I wish you knew... the process

So for around three months now, Matt and I (also known as MTCHLR) have been working away at recording my first song so I can start releasing my music. It was genuinely such a wonderful and positive experience working with him and I learnt SO much in terms of post production, but even production in a sense of live instruments etc. 

I wrote a song in around April of 2026 called "I Wish You Knew". It's about my dad, who passed away in June of 2025. It hit me, and of course, everyone else like a big rock to the heart and head. I started writing it thinking about all the things I wish he knew before going, and even now... if you understand that kind of feeling. Anyways, this song, along with many others, is held very close to my heart and I thought it really deserved a spotlight the proper way. 

I had been a fan of Matt's Youtube videos (which you should definitely check out, even before working with him, I learnt a lot about things to use on Logic and everything else through his videos), and thought one of the only right things to do was reach out to see how working with him would look like - seeing as I'm all the way in Malaysia and he's in the far away lands of maple syrup and cherries (aka. Canada). We set up calls and found a way - meetings, I remotely record the guitar and vocals here, send them over, he then works his magic on everything else with opinions and feedback along the way. 

Along with all my writings, and his expertise in making anything genuinely sound magical, I really wanted to take inspiration from Lizzy McAlpine's work - specifically works like Pushing It Down And Praying and homage from her Older (and Wiser) album. Which meant, electric guitar strings on an acoustic for a lighter sound, hauntingly tragic organs, multiple guitars panned out in what sounds to be a hollow room, a beautiful drum beat, synths, rhode pianos, real pianos, bass, etc... and I think it came together FANTASTIC!!!!

To cut to the end, one of the things we thought would be a good idea would be to make a video, to sort of guide his audience to seeing how his coaching and how working with him works, even if you are not in the same place as him. Art will always find it's way to make itself known and beautiful!

Here's his video about the makings of this very true to me song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCXxe6n0OoY&t=101s

Here's his Youtube Channel which has fantastic tips and advice on producing your own songs: https://www.youtube.com/@mtchlrprod 
(and at the very end of the video... there is a sneak peak of the song!!!)

Not entirely sure when I'll release it as I'm working on other things, but it's very safe to say SOMETHING is coming out... FINALLY!!!)

Excitedly yours, MEI !!! xxxx

A Songbird Interview!!

This is going to be a short one, but I really wanted to sort of jot it down somewhere of such a wonderful passion project I stumbled across. 

I found Emily Stabell through tiktok when she posted about a passion project of hers she's been doing and thought it was so beautiful. Writing and interviewing small artists across the globe to sort of bring light to the upcoming musicians of the generation. The internet is so vast, and often I feel you can get so lost in it, or stay within the mainstream echo chambers of music and arts. We often forget that there is constantly SO much potential growing everywhere!!

I connected with Emily, she is a sweetheart and more and really, I admire her work and dedication to it. She sent me some questions, I answered and then POOF! This beautifully written substack about me was made. It was such an oppurtunity and even small, I have found so many small artists I now LOVE through it!! To name some would be @annie.leppert and @abbyhayes75 .

I really do hope if anyone reads my silly little blog, they should definitely check out Emily's Songbird Substack - ill link it here <3 and even more so the one she so brilliantly wrote about me ;) - Mei Thistle, picking up the pieces.

I think it's important to remember the small joys you have in your art, whether you're a veteran of your craft or an amateur in it. It's the achievements and the goals you set yourself that can only ever define success for your career, and you do honestly also have to look at your own unique situation. Songbird may be so small to someone else, but to me it really built confidence and happiness that I was written about!!! Little wins count, the little parts of you that build up to who you are, you will win in some way, I know I have!

(omg...!!)

Joyfully yours, Mei xx

When you're in the slumps, look around

I've been going through a writers block, or as I call it, a music slump for around 3 weeks now. By that, I mean, I can't seem to really write anything that means something worthwhile to me, I can't put anything lyrical or metaphorically moving into something melodic. It annoys me SO much when it happens, because it demotivates me to write or persist. Writing is such an outlet for me, for all things grief, anger, sadness, melancholy, and longing. So, when that outlet dries out for a hot sec, I bottle up, I start feeling agitated and restless - like I NEED to write something or just create something so it's tangible and not just in my head.

For a long time, whenever I got in a slump, I would just let it ride, and sometimes it would only be a week, sometimes it would be as long as 3 to 4 months and that would SUCK! So instead, I wanted to do research on it, because I know for a fact it happens to every creative person. There was a video I watched, and it said, when you're in a writer's block, to write anyways, and to allow your pen and paper to write utter rubbish. Because something that blocks your flow is your fear of being cliche, or embarrassing, and sometimes those feelings can come from the discomfort of being vulnerable! It's scary for us to open up to people about feelings, so rightfully, it would be scary for us to not only talk about these feelings, but in such a detail, raw, wounded, kind of way.

So I wrote (this is me talking present tense as this was like last week lol) a song about this person that I know and how I'll never be as immaculate and pretty and cool and likeable as them. I think I have said this in every post right now, only because it is so so so so true to me and I try to constantly remind myself that "comparison is the thief of joy", it is, it steals my joy, and my motivation for my passions! I wrote the song and it was so awfully dull and muted and honestly, cringe to listen to. But I wrote it anyway because clearly, that feeling was something that was bubbling inside of me for a while. I also just posted that song on Soundcloud, because what better exposure therapy than to expose rawness to the salts of peers' opinions on the public world wide web. It's called Her.

After that song, I started writing from a craving of dried figs. I love them to eat, but they're also so poetically tragic of a fruit. How a female wasp must enter the flowering fruit, knowing fully that her wings and antennas were to be ripped, never to escape, all for the purpose of giving life to something her life was born to die for. There is a ghost of a woman in each fig we eat, and sometimes I feel as though the calmness and the intent I feel from eating them is from their little spirits (morbid, I am sorry...). So I took that craving and the sad truth of the fruit, and wrote it into something that I not necessarily experience, but something that reflects the ideas of it's botanical tragedy. An exploration of a sacrificial love, a reliant life, one that'll rot like all plants do. The lyric that I wrote at 1am opening "I can't let my figs rot, for the wasp already did", then its second verse being "I can't let us spoil, even though we already did." It's called Fig Tree. Now this song, I really really liked, so I finished it. But it doesn't necessarily mean I was completely out of my slump.

At this point, I am gasping for air, for some kind of inspiration or something that'll click. Something to show up in my life that will make me change my mood or maybe sink further into it to get all of its saturated sadness. I was pouring myself a glass of wine, when I saw, at the back of the alcohol cabinet, a bottle of scotch with a post it note stuck on it, saying "for someone to drink when they turn 80! 30/05/2012" in my dad's handwriting, on his 40th birthday. That really struck a string in my heart because I know he'll never get to drink it when he's 80, I'll never get to share it with him on his 80th birthday, there will never be a perfect day again, for that bottle to be opened and drank, without the subtle sting that its original purpose had been cut short. So, again, I took that sting, the ache that I felt and attempted to write something out of it. I did, the original idea was great, but didn't like the song. And that's okay! It's okay to write things and then not follow through fully, because that's the one beauty about creating, there will never be a run out, we will never fall short on the capabilities of one's mind. If we want it to happen, it will. 

That being said, I think I've gotten out of the worst part of my slump, the waiting, the search. I've made 2 good songs, and trust me, I've written around 5 crappy quarter songs I had to stop, but also had to put down or else the process would feel incomplete. The message is this: look around you, we are never dry of inspiration, we are never without something worth telling. It is simply a matter of trying hard enough to tell a story that's waiting to be told by you. 

Tentatively yours, Mei xx

I'm thankful for one, I'm grateful for all

I believe that social media, and the impact of digital crowds has often desensitised us from the initial meaning of having support. I was sitting in bed last night going through Tiktok and Instagram and I was genuinely just thinking to myself "dang, I wish I had more people that saw my music and supported me...".

Hold up. I have currently 1,364 followers on Instagram - that is a CRAZY amount of people. I would get overwhelmed if that many people swarmed me in person. It has been so normalised through reels and tiktoks that hundreds of thousands of views is normal. That getting anything below 1,000 should be shameful or just a bit embarrassing. Why have we become the race that wants so much more, and not look at what we have already in shock and awe! 

And perhaps that is the anomaly of social media: we can be surrounded by more people than ever before, supporting, commenting, INTERACTING with us and our art, yet somehow feel increasingly alone. The problem is that our perception of support has been distorted due to the inflation of people on the internet!

I sincerely believe that comparison is the thief of joy. It steals all the self confidence I have built for my style, my genre, my soul, my art. I swear, if I had just stopped thinking to myself "you should be more like her, then you'll be liked more", I would be in a better place than I am in now. I need to stop comparing the numbers, the body, the person, the soul, because at the end of the day, we will never be anyone but ourselves, so lets cut to the chase and just do that... be OURSELVES! 

The amount of love I have already gotten for my passions is crazy. One person leaving love, or reading my blog, or telling me "I watched all your short films! blah blah blah..." is so flattering to me, it makes me giggle and kick my feet in the air like a teenage girl!! It makes me feel seen (and heard if it's my music duh haha). And if 1,364 people stood in a room and told me they wanted to hear my music, I would probably be so utterly overwhelmed and shake in my boots till I shrunk to the size of an ant. 

I don't want to lose that. Because a person is still a person.  That is so special to me. Maybe the problem isn't that we don't have enough. Maybe we have really become desensitised to what “enough” looks like. Isn't that the tiniest bit scary to you??? 

I felt sick to my stomach when I caught myself wanting more. Greed is such an ugly thing to see, and I often try to refrain from feeling like it. If you know me in person, I try my best to saturate my life with happiness, to find the silver lining, to keep my head up out of the clouds! 

I want to look at 1,364 people (or more in the future... now we're derailing, whoops!) and remember that every single one of them is an actual human being, with their own lives, their own thoughts, their own little worlds that I will probably never know anything about.

And somehow, all of those people have crossed paths with something I made. So, I think I am going to try and remember:

I'm thankful for one.

I'm grateful for all.

Contemplatively yours, Mei x

There is something beyond passion in me

When I was around the age of 7 or 8 years old, I was in the UK staying at my cousin's house, and she had this beautiful piano in the dining room which she was learning on. I had also been learning piano since the age of 4, but being so little, it felt to me more like homework than it did a hobby that could grow into something more essential to me. We sat down and we wrote a little song, using the simplest chord progression known to man! 

Just then, something had clicked in my head, and in my heart. I had become infatuated with writing. With the added fact that I was a mischievous kid, I got TV taken away from me a lot and that being said, forced to read, so literature became a force of habit, and then a will. So moving from little Dork Diaries books all the way to mythology, history, fantasy, poetry and books that I still love with all my heart to this day! (Shameless mention of "The Problem with Forever", "A Thousand Boy Kisses" and "The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth" which I've probably read 8 times in my life now..? If you want to see more books I adore, I'm making a list of my favs in a different tab a little later on!) 

I loved reading, and even more I loved learning such fantastical words! That evolved into a love much larger than most things - I mean, the ability to have rhyme and rhythm all in the same thing was so fun, and not everything to me had to make sense one at a time, as long as it made sense all together... Does that make sense?

Music, and the ability to put pen to paper and for it to mean something completely different to me than it did to my mother or father was so magical and special. That only someone who was in my realm or universe could understand. I suppose that's why music is universal, the way in which one thing can mean so many other things infinitely to other people.

It's found in trees, burrowed away in electrical signals, and their physical rings, transformed into real melodies when people hook 'em up right. It's found in the birds, to communicate safe passage, warning, happiness, grief. It's in the littlest things like the lesser water boatman, a (really really cute) water insect that sings to find its partner in the puddles behind our house or in the streams to a river. And the best part about it all, it's connected us through hardships and built communities on nothing but hope that beauty in the world will persevere. Enough on my rambling about where music can be found and how wondrous it is. 

I found, sitting in that dining room with my cousin, writing a little song called "Melodies", a purpose in life that felt like nothing ever did. It continued to grow, it continued to bellow into this massive need to write and to say all my feelings without needing to directly translate to "I'm sad" or "I feel this and that".

It could be phrased like "And I built a slum out of my soul, right beneath the floorboards,
for all the selves I couldn't be anymore,
they slept softly... -Admittedly" or "They close the lid and everyone leaves. I stay behind with what’s left of me... -One In The Casket, One Unfamiliar" It all gave me the instrument (haha get it) to take the ordinary English language, and make something with 10 times the amount of meaning, with thousands of different ways it could be interpreted. 

But even through all this love and passion and admiration for the craft of writing, one can become stuck with it all. I went through a slump of writing for around a year, between early 2022 to late 2023, where nothing seemed to click - no rhymes, no meaning, no soul, no life stories felt good enough to be told. There was only one thing I could really do in that state, and it was to listen to the things around me. To revisit all of my favourite albums and singles and things in life (like the birds in the trees) that made sense musically. I went back to Joni Mitchell, to Adrianne Lenker, to Fiona Apple and Lizzy McAlpine. I went all the way back to The Beatles and Radiohead. I went to the roots of what inspired me. The more I sat and absorbed their art, the more I realised again why writing and playing wasn't just something they did, it was something they were glued to.

And then my love for the guitar grew more and more! I'd listen to these discographies of Joni and Hozier and realise that often, their instruments did a lot of the storytelling themselves. I fiddled with alternate tunings, and then that transformed my writing into something deeper. If you have synesthesia like I do, I would describe it as something going from this light mint green all the way into this beautifully complicated dark blue. An entire world was found, an entire purpose was created for me.

Lyrically yours, Mei x