Hong Kong-based singer-songwriter-producer cehryl has a voice as dulce and mellifluous as the songs she produces and writes to. Stories that explore the complexity of human emotion fill her dreamy, genre-fusing tracks, where her lyrical flair and classical training are on full display. From the strings she rips to the production, recording, and mixing, cehryl orchestrates every part of her songs. “I realized people don’t expect women to be producers and I hated that,” she admits, touching on her experience as an undergrad at Berklee College of Music, and the years that followed in Los Angeles where she worked in studios as an engineer whilst cultivating her own artistry. “Really broey producers from Soundcloud would message me and ask if I wanna top line things, and I just started saying no,” she says.
It hasn’t been easy for cehryl to find her voice. She’s always enjoyed singing, but for a long time she was timid. “I would even sing in the shower really softly so my parents wouldn’t hear,” she remembers about childhood at home in Hong Kong. In high school, she moved to Cheltenham in the UK, where she shed her shyness and began writing her own songs, drawing inspiration from a blend of R&B, punk and indie pop folk, from Alicia Keys to Avril Lavigne and Elliott Smith. cehryl pushed herself to perform in public, and her friends encouraged her to audition for music schools. When she got to college in Boston, cehryl began releasing her recordings under her moniker, a subtle change of her first name, Cheryl. “I was listening to a lot of neo soul and R&B and electronic stuff from London at the time,” she says about an early Soundcloud offering, 2017’s Chamber Music. “Lyrically hopefully I have improved, but I would make a lot of changes if I were to remake everything I’ve put out. I have to try to be okay with letting everyone see my progress.” Perfecting her craft is at the heart of cehryl’s artistic rigor, and doing so with the self-assured conviction—she cites Nina Simone, M.I.A., Rosalia, and Solange as inspiration—is her greatest intention.
Since her first release in 2016, the intoxicating, emotive vignette Delusions, cehryl released a slew of singles and projects leading up to 2019’s acclaimed Slow Motion. Her painfully relatable sonic gifts have gained her an international community of fans across the globe, and find her constantly revising and refining her sound. Her music videos for “Satellite” and “moon eyes” are heavily inspired by celebrated Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai, and mirror his films with cehryl’s own nuanced phantasmagoria—a fitting reflection of her expansive sound. She credits her close community of friends and fellow artists like Soft Glas, Maddie Jay, Alex Szotak, Zack Villere, Mulherin, and Gitai and their eclectic music tastes as foundational to her own, ever-evolving sonic palette. cehryl’s new music is a natural extension of her wide-ranging compass, from jazz to electronic, folk and pop. The aptly titled time machine is a sweet, and timeless dreamworld that finds cehryl unearthing and rebirthing her musical foundations to conjure her truest voice.
Listen angels (emily), Moon Eyes, Hide n Seek - Single, Slow Motion (album)
Socials Website, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube
It hasn’t been easy for cehryl to find her voice. She’s always enjoyed singing, but for a long time she was timid. “I would even sing in the shower really softly so my parents wouldn’t hear,” she remembers about childhood at home in Hong Kong. In high school, she moved to Cheltenham in the UK, where she shed her shyness and began writing her own songs, drawing inspiration from a blend of R&B, punk and indie pop folk, from Alicia Keys to Avril Lavigne and Elliott Smith. cehryl pushed herself to perform in public, and her friends encouraged her to audition for music schools. When she got to college in Boston, cehryl began releasing her recordings under her moniker, a subtle change of her first name, Cheryl. “I was listening to a lot of neo soul and R&B and electronic stuff from London at the time,” she says about an early Soundcloud offering, 2017’s Chamber Music. “Lyrically hopefully I have improved, but I would make a lot of changes if I were to remake everything I’ve put out. I have to try to be okay with letting everyone see my progress.” Perfecting her craft is at the heart of cehryl’s artistic rigor, and doing so with the self-assured conviction—she cites Nina Simone, M.I.A., Rosalia, and Solange as inspiration—is her greatest intention.
Since her first release in 2016, the intoxicating, emotive vignette Delusions, cehryl released a slew of singles and projects leading up to 2019’s acclaimed Slow Motion. Her painfully relatable sonic gifts have gained her an international community of fans across the globe, and find her constantly revising and refining her sound. Her music videos for “Satellite” and “moon eyes” are heavily inspired by celebrated Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai, and mirror his films with cehryl’s own nuanced phantasmagoria—a fitting reflection of her expansive sound. She credits her close community of friends and fellow artists like Soft Glas, Maddie Jay, Alex Szotak, Zack Villere, Mulherin, and Gitai and their eclectic music tastes as foundational to her own, ever-evolving sonic palette. cehryl’s new music is a natural extension of her wide-ranging compass, from jazz to electronic, folk and pop. The aptly titled time machine is a sweet, and timeless dreamworld that finds cehryl unearthing and rebirthing her musical foundations to conjure her truest voice.
Listen angels (emily), Moon Eyes, Hide n Seek - Single, Slow Motion (album)
Socials Website, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube
