“A bigger voice”: thủy Channels the Power of Intentionality, Redefines Cultural Identity, and Spreads her ‘wings’ on Latest Project

Vietnamese-American pop-R&B princess thủy gives glimpses into her early life, unconventional wellness practices, and the role of manifestation behind her third project, ‘wings’ – an ode to femininity, fierceness, and freedom.

Stream: ‘wings’ – thủy

Bay Area singer/songwriter thủy’s name is a self-fulfilling prophecy in more ways than one.

In Vietnamese, the name “Thủy” holds many meanings: new beginnings, a stream of water, and a sparkling star. The artist, like her multifaceted name, holds many selves. From graduating college keen on entering the medical field to pursuing music in her mid-20s, thủy is a master at turning inevitable endings into new beginnings. Unashamed of expressing what’s on her mind and in her heart, she’s like a stream of water, ebbing, flowing, and crashing – ironically enough, she’s also a triple water sign: a Scorpio sun, Scorpio moon, and Cancer rising. A sparkling star, thủy has earned icon status, from being named People Magazine’s #1 Emerging Artist to Watch in 2022 to making Coachella history as the first Vietnamese-American soloist this last April.

Fast forward six months, the singer/songwriter has officially released her third project via Venice Music, which she proudly dubs her “best work of art yet.” Unapologetically embracing her wit, femininity, and sexuality, thủy expands her songwriting and sound on wings, a testament to her freedom and fearlessness in life and art. With her distinct vocal colour and fiery scarlet hair, thủy widens her upbeat R&B-pop soundscape, soaring through the peaks and valleys of love, lust, and liberty.

We addressed the elephant in the room about ten minutes into the call after some back-and-forth about her thoughts surrounding the release, emotional resonance, and recent astrological discoveries; of course, making Vietnamese diaspora history at Coachella isn’t just any throwaway achievement. Looking back on the surrealness of it all, thủy is overwhelmed by gratitude, pride, and joy.

“It wasn’t just a big moment for me; I realized how important of a moment it was for my own community, how much we want to see us on these stages and making music like this,” thủy says. “I don’t let the pressure get to me, but I definitely see the importance of it, and I just continue living my life as I do – living it as authentically as possible. I love that I’m able to do that, and my community is still able to hold me up and show me support and love.”

Where there’s an opportunity to reflect on her journey and thank the people who’ve supported her through it all, thủy takes it. But, representation isn’t the end-all-be-all, and it shouldn’t be if the goal is equity for marginalized communities – thủy intends to cement her legacy as a multifaceted, passionate, and ever-evolving musician, refusing to conform to any molds or expectations of her artistry or personhood. For her, everything comes from a place of integrity, purpose, and authenticity.

“My intention was just to have fun with this project and show people that I can do a lot of things, like use my voice in different ways,” she shares. “I want to show that I’m growing as an artist and songwriter. I want to be known as a full artist and not just a certain type of person – I want to be known as a creator of art.”

Deeply intuitive and grounded in the present, thủy remains true to herself and her process; what sticks will stay, and what doesn’t, won’t. “Anything that makes me uncomfortable, I just lean into it more,” she says on conceptualizing the themes of wings. “It is so natural for me to write songs about this; it doesn’t feel forced at all… Maybe in that way, I’m very authentic to the art; whatever I feel, I’m going to talk about it, and I’ll think about what it means later.”

“Maybe this is the spiritual person in me, but I always feel like the universe is going to take care of me… Whatever it is, I don’t worry about a lot of the nuances of life, because I always feel like it’s gonna work out for me,” she touches on the importance of being intentional in her life. “Maybe it’s that delusional thought that keeps me afloat, but what matters is it’s able to keep me afloat, and it keeps me just not worrying about the little things.”

Sometimes the best advice is the simplest; for thủy, anything is possible with a little delusion and a lot of courage. Balancing spirituality and pragmatism, Atwood Magazine talks to thủy about rebuilding her confidence, being a girls’ girl, and how she manifested her childhood dreams into reality. For what’s in a name, when the art speaks for itself?

A CONVERSATION WITH THỦY

thủy: I think I’ve released the nervousness because I’ve listened to it so many times already – I’m kind of just like, “It is what it is.” I think people will be surprised to hear a lot of different sounds from me that somehow sound cohesive. I worked with a lot of the same producers on it, but we just got super creative with songs, especially their titles. I feel like people can get a little hint at how playful the project is going to be. That was where I wanted to stay. I’ve listened to it so many times that I’m just excited for people to finally get to hear and experience it!

thủy: Definitely. In the past, if I liked something, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna release it next week or the next day.” For this one, we definitely had a lot more planning, and even then, it never felt like we had enough time. I was super intentional and worked with some really, really talented people, so I feel like a lot of creative energy went into this. I’m excited! It’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a fun project.

thủy: I’m a very vulnerable girl. I can’t take away from the fact that I feel a lot of things. The song “wings” had to be in there at the end to remind people that I might be confident, and I might be in my “sporty cunt” era, where I feel more free than I’ve ever been, but at the end of the day, I’m still a crybaby. I feel so much, and I’m very empathetic. My intention was just to have fun with this project and show people that I can do a lot of things, like use my voice in different ways. I want to show that I’m growing as an artist and songwriter. I want to be known as a full artist and not just a certain type of person – I want to be known as a creator of art.

thủy: Actually, I learned recently that I’m not a double Cancer. I guess I’m a double Scorpio, Cancer. I have no idea what that means, but I had a little bit of a moment where I was like, “I don’t know myself anymore!”

thủy: No, not at all. I will channel how I’m feeling that day for sure; I can’t help but wear my heart on my sleeve. Because I used to be a very peppy girl during work, I used to never let my outside life interfere with that, but now, my work requires me to be very vulnerable. I’m like, “Okay, I’m feeling sad today. I’m gonna make a sad song,” or “I’m feeling happy, time to make a happy song.” That is a really cool part about my job – I’m able to channel the things I’m going through and put them into a song. I come in with a concept in mind based on how I’m feeling that day.

thủy: I think that I’m a very closed-off person until I get comfortable with people, then all of a sudden, I’m spilling my guts out. I like to say that I can make friends with everybody, but not everybody gets to know who I really am. In a studio session, you have to get comfortable with people fast, and you have to build rapport in the first 30 minutes. Usually, the first 30 minutes to an hour is spent getting to know each other. Even if you’ve worked with each other before, you’re telling each other about what’s going on in your lives and all of these things. It’s like a dating game. By the time we’re creating the music, I feel very comfortable with who I’m in the room with, and I’m not even thinking about whether or not they think something is cool. If I feel very strongly about something, I’m like, “This is what we’re gonna do.”

thủy: These days, it’s been hard to cry. I feel like my threshold has definitely increased when it comes to things that make me cry. A couple of songs almost made me cry – definitely “wings.” If you are just going through it and driving alone, it hits you. If I’m in a happy mood, I’m just like, “Oh, I don’t want to hear this right now.” When I made “crash & burn,” I remember listening to it over and over again; it was kind of one of the first songs that we made, and I remember it making me feel pretty emotional. Another one was “cloud 11.”

thủy: I’m very happy that I can look back on that moment and be very proud of myself – feeling those emotions are honestly very overwhelming. It’s one of those moments in my life where I’m like, “Holy shit. I can’t believe I did that.” It’s a reminder, especially during the times when I’m like, “What am I doing with my life?” When things aren’t moving the way I want them to, or when they’re not performing the way I want them to, just remembering that I did Coachella makes me feel like no one can tell me shit.

It wasn’t just a big moment for me; I realized how important of a moment it was for my own community, how much we want to see us on these stages and making music like this. I don’t let the pressure get to me, but I definitely see the importance of it, and I just continue living my life as I do – living it as authentically as possible. I love that I’m able to do that, and my community is still able to hold me up and show me support and love. The scariest thing is feeling like you have to fit some type of mold; I’m sure you know. Growing up in a Vietnamese community and household, I always felt like I had to say I wanted to be a doctor, but did I really want to be a doctor? Or try to fit a mold that somebody else made for me? Now I’m just like, “I get to be who I am.” The best part about that is that the people in my community still support me. The whole moment was just really cool and such a learning experience too.

thủy: This is so silly, but it’s really important to not only take time for yourself mentally, but physically too. Wellness is really important, right? This is gonna sound so LA, but I had this one pivotal moment that opened up my third eye. I got this buccal massage, and the lady who was doing it on me was super spiritual. I felt that energy and I felt very supported at the time. She was massaging the tension around my forehead and everything. I hold a lot of tension in my back and my head, and I think we don’t realize that tension is tied to a lot of the other anxiety in life. Taking time to do these little spa days for yourself is really important, because it kind of just resets your… I don’t want to say chakras, because I don’t even know what those are, but I feel like I’m becoming a little bit more spiritual, where I’m trying to do things that make me feel good. I can reset myself, recharge, and feel like I can take on the day.

For whatever reason, when that happened, I felt like I could just see a little bit more clearly, and it allowed me to go into studio sessions with an open mind and feel refreshed. Maybe it’s just that I felt refreshed, but from that day on, I made it a priority for me to not just take a day and not do anything on the couch, but also take a day and go get a massage, or do something that makes me feel good. This gives me more to pour into my art. All that is to say that the rest and recharge part of being an artist is really important. Once I prioritized that, I felt like it allowed more space for me to take in more, especially when it came to like the business side of things. Creating the art can feel like a lot of pressure, but once you free up more space, it’s not as daunting. I know it sounds kind of crazy, and I’m not some majorly spiritual person, but it made me kind of realize a lot of things for sure.

thủy: I still like having a plan, as free as I am. It’s funny, because I feel like I’m a Type A person in certain situations, but I’m honestly very lax. Maybe this is the spiritual person in me, but I always feel like the universe is going to take care of me. I can go out and not bring anything, and I always figure it out. I’m always like, “Oh, they’ll have Apple Pay. I’m sure they will!” Whatever it is, I don’t worry about a lot of the nuances of life, because I always feel like it’s gonna work out for me. Maybe it’s that delusional thought that keeps me afloat, but what matters is it’s able to keep me afloat, and it keeps me just not worrying about the little things. On the other hand, I feel like when I’ve taken time for myself, I have more energy to have a rigid schedule, where I need to do this, this, and this. I like checking things off my to-do list. It makes me feel it makes me feel like I’ve done something. But, I definitely feel like I like both things. It’s such a balance in my life – I have a rigid schedule, but I’m also very free and lax, or I have a very free and lax schedule.

thủy: I feel like I put one foot in when I graduated from college and moved back home. I met Charles, who still writes a lot of music with me, and I went to a studio session with him. I remember being like, “Oh, maybe I’ll make a song.” Then, I made a song, released it, and it did really well! I felt like a lot of people listened, especially for it being my first song; it was kind of crazy. We got on the local radio station! I remember when that happened. I was like, “Oh, I think I can actually do this. I can’t believe this is happening!” It’s so crazy. You have these moments in your life that really change the course of everything. When I heard my music on the radio for the first time, I was like, “Ooh, I’m a pop star!” I had no fans, but I just felt something inside of me spark up. I never let that little dream die; ever since I was a little girl, I was always singing. Then, I started releasing music consistently. It actually wasn’t until five years ago that I fully dived all the way in. At this point, I had quit my job and moved to Los Angeles, and it was really scary, but really fun too. I remember moving to Los Angeles, being in a new city, and just feeling so bright-eyed. The opportunities were endless, and I could just feel the energy. It was just really exciting.

thủy: Thank you for never giving up on your dreams. Actually, no – I’m trying to think about my past and all the times I would sing in my dorm, in my apartment, or at home when no one was watching. I never felt like it wasn’t going to happen. Despite not doing it in front of people, taking classes, or taking that step to become a singer, I still believed in my mind that it was going to happen no matter what. I knew it was going to happen. I guess I just always knew, but it’s kind of crazy thinking about it because I never did anything to work towards it, at least while I was in college.

thủy: Anything that makes me uncomfortable, I just lean into it more. It is so natural for me to write songs about this; it doesn’t feel forced at all. When I’m in the studio and I’m creating these works of art, it’s just coming from my heart. I don’t think about how people are going to perceive it, if it’s not going to be accepted, or if my parents are gonna like it. Whatever it is, I don’t think about any of that at all. I’m literally just like, “How can I finish the song? How can I make it the best that it can be?” Maybe in that way, I’m very authentic to the art; whatever I feel, I’m going to talk about it, and I’ll think about what it means later.

thủy: In the earlier stages of the project, I did a lot of different sounds, and I remember playing it for people and not getting the reaction that I wanted. That was hard, because I’ve always been the type of person that never really cared what people thought. For whatever reason, after Coachella, I started to let more opinions in, and it clouded my own judgment. That really sucks as an artist, because it makes you second-guess yourself. Certain people didn’t like the song “roleplay,” but I knew in my heart it was good. I just hated the fact that I let certain opinions almost deter me from putting it on the project. At the very last moments, I was like, “No, I know I love this song. It’s going on there.” Trusting my gut, you know, is really hard. It was hard after Coachella to believe in myself again and know that my thoughts and opinions are cool regardless of what people think. I’m happy where we got to at the end of the project.

thủy: It’s funny, because that song is the one where I use my voice the most. I’ve never talked in a song like that before. It was really hard, I’m not gonna lie. It’s really easy to sing, it’s really hard to talk. I give it up for all the rappers out there who sound so cool when they’re rapping. I can’t do it, I’m sorry! It took a lot. Talking on a song takes a level of confidence that I had to tap into, and that day I was working with a new producer too. Talking is a very vulnerable thing. It’s honestly like public speaking – it’s very, very, very, very scary. I’d rather sing until I die than public speak! It’s just a scary thing, but I knew for this type of song, like, I wanted to tap into that. It challenged me in a good way, and I feel like that song definitely unlocked a new side of me. I wanted to play into this Vogue thing; I wanted to make a song for the gays, the girls that are just feeling hot, that whole thing! That is the whole gist behind the song, “roleplay.”

thủy: I love that one. That was one of the last songs we made, and we came in not knowing what we were going to make. The producer that I worked with, dwilly, was so talented. At the end of the song, you hear the slowed version of the chorus, and that’s actually how we recorded the song, but then we sped it up and pitched it up. That was really, really fun. I really just got super experimental with this whole project, but it’s still sonically very R&B-pop. The production is just so elevated, fun, and full. “D8” is just a stupid song. It’s not subtle at all. It’s like, “You want to take me on a date? I know you want to take me on a date.” It’s funny, because I write a lot with men, and thankfully, most times they kind of understand. Sometimes, you have to beat a dead horse with them, because they might not understand the concept that I’m thinking of – men can’t read like a woman’s mind. It’s like that when you’re in a room with a bunch of men and you’re trying to create. When I heard the beat, I was like, “Oh, I know what the concept should be. It’s like, ‘Take me on a date.’” They were like, “No.” Then I’m like, “It has to be that – take me on a date. It has to be that dumb.” Eventually, it just made sense; it was just stupid enough that it came out so cool, and it’s just such a bop. I love that song.

thủy: I had an idea to have a K-Pop artist on it, and I heard that CHUNG HA liked my music, so I had my team reach out, and she said yes! That was pretty crazy, because even before I knew that she was going to get on it, I was already promoting it like I could hear a K-Pop artist on it. That’s just another example of manifestation and just speaking it into existence. I was making a bunch of TikTok videos saying, “Imagine a K-Pop feature on this,” and then it happened! It happened so fast, and she was so nice. Meeting her in person and getting to film with her was a dream come true, and she was such a sweetheart.

I feel like those type of collabs are the best, where they’re genuinely just so nice, and the energy is so pure – the energy was just really amazing. I feel like when you release a song to the public, people feel that energy, and I think that that’s why the song did so well. The music video got such good feedback, people loved it, and it was so fun. It just felt very girly pop, like it was just teen girls having a good time. That’s exactly how it was creating the music video with her too. It was so easy, and she was just awesome. I love collabing with girls. I’m such a girls’ girl, and I’m willing to I can uplift anybody or spread any type of knowledge any way I can! The people that I collab with are also the same. I have good discernment when it comes to that. I usually can tell if they’re going to be a good collab, because I can just tell that they’re going to be a cool person.

thủy: Everything with me is so intentional. It’s crazy how powerful your mind can be. When I was in the process of recording that song, I was like, “blxst needs to be on this. blxst needs to be on this.” I had already said it. I had to muster up the courage to just slide into the DMs and ask. From the moment I made the song and then from the moment I asked him through DM, it was a long period. I was nervous because I was still trying to muster up the courage. Then, I was like, “You know what? F* it. I’m just going to do it.” I DMed him through my phone, and then he said, “Yeah, I’m down to try it!” That was really cool, because I was like, “Oh my god, this is amazing!”

He was super busy prepping for his tour and everything, so we didn’t hear back for a while. We were on a time crunch to get everything mixed and mastered, and he hadn’t sent it in yet. So I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna do one more Hail Mary and text him,” just so I know did my due diligence at least. I texted him, and he was like, “Okay, I’m gonna make this a priority.” He sent it literally the next day. I remember being at dinner in New York with my family when I got the text from him, and I had to run out of the restaurant just to listen to it. I was just so happy with how everything came out. It’s just insane to be able to be like, “Yeah, blxst is going to be on this,” even though he hadn’t even agreed yet. He hadn’t even heard the record. But I knew, it would happen. I knew he was the only one who could do it justice. I’ve been teasing the song on TikTok, and everybody’s going insane for it! I’m just like so happy when it works out that way, where it’s super organic. It’s really cool to get good feedback on it.

thủy: I think I grew in my ability to, not necessarily say “No,” but not be afraid to voice my opinion on things that I don’t like, or things that I don’t want to participate in. Things like that. I truly think I gained a new confidence, even in my body image. I’m always going to have my highs and lows with my body image. Growing up, I never felt the most confident, so it’s something you have to unlearn over a long period of time. I will say that where I’m at currently is good; I feel like I’m in a good place with my body image. I see so many comments about girls looking up to me that have the same body. I feel like that’s so important, because when I look at other artists that have similar body types, it makes me feel seen. It feels really nice that other women look to me and feel that confidence. I’ve gained a bigger voice.

thủy: The sports mentality that I have growing up; I don’t talk about that a lot. I’m a huge athlete and I grew up doing a lot of sports, and I feel like that has helped me with navigating the industry and not quitting when things get tough. That is always cool to talk about for me. I grew up wrestling. My little cousin who immigrated here from Viet Nam when she was 11 or 12 never had that, but now that she immigrated here and saw that my sister, cousins, and I wrestled, she’s wrestling now! It’s really cool to have an influence in that way. I think taking an interest in sports is really cool and has helped me a lot!

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“hair down” – thủy

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