After years of building a multifaceted creative career, Singaporean singer-songwriter Alyssa Lie is entering her next chapter with a clear focus: putting music at the centre and building on everything that came before.
Here, she shares her journey, creative evolution, and what music means to her, in her own words.
Music has been the one constant throughout every version of my life.
I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. It was my first love before I even understood that it could become a career. Over the years, singing became songwriting, releasing my own music, performing and eventually producing my own concerts.
At the same time, my career grew in many different directions. I became a content creator, worked with brands, hosted, did voiceover work and found different ways to build a life around being creative.
I’m grateful for all of it. Every part has taught me something and shaped the artist and person I am today.
But through every chapter, I kept coming back to music.
That has become especially clear to me now. I love being creative in so many different ways, but I know what I want at the centre of everything I build.
I’m an artist.
And in many ways, I’ve already been building that life for years.
I’ve performed at Sofar Sounds Singapore, the National Stadium for HSBC Rugby SVNS and the Singapore Indoor Stadium for BLAST Slam IV. I’ve independently produced my own concerts, including my most recent show, HALF-ASLEEP: INTO THE DREAMSCAPE. My music has received national radio play, and songs that once existed as little voice notes on my phone have made their way out into the world.
Instagram: @itsalyssalie
There have been so many moments where I’ve stood onstage and thought, “This. This is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Songwriting gives me that feeling too, just in a much quieter way.
A lot of my songs come from things I’m actually living through love, longing, heartbreak, hope and all the feelings that are sometimes easier to sing than to explain.
My latest release, Bed of Roses, began with a very ordinary moment. Someone I loved asked me once why I had never written a song for him. Then one day, while I was at King Albert Park waiting for a meeting, the words “Where are you? Are you thinking of me?” came into my head.
So I took out my phone and started recording voice notes before I forgot them.
That little moment eventually became a song about missing someone you love when you can’t physically be together, and imagining this dreamlike place where the distance between you disappears.
That’s one of my favourite things about music. Something can begin as this incredibly specific feeling in your own life, and once you release it, someone else can hear themselves in it too.
Right now, I’m working on more new music and being very intentional about what I want the next few years of my career to look like.
Music is at the centre.
That doesn’t mean leaving behind everything else I do. Content creation, brand work, collaborations and the different parts of my creative career are all part of my world. The difference is that now I’m building them around the artist, rather than treating music as just one of many things I do.
I also have a much clearer sense of who I am creatively.
My voice is naturally bright. I love pop music. I love big feelings and dreamy, beautiful visual worlds. I’m Singaporean and Peranakan, and that will always be part of who I am. At the same time, I want to make music that travels far beyond Singapore and connects with people wherever they are.
I’m interested in seeing how far I can take that by becoming even more myself.
There’s still so much ahead that excites me: more songs I want to release, bigger stages I want to perform on, countries I want to play in and people around the world I haven’t reached yet.
Being an independent artist means building all of that piece by piece. I’m involved not only in writing and performing the music, but also in the production decisions, visuals, live shows, content, releases and business behind it.
It’s a lot to build, but I love knowing that what I’m creating is mine.
And I’m not starting from zero.
Every song, every show, every unexpected detour, every person I’ve met and every version of myself that came before this one is part of what I’m building now.
I’m not starting over.
I’m moving forward.
And music is exactly where it belongs: at the centre.
