CHIRAI may not be a name you have heard of since the release of her debut single Blueberry Skies on March 7th, but the track has been stacking up listens across all platforms as well as sweeping trends in TikTok uploads.
It’s unsurprising that there is so much resonance for listeners with CHIRAI’s emergence into published music, with the track holding a uniqueness that bypasses an opportunity to pinpoint what has influenced its sound.
And despite that which has shaped her as a person and a musician it’s precisely the apparent lack of connection to a source of influence that sparked the development of Blueberry Skies as a song.
As CHIRAI explains to The Music, its sound and lyrical epicentre can be traced to a place deep within her.
“When I was making Blueberry Skies, I remember I watched a video that prompted what would you make if there was no other music in the world,” CHIRAI recalls. “And if there were no influences, and if you weren't listening to what the Hot 100 was playing, and what the most popular tracks out now are.
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“Instead, it provoked an enquiry into what your soul wanted to make, and whatever you wanted to make from the depths of that place. That's where I went into making Blueberry Skies. I’ve never wanted to do things that are commercially viable from a music standpoint, but that feel right to me, and which I really want to make.
“I want to make something and release it that honours whatever sound my soul wants to make. And so that's what fell into place when making a lot of the sonic choices for the song. I just wanted to make something for the love of the music.”
And yet the confluence of irony and beauty that resides in how it has been received by audiences around the world is a reflection of the very authenticity that CHIRAI embodies and that which she has been able to capture in her first single release.
“I look up to a lot of artists that are often speaking about the notion of yearning for something or someone,” she states. “It’s a powerful and moving experience and yet there’s countless songs where musicians sing about giving life to someone or dying in the name of love.
“It’s ubiquitous in poetry too. Shakespeare was always so dramatic. Poets would take these super mundane feelings and speak about them in a way that is so human. Because, we’re just quite dramatic beings at the end of the day.
“Most of us have been broken up with and in times like that we can genuinely feel like our lives are ending. Or when you fall in love, that person consumes you every day. For me, it was wanting to make something that felt human and felt real.
“I wanted to allow myself the opportunity to reflect on my sense of yearning and speak to what I think people are yearning for, which is real human connection,” she adds. “People yearn for people to speak into mundane feelings about love, loss, hope and all sorts.”
And Blueberry Skies speaks to all of that in direct and indirect ways. Yet the focus of the track echoes an arrival at a type of love that as humans we all seem to be yearning for, some in more conscious ways than others.
“I would say It's really human to want to be loved,” proclaims CHIRAI. “And we're living in an age of nonchalance. I call it the nonchalant epidemic. There seems to be this phenomenon of who can outdo the other in not caring. People are thinking they look cooler than you because I care less than you.
“This false premise that I'm tough and I'm cool because I don't care, nothing phases me and nothing matters is rife,” she adds. “I really resent that because it's like we're almost completely rejecting the very thing that makes us human, which is caring.
“Caring for each other, caring for ourselves and caring for people around us, family, friends, the world. And that's what humanity has always been about. It's about love.”
And so woven into the creative expression of Blueberry Skies resides the allowance to feel and experience love, a love that isn’t to be feared, but to be welcomed.
“It's about allowing yourself to say, ‘I do want this. I do want to feel loved, and I do want to feel safe.,” she explains. “And I think a lot of music, a lot of stuff that we've put out can be the inverse of that.
“Many people haven’t afforded themselves that and have been hurt so many times that they've tried to shut that off and replaced it with these negative emotions.”
And so, if all you take away from Blueberry Skies is the invitation to question your own relationship to love then the song itself has created an outcome CHIRAI hopes for more in the world.
Ultimately, it’s no wonder CHIRAI is developing the style of music she is sharing, as the diversity of her experiences ranging from growing up in church, to playing a part in choirs and being involved with musical theatre have all informed her sound.
She surmised the intersections of it all in a way that can act as an applicable metaphor for all that life and music draws forth, “the experience of being with music can act someone having both this ritual encounter, as well as experiencing an emotional response.”
There’s a lot ahead for CHIRAI. She’s already promised that new music will be arriving sooner rather than later, and with an EP release scheduled for later in the year, there’s bound to plenty of discussion about how it is that her music, and the emotion it encapsulates, can be brought to life to create relationship with her craft for audiences.
CHIRAI’s Blueberry Skies is out now.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
