GRADIENTS feels like a world built from colour and emotion. What made you want to map your inner landscape this way, and when did you realise colour was the right language for this EP?
I’ve never felt emotions in a straight line. Growing up between Taiwan, Australia, and several other places, my inner world has always been a blend — of cultures, tones, moods, and identities. Words like “happy” or “sad” felt too flat, but “warm,” “dim,” “hazy,” or “glowing” felt closer to how I actually experience things.
In many ways, I’ve always been a gradient myself: mixed in culture, mixed in genre, mixed in the roles I carry on a day to day basis. So even though I’m not a visual artist or naturally drawn to think visually, colour became the clearest way to capture the emotional layers of this project. When Make Time arrived with a very specific orange-red feeling, I realised the whole EP needed to live in that kind of blended space — where emotions shift, overlap, and don’t need to be one thing.
You’ve lived between cultures, languages, and continents your whole life. How did those in-between spaces shape the way these songs formed?
Living in-between places teaches you to read the atmosphere more than words. You learn to hold multiple identities at once, and that naturally spills into the music. These songs weren’t written from one cultural lens — they carry Taiwanese sensitivity, Australian openness, and pieces of everywhere I’ve lived or found community.
Instead of choosing one version of myself to write from, I let all those layers coexist. The EP reflects that same blended identity: not fixed, not singular, always shifting.
PEACE & LOVE opens the record with a softness that still feels incredibly powerful. What part of your own story were you reclaiming when you wrote it?
I was reconnecting with the gentler, more forgiving part of myself — the version of me that existed before I felt the constant need to be capable, endlessly adaptable and at times a people pleaser. Living and working across countries for years made me hold myself very tightly and let relationships with people drag on longer than it needed to be, and PEACE & LOVE became a moment where I could finally exhale.
It reminded me that softness doesn’t mean defeat; it means choosing peace even when life doesn’t go the way you want it to. Writing it felt like stepping back into a lighter version of myself, one who can still recognise beauty and gratitude even when things are imperfect.
It was a reclaiming of softness as strength.
This EP carries a sense of artistic clarity, as if you finally allowed all sides of your identity to speak at once. What did embracing that full spectrum unlock for you musically?
It unlocked a sense of relief. For years, I felt like I had to tidy myself up into one identity — jazz vocalist, R&B singer-songwriter, Taiwanese artist, Australian artist — when the truth is that my life has never existed in neat categories.
The moment I stopped trying to make the music “fit,” it started sounding more like me. Allowing all the parts of my identity to sit at the same table — culturally, musically, emotionally — created a freedom I didn’t expect. The songs became more fluid, more intuitive, and more honest. I think that’s the clarity people hear: not perfection, just alignment.
Your jazz background meets soul, R&B, and pop in such a fluid way here. How did your training guide the emotional weight of these arrangements?
Jazz taught me how to feel before it taught me how to sing. It gave me a deep respect for space, tension, surprise and the way one note can shift the emotional temperature of an entire song. That sensitivity carried into GRADIENTS.
Even in the more pop-leaning tracks, I’m always listening for the emotional arc — where the song needs to breathe, where it needs to crack open a little, where it needs to sit still. Jazz training made me comfortable sitting inside vulnerability, and that guided a lot of the production choices. The arrangements weren’t about being clever; they were about serving the feeling.
Each track is tied to a specific colour. Which shade challenged you the most while you were making it, and what did you learn about yourself in the process?
Colours in the Sky challenged me the most, not because of the sound at first, but because of why I wrote it. I originally wrote it for a friend who was feeling stuck and didn’t want to keep going — she felt like she didn’t fit anywhere, like life had no space for her. I wanted to offer her a vision of something bigger and softer, something that says: life is about embracing things fully, about painting your own colours in the sky even when you feel dull or invisible.
But after finishing the song, I realised I had unknowingly written it for a younger version of myself too — the Cait Lin who often felt left out, who moved countries and didn’t quite belong, who needed someone to tell her that her world could be brighter than what she could see at the time. Now when I sing it live, I feel like I’m speaking to the parts of me that still need that encouragement.
The live performance was another challenge. The rhythmic stops, the sudden shifts, the multiple sections — it felt like trying to hit something just out of reach. But once I learned to move through the pauses and bumps with trust instead of fear, it became the song I look forward to singing the most.
That whole journey taught me something important: optimism isn’t simple or effortless — it’s vulnerable. It requires the same level of honesty as sadness, maybe even more. You can’t fake hope; you have to open yourself to it. And for me, that was the real lesson behind this colour.
fragile love feels like the emotional centre of the EP — quiet, piercing, deeply human. What memories or truths were you holding when you wrote it?
fragile love came from a place of accepting responsibility, and also accepting that sometimes love doesn’t survive even when both people care deeply. The lyrics came out almost like a confession — acknowledging the mistakes, the weight, the emotional immaturity, and the parts of myself I was still learning how to face.
The song is about knowing you’ve caused harm, knowing you’ve held someone back, and choosing to let them go so they can become the version of themselves they deserve to be. It’s not a breakup song in the dramatic sense — it’s more like an admission that love can be beautiful and still not be strong enough, and that clinging onto it can hurt both people more.
Lines like “Wish I had a stronger soul, but I’m a child” came from a very honest place — recognising that I wasn’t the person I wanted to be yet. And “I would give up everything I had hoped for to see you shine instead” is a moment of selfless clarity: the kind of love that chooses someone’s wellbeing even if it breaks your own heart.
Writing it taught me that accountability is its own form of love, and that letting go isn’t always abandoning someone — sometimes it’s the most loving thing you can do. That quiet acceptance is what makes the song sit at the emotional centre of the EP for me.
You’ve travelled widely and built communities across Asia and Australia. How did performing in so many cultural contexts inform the way you approached storytelling on this project?
Performing in different countries taught me very quickly that people connect to sincerity before anything else. Some audiences lean into subtlety and intimacy, others love rawness and directness — but the emotional core is what carries across every room.
That understanding made me write more honestly, without worrying whether a feeling or story would “translate.” If the emotion is real, it travels.
And honestly, music is one of the very few things that truly connects everyone — regardless of age, language, culture, upbringing, or background. I’ve felt that again and again on stage. The details might shift, but the heartbeat underneath is universal.
You’re known for performances that cut through language barriers. What internal compass do you follow to make sure your songs resonate no matter where they land?
Presence has always been my compass. If I’m actually feeling what I’m singing — not performing the idea of the feeling, but genuinely in it — people understand, no matter what language it’s in.
Growing up bilingual taught me early that tone, intention, and emotion often communicate more clearly than vocabulary. And honestly, I love engaging with the crowd — a little stage banter, a shared laugh, getting everyone to clap along, or having them sing “PEACE & LOVE, PEACE & LOVE” with me. Those moments remind me that connection doesn’t require a shared language, just a shared moment.
So I always check in with myself: Am I being honest right now? Am I here? If yes, the audience feels it.
This EP introduces a new chapter for you — visually, sonically, emotionally. What horizon are you moving toward next, and how do you hope listeners grow with you?
I’m moving into a chapter that feels both more grounded and more expansive — a space where I can experiment visually and sonically while staying anchored in the emotional clarity that GRADIENTS gave me. I want to build worlds around the music: fuller live shows, richer visuals, and collaborations that reflect the cultures and communities that have shaped me.
What I hope most is that listeners feel permission to embrace their own transitions — the messy, shifting, in-between parts of their identities and emotions. If this EP helps anyone recognise the beauty in their own gradients, in the parts of themselves that don’t fit neatly into one place, then that means more to me than anything.
