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PERSONALITY
50 | FireFlyz
I
T
was only after she threw in the
towel and returned to Malaysia in
2004 that she cut her first album
Eclecticism, spread her wings
and soared. In October 2013, she
released her second album MDot
and told Stephanie Sta Maria that
“if this is what you really want to do
then you have to accept certain failures
because it’s all written in the cards”.
How long did it take you to put MDot
together?
About three years, including the
writing process. MDot has been a long
time coming and I wanted to make
sure that I didn’t release a version two
of Eclecticism. That set the bar very
high and put a lot of pressure on me to
come up with new materials that are
equally as good if not better. I wanted
something that would chart my
journey and be an improved version of
my music.
Did you also discover an improved
version of yourself in that journey?
A huge one. I’m a completely different
artiste now than I was back then and I
owe it to life’s experiences and having
gone out there to play more. Singing in
the studio is different from performing
in a pub. You can’t cheat people on
stage. You’re out there with one chance
to sing the song and you need to
express and narrate the story through
your vocal performance. Doing that
really helped me develop my vocal and
expressive skills. So when I hear my
vocals now I hear more expression,
real storytelling and more control.
Did you have a vastly different
experience with MDot than you did with
Eclecticism?
Completely! With Eclecticism I worked
with three different producers and
washed my hands off the demos until
they played me the end product. I was
a novice myself so I relied a lot on their
professional skills to take my demo to
another level. After a five-year break,
I had honed my skills as a producer
and an arranger so I worked very
closely with one producer and several
arrangers on MDot.
You were born in Malaysia but grew
up in London. Why did you choose
to return when many other Malaysian
artistes are seeking their fortunes
abroad?
What brought me home was family.
There were no two ways about it. I was
the only one in my nuclear family who
lived abroad. And I think you reach a
certain point in life where you want to
be closer to your family again. I was
ready to come home. I had always said
to myself as a teenager in London that
I would never move back to Malaysia.
It just proves that you should never say
never.
Many artistes in this social media age
measure their success by their number
of followers. Do you subscribe to the
same benchmark?
It’s very easy to get caught up in the
“followers” measure on social media.
I can follow someone on Twitter,
but never go back to his page again
and never connect with him. What’s
important to me though is connecting
with someone, joining the dots. It’s
Melissa Indot:
Connecting the Dots
Melissa Indot is a non-believer of overnight
successes andwith a good reason too. She
spent a significant slice of her adult years
building a name for herself in London’s
music circle only to be turned away by
music labels because of her Asian looks.