During the photo shoot, our photographer asked if Tanya Chua would oblige us by putting on her best “haughty” face for the camera. The amiable Singaporean singer-songwriter, who is usually all smiles and easy manners, took a few seconds to compose herself. Dropping her grin, she stared straight into the camera, her fiery gaze and angular jaw catching just enough sunlight from a window nearby for her to seem, just for a second, almost invincible.

It took just one innocuous comment, however, for it to unravel. “You look like you own the world,” I remarked from the sidelines. She burst into laughter, blithely chiding me for breaking the illusion, and continued with the shoot like a pro.

But was it really an illusion, or is it fair to say that Chua is well and truly at the top of her game?

Since her debut in 1997, the guitar-toting multi-hyphenate has built a solid international career in the music business, winning fans and critical acclaim for her work in the Mandopop industry with her signature romantic ballads, such as Bottomless Pit and Beautiful Love. Based in Taipei, the three-time Golden Melody Award winner has also written and produced songs for scores of singers, including the likes of Stefanie Sun, Na Ying, Aska Yang, Jam Hsiao and A-Mei, and recently played judge on Chinese reality talent show Sing My Song.

And if there is one thing that keeps her motivated after all these years, it’s the excitement of learning and discovering new things about music.

“I am very scared of repeating myself,” said Chua, whose new album Aphasia is musically unlike anything she’s done before. “I don’t want to be pigeonholed as a singer-songwriter who just plays the acoustic guitar, or who just writes love songs. There are only so many love songs in the world, and only so many heartbreaks. I can’t always be heartbroken, right? I’d be so sad if I were always just so heartbroken.”

She explained: “I want to keep it real, and I always want to be in love with music. You know how it is when you fall out of love with something? I don’t want to fall out of love (with music). I am always finding ways to keep it fresh and keep it creative. And I know that I’d always surpass my previous stuff. It is always like that for me.”

MOVING FORWARD

This is one reason why Chua’s tenth and latest Mandarin album features introspective pop electronic numbers, instead of her usual karaoke-friendly ballads.

“(They’re) not meant for singing sessions or karaoke. When I did Aphasia, I wasn’t thinking of the market, (or whether people) can sing this. Because, sometimes, I find it difficult to sing myself,” Chua said, chuckling merrily. “Because this album has so many layers vocally … I don’t want to sound like I am very cold and completely inconsiderate, but I really felt like I needed to go with my gut instincts. I wanted to make an album that was musically creative and technically more superior,” she continued. Elaborating on this venture into relatively new ground, Chua explained: “Electronica is really very technical. You are designing sounds, (and) how people perceive these sounds. It’s a challenge to see if I can get out of my comfort zone, away from my guitar, and get into something that needs a lot of precision. If I started to think, would (my fans) understand, would they be able to sing this song, I wouldn’t be able to move forward. So I thought … just have fun. I want to have fun.”

Inspired in part by her thoughts on mankind’s increasing reliance on technology, Aphasia also speaks of Chua’s discomfort with not being able to fit in. But with the success of her career built on the uniqueness of her sound, I could not help but ask if she actually wanted to fit in.

“No, actually,” Chua said, thoughtfully. “I have come to realise that it is okay that you don’t fit in. Because the more you fit in, the more miserable you will be. Because it’s the process of wanting to fit in that is miserable.”

She shared how she used to wonder why some said her music was not mainstream. “Is it not good? You start questioning yourself,” she said. “But then when I started asking myself what I should do, I am like, I don’t know. So I just keep writing the way I do, because I can’t change the way that I am.” She posited that it was when she began producing her own albums that she also started to learn how to appreciate herself, and “feeling different from other people”.

TO PARIS WITH BAKED GOODS

Now that Aphasia has hit the shelves, Chua has other adventures to look forward to. Come February, the 40-year-old will attend a three-month baking course in Paris. And although she isn’t sure if she will end up opening a bakery after the course, the baking enthusiast said she looks forward to the prospect of gaining an extra skill.

“I never look very far ahead, but I am very concerned about learning new things, the technical aspects of how everything is made. I love that, and I think it is very important to spend more time on it than to think about whether I am going to open a store or whatever,” said Chua, who will return from Paris in time to start preparing for her concert tour, which will likely kick off in the middle of this year. “When it happens, then it happens. But if I don’t have that luck, then I will never open a shop, and that is fine with me, as long as I know I have this body of knowledge of music and baking (that) I can carry to my grave.”

It was a rather unexpected and somewhat overly dramatic statement to make, to which Chua acknowledged with a laugh: “I have become a very dramatic person over the years. But you know how it is, right? You want to be a very full body of knowledge when you leave this earth. You don’t want to be an empty vessel. That is the aim.”

Aphasia is available in stores and on digital streaming platforms such as iTunes and Spotify.