Tanya Chua's Wild Musical Journey

Quarantine compelled Singaporean singer-songwriter Tanya Chua to create a new sound. As she releases her 12th Mandarin album, she shares how she wants her new music to take us out of our rooms and into the vast wilderness of Mother Nature

- Celine Tan

Just one guitar. That’s all it takes to fly us away from wherever we’re stuck in the world into Mother Nature’s wide open spaces, where we can soar with the birds, sing with the hills, and be wherever we want to be, whether it’s Paris, Tokyo or Singapore. That’s what Tanya Chua is hoping for with Depart, her 12th Mandarin album which is set to be released this month.

Every album is special, but by the sound of it, Depart will be the Singaporean singer-songwriter’s most extraordinary one yet. The 46-year-old tells us over a Zoom interview from her Taipei home in June that this album, which she finished recording in March, had a life, purpose and spiritual journey of its own, and was no longer about “Tanya Chua trapped in her own small little world”.

“There’s something about this album that is so different from my previous ones,” the award-winning songstress, who has been in showbiz for over 20 years, says. “It was born during quarantine, when I was stuck at home. It was just me and my guitar. I felt so empty. It’s like for us songwriters, we need to go through some tumultuous life, you know, to be creative. Then I started watching nature documentaries and listening to classical music. And at some point, it hit me so profoundly that maybe this whole pandemic is a message from Mother Earth.”