There’s something about how women listen and how women make music that bleeds through A Lost Singer. Perception, sound, and feeling move together in the track. Doused in electronic beats, it carries a pull that guides the listener, offering a new vocabulary in taste and sound.
Adai wrote her first song at twelve and taught herself guitar and keyboard to bring her ideas to life. Since graduating from UCLA in 2016, she has worked independently as a singer, songwriter, and producer. You can hear her classical and traditional Chinese training in the way the instruments and vocals interact—delicate, precise, and full of space.
In A Lost Singer, Adai reinterprets the 1937 classic Tianya Genu. Where the original told the story of a woman wandering in search of a soulmate.
Adai’s version is about a woman making her own path. She isn’t waiting. She’s moving. It’s a small shift, but it changes everything. Very opposing to the image of a woman created in pop culture. One who’s static. Waiting for love and luck to happen to her.
The track reminds you of how women in music are shaping new ways to tell stories, adding nuance and a different kind of movement to sound. Yili Cow contributes production and electronic textures, helping shape the song’s rhythm and lift.
Around the forty-second mark, the electronic beat takes over and suddenly you’re lifted off the ground and can easily transport onto a psychedelic world where clouds are the colour of cotton candy and the sun sets right in your eyes. That’s a whole lot of experience packed in one song, with a very nuanced understanding of layering, especially a classical tone with a modern house and electronic texture.
