Paige Su

For many artists, the ultimate goal is to make music that’s both artistically valuable and appealing enough to attract an audience.

Paige Su is striking that balance. The classically trained Taiwanese singer-songwriter’s experimental pop music has earned her invitations to prestigious international music festivals such as Harpe Au Max in France and the No Maps Creative Convention in Japan, as well as Golden Indie Music Awards where Su just earned 2022’s Best Live Performance. 

But Su’s sound – stemming from her multi-instrumentalism (electric harp/piano/synths/flute/ bansuri/ drum programming & more) – isn’t just for the adventurous. It has also landed her tours and performances with Eastern pop stars like Yoga Lin, Joanna Wang and Waa Wei, as well as a record deal with a major label – a deal she has since ended in favor of an independent path.

“The fact that I can play a world music festival and a jazz festival and an indie rock festival, all in the same month? I think that’s great. Not a lot of people can do that,” Su said. “And the best part is that I feel comfortable doing all these different things now. I feel free.”

You can hear that freedom on her stunning new album You’ll Live Forever in My Songs, an 11-track collection that blurs the lines between pop, classical, jazz and experimental music, while at the same time tracing Su’s own life-journey from darkness and the specter of death to lightness, acceptance and, above all, love.

The arc of the album is tied directly to Su’s own experience in 2020 and 2021, when she was diagnosed with cancer and then went through a year of treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic, which only heightened the isolation of the experience (she is in remission and feeling great now).

“When you go through things like that, you come out with a completely different take on life,” Su said. “You see what’s important. You understand the weight of life itself and how nearsighted we are most of the time, chasing things that don’t really matter when living by itself is such a marvelous thing.”

In early 2021, after a period of creative dormancy, songs started flowing out of Su – sometimes in the middle of the night, when she would quickly record a voice memo to capture the idea.

“Then I’d write something the next day and they would make sense together. The lyrics and the music all came out in about a month’s time,” she said. “I just felt like something was shining down on me.”

Su recorded You’ll Live Forever in My Songs with her husband and close collaborator Cody Byassee at home, in studios across Taiwan and at Leon Russell’s The Church Studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Highlights include the song “Involuntary Adventures,” which grapples with the unpredictability of life and sounds like Radiohead covering an ultra-cool collision of jazz and trip-hop, as well as “Things Will Never Be The Same,” a deeply intimate piano ballad that serves as the pivot point in the album’s journey from dark to light. And then there’s the title track, which appears twice – first as a home-recorded demo (complete with Byassee and the couple’s son in the background talking about breakfast), and then as the album’s gorgeous closer, featuring a backing chorus of dozens of Su’s friends and family.

“I will always be singing right here for you my dear, my love,” she sings in the song’s chorus, as if she’s speaking from the great beyond. “Whenever you need me, whenever you miss me, I’m right here.”

Su grew up in Taiwan studying classical music before falling in love with jazz while hanging out in record stores. For college, she went to the renowned music school at the University of North Texas, where she double majored in harp and flute performance and met Byassee, who was on campus studying classical percussion. Once they were together, the couple moved to Taiwan, where they focused on Su’s music and spent a lot of time in India, soaking in the sounds. After releasing an EP in 2011, Su signed with Sony Music, which put out her debut full-length, We Are All Lonely Souls, in 2017.

Sony wasn’t quite the right fit, however, and Su left the label in 2019 feeling like she needed to pivot from Mandopop and take control of her music. And that’s when the cancer diagnosis came along, followed quickly by COVID-19. 

“It was extremely humbling. I felt like I had my life back and I had all these plans, and within three months, everything changed and none of that stuff really mattered,” she said. “Life has a funny way of making you slow down and appreciate the things you have – human connection, love, family and friends.”

What followed was a time of uncertainty and struggle, simple living, strength, recovery and, ultimately, the rebirth that is detailed so beautifully on You’ll Live Forever in My Songs.

“I think when something like that hits you, you question everything,” Su said. “For me, facing the darkness in life is very natural, and the deeper you go, the more beauty you’ll find.”