About The Blog

In late 2002 I entered a 'reality TV' singing competition called Popstars. Proved to be popular in Australia the concept made its way to Malaysia looking for the country's own next-big-thing. By early 2003 my lifelong dream of becoming a singer had come true as I was announced as one of the five members that had been chosen to form a new mixed-gender group that was to be named By'U (Pictured below: I'm the one on the far left if you're wondering).

Like many products of reality tv we enjoyed a glamorous adventure. Our first single topped the charts, we received various nominations for local industry awards, we were the main hot topic in magazines, and we toured the country state by state performing to thousands of screaming fans before us. But like most celebrities would tell you, it's not all fun and games.

What you don't read about was how we were consistently ridiculed by backstabbing managers & agents, how we were struggling to pay our bills, and, amidst all this, how we were still required to uphold the pride and image that we were composed into.

As most would expect the hype soon faded and our main source of income (via shows) soon faded along with it. We were terminated by our management (who didn't see much business sense in keeping us any longer) and our label (due to disappointing record sales) leaving us little choice but to part our separate ways just shy of 2 years from the time we were assembled.

So you'd think that after facing the harsh reality of the local music industry that I would fear ever stepping foot in it ever again, right? Not quite.

You see the journey was not 'all bad'. In fact, I regret nothing and I'm appreciative of all the things that I have learned along the way, and truly cherish the network that I have built. I have since made great bonds with top producers and players in the industry. I've greatly developed my singing, songwriting, and music production skills. I even became an A&R for small record label which enabled me to learn valuable business lessons. In other words, I see the failure of the group as simply falling off the horse... and we all know what we should do after that. I'm now wiser, more well informed, more prepared, and ever more passionate about music.

But most importantly, as fun as it was being manufactured and taken care of (well... sort of) from the get go, I was always deprived of the one thing that I feel had greatly contributed to the failure of the group: I was not allowed to be ME.

So what is it about ME that's so different? Well, for starters my main language is English, not Malay. In fact, my Malay sucks bad. Having grown up in Australia I was not particularly expressive during media interviews and performances in Malay, which was 95% of the time as our label was targeting the major Malay market. This truly 'cramped my style' because I am a REALLY expressive person, and having to suppress that characteristic during our time really deprived me of my individuality. I was practically a zombie!

Being in a pop group also didn't quench my thirst of releasing songs that I truly wanted to do: R&B. I must admit however that I do enjoy pop music but only if the songs enabled me to perform extraordinary dance routines too. I'm a big fan of pop groups like N'sync & B2k because of how they brilliantly showcase the duality of singing and dancing simultaneously, and I was hoping that joining the group would allow me to do the same. But with a full album containing virtually no dance-friendly songs (at least not for N'sync type routines anyway), uninspiring choreographers, and inexperience group members, we were stuck dancing to 80's choreography which I am, till this day, still very embarrassed about.

So I think we've established what 'ME' is and 'ME' is exactly what my solo album will be about. It's about R&B, world class dancing, and no limit to expression... and I truly believe that the lessons that I have learnt along the way will help me get it right this time around.

This blog is like a diary that happily invites all those whom are interested to go through this journey with me on making my very first solo album..

Note: The first 3 entries (post this one) were written and posted a while ago on another site which I have only recently transfered here. I have placed dates on them so as to indicate when they were originally posted just in case you get confused with the post dates on this blog - a feature I'm unable to switch off!).