self care, self love or self acceptance?
[SU LEE]: I think the whole term self love, care and acceptance gets a bit of a misconception where it means you love yourself as you are, and you kind of accept everything as you are. But I think the way that I approach it, and the way that I think can help some people, is by accepting you’re inherently a human and you’re going to fuck up. Sometimes you're just imperfect. Just accept that it's okay to not like what you see in the mirror because that's just part of being an insecure human that we are. I think that's what I call self acceptance just knowing that feeling inadequate and feeling like you're less than is natural. That's okay. You don't have to suppress it, and from that acceptance I think comes freeing. We're just kind of fucked up, chaotic, messy creatures and let's turn it into something fun.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would love to share with the magazine?
[SU LEE]: The prime model answer will be like, ‘I'd love to go on my first headline tour sometime soon.’ ‘I'd love to open for nice artists again sometime soon.’ ‘I would love to have my album succeed.’ That but also, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing right now and I think I'm just taking it day by day and want to have fun and collaborate more. If there's one thing that I could be openly ambitious about, it would be that I would love to have more people come up to me just suggesting new things that they have never had the guts to try with artists. I don't give a shit. Let me just try new things. That's my brand and I'm glad that's my brand because I love trying new things.
[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 hope to achieve, what would that look like for you?
[SU LEE]: I think it would be to play the main stage at Head in the Clouds Festival. I just feel like that's such a big embodiment of the status you can have as an Asian creativity musician. I think it's just symbolic, not so much the festival itself or the headliners that are usually there, but it's more the significance of it and the symbolism of it playing the main stage and you have a base of this really loving, wholesome community of people who share a culture like no other.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Those are all the questions I have for you. Is there anything that I didn't ask that you'd want to add?
[SU LEE]: Please share Messy Sexy with your loved ones, your friends, your dogs and cats and your grandma and grandpas.
Photo by Sela Shiloni