Jaie Takes the Plunge
Following one of the darkest periods of her life, Jaie turned to music and created her debut album, “Night Swim”.
Jaie wanted to wait until she had something to say.
For years, as she would release singles that brought her thousands of listeners and fans, friends would ask her, “When are you going to put out your album?” But Jaie, a singer based in Malaysia who’s been releasing music since 2017, would bristle at these questions.
“I just felt, ‘What am I supposed to do? Just create a collection of songs?’” She told me with a dark laugh late one night in July. “It didn’t feel meaningful to me at that time.”
But her friends had good reason to ask. Compared to many independent artists, Jaie developed a following quite quickly. Her first EP “December” found a devoted audience that only built with several collaborations like her friend Juju B. Goode, who she’s worked on four songs with, and lost spaces. “It was slow finding listeners at the start,” she recalled. “But half a year after the EP came out, ‘Better Days’ got traction on Spotify.” Since then, her fans have stuck by her.
Jaie’s soulful, vibrant voice is so distinctive, so full of stories, that she is the rare artist who can almost make me stop what I’m doing when I hear her. And for a long time, she continued to release singles as quickly as she made them. Through it all, Jaie felt that the album would come to her when it needed to reveal itself.
And then, late last December, as she recorded her first studio album “Night Swim”, it did.
On Friday, Jaie released “Night Swim”, a collection of eight songs that cover the darkest period of her life. “I felt lost with no direction or way out of it,” she described. “Lyrically and sonically, you can get that feeling listening to it.” The title and album art, a closeup shot of Jaie’s body with a strand of hair falling over her, evoke mystery. The title, mysterious and provocative, sets the tone for an immersive listen. “I had the title at the beginning of last year, and I just felt that the title created that atmosphere that I wanted to surround the entire project with.” By the end of December 2023, she had created eight tracks that encapsulated the mood of “Night Swim”.
Jaie, by design, created an album that plunges you into the darkness from the first track “Come Near”, a song that sounds straight out of an 80’s true crime film. The album simmers, frequently burning with madness, and is best absorbed in one listen. Tracks like “Spin”, which covers a mental breakdown (“I spin”, JAIE declares in the chorus, “I can’t take this silence anymore”), let you into the obsession. While on “Melt”, JAIE decides to let the darkness take her over. Maybe, she theorizes, it’s better to dissolve like the storm raging outside. On “All That It Cost”, over a punishing guitar riff that is reminiscent of Jeff Buckley’s skill, she theorizes, “All I can do is wait for these wounds to turn into scars.”
“I was going through a lot at the time, so a lot of the themes are dark, moody,” she remembered. “I felt broken down. It’s a really emotional, really vulnerable album.”
“It started very organically,” Jaie told me as she thought back to the beginning of her career. So organically, that it was almost homegrown. “I started making covers of songs and posting them on SoundCloud using GarageBand to flesh out the production. From there I had an interest in creating my own arrangements.” Though Jaie grew up listening to several prominent Malaysian and Hong Kong artists, she was most drawn to Western singers, particularly the ones who made R&B and soul music. “The way I sang and the music I made kind of came naturally to me. I felt like I could deliver a song that was more genuine in those genres,” she told me. Quickly after releasing a few singles, she connected with a manager who helped her release her first EP, “December”. “It wasn’t like I planned for it to happen,” she said simply. “I just released my original stuff online and then it grew from there.”
Perhaps due to her discography, Jaie said, people often think that she collaborates with other artists more than she does. “But the truth is I do a lot of things on my own that I just haven’t put out. I try a lot of things on my own,” she explained. “I experiment in my own time.”
“Before this I wasn’t really sure how to bring a whole project into fruition,” she explained. But as she worked, she realized that not only was it possible – but that she could do it. The madness and timing of the events that unfolded during this period of her life all fed into the music that she was creating.
When I first spoke with Jaie, she was in the process of moving to her first proper studio. Behind her, sat what she described as a “makeshift” work space: a keyboard, red cello case, and a microphone. She recorded “Night Swim” alone here, choosing to make the album on her own. It felt safe doing this because somehow she needed to release the pain gnawing away at her.
“I think up till this point I was pulling all of the pieces together from different places,” she said, “and now I can put the pieces together how I want.”
Almost as quickly as Jaie finished “Night Swim”, she was eager to release it. The album’s creation had been therapeutic for her and there were numerous times she felt like it was a lifeline as she was swallowed by depression. Part of her, she said, wanted it out and for the feelings to be released as quickly as the music came to her. But there were kinks with the music she needed to iron out, and she realized she needed to take her time. The album, like her healing, would be done in its own time.
“But after I just let go of all that, I think I realized it’s a better way for things to go,” she said, “to just let it take its time and finish its process.”
There were many moments in the making of “Night Swim” when she wondered, “When am I ever going to get back to my previous self?” She sighed as she recounted this. “It felt impossible.”
“I was pretty much at rock bottom when I wrote most of these tracks,” she continued. “A lot of the album touches on that – spiraling, being stuck in a loop. That’s one of the themes throughout the project.”
When she wrote “Complete”, Jaie still felt like she was trapped in darkness. “I was trying to figure out a way out of it,” she explained as she walked me through her thought process. “I wrote those lyrics as if I were talking to myself.”
Eventually, completing through the creative process and carrying the project to the finish line gave her a new sense of creative freedom and confidence. “It’s the first time I felt like I could finish and create an entire project,” she said. “It’s just fulfilling knowing that I have that ability. It’s freeing and empowering. It opens up the doors for me in my future with all these options and possibilities that I have.
Plus, “Night Swim” confirmed something that she had always felt: that music is what she is meant to do in life. “I feel like making music is one of the things that brings me the most fulfillment in life. It’s not even a question,” she said with a laugh, “It just feels like a part of who I am, and I want to continue doing it all of my life.”
In April, Jaie traveled to New York to visit her closest friends from university. “My creative community is quite spread out, just like my friends are. And I think that’s just the result of studying and spending time overseas,” she said. “Your network is spread out. I actually think that’s really nice because I get different ideas from different places.” She’s used to having friends across the world, but this trip was particularly meaningful.
“I felt like I forgot who I was, and that trip helped me find my roots again. It helped me remember who I am and what I love,” she said, her voice softer as she remembered the feeling. It was the first time she had felt warmth in months. “It was spring and there was a solar eclipse and an earthquake,” she said and smiled. “I thought, It’s a sign!”
When she returned home to Malaysia, she felt reborn. “Night Swim” was complete. The darkest chapter of her life was finally closed. “This one was all me. I think it makes sense that it was all me because I was so down and so in my head,” she said as she thought back to the entire process of making the record. “So it kind of made sense that I had to do it on my own.”
She smiled as she thought back to how much had changed while she was away in New York. Was it fate? The universe had literally rearranged for a brief moment during the solar eclipse while she was there. In time, she realized she had also been transformed. .
“So, that’s my secret to healing,” she admitted before letting out a giant laugh. “Go see a solar eclipse.”
