Chloe Qisha: ‘I fell into music backwards’

Chloe Qisha lived many lives before she decided to become a pop star. Born and raised in Malaysia, she wasn’t the kid that developed her passion from writing songs in her bedroom as a teenager, like so many other romanticised stories go. She knew she could sing and compose songs, but never felt the undeniable urge to write them down.

By the time she started posting cover versions online in her early twenties and was messaged by an A&R, she had followed her older brother in leaving the country a decade ago to study in the UK at 16, and was undertaking a psychology degree in London, training to become a therapist.

“I fell into music backwards,” the now-26-year-old laughs over coffee after wrapping her Future of Music cover shoot. While most songwriters figure out the business and logistical side of launching a pop career after wowing people with their songs, Qisha — a voracious consumer of all corners of pop — did the opposite.

After that first message from an industry exec, she undertook “a circuit of meetings” for a year, speed dating a number of labels, writers and producers to try and connect the dots of her potential future career, before finding an undeniable spark with Rob Milton, who has worked with Holly Humberstone, The 1975 and others.

Together, Qisha and Milton wrote the songs that would become The Chloe Qisha EP, a startling collection of hooky, funny, pristine pop songs released late last year after being concocted behind the scenes “for a hot minute”. On those four tracks, Qisha showed an immediate knack for writing music that traversed the entirety of pop, past and present, from the Olivia Rodrigo-influenced pop-punk strut of ‘Evelyn’ to the Caroline Polachek-like ‘Sexy Goodbye’.

“I’m just a big fan of all things pop,” she says. “I like trying on all the different hats, because it mixes things up, and I don’t think they sound too dissimilar from one another — it’s a different child but always the same mum and dad. I’ll always be like that, to be honest. There will probably be a country song a few iterations down the line, because why not?”

Her second EP, Modern Romance, out this summer, proves her point, with the influence of ABBA weighing heavy on the stunning ‘21st Century Cool Girl’, while The 1975 and Talking Heads can be heard on the irresistible funk-pop of ‘Sex, Drugs and Existential Dread’. She describes the dual EPs as a “sister act”, eight songs that present a strong-minded and abundantly talented new pop star.

Because of her unique and delayed entry into the music world, Qisha is well aware of the potential pitfalls of the industry, and the whiplash-like effects of fame. “It’s good being a cynic going into those meetings,” she says, fully aware of horror stories of wide-eyed teenage pop stars promised the world before being signed into decades-long contracts that restrict their freedoms.

While openness and a lack of boundaries is almost a prerequisite for new young artists in the pop space, Qisha’s experience and worldly-wise outlook allowed her to choose the parts she wanted to buy into with her career, and those she wanted to keep to herself.

She says: “I’ve had this conversation so many times recently. What we do is the most unnatural thing, being exposed to millions of people, and then being exposed to their opinions. They have access to your body and your face [as well as] your music. It’s important to have a good, healthy distance between you and the person that you’re putting out there, because then you can protect your private self a little bit more. I’ve come to welcome this distance a little bit, when I don’t quite recognise myself in those photoshoots or videos. It’s cool that I can somehow turn that on, and then she becomes her own thing.”

Qisha’s songs aren’t hugely removed from her own life, instead they poke gentle fun at a younger and more naïve version of herself. The songs are packed with emotion, but she is always ready to cut herself down with a withering self-own. “I dream about the girl I used to be,” begins ‘21st Century Cool Girl’, the best pop song of 2025 so far. Later in the track, she quips: “Now this could be hyperbole / But I’m afraid I might die if you’re not holding me tight,” showing reverence to her younger and less cynical self but from a sturdier and more balanced vantage point.

In the songs on The Chloe Qisha EP and Modern Romance, both Qisha and Milton dredge up memories of their younger selves with the assuredness of a pair who have been there and done that and are writing for those still in the throes of these earth-shattering emotions.

“We’re a little bit more mature and older, and we’ve lived so many different lives prior to this,” she says. “I’ve always been a homebody and a hermit in my own way, but, at a certain point, either of us would have been making out in a bar in Amsterdam [as goes the lyrics to ‘21st Century Cool Girl’], been that, like, crazy person hopelessly in love with somebody that just couldn’t give us the time of day, or wanted to crawl into somebody else’s skin because they were super jealous. We’re reflecting on ourselves from way back when, when we thought we were the shit. We’ve all been there in some way, shape or form. Right now, it’s nice that we’re in a settled place where we can reflect on those times and not necessarily live it and go through the throes of it while all of this craziness is happening.

“I wouldn’t go as far to say she’s a persona, but she’s definitely the cool version of myself that I can switch on,” Qisha says of the character in her songs. “If I were going on a night out or was at an event, she’s that girl that I always aspire to be, but if I were her every single day, it would be exhausting! I’m not her every day, and I’m glad I’m not.”

For Qisha, this persona also helps her protect a life for herself outside of the glare of what will surely be fast and significant success. “When you get back home,” she says, “you can still be the private self that nobody but you and your partner and your cats will know.”

Despite being at somewhat of an emotional remove from the character in her songs, Qisha imbues every note with the yearning and euphoria of those feelings, as well as the insights from a decade spent as a keen student of pop.

Before settling on her sound with Milton, Qisha went through phase after phase of trying to corner a certain sound. There was the sultry Troye Sivan phase, the R&B-leaning Frank Ocean phase, the stripped-back Phoebe Bridgers phase.

All of the above — as well as Charli XCX, Talking Heads, ABBA and many more besides — can be heard in Qisha’s music, and the idea of being a little bit of everything is “most authentic to me”, she says. “I think most people would think the opposite. They’d be like, ‘Oh, if your music is super concise and everything sounds the same, that’s more authentic and shows the clear direction of what you like to listen to.’ But for me, I’ve always listened to every strand of pop, and it will always sound like me.”

In conversation, Qisha speaks like a pop star reflecting on their embarrassing earlier moments from a standpoint of greater clarity. The difference here is that those moments happened before she was a songwriter, making her first-ever songs a gorgeous and balanced mix of emotion that most only get to many years into their career.

“That’s what growing up is,” she responds simply. “It’s learning to accept your past selves and also learning to make light of your more embarrassing, cringey moments, because it’s built you to the person you are today.”

Qisha adds: “I was an absolute wreck of a human being in my early twenties. I think I hid it well, but my brain was just in overdrive. If this music career had happened for me then, I would have fucked it for myself. It wouldn’t have happened, or it would’ve happened, or it’d have blown up in my face.

“I didn’t have a sense of identity; I didn’t even know how to dress. Those things have only become apparent in the last year or two,” she says, with the experienced attitude of a singer who knows the world is about to fall into her lap and is ready for all of it. “To any future artists, I’d say that if it takes its time to work, then you should let it run its course. There’s a time and place for everything.”

Taken from the April/May issue of Rolling Stone UK, which is out on Thursday, March 20. Pre-order your copy here.

Photography: Ryan Saradjola
Photography Assistant: Henry Hewitt
Styling: Lewis Munro
Styling Assistant: Miranda Mikkola
Fashion Assistant: Aaron Pandher
Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita using Bumble and Bumble
Makeup: Yolanda Dohr using NARS Cosmetics