How a cross-cultural artist turns personal experience into music while building a career in London

Amelie Jat has built a music career across borders. Raised between Hong Kong and the UK, the independent artist has spent the past few years turning personal experience into songwriting. Starting at 11 “just for fun,” before deciding to pursue a career in music at 16, Amelie has released five projects since 2020, three of them commercial studio albums, while steadily carving out her place in London’s live scene.

With these achievements under her belt, however, she did not think she was prepared “for her goals and achievements to line up in such a way when life can be difficult to navigate, and dreams are, more often than not, far-fetched.” “Honestly, this whole journey so far has been incredible, and sometimes I still can’t believe this is my life!”

Never imagining she would already have achieved so much in such a short time, she also did not think that “I would actually be here right now if you asked me where I saw myself in 7 years when I was at that age.” “I’m so lucky and have worked really hard to be at this stage and accomplished so many things that 16-year-old me could only have dreamt about.”

When asked whether Hong Kong or Kent, the places she grew up in, influenced her music (if at all), Amelie answered “not applicable.” “I think as someone who’s a ‘third culture kid’, I sometimes feel like I don’t belong to a specific place in the world, or even a specific culture.” “This is such an interesting question, as I will always be from Hong Kong at heart, but the music I make is so westernised that moving to / being in the UK has allowed me to take my career to places that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.” Besides her own experiences, watching artists perform live at venues “of every size here in the UK has been a massive part” of what has influenced her music, with the style and energy that translates into the songs being “so inspiring and motivating.”

Having had a range of experiences in the UK, from making friends for life to having three birthdays ruined in a row, songwriting for Amelie is “about recording and noting down universal experiences – whether they’re pleasant experiences or not.” She thinks that “if you ask most songwriters, they will agree that the main reason why they write is to be able to make their audience feel things, and to enable them to be able to see themselves in the songs and apply those situations/emotions to their realities.”

“And so, just because of how life is – unpredictable, with its ups and downs – for me it’s very important that I convey every side of what life gives me, whether they’re good experiences/feelings or bad ones. I’m only human, after all.”

As someone originally from Hong Kong who has “grown accustomed to British pop culture,” she writes “in a certain way that’s completely different to traditional Hong Kong artists,” having been told a couple of years ago that her music “doesn’t fit within the mould” of Hong Kong pop. “You can hear it in the lyricism, in the production, even in the sonic aspect of my work,” she says. “A lot of this is contributed and also steered by the amazing producers/writers I have been lucky enough to work with; at the end of the day, it’s a collaboration – so it’s what every single person who is part of the process brings to the table.”

Recently, Amelie came “one step closer” to progressing to the Isle of Wight Festival through the Hotvox New Blood Competition. Now at the semi-final stage, she is one performance away from playing at the festival, something she described as a dream if it comes true. However, she wouldn’t say that surpasses her previous goal of playing an arena necessarily, as “these 2 things are incomparable, and are both on my bucket list as an artist.”

Nonetheless, the opportunity to play at the festival would be “HUGE for a relatively small independent recording artist like me,” opening up “so many doors for other independent artists and me in the same boat.” “It would also just be so significant, I think, to show the world that small artists can do big things – we’re here, and we’re ready to be heard.”

Amelie Jat will perform in the New Blood Competition Semi-Finals on April 17th at O’Neill’s Wardour Street, with doors opening at 7:15 pm, as the opening act out of the four-artist line.