A Conversation with BAER — Her Unique Journey to Becoming an Artist

BAER is a self made pop artist from Taiwan, currently based in Los Angeles. Her music has been played on Sirius XM, Netflix, Hugo Boss, Puma, Hypebeast, Macy's, among many other places. With 12 years of experience in the music industry under her belt, BAER has acquired expertise in songwriting, singing, rapping, producing and engineering (both vocals and tracks) across multiple genres of pop music.

Not at all! In fact, I grew up in a culture and society where pursuit of a career in the arts is usually greatly discouraged; believing in myself and deciding to become an artist was a big part of my journey in getting here.

My time in the music industry hasn’t always been as the artist taking front stage. I actually started off assisting studio sessions, getting there hours before the artist and even engineer, patching cables and making sure the gear and DAW is running smoothly, and leaving after everyone to make sure the studio is normalized and clean. I shadowed songwriters and producers’ sessions as often as I could, with the skillsets I had to offer, and being a runner. I tuned vocals on melodyne while everyone was eating lunch. Eventually I worked my way up to engineering the sessions sometimes and vocal producing other artists. When I got home, even if it was late, I was writing and recording songs furiously, fueled by the knowledge I soaked up during the day. I learned so much about vocal production from DQ (Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj), who I still consider one of the mentors that was monumental in my music career and taught me a lot of skills I still apply to this day.

My goal at that time was STILL to write for other big artists. It just never occurred to me that the artist could be…me. Like that seemed so outrageous. But I was on a time crunch to secure a visa to continue working in America, and since I didn’t have a label/publishing deal or any cuts, my lawyer told me to just start releasing all those songs I already have and try to get a few blog write ups.

The first song I released, “Breathe The Same” actually ended up randomly getting on the Spotify Global Viral Charts at #37, six months after it was released. Also during this time, all my friends who had previously signed publishing deals were really struggling. I was really starting to see behind the facade and understand more of the music industry; I think alot of things combined lit a fire within me - I wanted to tell MY story. At the time (and even now, still) there was such a lack of Asian representation in pop culture too, I was just overcome by this urge to really go for it 200%. I knew I had all the skills.

My creation process has evolved so much over the years that I’ve been making music, but it’s definitely always had a big DIY component, even when I collaborate, since I have most skills required to make a full song and a very specific vision and taste of what I want. I’ve always recorded and vocal produced all my own vocals and that will never change, haha. These days, it’s usually just me and my mix/master engineer, King 80.

I used to collaborate more in my earlier stages of making music, but as I went on I found that it diluted my message. The more collaborators, the less personal the end product is. It might be polished and perfect but if there’s too many opinions and input, sometimes the song loses its original personality.

My process is actually quite sporadic now. I will usually have waves where I create a lot of new ideas, but usually if I really like a beat I made, I’ll sit on it for a bit to make sure I know what I want to write about and then let the ideas pour out. Sometimes that’s a day but it could also be a few months. For me that’s an important distinction when im creating art and music for BAER, as an artist. I’m not just a songwriter anymore. It’s not a job to finish. Every song is a creation I hope to live on forever. As an artist, I don’t want to write just to write, but write intentionally.

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