Joanne Zou

When I tell Linying that my favorite song from her 2023 EP House Mouse is ‘Take Me To Your House,’ she laughs a bit and says, “Oh man, I knew it. You’re a softy.” It’s true that I’m soft, sensitive; these qualities are part of why I’m drawn to the L.A.-based Singaporean singer-songwriter’s music. ‘Take Me To Your House’ centers around the house as a place of sanctuary and shared lives. The song is grand and intimate at once, full of hope tempered by the ever-present possibility of heartbreak as Linying sings, “Don’t just say we’ll split the difference / actually close the distance / take me to your house.”

I sat down with Linying over Zoom in early January, neither of us in our houses: I was in China, and Linying in the Philippines. That afternoon comes after a few highly stressful days, and as always, music brings me comfort amongst the anxieties and demands of traveling. I open by asking about House Mouse, the four-song EP released less than two months previously. “I have never felt as convinced and convicted and happy with it. I’m trying to synthesize what it is that makes it so,” she ruminates. “I just feel like it’s the best music of my life. But I don’t know if I’m only saying that because it’s the music that makes me happiest.”

Linying’s indie pop songs are strung through with fragile emotion. I’m not sure how I first came across her 2016 EP Paris 12—probably Spotify or YouTube—but I was immediately struck by her lyricism. On the record’s titular song, she sings in a crystal-clear voice over grand, echoing piano chords: “Somewhere by the corner stove / I said the words that I was told / ecstatic, scared, and daring to believe.” I’ve thought about that final line a lot over the years, stitching the idea into my own being as a way of understanding how I move through the world—or at least, how I perceive myself. Seven years later, on House Mouse, Linying seems to have lost some of that fear, reaching instead towards happiness. “In this past year, and in the making of this record, I realized that I don't think objectivity matters as much as I thought it did,” she reflects. Instead, she wants to follow her instincts when it comes to music. “All it is is how it makes someone feel, right? That kind of security, I feel so good to finally feel it.” This confidence shines through in both her mindset and the sound of House Mouse itself, which is light, buoyant, rich with instruments.

The journey from Paris 12 to House Mouse was neither simple nor straightforward. “I’ve wasted many years,” Linying admits. “Trying to be something else or I don’t know, trying to be ahead of the game and all that.” The EP gained traction from Singaporean music writers and indie listeners worldwide, who praised the vocals and lyricism. The years immediately following Paris 12’s success saw a spate of singles, as well as a handful of EDM collaborations, as Linying signed to Universal Music and began asserting herself within the global industry. Reflecting on that time, Linying muses, “I feel like I got my first little hit of affirmation, and then I got really worried and precious about my music. I was like, ‘Oh no, what's the follow up gonna be like, and am I gonna be able to maintain this momentum?’ There was so much interest from management, like signing to a major label in Asia. I remember my manager at the time said, ‘Everybody wants a piece of the pie.’ I remember feeling really validated by that.” But now, she reflects, “It really messed with my head. I would spend a whole year sitting on a song. And I would just keep over-cooking and over-cooking, and I would push release dates further and further.”

Getting caught up in your own head is a familiar feeling for any creative, but the fact that it’s so common doesn’t make the experience any less anxiety-inducing. As Linying describes it to me, “First of all, you start with exploring the art form—for you as a writer, for me as a musician—with a sense of play and meaninglessness. There's no end goal: you do it because you like it. You go along with that. The moment you gain some success with it, you start using it to be like, ‘Okay, this is my identity now; this gives me validation. This cements, this salves any kind of wound that I might have ever had, or any kind of insecurity.’“ She describes the onset of constant self-doubt, comparing oneself to others—“It was an always losing game.”

Still, Linying affirms, “I'm still proud of all the music that I put out in those years. There's ‘Tall Order,’ ‘Paycheck,’ and then There Could Be Wreckage Here [2022]—that whole album, I'm really proud of. I'm grateful that even in these moments of clouded judgment, there’s still music.” As a listener, each new Linying single was precious to me, a new treasure to carry through my days.

House Mouse, though, transformed how Linying approached music-making. Crucially, in the summer of 2022, about six months after the release of the Wreckage album, she moved to Los Angeles. “It really opened my eyes to what it could be,” she muses. “Everyone’s friends. I think I’d always been in situations where the label was putting stuff together. So I’d be meeting people blind and it just never turned out well, because they were always trying to get a hit.” With a new group of friends, Linying was able to approach music once again as a form of play, free from the pressure of structured songwriting frameworks. “At the end of it, you just never felt like the day was wasted, because you enjoyed each other's company,” she tells me. As a testament to this creative collaboration, one official House Mouse T-shirt features the tracklist and lists the band members who lent their “shimmering sounds” to the record. These are Jon Graber, who plays in NOFX; Jordan Blackman, who’s played with Toro y Moi; and Brendon Benson, who was in a band called We Are The Union. “That’s how House Mouse came about. It was just the four of us, we were just friends,” Linying recounts. “We didn't go in saying, ‘Hey, I have a plan to make all these records, what's your rate?’ It was just like, ‘Let's hang and let's just work on music, because we have a really good time doing it.’” That refreshing way of working, Linying says, has changed her life, “I'm so, so proud and so, so happy with what we’ve made.”

Of course, the years of working up to House Mouse also included COVID-19, lockdowns, and the ensuing sense of isolation. During this time, Linying began the newsletter 1800-LINYING-SINGS, sharing thoughts and unreleased demos and covers via Telegram and email. When I bring this up, Linying first asks, “Wait, do you think it’s nuts?” I reassure her that I think it’s lovely. Laughing, she says, “That helps.” What began as a desire for structure and commitment evolved into a way of connecting with her audience. “When I started putting songs out like that, and engaging with people in that way, I started realizing, ‘Oh, okay, this is what people like, and this is what I like to [do]. I'm attracting the right kind of people who enjoy the same mode of transference,’” she recounts. “As I've gone through more growth and more personal change, and the music's evolved as well. I just, I don't know, overthought it less. Then I started feeling comfortable with talking about the songs and being transparent about it.”

She recalls an anecdote where somebody asked her about a line from Paris 12’s ‘Alpine’: “Cherry hill / I don’t look a thing like that.” She’s forgotten whether she told that person the truth behind the lyric—that Cherry Hill was the name of her ex’s condo. At the time, she admits, “It felt so dumb.” Now, Linying feels more open about sharing her inspiration, mirroring the vulnerabilities laced through her music. “As you grow a bit more sure of yourself, and as you start to live more in accordance with your beliefs, then your life becomes a patchwork of intentional decisions,” Linying shares. “You start to own your decisions, and you own your experiences and see them for what they are. You lose the shame and embarrassment of like, making songs out of experiences. That just kind of fades away.” Linying’s growth and security in her musical identity is crucial in an environment wherein women songwriters so often contend with gendered reception of their music, with songs often treated as purely diaristic and/or labeled as ‘sad girl’ music in ways that dismiss their artistry. At another point in the interview, she recalls how, when she first put out ‘Take Me To Your House,’ a listener reached out on Instagram to express how the song resonated with them. “I know what it feels like to be that kind of listener. I’ve felt the exact same way,” Linying says. “So when it comes to that intensely personal connection, I'm just like, ‘Yeah, I can deal with a little bit of discomfort.’ That’s a small, small price to pay for everything else that the music's doing.”

It’s true that Linying’s music is always sharply evocative, her lyrics attuned to small details that feel vivid to real life. “Wear it out of you like I do my best blue jacket / with downtown Austin causing a racket,” she sings on 2019’s ‘All of Our Friends Know.’ We talk a bit about how she weaves experiences and nostalgia into her work, and about ‘Take Me To Your House,’ which she describes as “definitely the most melancholic of the lot. It just brings out this sense of yearning in me.” It does the same for me, and for my best friend Jordan; we’ve shared many delighted text exchanges about the song. ‘Take Me To Your House’ was co-written with Graber, as well as Conor Rayne from the hip-hop duo Brasstracks. Linying recalls the process, telling me: “We were all sitting together in a triangle and holding two guitars. Everyone’s feeling each other out and playing.” When it comes to songwriting, Linying professes to be less proficient in instruments than her friends, “But I'm extremely sensitive and emotional. I pay attention to a lot of how everything feels in life, and I think I'm good at living—mining experiences.” She returns to the same sentiment a little later: “I also see it as, ‘We're a team and my role is to live and pay attention to the living, and put that idea [into] the song. I'm at the start of it, and then I have the support and the love of friends to carry it on, and give it new meaning, put new layers to it.”

Nowadays, Linying says, “Inspiration is never too far out of reach.” When I ask about her main sources of inspiration, she circles back to her friends: the pre-session hang; hearing them play; taking in the music that they listen to. “The inspiration, it’s just so abundant every day in the studio,” she ruminates. “One time, we just went to this junkyard where this guy was selling haunted shit, like, his wife was a witch. It’s some L.A. shit. And it's just tubs of really scary-looking dolls. There was a coffin that his wife sleeps in. We just went, ‘Let's take the first hour and hang out, and pick up things, and just play.’”

That moment, and others, will probably make their way into a new album in 2024. Linying is full of a bright hope: “This is the kind of thing I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life,” she says. The joy is tempered by pragmatism, of course: “Knowing myself and knowing how humans are,” Linying continues, “I'm going to have a dry spell and not going to feel inspired. But right now, it's still there. I'm just gonna ride that wave for as long as I can.”

It’s exciting news for me. When I convey to Linying how long her music has been with me, she seems almost overwhelmed: “That’s what it’s about; it’s priceless,” she says. “It’s like we’re growing up together.” And that really is what it’s about. As we prepare to wrap up, Linying offers a thought: “For everyone for whom this music resonates… I hope for all of them to find it.” ‘It’ is the happiness and comfort which the artist has cultivated at last. “Everyone has a different mode of peace and a different mode of happiness. But I know that my audience… they’re like me. We’re the same type.” Having reached a place of more security, in herself and her music, Linying wants to broadcast the feeling to us. “While I've been lucky enough to benefit from the generosity of people who have brought me to this place and for me to feel this way, I'm like, ‘Okay, it's my moral duty to do this for the other people who are just like me, to model what that looks like,’” she tells me. “Because—it's great. For now.”