In an unprecedented move, Singaporean singer-songwriter Vivien Yap has released another love song as part of her sophomore EP campaign.
Since her debut opening for Boston-based singer-songwriter LEW’s Lullacry album launch in 2017, Vivien has since seen international success with her debut EP Fables.
With over 500,000 streams to date, physical copies of Fables are also exclusively sold in Japan, along with a country-wide radio play campaign in October 2019. Vivien (along with Nigel Cheah) was most recently awarded ‘Best Original Song’ for 2020’s National Youth Film Awards for her collaboration with popular video publisher ‘Our Grandfather Story’ to write a song about the wage gap in Singapore.
Vivien is also a self-published poet, her debut book of poems titled, ‘Can You Hear Me Now?’ was released October 2018. Her poems have been featured on international online magazines and on podcasts. Vivien was also a speaker for 2019’s edition of TEDxYouth, giving a talk on mental health and the power of art.
Her stunning new release slides into a world suspended in a plague-ridden limbo – ‘Loved Again’ is a song about falling in love under lockdown the only way possible, over the internet.
It is a soft pop song set against the backdrop of an increasingly anxious world.
Produced by Daniel Wong of Ardant Studio, ‘Loved Again’ fits into both the lo-fi and singer-songwriter genre. While known for his stylised and polished production work for folk-based musicians (hubbabubbas, JAWN, LEW), both Daniel and Vivien worked together to produce a song that would reflect the introspective tone of music made in a private and intimate space, while still keeping to Vivien’s signature sound of thoughtful lyrics with lush instrumentation.
Says Vivien,
“The songs in my upcoming EP come from a very different place from my previous body of work. They are happy and frivolous – and the lyrics are just unabashedly about falling in love. I’m quite used to ruminating on sadness, but I don’t think now is the time to do it. The world is a mess, and so are we. The last thing I want right now is for my music to add to that.”
Vivien’s previous single ‘The Spot’ was a melodramatic and dreamy pop-lullaby, while ‘Loved Again’ is its laid-back (albeit not wiser) follow-up.
‘Loved Again’ is best enjoyed indoors on a rainy day whilst indulging in our most childish fantasies of falling in love with strangers we meet online, anywhere around the world.
Indeed, listening to it and we’re immediately drawn in by the incandescent sways and moods, wrapping ourselves in a blanket of colours, while introspectively looking out at the world and its “splashing puddles”.
Listen to the song below and let us know what you think.
