Colombian-Canadian Singer Tei Shi Talks New Album, Creative Freedom, and Cultural Roots
- W4TC
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Interview By: Summer Bowie
Colombian-Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer Tei Shi has never been afraid to push boundaries. Raised between Bogotá and Vancouver before carving out her career in the U.S., her music reflects an eclectic blend of cultures, genres, and influences. Now fully independent, she has released her fourth album, “Make Believe I Make Believe”, recorded during a week in Vancouver Island. For Tei Shi, this project represents more than new music. It’s a statement about creative freedom, the strength of community, and the pride she carries in her dual heritage.
W4TC: Hi Tei Shi, so glad to talk with you today! Tell us a little about you.
TS: I'm Tei Shi. I'm a songwriter and producer. I've been making music, writing music and performing most of my life. I'm originally from Columbia. That’s where my parents are from and I spent my early childhood there. I grew up after that, mostly in Vancouver, Canada so I'm Colombian and Canadian and I've been living in the states now for a long time. I studied music and started my career here. I've bounced around a lot, but I'm based in LA now and I just released my new album.
W4TC: Tell me more about your album. I know you just dropped it. Are you excited about that?
TS: Yes! I just put out my fourth album. It’s called “Make Believe I Make Believe” and I'm really happy about it. I'm really excited to take it out on the road soon. It's like the fastest that I've ever made and released an album, which was very much my intention with it. Now that I'm a fully independent artist, I was like, okay, I have all the freedom to do this however I want. So I booked a studio for a week in Vancouver Island and my goal was to come out of that with an album. I brought two of my collaborators and producers, Noah Barrison and Tommy English, and we basically just worked the whole week and came out with most of this album. I've just been tweaking it over the last eight months or so here in LA and now it's out. I'm really proud that I was able to make it and release it 100% just the way that I envisioned.
W4TC: What's your creative process from start to finish when you're making a project such as the album?
TS: Well, it really varies. It really depends based on the album and the circumstances at that time. With this album, I just wanted it to be very concentrated in a short period of time and in a very specific space. I had some loose ideas I brought with me, mostly some lyrics, and maybe a couple of little melody ideas. I really wanted to kind of go in fresh and just make everything from scratch. We were in this amazing studio with this beautiful live room, which led us to want to record a bunch of acoustic instruments. A lot of what this album looked like was recording guitar in the live room and kind of getting a vibe going that way. Usually melodies start coming to me and then the lyrics and the melodies start revealing themselves. At that point, I kind of remove myself and go into my little nook and really zero in on the melody and the lyrics. I try to get that locked in enough so we can record a demo. There's a rough demo with just guitar and vocals, or sometimes it's a synth sound and vocals, or just a basic drum beat and vocals. From there, it's usually just playing around and throwing stuff at the wall, or putting that aside and letting it breathe for a while. I have an idea of what the song should sound like or what the production should be after that. This time it all just happened all at the same time because it was so concentrated.
W4TC: I know that you said you're Colombian and Canadian. How has that shaped your musical identity?
TS: I've moved around a lot and I've been exposed to a lot of different music and culture. Growing up, there was a very eclectic mix of music that was around me. From all kinds of Latin music to all kinds of pop music, to finding my own genres of music as a young person and a teenager in Canada. Indie music, electronic music, hip hop, R&B were all of the stuff that was more of my own taste. That came together with all the early pop influences I had, like Madonna and Mariah Carey, mixed in with more indie rock. It was just growing up that way and having a variety of languages and culture. I just felt like a pretty eclectic person. I could go into a lot of different environments and adapt. I think in my music that's definitely something that happens organically, but also purposefully. Genres for me have always been very non-restrictive. I've just always liked all kinds of music and I studied music. I studied some jazz and classical types of music. So yeah, that's one of the things that has defined me in terms of my work.
W4TC: You’ve collaborated with different artists like Dev Hynes and Loyal Lobos. What have those collaborations taught you about the importance of community in music?
TS: They've taught me a lot. I love collaborating for that reason. I think it's always really fascinating to see another artist's process and it's always really interesting to see the differences between what their process might be and yours. It’s also really exciting and reaffirming to see the similarities. You know certain things that you just have picked up as a habit or your little quirks and then seeing that like in somebody else and being like, okay, this is like a universal thing as an artist. Dev, for example, I feel like I learned a lot just seeing his creative process and how he surrounds himself with a lot of different artists and creatives. It’s like an artistic community that isn't just bound to music. That was something that I really was inspired by. At that time when I worked with him and started getting into his world a little bit, I was feeling very lonely as a solo artist. It can be really lonely. It's just you and you have to make your decisions and navigate everything on your own. So it was really cool seeing somebody, who's also a solo artist, but has found a way to always be surrounded by other creative people and nurturing themselves that way.
Really, with everybody that I work with, I learn a lot. Seeing other people's processes and seeing that they don't take things as seriously as you do sometimes can be refreshing. It just depends on the person, but I've definitely picked up a lot of interesting tips and I love to observe other people too.
W4TC: You went from working with a label to becoming an independent artist. How has that shaped your approach to creative freedom? How did you navigate the challenges that you also experienced with the label?
TS: Probably not in the best way. It was definitely tricky to navigate. I think in the end, the way that I was able to navigate it was to get out of those deals. After a while, when you're in a situation and you find yourself in any kind of relationship: romantic, friendship, family, professional… and it's completely conditional and you are expected to give and provide everything and not really get anything back… it can be extremely frustrating. On a professional level, it’s also very frustrating because you lose all control and you lose ownership over your own work. That becomes evident very quickly when you're not in the right situation. Loss of control really took its toll on me. After various years of experiencing and ending up in those kinds of situations, I felt like my creativity was like really compromised by it. Instead of going into creating with a totally open mind and heart and creating for the sake of creating, it became creating in an attempt to try and convince somebody else that this was worth releasing and worth investing in. Then, you're creating with somebody else's voice in your head or these pressures and opinions from other people that are trying to influence what they think you should do.
I ended up in a place where I was creatively blocked and my relationship with writing and recording music was really tainted. I had to hit rock bottom in that sense and feel like I lost touch with myself to realize that I needed to get my freedom back in order to get my power and my ability to make music back. That took a couple of years and it wasn't a quick process. Getting my independence back and not being tied to another company got me back in this place where I feel really invigorated and inspired. I can hear myself again.
W4TC: What type of advice would you give to women music artists navigating industry pressures and still trying to uplift those around them?
TS: I would say I think it's very important to connect with other women artists. Other artists that might be experiencing similar kinds of obstacles. For me, a lot of the loneliness that I felt early on in my career was because I didn't really have a network of other female artists that were navigating similar things as me. I started making that effort and connecting with other women in the industry and being open to receiving other people's experiences. That is very helpful. If you're a woman, who's an artist and trying to navigate the industry, finding other women that you can see eye to eye with and can support one another is very empowering and important. Again, you don't need somebody else's permission or somebody else in order to express an idea.
W4TC: This is something that I ask all the music artists that I interview. If you could form an all-women supergroup for one project, who would be in it and what kind of music would you make?
TS: I think it would be Pink Pantheress, Arca, myself, Nathy Peluso, and Kacey Musgraves. Let's just make it really interesting. It'd be electronic and kind of industrial, but also acoustic and very vocal heavy. I honestly think it would be like every album would be like a completely different genre.
You can find Tei Shi on Instagram @teishi and listen to her newest album “Make Believe I Make Believe” on streaming platforms!
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