Digital Cover: Tei Shi
After five years of releasing music as a signed recording artist, pop prodigy Tei Shi returns fully independent with a fresh perspective on trusting herself and following her intuition.
Growing up between Bogotá, Colombia, and Vancouver, Canada, Tei Shi is heavily influenced by her everchanging environment and cross-cultural identity. Tei Shi - the moniker for singer, songwriter, and producer Valerie Teicher - isn’t afraid to creatively go outside her comfort zone. Her first two EPs, Saudade (2013) and Verde (2015), introduced her to the world as a skilled and fluid vocalist while she fully stepped into her own brewing confections centered around trusting your own intuition. Her debut album Crawl Space showcases her vocal prowess threaded together by a craftily executed take on pop minimalism, tempered by restraint and openness alike.
Forwarding to 2019, Tei Shi released her career-defining sophomore album La Linda - an emotionally and sonically daring project where we witnessed the artist embrace her Latin roots and multicultural identity, seamlessly shifting between languages and musical genres that demonstrate the mastery of her pen. Over spacious R&B sensibilities, she explores nuances of her voice while spilling emotional excess across this beautiful record. After breaking out of a toxic label dynamic, Tei Shi dropped her alt-pop EP Die 4 Ur Love in 2020, allowing the singer to shake off feelings of resentment and disappointment through a combination of dance-pop and existential songwriting. The record laid the sonic groundwork for how evolved Tei Shi’s process has been.
In a conversation with LISTEN Magazine, Tei Shi opens up about her current sonic palette along with the releases of her two recent singles “GRIP” & “BAD PREMONITION.”
LISTEN: It's great to see you releasing music again. How does it feel to be back after a two two-year hiatus?
Tei Shi: It feels really good. It feels great. I'm finally doing things the way that I've wanted to for so long, and this time I'm being able to follow my instincts and make my own decisions and not have to run that by a bunch of other people. That's been a freeing experience for me. In a lot of ways, I almost feel like I'm starting my career for real right now, even though I've been doing it for so long already.
LISTEN: Does that come with a feeling of freedom and liberation? Does that affect your creative process of making new music?
Tei Shi: A lot of the music that I'm starting to release now is music that I was writing throughout the last two years when I was experiencing the feeling of hitting a dead end. The music that I'm releasing now, was written throughout those experiences and those emotions. So creatively that was a whole journey. I'm approaching it from such a different perspective of knowing that I'm not gonna have to prove to somebody else why it should get released or why it's worth investing energy and, and time into.
It's definitely liberating creatively. I think when it comes to the music that's coming out now, it's kind of, it's a mix of both feeling liberated and feeling very trapped. There were a lot of times when I was feeling really held back and my creative process got really affected by that. There was a point where I just had to really work on that and work on separating external opinions or any external aspects from my creativity. Once I was able to do that, I definitely felt so liberated. It's a completely different experience sitting down to write or going into the studio with someone and knowing that at the end of the day, I'm the one who's gonna decide what happens with that music. It's a completely different feeling that I'm really grateful for.
LISTEN: That's amazing. You can hear that on “Bad Premonition” it's like you're stepping into a new sense of confidence with the new music that's out.
Tei Shi: Yeah. I think that was the kind of confidence that was forged out of the difficult situations I was in. In some ways I pushed myself a lot because of the circumstances, feeling like I had to prove to somebody else that this song I had just written was worth putting out and investing in. I really pushed myself as a songwriter and as an artist in general. It was confidence that came out of that difficulty. I felt it was forged in the fire.
LISTEN: Yeah, absolutely.
Tei Shi: I had no other choice. I was saying a lot of things on these songs that I wasn't able to get across in real life and things that I was trying to say to the people that I was working with but wasn't being listened to. It forced me to get that stuff in the songs and get it across in a direct way because that was something I was really not able to do in my day-to-day life.
LISTEN: Is your music an outlet for that? Some of your songs are very interpersonal. Do you get a little hesitant or nervous to be that vulnerable in your music?
Tei Shi: Sometimes. I mean, to be honest, not really. I struggled with that for a number of years when I first started putting music out. That was definitely something that was really hard for me. Because of the kind of journey, I've been on and because I've been doing it for a pretty long time now, I've gotten to a place where it doesn't really phase me anymore. But when it comes to making the music, I've lost a lot of that hesitation of putting myself out there emotionally. And in terms of releasing the music, I've also let go of those fears. I think to me it's more exciting than anything else. I feel the most excited and motivated by my music when it's really putting something out there and bearing something and saying something real.
Fear or hesitation is more like fuel for me now. I feel like I'm doing something right when I make something that others find really vulnerable.
LISTEN: Your sound has always been evolving from the beginning until now. As you grow and change, is there a song that you still hold true to you or one that still resonates with you?
Tei Shi: I think there's a lot of them. I really go back and forth with like my catalog. Once I release something, I distance myself from it in a way. I feel like a lot of my past music, I have kind of avoided revisiting and even just looking at it.
LISTEN: I feel that.
Tei Shi: But recently, there's been moments where I've kind of forced myself to do that and I've actually been really pleasantly surprised. I'm like ‘oh, okay my past music isn't trash - it's not the garbage that I've made myself believe it was.’ It's really easy to be so critical of the work that you've put out. I have a really complicated relationship with a lot of my old songs. Where I'm either just trying to avoid it and forget about it or I'm really nostalgic and emotional about it.
The very first song that I ever released was called "Sickasfuck". And it was just something I wrote like in my dorm room in college and I just remember it was such a simple song like it was all just acapella and that's one of the projects that I've like really avoided looking back on for a long time.
But once I did, I was like there's something about that song that really resonates with me today. Cause it's really about realizing that all you really need at the end of the day is yourself. And finding the power in that and realizing that you are enough. You don't need to try and compensate for anything by looking for it in other people. That still resonates with me a lot.
LISTEN: I relate to that mentality of just ignoring older stuff or older work and like completely detaching from it.
Tei Shi: I think most people do. It's a normal thing but it's tough when it's out there, right? Like it's tough when it's like on the internet or on streaming platforms and it's just out there and there's no, there's no hiding it.
LISTEN: That's true. Do you still keep that mentality when you have to perform them live for shows or anything like that?
Tei Shi: I'm having more fun when it comes to doing shows and figuring out set lists. I can pick and choose and make a curated set list for each show. I'm having more fun with going back to older songs of mine and bringing them into my current world and updating them a little bit and finding new things in them. Now, I have enough of a breadth of music I've released where I can do that.
I think now I'm way more confident as a performer and as a vocalist. So it's fun going back to older songs where I feel like I was really shy and not confident in those things and performing them from a really different point of view now.
LISTEN: No, totally. I've even fallen in love with songs after listening to them live. A live performance can give a new life to an older song.
Tei Shi: That's something that's very new for me. For a long time, I felt like I had to perform the song exactly as it is on the recording and it has to sound as close to the recording as possible. But now I'm realizing I can do whatever with these songs and that's really freeing and fun.
LISTEN: With “BAD PREMONITION” and “GRIP” out, is that the sonic direction that you're going to be leaning towards for your upcoming project?
Tei Shi: Yes, totally. “GRIP” and “BAD PREMONITION” are very much introducing the sound of this project. The guiding principle for me has been minimalism and making songs that feel very intentional and have a lot of open space in them. So sounds that are all really dialed in. Keeping it as minimal as possible so that my voice can kind of really lead the way.
I think both songs are very representative of the direction I'm going in. Which is leaning into more pop production and that minimalistic style. But then there's a grit. There's kind of an edge that I'm seeking with this music that contrasts some of my past music which is much more soft, ethereal, and pretty.
I would say “GRIP” and “BAD PREMONITION” are very much the intro to the sonic world of this new chapter.
LISTEN: Oh, I'm excited! Does it differ from when you made Die 4 Ur Love or along the lines of a similar sound on there?
Tei Shi: Yeah, I think there's some things that I learned making Die 4 Ur Love that I've brought into this new music. There are things that I wasn't really happy about with Die 4 Ur Love that I've realized. I think with this new stuff it's a little less clean, there is something really clean and shiny about some of the stuff on Die 4 Ur Love.
Die 4 Ur Love was definitely me stepping more into that pop space, especially with my songwriting, just like really trying to make bangers. I didn't really get to shape the production across that EP the way that I fully wanted to.
LISTEN: Describing it as clean and shiny fits it perfectly. “OK Crazy” is the perfect example.
Tei Shi: Yes. That's probably my favorite one on that EP. That was the one I had the most fun with.
“Die For Your Love”, the title track of that ep. That one in particular to me was just a little too clean for me. So, I'm really enjoying playing with the clean and shiny pop direction, but then also a kind of more gritty side of things too. The contrast between those two is what I'm really trying to finesse in this new music.
LISTEN: I can’t wait! What's something that's inspired you recently?
Tei Shi: Honestly, I think meditation has been inspiring me a lot. I've been doing a lot of meditation for the past year and a half very regularly. It's really helped me step out of my head and follow intuition more in a way. I've been finding a lot of inspiration in that silence and stillness. It’s something more new to me. I never really explored that until quite recently. It's made such a difference in my daily life that it obviously spills over into my work and also allowing me to not be so intense and hard on myself over every little thing. Kind of letting things be. That's been freeing and opening me up more creatively.
Chris: My last question is, who are you listening to right now?
Tei Shi: Right now I'm listening to a lot of my dear friend Nick Hakim, who just released three new songs and I cannot stop listening to them. They're on repeat. I've been listening to Alex G's new album, which I really love too. I've been checking out the new Shygirl record, which is really fun. And also this artist, LYZZA, I am really into these days.