Singaporean, Australian artists collaborate on ‘honest, heartbreaking’ song

An impromptu jam has led London-based Singaporean singer-songwriter-producer Charlie Lim, Melbourne producer and electronic artist Katz, and L.A.-based Singaporean singer-songwriter Linying to produce a melancholic ditty titled Definitely.

Charlie was just visiting Katz at his studio in Melbourne when the latter started playing a chord progression. “Charlie jumped on and we just had a little improvisation session. Luckily, Charlie was filming it and Lin got to hear it!” Katz shared to The STAR in an e-mail interview.

“I heard Charlie and Katz jamming in a reel they uploaded on Instagram, just piano and guitar, and it made me feel something, so I wrote to it. The song is about the helplessness you feel watching someone else be so sure when you’ve been so confused,” added Linying.

The three-way collaboration is “honest and heartbreaking but not overly melodramatic,” as Charlie described it, adding that the song is both “personal” and “universal at the same time.”

The album cover art for the collab song and melancholic ditty Definitely

“I feel like Lin has a penchant for writing these beautiful, oblique lines that transcend beyond any specific scenario that she was writing about at the time. I was in tears when I first heard her demo after she sent it over, so the song became very personal to me as well and I just poured everything into it when producing the track,” Charlie explained the sentiment of the single.

“I think anything universal starts with being something personal,” echoed Linying.

Charlie’s records TIME/SPACE and CHECK-HOOK both reached No. 1 spot on the iTunes Singapore chart years ago. The Straits Times cited TIME/SPACE as Best Pop Album of the Year and the record was named Best Song of the Year by Apple Music Singapore. He had performed in various music festivals around the world, including the Wanderland Festival in Manila, and collaborated with international artists, namely, Kimbra, Khalil Fong, TENDRE, Elephant Gym, BIBI, Taku Takahashi, and Filipina singer-songwriter Clara Benin. He will be playing at the Marina Central Festival dubbed District M in Singapore come Oct. 6 and 7.

“I love playing in the Philippines... I was there in 2019 for Wanderland and also did a couple of shows with Clara Benin. She’s such a gem,” Charlie said.

Linying, who was in the Philippines while responding to this interview, shared, “It’s a beautiful country. My favorite memory is my current reality, savoring a wondrous plate of lechon and rice.”

Linying is the music maker behind the Spotify viral Sticky Leaves, which is her first single. She co-wrote the song Overgrown with Nadine Lustre, in collaboration with WILD Entertainment and produced by Josh Wei.

Katz would love to visit the Philippines someday and play some shows here. In 2018, he debuted his EP called Waterfall, dropped Back From Nothing single in 2019 and released another EP Only You in 2021.

Meanwhile, here are the excerpts of the rest of the interview:

How was the creative process in churning out Definitely?

Linying: It felt immediate and instinctive.

Katz: It was super organic, since it started from an improvisation with no pretense or even an intention to take it any further than the original jam.

Charlie: The whole thing was really about preserving the spontaneity of Lin’s response to our jam, and then building a space that could hold the three of us without any unnecessary clutter. We also kept and polished up some of the original ideas from the jam itself which translated quite well.

What is the most challenging and fun part to do in recording the track?

Charlie: I think it was about finding a balance between buffing the arrangement but keeping it minimalist. The arrangement sounds deceptively simple, but there are actually so many vocal layers which give the song this kind of misty, “bokeh” effect that I think goes well with the sentiment of the lyric. There’s quite a number of guitar layers, too, doing really simple and understated parts but give the song its flow and rhythm by supporting Katz’s piano parts.

Linying: For me, it was the stacks and stacks of harmonies. I get carried away layering vocal lines.

Katz: For me, it was trying to recreate the original emotion of the jam, but in a studio session. I wanted to make sure that essence wasn’t lost, while still trying to produce something refined and suitable for proper release.

How did you work on your chemistry and create “magic” together for this song?

Linying: I think the magic comes when you put the least pressure on the outcome!

Katz: I think the process of how this song was made (a random improvised jam, which Lin happened to hear and intuitively wrote to) is a big factor as to why the song works. Nothing was forced; the chemistry and magic (were) genuinely organic.

Charlie: We’re all Tauruses, but we do not care about astrology.

Can you tell us about your musical backgrounds and influences?

Charlie: I do love a lot of neo-soul and R&B and electronic music, which are all really different from this track, but at the end of the day, I’m just a singer-songwriter using a mix of different genres to have fun and find new ways to express myself.

Katz: My background is in jazz piano, which I was doing for many years before moving into more pop-based music. But I think there will always be a bit of jazz influence in the contemporary music I make.

In what way are you guys similar and different, music-wise?

Linying: We’re similar in that we all love music deeply; we’re different in that I’m definitely a lot less well-versed in music theory than these two are.

Charlie: We’re all melancholic softies at heart, really. I guess we differ in terms of how we might write music? I pour over things a lot and spend days trying to finesse a phrase, whereas Lin seems to have an eternal fountain of lyrics constantly channeling through her. Katz is probably the most stoic musician I know and can kind of complement anyone, really.