By Aaron Kok – published 2 Mar 2026
There is a stillness to Shye that one could mistake for shyness, until she starts talking about music. That’s when her voice picks up, her eyes brighten, and her thoughts unravel into something quietly intense. Her voice lifts with a streak of conviction; unflashy, unyielding, and built over nine years of making music, mostly alone, often by instinct, and always on her own terms.
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Jacket; pumps, Chanel. Singlet; vest; jeans; necklaces and ring (worn throughout), stylist’s own.
Photo: Joel Low
At 24, the Singaporean singer-producer is about to release her most personal work yet: an album shaped by grief, healing, memory, and what she calls “the in-between”. It’s due this May, and arrives sans bombast, but with a soft, steady honesty that cuts deeper instead. “I wrote it in a year when I had to relook at everything around me. The people in my life, my energy, what I was holding onto,” she says.
To say that the project unpacks endings, or even beginnings, isn’t exactly accurate per se. Instead, Shye muses, the work is a dwelling in the middle: in the moments after a goodbye, before anything else has had time to arrive.
One of its main songs, “Shed”, centres on a lyric that stuck with her long after she wrote it: Maybe it’s time to learn to live with the skin we will never shed. “There are just some emotions that aren’t meant to be resolved,” she explains. “They’re not meant to be erased or even moved on from. You just learn to live with them, and that’s okay.”
Jacket, Chanel. Singlet; jeans, stylist’s own.
Photo: Joel Low
This album, more than any of her past releases, is a mirror. Not for others, although her fans will undoubtedly find parts of themselves in the work, but for herself. “It’s very reflective of my story,” she says. “It came from a moment of needing to confront things I hadn’t fully understood yet. Not just in terms of relationships, but also in how I see myself, how I grow, how I change.”
The result is a body of work that resists resolution. There are no tidy lessons here, no grand crescendos of catharsis. What she offers instead is space: to ache, to hold memories without needing to reframe them as wisdom. In doing so, she captures something that feels strikingly present in the state of music today. At a time when algorithms reward instant gratification and trends chase virality, there is also a groundswell of artists who are pulling us back into deeper territory and reminding us of what it means to be human.
Just days before Shye and I spoke, Bad Bunny staged one of the most emotionally resonant Super Bowl halftime shows in recent memory—a performance that moved beyond spectacle through substance to explore cultural identity, vulnerability and pride. And right before “Bunny Bowl”, Olivia Dean was awarded the 2026 Grammy for Best New Artist, recognised for her songs that feel intimate and immense all at once in the way she renders love, loss, and longing without embellishment.
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Shirt; belt, Chanel. Cape; singlet; jeans, stylist’s own.
Photo: Joel Low
At the core of this growing movement are big name artists and independent musicians, who pay homage to our shared grounds as humans who bond through community. And in an auralscape accustomed to choruses about sex and escapism, this was a reminder that music can still say something. That it can, and should, matter.
Shye is of that ilk. Maybe in a quieter way, without the pyrotechnics or the hundreds of background dancers, but her music carries meaning and reminds us what sharing bonds feel like too. “I hope people see me,” she says. “Not just the music, but the person behind it. I hope that they see the growth and honesty. This is a love letter to all of us who are still figuring it out.”
This steadfast radicalism runs through everything she does. Her early work was self-produced from a GarageBand setup at home, without formal training in music or instruments. Her biggest streaming hit? A demo called “Love You”, which she never intended to release beyond SoundCloud. That rawness and vulnerability—sometimes awkward, often unpolished, but always sincere—has become her signature.
Trousers; belt, Chanel. Blouse; singlet; slingback shoes, stylist’s own.
Photo: Joel Low
There’s a kind of emotional resilience here that doesn’t demand to be admired, but it lingers nonetheless. When she performs live, whether to a crowd of 20 or 2,000, she doesn’t dial up a persona. “I’m still awkward on stage,” she laughs. “But maybe that’s why it connects. It’s like, ‘Haha, she’s a loser just like me’.” Which is perhaps what endears the hundreds of thousands of listeners to her: her fans don’t follow a brand, they follow a person.
“It really is about the music connecting,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be real.”
Touring teaches her the value of surrender—a tricky lesson for someone who prefers the control of her home setup. “When you’re performing, you have to be ready for anything. You have to chill, adapt. It’s taught me to let go a little.” It has also taught her gratitude, as she’s quick to credit the crew, the behind-the-scenes workers who make shows run, the people she never wants to overlook. “You just show up and sing, but they have to clean up. So you better say thank you! I just sing the words, feel the feelings, and stay humble,” she shrugs with a giggle.
In a way, her creative independence has always been both her superpower and her shield. She produces, writes, and records herself. She doesn’t mind being misunderstood. What bothers her more is the assumption that her success just appeared, without seeing the years of quiet effort that got her here. “It’s late nights, it’s failure, it’s figuring things out. But I don’t really share that online, so people think it’s all just easy.”
Top; pumps, Chanel. Jeans, stylist’s own.
Photo: Joel Low
That is the reality of being an independent artist today. The idea of a creative career isn’t as frowned upon today as it was a decade ago. There are more opportunities for musical aspirations to become a reality. “Yes, there are more platforms, more access, but there’s also more noise. It’s not just about making good music and that’s the end of the work. It’s about marketing, content, consistency. It’s hard.” She doesn’t deny the emotional toll. Social media, for instance, doesn’t come naturally to her. “I’m introverted, so asking people to listen to my music feels like the scariest thing ever.”
But she’s learning how to adapt on her own terms. The trick, she says, is to stay true to your own pace. “Baby steps…especially in an industry where everything moves fast. I want to keep growing, keep learning, and even be open to making mistakes. Just not so many that I hurt myself,” she deadpans.
Even fashion, which she enjoys in her own low-key way, follows this instinctive rhythm. She was the first Singaporean artist to be invited to attend a Chanel show in Paris, for the brand’s fall/winter 2025 runway. That experience left a mark, not just sartorially, but spiritually. “To visit Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment and see where she lived and worked, to learn about her work ethic, her discipline, her belief in her vision…that was inspiring. It reminded me to stay true to myself too.”
Jacket, Chanel.
Photo: Joel Low
Has she ever felt pressure to represent something—the Singaporean arts and cultural scene, youth, femininity? “Unconsciously, maybe,” she admits. “But I just try to speak for where I am in life. If people see themselves in that, that’s where the connection happens.”
As for what this moment says about who she’s becoming, Shye pauses, then answers with the same clarity that runs throughout her album: “I hope it shows that I built something from the ground up, and that I was willing to sit with uncertainty, that I was learning to trust myself more as a person, a woman and as an artist.”
After all, this is an artist who is more interested in substance than splash. Whether in sound, style or selfhood, Shye seems less concerned with the finish line than the process of becoming, and perhaps that’s what makes her voice so resonant in a time where identity is often curated and commodified. Her work reminds us that there’s value in honesty even when it’s unpolished, and in certainty even when it’s unresolved.
Because even in the quietest voice, truth carries. And Shye, for all her softness, knows how to make it sing.
Editor-in-Chief: Kenneth Goh
Photography: Joel Low
Creative Direction: Windy Aulia
Styling: Gracia Phang
Makeup and Hair: Kat Zhang / The Suburbs Studio using Chanel Beauty and Dyson
Photographer’s assistant: Eddie Teo
Stylist’s assistant: Laila Mishazira
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.harpersbazaar.com.sg ’
