cehryl

cehryl builds split-screen worlds with words that cut deep, distilling life’s highs and lows into their purest parts. most songs feel like other songs. hers feel like secrets shared at late-night movie screenings, protected by indistinct chatter and the cover of darkness. secrets exchanged through quick glances and wry smiles. secrets just for you. those who lean in and listen stick around and stay awhile.

born and raised in hong kong, the singer-songwriter-producer considered herself a composer first. she abandoned childhood piano lessons to play what she heard on mtv by ear. that same watchful curiosity led her to point-and-shoot cameras in grade school. ever since, cehryl documented everything, fending off day-to-day transience by preserving fleeting moments with sound and color. meanwhile, film guided her music as if they were one in the same. cehryl draws her magnifying-glass memories of fallen relationships from the close-quarter romance of in a mood for love, her eerie calm in the midst of chaos from eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. it’s no wonder she’s an illustrator, too.

punk princess avril lavigne and taiwanese pop star jay chou formed her melodic foundation, which amy winehouse, john mayer, frank ocean, alicia keys, the beatles, and justin vernon later informed, but it took a decade for the shy multi-talent to identity as an artist. first came high school in the uk, which taught her self-reliance (cehryl started recording her own lyrics because no one else could). a berklee education in boston followed, infusing her raw ideas with new source material and skilled collaborators. then came a post-grad la move, cehryl’s current home base, where precocious friends — zack villere, mulherin, dijon, alex szotak, brian mantra, softglas — inspired her to go all in.

as cehryl’s early soundcloud experiments evolved, more and more entranced heads turned toward the girl with tinkerer’s ears and big picture eyes. fast forward to millions of streams, Paper cosigns, performances alongside the likes of still woozy & ravyn lenae, and a debut album out now “slow motion”, cehryl’s ready for whatever’s next.