TyeLeah Pulls Songs From A Post-Breakup Daydream
Do You Wanna (Get to Know TyeLeah)?
The stage is usually imagined as a place to masquerade, to show up as a caricatured version of yourself and play a part. But for 22-year-old TyeLeah, the spotlight is a place of honesty. Everything else, it seems, calls for an act. “I spend most of my time working a corporate job. Using [they/them] pronouns and everything, a lot of the people I work with don’t respect that. It’s not because they’re rude, it’s just because they don’t know. Or they don’t care.” And while Tye doesn’t blame the people around them, no one likes playing a part made for someone else, especially not in their daily life.
Luckily, Tye has developed a pretty strong sense of who they are, which has proved crucial in finding their way as a solo artist. “It’s not like anyone ever came to me and said, ‘you should do this.’ No one ever saw me in a front and center stage kind of way. I think a lot of people growing up didn’t think that I had that in me. But then, that just made me want to do it more.”
“For me, it started in elementary school. Picking up singing, then guitar. And mostly I played the drums, which I still do a lot of. I had some classical training also and played the oboe for a bit . . . that didn’t really work out. Not my instrument,” Tye laughs. Hailing from Everett, WA, they come from a family of musicians. Their father was a classical violinist and singer. He and Tye’s mother, also a singer, made an album called Heavenscape which Tye got to watch come together from start to finish. Their grandpa, big in the jazz scene, was a musician as well and toured with the likes of Phil Collins and Kenny Loggins.
Tye recalls the catalyst for their music career as being the sighting of a famous jazz acapella group at a school-sponsored jazz festival. “I was sitting there listening to them and I went ‘wait a second, you’re telling me this jazz acapella group can make a living doing this, just touring and nothing else?'” Which, naturally, led to the conclusion that if a jazz acapella group can do it, anyone can.
Tye was also involved in an acapella jazz group during their time at Edmonds Community College as well as several theatre productions before finding their place in a local funk-pop band called Foxy Apollo. They joined the three-piece, soon-to-be six-piece group as a singer and percussionist. “[The band] had a lot of cool instrumentation, trumpets, saxophones, things like that,” says Tye. “Coming from the jazz background my family gave me, that felt like home” They stayed with the band for two and a half years, performing at house shows, bars, and parties across Washington. In 2020, the band released its first full-length album entitled Sweet Talk.
When Covid closed in, Foxy Apollo was gaining a lot of traction in the local scene. But much of that upward trajectory relied on fans accrued through live shows. “All of a sudden we didn’t have that for like two years,” says Tye. “That’s one thing that pushed me to go solo. No matter what happens now, I can still make music.”
But Tye knew well before then that going solo was inevitable. “I don’t want to have to scream to be heard,” they tell me. “And I mean that in the greater sense, but also in a literal one because I have a kind of quiet singing voice.” And during quarantine, there was nothing to drown them out. The isolation resulted in the release of their first solo track, “Do You Wanna (Get to Know Me)”, produced by Eli Jonathan.
“I don’t want to have to scream to be heard. And I mean that in the greater sense, but also in a literal one because I have a kind of quiet singing voice.”
— TyeLeah
*All photos courtesy of Giiirlband Productions
Reeling from a breakup and writing in the dead center of a pandemic, you’d expect something darker from an angsty, emerging soloist. But what Tye released in June was far from a middle finger to love or some longing ballad sedated by heartbreak. Instead, they push forward with what sounds like a summertime pop song injected with glitter.
“It was a fake fantasy world that I created for myself. I was like fresh out of it and trying to find a way to talk about things without it being a sad breakup song.” The lyrics are true to that. What feels like an upbeat ultrapop anthem says and does exactly what it intends to; it distracts from what it’s about.
Feeling better and getting better aren’t always the same thing. But sometimes all you can do in the aftermath is rally and dance like everything is fine until it is. “That’s honestly how I feel about our whole generation,” says Tye. “We’re all just kind of bummed. But like, the world is kind of a bummer, so I think it’s ok.”
Tye has another single on the way—a sort of alternative club pop song. It will pick up right where the first single left off, following that storyline onto the next page. Soon to follow will be their first EP, which is already in the works with their producer Nic Casey.
Tye notes that although their first few singles will clearly fall into some subcategory of pop music, what they plan to release in the future will vary from project to project. They have a love for jazz, funk, and songs with heavy or unique production, and those influences will certainly make themselves known later on. But the goal, for now, is to keep pushing out good content that’ll catch on quickly and fast-track them to live shows. “Anytime I’m performing live I can really come back into myself . . . When I sing, I feel like energy flows through my whole body, where I’m scared and awake in this really good way,” Tye tells me. The quickest way there is through pop.
For Tye, it’s also a matter of representation. “I like to have a mainstream sound because I like the music itself, but also because not enough queer people are in the mainstream, so I just want to be one of the people who have a hand on that. I think people are waiting for it.” The stage is where they feel the most accepted, and while they’re up there, Tye has the opportunity to share that feeling with the audience. “I want to be in a place where I can inspire the people who see me as I am, and hopefully I can help them in their own struggles.”
From our conversation, one thing that’s clear to me is that Tye is resourceful. Like, strand them on a deserted island and they might come home on a makeshift boat with a new album in hand, kind of resourceful. Old poems get recycled into new songs, their friends become their trusted production team and closest collaborators, and their living room becomes a nightclub for music videos. Tye has also put together a home studio; “so, no matter what happens now, I can still write music in my room,” they say. “I mean, I live in an apartment, so it’s not anything crazy. I just fit it where I have it, and make do. Covid and outside stuff can’t keep me from it.” It’s a ‘work with whatever’s in reach’ mindset that seems to keep them moving and stretching into new territory at all times.
As the life of a solo musician lays out its demands in front of them, that mindset becomes more and more a necessity. Tye explains that between trying to launch a career in music and working full time, it’s tough for new artists to get a breath to themselves. “We’re doing a million things at once. We get up, work a full day, can maybe make time to produce art, go to bed, and then the whole thing starts over again.” It’s an exhausting existence, but for those who know what they’re after, the chase is well worth it.
It’s what I want to do with the rest of my life,” says Tye. “I’m never going to stop doing it. Don’t care if I’m 80—I’mma still make my music until I can’t anymore.” The ultimate goal is to make enough doing music to where work outside of it is a non-thing. “I think while that’s hard to get, there’s time, and it’s not as unreachable as people think.” They plan to be the one in their family of musicians that finally and fully goes for it. “Whether it works out or it doesn’t, I’m giving it everything.”
TyeLeah Recommends
Usually, when I ask people about this they need a second to mull it over, but Tye is quick to share some of their favorites along with the specifics of what makes them great: Remi Wolf’s debut album, Juno, is a big inspiration to Tye’s EP in progress and their own work on the production side of things. Anything by Harry Styles, Amber Mark, Jaden Smith, or Billie Eilish gets a green light. The last two also get points for sense of fashion. The 1975 get a shoutout for their live performances. And Lil Nas X, who Tye wants nothing more than to befriend, is applauded for all of the above.
Learn More
For more on TyeLeah and their music, you can find them on Spotify and Instagram. And be sure to check out the music video for “Do You Wanna (Get to Know Me)” produced by Seattle’s own Giiirlband Productions.