Tay Kewei is all smiles

SINGAPORE — Singer-songwriter Tay Kewei has been active in the music scene since 2006 and she has made the most of her opportunities in those eight years.

She collaborated with Chinese pop stars like Wang Lee Hom, David Tao, A-Mei and JJ Lin — whether as a background vocalist, duet partner or erhu player — before embarking on her solo efforts and eventually signing with Japanese label S2S in 2009, for which she released two albums: Come Closer With … and Fallin’ in 2010 and 2012, respectively.

She has taken it up a notch again. While her previous albums were primarily in English and consisting mainly of covers, her latest, which is out today, is an all-original Mandarin offering titled Turn Back And Smile.

“I used to tour with all the Taiwan artistes so the media always saw me as a Mandarin pop personality, so I think this is long overdue,” Tay explained. “Of course, my previous albums had Chinese pop singles that were always on the radio and still are, so we needed to refresh our Chinese pop repertoire.”

Turn Back And Smile is very much a made-in-Singapore project, with producer See Kwang Seng, mixer Jerry Chua and arrangers Martin Tang, Kenn C and Jonathan Koh all playing prominent roles. “They are really masters at their work,” she remarked.

Releasing a Mandarin album was her way of paying tribute to the heydays of Chinese pop music in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and to local singers such as Kit Chan, Stefanie Sun, Lin and Tanya Chua, who are still going strong today.

More significantly, Turn Back And Smile had offered the new challenge of writing the bulk of the album herself, with assistance from some talented collaborators, of course.

“Last year was a down year for me. I was very insecure, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing,” she confessed. “So I decided to exercise, practise (on the) guitar and write. But a lot of the stuff I (initially) wrote was self-indulgent, so it didn’t go down well with the company (S2S).”

However, Tay managed to turn the corner, coming up with commercial, radio-friendly songs. “I wanted to make this album work,” she remarked, adding that her label’s support had been essential. “(S2S) put so much faith in me, it’s beyond business sense, so I am very thankful for that.”

Of her songwriting process, she explained: “I tried different ways. I tried writing the lyrics first, writing the melodies first — I even looked at other people’s lyrics and sang new melodies over these. Having creativity and flow is easy, but organising a structure — that’s where you’ve got to put in the hard work.”

It finally paid off when she listened to an arrangement for her original song Heart Shaped Void by Tang. “Before, it was just a crappy piece of demo,” she candidly admitted. “It was just a vague thing, but when I listened and sang along to (Tang’s arrangement), I cried because it sounded so beautiful and he was one of those who arranged for Stefanie Sun when I was growing up, so I just felt that he breathed magic dust on my demo and made it come to life.”

Turn Back And Smile is out now. For more information, visit http://www.s2s.com.sg.