The biological backbone of my songwriting

Love, loss and change are and have always been the biggest drivers for people to make art—I admit they are among my biggest inspirations too. Almost all of my songs are about change (it is especially inevitable in teenage girls’ lives) and love (or the loss thereof). However, as my songwriting journey continues to evolve, I have observed another major inspiration sprinkle itself across my lyrics, manifesting in lexical fields and successions of metaphor.

Biology is my favourite class in school. I took it for my iGCSEs and now take it at Higher Level for my IB (International Baccalaureate). My teacher is one of those miraculous once-in-a-lifetime change-the-entire-course-of-your-being teachers, the ones that somehow balance an adept academic dexterity with a passion for the subject. I’ve always been drawn to teachers that can get their shit done while being both ample strict and humorous—the kinds that can turn your STEM subject into an art form. In particular, my teacher’s flair always turns class into a stand-up comedy show where, by some magic, everyone leaves having had a good laugh and with a completely solid understanding of the biological system we’re studying.

Now, as I write my lyrics, I notice how biological terminology finds its own way into my sentences. Sometimes it appears in metaphor—I’ve written about “[being a] metabolic slum (being unhealthy)” and “aperol in your arteries as [a] catalyst (implying drunkenness).” My use of scientific and biological words has coagulated into a discography-wide semantic field, which includes vocab like “skin cells, oxygen, vitamin, calcium, bones, fermentation, pH 1, carbon monoxide radioactive, teeth, rib, stitch, clinic, diagnosis, X-rays, lungs, skeletal, bandages, doctor, septic, stomach, flesh, medicate, cataract, circadian, drip, wrists, veins, microscope, limb, autopsy, etc.”

After making this observation, I was very curious as to WHAT it is about these terms that inspires my subconscious, and after reflecting on it, I’ve boiled it down to 5 main reasons.

1. These words are inherently VERY PRETTY WORDS! There was a trend going around a few months ago where people made lists of words that would be beautiful baby names if not for their meaning. Chlamydia, Diarrhoea and Aorta were commonly mentioned. Because of the Latin and Greek origins of these words, they all have a beautiful classical and poetic form—one that is especially beautiful when expressed SONICALLY. In songwriting, a lot of what makes lyrics successful distils down to whether the words used are innately ‘pretty’ or not. There are less sonorous words like “elbow”, “quarter” and “therapist” that you may not be likely to add to your lyrics (I reserve the right to use one of these words in my lyrics later, if necessary—not therapist, though; that one is REALLY fugly). They’re not very evocative and quite awkward on the tongue. The beauty of a word like metabolic or vitamin is that they are effectively plosive and vowel-rich, which makes them a sonically surprising but satisfying add.
2. There’s this silver lining I’m constantly trying to reach in my songwriting by finding a lyric that balances directness and poeticness. Something I admire about my favourite songwriters is their ability to craft a sentence that is almost pretentiously descriptive but also skilfully blunt. The beauty of a biological term is that, when used in a sentence, it can form a beautiful sensory description while being the very scientific ROOT of the theme it is describing.
3. I am surrounded by these words! They’re up on post-it notes on my windows, mirrors, walls, scattered along my desk, annotated in my books, embedded in my long-term memory… Part of why I think these terms have appeared almost subconsciously is because I am passively observing them all the time. I live with them!
4. In certain ways, Biology is the antithesis of music making. STEM subjects are objective, mechanical and not very descriptive. Ever since I was young, nothing has inspired me like CONTRAST has. I wanted to be feminine and masculine, to have colour next to monotone, to draw in pencil and then ink, to read about utopia and then dystopia, to live in the bustling city of Singapore and then visit my grandparents in the barren English countryside… Something about it tugged at my heartstrings and catalysed me into art-making. Biology (and Maths) has a similar effect for me. I live a life where my school subjects and my music are the two things I think about most, and I feel that their contradictory yet complementary nature has made both sides equally sustainable.
5. Aside from love, loss and change, biology is probably the biggest miracle of existence! When I sit in class listening to my teacher explain biochemical systems and processes, I can feel my brain POP. I cannot even begin to imagine that there are microscopic transmitters, cells, enzymes and checkpoints in our bodies that are just coded for function in complex systems that keep us alive. When I studied my first few metabolic cycles, I couldn’t believe life was real. It is so awe-inspiring and thought-provoking and SO VERY EXISTENTIAL. When the tiny, complex internal mechanics behind your existence are explained to you, the idea is so miraculous and impossible to grapple with that it makes you believe in magic. And once you have that belief, making art is impulse.

Metabolically yours,

Mila Bea

Growing up surrounded by ghosts made me the creative I am today.

TW: Ghost stories!

My family is obsessed with ghosts.

Ever since I was young, I was subjected to both of my uncles' constant stories of the horrors and ghosts they encountered while attending national service. My grandma's second child, my first uncle, has always been cheeky and incredibly expressive—he would tell his stories with a flashlight harshly lighting the underside of his chin and a mischievous tone that left us kids screeching in anticipation. We would be immersed in stories of civet cats that pounced even after being shot, people who disappeared into the jungle and came back as limbs, and beautiful dead women who left their lingering frangipani scent in the back of unknowing taxi drivers’ cabs.

As a child, my mom had several encounters with ghosts too. She grew up in a house right next to a 'haunted house' and claimed to have seen a woman in white numerous times, following her to the bathroom a floor down from her childhood bedroom. Some of my earliest memories were of my mother saying she felt reassuringly safe, and that ghosts can be both kind-hearted or mean, just like living people. My dad, unlike the Singaporean-Chinese side of my family, has never seen one with his own eyes, but has spent years of his life obsessing over spirits in Singapore. He researched countless ghost stories and wrote the book Spectropolis (an academic study examining the intersection between urbanisation and Singapore's spectral beliefs and practices), after having written Horror in Architecture with my mom.

As a kid, the best thing that could happen at our Sunday 团圆饭 was when my uncle cracked into his booming ghost stories. Excuse me, for I can never quote him (or anyone) verbatim on the matter of ghost stories; part of their charm is their Chinese-whisper nature: they are often hyperbolic, and no one can remember the exact way they were told the last time.

“Moomin (his nickname for me), this one is scary!” my uncle would say. My brother Leo, our cousin, and I would exchange grins. We were always graced with one of these stories:

1. There was this man at camp. He was ostracised for abnormal behaviour, and had a red cross painted on his cabin door. One night, while he was on jungle watch, he disappeared. They looked for him for days. One day, someone decided to clear out his cabin and, to their dread, found his organs in his bathroom cabinet—arranged in alphabetical order!!

2. There was a soldier who shot a civet cat one night. He heard the thud of its feline body hitting the floor, but there it remained, staring down at him. Until suddenly, it pounced, and everything went black! 

3. My mom would tell this one. She'd say: one day, your uncle brought home a mini terracotta warrior. Every night, the woman who worked in the house would wake up with bruises on her face. We called a medium in to examine the house, who said the spirit was inside the terracotta warrior. To fix the problem, we had to bury it under a tree!

4. My grandpa worked in a hospital where soldiers were taken during the Singapore-Japan “Battle of Singapore.” At night, ghosts would rearrange all the beds. The workers at the hospital had to get used to waking up in different orientations every morning.

5. A woman had a ghost in her house, and it was always pinching her arms. She asked a priest, who told her that she had to make offerings and feed the ghost. So she did, for nearly a decade, but the ghost kept causing trouble. Years later, she told a bomoh (a Malay spirit medium) about it, and the bomoh visited her house. She asked if she had been feeding the ghost, and the house owner said yes. The bomoh then asked what she had been feeding it, to which she responded: “What we eat: roast pork, duck, rice…” The bomoh said: the ghost is Muslim! You have to feed it halal food!

As I grew into my teenage years, I became obsessed with ghost stories too. I read all the books my dad had bought and left around the house. Admittedly, I read them until I couldn’t sleep at night. I had to spend nights curled up in my brother’s room. But it was never purely fear.

In East and Southeast Asia, every August was a month dedicated to honouring deceased ancestors and wandering spirits during the Hungry Ghost Festival. My mom would warn my brother and me not to go out alone at night, and to make sure we didn’t step on ghost offerings. If we did accidentally step on them, we were always taught to apologise and show respect. But our belief in ghosts was never rooted in fear. Instead, it was a respectful sense of caution—an understanding that, just as we must be mindful and kind to other human beings, we have to treat ghosts the same. I mean, imagine how grumpy and hungry they must be! They only get to eat every August. And you never know how they could've died!

Looking back, I am so lucky to have grown up in an environment with an unwavering belief in ghosts. Not only did it teach me respect, but also the beauty of narrative and its role in culture. I recently read a book called A Short History of Myth, where the author Karen Armstrong argues that mythology, before being deemed “imaginary” and “allegorical,” was a display of an archetypal way of life. A life ornamented by spirits, immortal beings, and moral lessons was a life that felt irrevocably true.

In a way, this notion is paralleled in growing up surrounded by ghosts. As a child, I learned the beauty of emotionally evocative narrative and belief. Stories were a point of connection in my family, something that erased the years between adults and children. Everyone was a sucker for a well-told ghost story. Likewise, growing up without questioning the existence of ghosts taught me to believe in what others might quickly dismiss as too imaginary to be true. That was just never the case here. I would have never batted an eye at a claimed ghost sighting—the only things that taught me ghosts were fictitious were Western comic books and TV shows.

Having grown up surrounded by such narratives is something I am forever grateful for. I have no doubt this influenced my creative process and my enduring love for storytelling as I grew up.

Ghastly yours, 

Mila Bea

When I was 7, I grew a guitar shaped limb

When I was gifted my first guitar at seven years old, I had no idea how inseparable we’d become. My first guitar was a beautiful Epiphone Flying V.

Female Magazine on yours truly

For 10 years, my guitar teacher has been my best friend and jamming partner. From the very beginning, he never talked about grades or the “conventions” of guitar playing (aside from constantly reminding me that I was plucking the wrong bass note). Because of this, playing the guitar became a space for freedom and creativity, and it still is. Over time, our lessons slowly turned into jam sessions and songwriting sessions.

I’m not one to claim my guitar skills are otherworldly—but they’re not too bad, if I do say so myself! So I’d like to share a bit about my guitar journey, along with some tips for beginners.

From ages 7 to 14, I was committed to playing acoustic, electric, and classical guitar. I became fluent in tabs and could compose comfortably in standard tuning. But it wasn’t until after I released my debut album at 14 (an impressive feat that I do not recommend to anyone) and went through a massive writing rut that my guitar skills truly soared.

When a chronic songwriter struggles to write, there is only one valid response: to listen. I revisited all of my favourite albums by artists like Joni Mitchell, Adrianne Lenker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Vampire Weekend. That’s when I noticed something. These artists weren’t just playing the guitar; they were playing with the guitar.

It wasn’t long before I was cycling through the discographies of Joni and Adrianne, learning every song I could and focusing on their use of alternate tunings. I wrote all my favourite tunings down in a notebook (see below).

With a severe case of lyric blockage, I had to let the guitar do the speaking for a month or two. This, combined with exploring alternate tunings, completely changed the way I saw the instrument. Suddenly, it became an extra limb: an arm, a whole new world I got to rediscover with the same wonder I had as a seven year old taking my first lessons.

While my guitar skills continue to evolve every day, that particular rut was monumentally pivotal in shaping my relationship with the guitar.

Now for some tips (for a range of skill levels)

1. Branch out with types of guitars— baritone, classical, electric…
2. Learning how to strum is almost as important as learning how to play chords!
3. Play with alternate tunings. Society says standard tuning is standard but I say NAYYYY!!!!!!!! Don’t chicken out when tuning your guitar because you’re worried the strings will snap. But also tune it away from your face because you’ll never know.
4. Learn discographies with incredible guitar playing and incorporate those chords into your own compositions. Artists include Joni Mitchell, Adrianne Lenker, Andrew Bird, Vampire Weekend, Haley Heynderickx, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. 
5. You don’t need music theory, but an asset is an asset. Circle of fifths is a great way to come up with harmonic progressions. 
6. If you don’t like using a pick, don’t use a pick!
7. Here is said notebook with fave tunings :))))))

Note-ably yours,

Mila Bea