Q&A: Screaming, Crying, Throwing Up — Embracing Chaos With Su Lee’s ‘Messy Sexy’
WHEN LIFE SEEMS TOO HARD TO GO ON, WHAT MORE IS THERE TO DO? — For all those who are feeling discouraged, singer-songwriter, graphic designer, podcaster, and self-proclaimed “problematic overthinker” Su Lee has a quick remedy to help lighten your burdens: put on the most zany, colorful outfit that you can rummage up in your closet and dance. Throw your body around with reckless abandon — cry, scream, laugh, sing, do whatever it takes to unleash this hold you have on your emotions. Feel as much as you want to; let everything out.
Don’t think it’ll work? Well, don’t knock it until you try it. Time and time again Lee has resorted to this cathartic release of energy and it never fails. Lee rose to fame after her song “I’ll Just Dance” went viral amidst the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The musician’s exuberant energy reached out to viewers through their screens, grabbing their attention with her vibrant soundscape and relatable scrapbook of experiences captured within her discography.
Lee’s disposition is best compared to that of a buoy, floating along with the ebb and flow of the ocean’s tides, occasionally being thrown around when those currents are stirred up by turbulent storms. But if anything, Lee knows how to endure through these challenges, braving every catastrophic wave that tries to sink her once and for all. She channels this seemingly infinite courage into her debut record, Messy Sexy, released Oct. 28, 2022.
Defining herself as an anxious overthinker, Lee’s day-to-day is riddled with worries that muddle her brain and convolute her very existence. Music, however, is the only remedy to this plight.
“I overthink everything, whether that's work, education, school, friends, [romantic] relationships, relationships with my family, Lee shares. “Whoever and doing whatever, the problem is always overthinking. When I started doing music … I [found] myself not overanalyzing things, going with the flow, and going with my intuition. That's why I find making music so therapeutic … It’s a very cathartic experience of looking at myself and my experiences from above. It's like detaching myself from my life.”
Lee is here to adjust the narrative around our modern-day conceptions of sexiness, loudly and proudly declaring that “messy” and “sexy” are not mutually exclusive states of being.
In regards to the title of the project, Lee explains, “I was riffing off of the idea of how when you think about the word ‘sexy,’ you don't think of an ugly ass potato sack sitting on a couch with shit hanging out everywhere. It's always poised, everybody has it figured out. Sexy ladies got it!”
But Lee seems to have that special something as well, as she confidently turns this notion of sexiness on its polished and perfect little head, asserting, “It's all about how those two things can come together. The chaos could be part of who you are, and part of life — part of something beautiful,” and, dare I say, something sexy. It’s all about embracing that messiness, reveling in the discomfort that so often eclipses our optimistic perspective on life, leaving us in the dark.
Lee herself has a surefire remedy for soothing her nerves and making the darkness of her mind a little easier to bear. When in distress, you can find her quite literally bouncing off the walls of her apartment and running around like a chicken with its head cut off, all of this being done with a giant grin plastered across her face as she unabashedly succumbs to the cacophony of her thoughts.
“Feeling perfect being so chaotic / I'm already divine with my neurotic mind,” Lee sings in title track, “Messy Sexy.” Her lyrics playfully recognize the idiosyncrasies of her mind as the very things that make her a beautiful individual. This stream of consciousness lyrical approach paired with her cheeky melodies is what makes listening to Lee such a pleasure. The stark honesty and levity with which she acknowledges these hard truths puts everything in perspective, alleviating any sense of worry after listeners dance the bad vibes away with her spunky discography as the soundtrack.
But her go-to coping mechanisms haven’t always been as healthy. “There have been moments where I'm like, ‘Huh, if I was the past me, I would be breaking down and shit — at least right now I'm turning it into dark comedy,’” Lee shares. “Or, ‘At least like I'm grinning like a freak while I'm crying my eyes out.’ I don't know if it's worse or better, but at least there's some kind of interesting emotion that comes out of it.”
While Lee has found a healthy outlet for her emotions within her music, she admits that joy comes in waves — it’s a constant ebb and flow. Some days are better than others — that’s just a fact of life — the key is learning to accept that truth. “Melancholy is my existence,” Lee confides. “It's all of these feelings that are not good, but not bad. I'm not crying, but I'm not smiling either — it's in between. There's not a single word that can actually describe it, other than a series of three-minute songs.”
Thus, Lee encourages people to embrace the messiness of life by listening to Messy Sexy. Her elevator pitch? “It's gonna make you shake your booty and feel some feelings!” So, whenever you’re feeling down in the dumps, just remember, your messy is so very sexy.
Read on below to learn more about Su Lee’s experience working in the music industry, how she navigates through the messiness of life, and of course, her key to being sexy.
LUNA: Before we talk about your record, I want to touch upon what you did before you were a musician. You were in the graphic design industry scene for a little bit — how did you decide that it wasn't for you, and what made you pivot to music?
LEE: I've always had this inkling that I wanted to do something creative. But being an artist means a lot of different things. It can mean being a graphic designer, it can be being a fashion designer, a painter, a singer, or a classical musician. My whole life has been me constantly trying different things that are creative, finding things that I dig and don't dig — graphic design was just one of them. After I graduated and started doing some internships and work experiences in the design industry, as much as I loved it, it was not an environment that I thrived in. I didn't like that I was using all of my creative juices to fill other people's needs. I was also getting sick and tired of kissing people's asses all the time. I decided to give myself a year to try another thing that I've always wanted to do, which was music and writing songs. So far it has been going great — I think it's working out! I'm trying my best. I like it, so I think it'll stick.
LUNA: That's wonderful. I read that you are a classically trained cellist as well. What are your thoughts on arts education and the classical teaching of instruments? Is it beneficial to learn how to play music, or does it stifle the authentic creation of art?
LEE: People think if you're classically trained, especially if you've been playing a classical instrument for more than a decade, you're a master at reading sheet music and know all of the music theories, but I don't know shit about music theory. I actually don't even know the chords to my own songs. People will ask me what the chord progressions are for my songs and I say, "I really don't know, I'm so sorry." It's a tough one because there definitely needs to be some kind of baseline education for you to get a head start, but also there is a point where theory doesn't really matter anymore. In the arts industry, talent definitely plays a role. It's something that you're inherently born with. Education plays a role in letting you use the tools that you're born with, which is your musical talent. That's how I view it.
LUNA: Like you were saying, theory and knowing everything about it can make music inaccessible in a way, blocking people off from actually playing and enjoying it.
LEE: The sort-labeling stifles the creative process for a lot of artists. The one thing that I hear a lot about is defining genres. It was a problem that I had myself when I started doing music. I was like, "Am I a jazz musician? Does this sound jazzy? Does this sound like pop?" At some point, I realized that trying to label things and trying to fit into a certain box of sounds doesn't really do me any good.
LUNA: Definitely. Genres are so fluid nowadays, too. Back in maybe the ’70s genre was a little more clear on where it started and where it ended, but now [that] we have the internet, people have different influences to pull from.
LEE: Yes, everyone is their own genre!
LUNA: Going off having influences to pull from, a lot of that is found on social media. A lot of artists are discovered on the internet, like yourself! We live in this age of self-promotion, and especially as artists you sometimes feel like you have to constantly post to maintain relevance, which can be harmful to mental health. What are your thoughts on navigating through having a social media presence as an artist?
LEE: I hate self-promotion. I hate it from the deepest pit of my soul. It really is the biggest downside [to] being an artist for me personally. How wonderful would it be if an artist put out an album and people just [knew] about it instantly? That's not the world we live in. Ironically, because social media is so saturated, we have to be constantly telling people [about our work] in order to not get buried behind all these things. I don't like it, but I have also found, or am at least slowly finding, my own way of embracing that. For me, that's being tongue-in-cheek about it and acknowledging the fact that I hate it. I always say, "I'm so sorry for saying this for the 17th time this week, but please pre-save, and share, and listen, and stream, and leave comments, and press the like button" — everything, because I care about it. I don't like it, but self-promotion has been one of those things where it taught me how to live that life of where, if you can't avoid it, then just enjoy it.
LUNA: It's hard to navigate through. What helps you detach from that social media grind? What do you do in your daily life outside of having to film promo or post? How do you take care of yourself?
LEE: This sounds like such a common sense answer, but just don't look at the phone. In this day and age, not looking at your phone is pretty much impossible. Block some of the apps that aren't giving you a good time and take some time off from it. I love spending hours upon hours on Pinterest because it doesn't trigger me. When it comes to socials like Instagram, I end up comparing myself to other people, so I take time off from it. That is a luxury sometimes because, going back to that-self promotion, it's my job — I have to be on it. Just go out for a walk, look at some dogs, go out on a date. Distract yourself with real-life experiences.
LUNA: That's all great. From what you were saying, in being an artist, you also kind of have to be a marketer. It's hand in hand now — you do have a team, but you yourself are in charge of pioneering your own career, which can definitely be hard.
LEE: It's a lot. Just the element of having to wear too many hats. It's fun, but it's also very demanding.
LUNA: I can see how that can be stressful. You're releasing this very vulnerable music that is really authentic to your emotions. How do you handle self-doubt or fear when it comes to releasing music that is so personal and authentic to who you are?
LEE: In my experience, the best way to go about dealing with self-doubt is to accept it and feel whatever you're feeling — whether that would be self-doubt or self-consciousness, all the negative things that people say to just switch off for some reason because it's seen as bad to feel those feelings. If you think about it, it's not a bad thing. It's just the fact that other people think it's bad that makes it bad. If you have self-doubt, stop and recognize: "Yes, I'm having a lot of self-doubt. I feel like shit, I think I'm a failure, but also, let's turn it on its head and just make a song out of it." Or post a fuckin' ugly ass selfie saying, "I feel very self-conscious today, but here I am admitting it because that's how we all feel." Turn it on its head and fully embrace it — [don’t] half-ass embrace it.
LUNA: I feel like that helps process it better too, because you're embracing it and not pushing it to the side. You're saying, "This is who I am, and these are my emotions. You can take it or leave it." That's really powerful.
LEE: Some people call it chaotic vibes and energy. That's what it boils down to. When I'm having the worst time of my life, I'm just like, "AHHHHH, this is how I feel!!" And I'm crying on camera. It's so unhinged.
LUNA: That can be an awesome way to release those emotions though. You released your record, Messy Sexy, a couple of weeks ago. How have you been feeling?
LEE: Super burned out. I've been so burned out. That's all I can think about right now. It's a weird thing where it feels like a chapter has ended, because all of the work that's gone behind the album led up to this point of releasing the album. To people's perception, it's the beginning. It's the end of the chapter, but also the beginning of the chapter, where now that the album's out… What do I do now? It's just like, here comes the self-promotion part...
Wait, sorry, this is terrible. This is a terrible answer. To be honest, I'm feeling very chaotic about this album, and it's very on-point because this album is about the chaos of life and how I'm feeling. I'm all over the place all the time. Maybe one day I'm feeling like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna be a superstar!" and another day I'm like, "This is going like shit because I don't see the numbers going up. I don't see enough comments. I didn't get enough likes." It's all of these waves of things and everything in between. Who knows, I might turn that on its head and make a music video out of it or something. I'm just feeling really chaotic about this whole thing, just because it's the first of everything. I don't know how to feel. It's a new feeling that I don't know how to label.
LUNA: I bet that the start of this really cool new chapter is both so encouraging and wonderful, but conversely you're doing all of this press and have to mentally prepare for that. It's these two warring sides. That aligns with the title, Messy Sexy, these two really opposing concepts. Could you explain that title a little bit
LEE: You've explained the gist of it perfectly. I was riffing off the idea of how when you think about the word "sexy," you don't think of an ugly ass potato sack sitting on a couch with shit hanging out everywhere. It's always poised — everybody has it figured out. Sexy ladies got it! It's a blast. Sexy means embracing things. It has a lot of meanings behind it. Behind the juxtaposition of these two words, it can mean that you turn something — anything — into sexy, including messiness.
But also, the message of sexy could represent the chaos of life and how embracing that messiness of life can be a beautiful thing, which can be interpreted as being sexy too.
That's my interpretation, but just because I say that's what it means to me, doesn't mean it's going to mean the same thing to you. I want those two words to mean whatever people find helpful to them or resonating with. Messy could represent your terrible relationship with your friends or your family or certain people in your life. It's all about how those two things can come together. The chaos could be part of who you are and part of life — part of something beautiful.
LUNA: I love that — messy and sexy are not mutually exclusive. They can both be present and coexist.
LEE: They can mean whatever you want — it doesn't have to do have anything to do with sex. It can mean anything.
LUNA: I love that. It's such a catchy title as well — it really grabs your attention. So many of the songs on the record have to do with inner thought processes that really impact your day-to-day, something that you've previously described as "musical barf about the chaos of life." How has making music helped you make sense of your mind and the way that it works? Or has it made everything even more foggy? How does music help you navigate through life?
LEE: Sometimes I feel like this is what they mean by [finding] "your calling." The context is that all of my life I've been a problematic overthinker. I overthink everything, whether that's work, education, school, friends, [romantic] relationships, relationships with my family. Whoever and doing whatever, the problem is always overthinking. It would stress the hell out of me.
When I started doing music, I realized this really interesting thing: when I'm making music, it's the only time that I don't overthink. That switch flips off a little bit. Not entirely — I don't not think, that would just be sitting there dumb. I find myself not over-analyzing things, going with the flow, and going with my intuition. That's why I find making music so therapeutic, because it's the only thing that naturally brings out the non-overthinking side of me. It's this authentic experience where I'm writing about a certain experience or emotions that I felt personally in my life and I'm looking at it from this non-overthinking perspective. All of these experiences that I've experienced while I was in this foggy overstimulated state of mind. It's a very cathartic experience of looking at myself and my experiences from above. It's like detaching myself from my life.
LUNA: That's so beautiful. You get to look at these experiences in an objective way. You get to look down from above and just think, "This is my life, these are my emotions." It's a really beautiful way to make sense of things and notice, "Maybe I am overthinking a little bit" or "Maybe things aren't as big as I think they are."
LEE: It's very interesting how I feel a little quote-unquote "woke" when I'm making music. I feel a little bit cool because I'm not overthinking. I get out of my room or the session or the studio and then I start being chaotic and anxious as fuck. It's my sanctuary.
LUNA: I’m glad that you have that outlet because as a fellow overthinker, life can definitely be hard.
LEE: It do be! I really hope you have your outlet too!
LUNA: I do. You really eloquently balanced these darker themes with these really fun snippets of humor and wit. How does humor operate in your day-to-day?
LEE: Finding humor in everything, including painful times, is the state that I aspire to be in. I don't think that any of us can get to this woke level of nirvana where we're always laughing no matter what happens — that would be psycho, right? There have been moments where I'm like, "Huh, if I was the past me, I would be breaking down and shit — at least right now I'm turning it into dark comedy" or, "At least like I'm grinning like a freak while I'm crying my eyes out." I don't know if it's worse or better, but at least there's some kind of interesting emotion that comes out of it. That's why people love Deadpool so much, because that's what Deadpool is like.
LUNA: It's all about not replacing sadness or negatively-associated feelings with happiness and just being happy all the time. It's finding the medium between these two, which you do really well.
LEE: Melancholy is my existence. It's all of these feelings that are not good but not bad. I'm not crying, but I'm not smiling either — it's in between. There's not a single word that can actually describe it, other than a series of three-minute songs.
LUNA: And why not have fun with those songs? Forget about your momentary worries. One track that really stuck out to me on this record was "Sonder." From the beautiful instrumentals about this figure who "doesn't give a damn" but is still kind of lonely. Can you speak about this track a little bit and the inspiration behind it?
LEE: I'm trying to explain this emotion but I don't have a word for it. I have to do it without singing the whole song. It's about this feeling where you love being alone but you're always lonely. You end up people watching and you're only kind of satisfied. That's the vibe that I was going for. I would say "Sonder" is my favorite because I also play the cello in it. All the strings that you hear are me busting my fingers for 12 hours. I'm literally bleeding on the fingerboard and there's finger juice everywhere. It was disgusting, but it was my baby. They just came together in this orchestral thing. I'm really proud of it — not just the production side of it but also lyrically. It resonates with me so much, and not a lot of my own songs resonate with me by the end of finishing it because I've heard them so many times that I don't even know what it means anymore. I listen to "Sonder" myself, and without sounding too self-absorbed or anything, wow, I really captured a feeling here, and I'm really proud of it.
LUNA: No, I totally get that! With releases, you can get so detached from the songs that once meant so much to you. I really love that you're able to hold on to those feelings and still have the songs feel authentic to you because, like we were talking about, release processes can be tiring and you can burn out from them.
LEE: It can be a bit of a turnoff from your own work.
LUNA: That's really hard. Is that something you've experienced often?
LEE: Would the answer be considered a yes if I say that I skip all my songs when they come up on Spotify? Please don't skip my songs! But I do. I skip my own songs. Sometimes I will listen to songs that I created two or three years ago and I'll be like, "Wow, this is what I made at the time!" But if it's a recent thing, then I try to take a little break from it.
LUNA: It's healthy to get some distance from things because, like you said, you are working on it day in and day out until the release. It's not a bad thing to want to have some time away from it. It's healthy.
LEE: I will say though, when it comes to live shows and live performances, no songs ever get old. The older the songs are, the more experienced I am performing them. It gets more fu because now at this point it's kind of like muscle memory, so I can play around with it. I don't have to worry about fucking things up or messing things up on stage. It's the reverse on stage, actually.
LUNA: You have all this energy coming at you when people are singing the lyrics back to you. They're jumping around. Performing live is something that can definitely change the vibe or dynamic. What do you want listeners to get out of Messy Sexy?
LEE: If there's one thing they could take away, I wish they would realize that it's okay to feel things as a human outside of happiness, joy, and laughter. You can feel like anything at any moment — nothing is invalid. That's how you feel as a human, and own it. It's okay to feel things and actually elevate it to a point where if you want to cry, if you feel like crying, then you do cry. If you're angry and you want to scream at somebody… maybe not your wife and your husband, but your pillow, or you can go to a karaoke bar and let it out. It's okay to elevate these feelings, and it's liberating to let those feelings out sometimes.
LUNA: Definitely. And why not do it with Messy Sexy as the soundtrack?
LEE: Oh my god, yeah! Just do it! It's gonna make you shake your booty and feel some feelings!
LUNA: My next question kind of has to do with you and the future: What are you doing to ensure that you continue to grow and develop as an artist?
LEE: There are different types of things that I can do in different realms, but one that aligns with my interest financially but also career-wise for my music is to play more live shows and move toward playing more live shows in general. Hopefully go on a tour again sometime soon. Really get my songs out there and be heard by more people. I'll be there to listen and sing along with them. That'd be fun!
LUNA: I'd love to catch your live show one day in the future — I'm crossing my fingers. I like to end all my interviews on a positive note, so what is giving you joy right now? It can be anything in the world.
LEE: This is such a common answer, but Billy and Zoey, the dogs that I live with right now. I will add a little suffix: they bring me so much joy that it turned me into a dog person. I'm formerly a cat person. I still love cats, but Billy and Zoey completely changed my mind. I'm a dog person, 100% — but I love cats too!
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