You should never underestimate people’s willingness to take on something that’s a bit weird. I’ve always got to remember that people love Elton John, love Freddie Mercury, love David Bowie — they’re all fucking weird. You’ve just got to do it more and show people that this is a fun place to be, rather than a scary place to be. And I think people will get on board.
When I was starting out, I was very, very fixated on what I represented to people. At the time, I remember looking around being like “There’s not a single Asian pop artist that I can name.” Hayley Kiyoko was sort of coming in a bit, but I was like “I can’t name people who have pushed their Asian-ness to the fore and made art out of it.” Even just in the process of writing this album, there’s so many artists now. I definitely felt the pressure for me to reach this next level of representation. I feel like the first step was me talking about the fact that there’s no representation, and then the second step was just being as successful as possible doing something that I would be proud of.
