Serrini: Weird and Wonderful

From writing songs in her university room to becoming one of Hong Kong’s most popular female artists, Serrini has always carved out her own path.

Photography and creative direction KARL LAM  
Styling BHISAN RAI
Make-up HEISAN HUNG
Hair JEAN T   
Styling assistant NISHAM LIMBU and HALEY CHAU        
Photography assistants GREY CHAN and JOHN YAN

There are those who’d say she’s quirky, and some even plain weird, but no matter how you choose to describe Serrini – who’s affectionately known to her fans as “mami” (mother) – there’s one word that pops into my mind time and again during our cover shoot and interview as I watch her transform from one look to another, energetic and enthusiastic as ever despite all the hours that’ve gone by: maverick.

Whether she’s singing playfully about the lack of boba in her bubble tea in “Sophia’s Boba Milk Tea” or addressing issues of urban isolation in “Kowloon Blondie Ling”, nothing that Serrini – who also possesses a PhD in Hong Kong Studies from the University of Hong Kong – does is mainstream. Which is why she was understandably so surprised when she not only won the bronze prize for Best Female Singer at the Ultimate Song Chart Awards earlier this year, but was also ranked among the top five most popular female singers. 

“This year, I was also voted the most popular female singer at the Chill Club Chart Awards, and I was downstairs thinking, ‘What the fuck?’” she tells me, laughing. “I really don’t know why I won those awards, but I do know I have a hard time accepting praise. I always underplay my achievements, so this year I really want to just celebrate my artistry; I wouldn’t say celebrate my success, because there’s still so much more to be done to impress myself, but I was very honoured to win these awards. It’s been so many years since I’ve first attended those ceremonies, so it felt great to finally win.

“Everyone wants recognition, but for me it’s not necessarily in the form of awards,” she explains when asked how important such accolades are to her. “These are additional bonuses, and making great music and music videos are things I’d be more proud of. But of course, I wouldn’t say I didn’t need these awards, because they lead to a larger market that I wouldn’t have touched on if I was just singing on my own. A lot of the public just think I’m weird, and they might not really understand what I’m doing, but as I go on stage to sing with these popular stars and idols and become recognised among them, I think it opens the opportunity for them to perhaps look me up on Spotify and
start to understand me more. It might help them realise I’m not as harsh or intimidating as I portray myself on mainstream media.”

A strong proponent of women’s rights and an “enlightened enthusiast of cultural studies” in Hong Kong, Serrini doesn’t shy away from expressing her opinions and beliefs – and this, she suggests, may be why some consider her difficult to approach. But it’s also why so many fans find her relatable, and why she’s a much-needed breath of fresh air in an otherwise increasingly homogenised music industry. Since her debut more than a decade ago, Serrini has always been an independent singer-songwriter, and though the venues she performs at, the clothes she wears and the scale of her productions have no doubt changed, one thing has remained constant throughout her career: her thorough understanding of herself and how she needs to operate to achieve her goals.

“I studied in Japan at Keio University on exchange, and that’s when I first started releasing music,” Serrini says of her early days. “I was playing guitar in my dorm, and I was so lonely, and my Japanese was terrible, so for the first half of the semester I barely had any friends.” 

Though her solitude didn’t last long – her social life began to flourish once she quickly got a grasp on the language – her passion for music did, and soon she began juggling both her academics and her music career, until one day, as she was studying for her PhD, she had an epiphany.

“I was trying to figure out my life at the time, and eventually I realised I just wanted to take a break and focus on being happy,” she explains. “I always joke about how doing my PhD damaged my brain permanently, because it made me question my ability every single day. As much as I was being scrutinised by others, I also scrutinised myself a lot, and I became so scared of putting my thoughts out there that I shelved writing my thesis for quite a while. I told my professor I felt I was being judged for my opinions and I didn’t feel safe or comfortable. That’s when I redirected my efforts into feeling happy and made that my priority. I was shooting a few advertisements at the time, and I was having a lot of fun with them, so I figured I’d pursue becoming an artist instead, and it all just snowballed from there.”

Now with seven albums behind her, Serrini’s popularity has surged in the past few years, bringing her to the forefront of Hong Kong’s music scene despite her reluctance to be just another celebrity. Awards aside, she’s collaborated with artists such as Hins Cheung and Anson Lo, both of whom recently featured on the cover of Prestige, and her fan base has grown exponentially. 

“I’ve always been weird, but the recent success has definitely given me the confidence to continue being myself and be even weirder,” she says with a grin. “Commercially, I reinvest everything I make into creating better music and music videos and building a better team to support me, and these are all things that make me feel safer in exploring my artistry. It’s made me less self-battering, and I don’t limit myself as much now. I know the talent has always been in me, but now I have more ways to express it, so it’s different, but still the same. That said, to be honest, the attention was kind of overwhelming when I first started gaining traction two or three years ago.”

Overwhelmed as she may have been, Serrini certainly hasn’t shown any signs of it, and the idea of repressing – or internalising – her emotions forms the subject of her latest album, Rage In Peace. 

“One day I was thinking about resting in peace, and what we do when we die,” she explains. “But what do we actually do when we’re alive? I thought about the last few years for me, how I’ve felt working in this industry after my doctorate, dealing with family and handling my own personal growth, and I think the key word for me has been anger, or rage. I think it’s just common among women in their thirties. They don’t show it – unless it’s on their credit card bills. Rage in Peace is me as a thirty-something-year-old woman coming to terms with herself and learning how to handle the rage in life.”

The result of this thought experiment and processing of emotions is a 17-track project released back in June to critical acclaim and widespread popularity, with her video of “Moon Dance” viewed more than 2.6 million times in just three months on YouTube. Segmented by three perfectly positioned interludes, the album takes listeners on a journey through the emotional rollercoaster that Serrini experienced during the past few years, starting with slower ballads like “Tree” and “Blue Song” before progressing to more vibrant and pacier tunes such as “Faery Queen” and “Ma’lady”.

“I’d consider myself an indie-pop artist, but I’m not particularly devoted to any one genre,” she replies when asked about the challenges of tackling such diverse styles of music. “I began as a folk singer-songwriter, but only because I didn’t have gel nails at the time. Now I have manicures and pedicures all the time, so I can’t play the guitar anymore, and instead I asked my friends to play for me. They’re all so multitalented, and they’re able to play across so many different genres, so that’s how we collaborated. This is a work of love which I created with all my friends, and it’s one of the least commercial works I’ve done. It spans from quiet, doomed- to-be-unpopular songs to crazy, rage-filled ones. I honestly didn’t know what people would think, but it turns out my fans loved all of it. I think they accepted my weird side, and so now I keep producing songs across many different genres. I feel like my identity is so fluid that not one genre can define what I want to do.”

Songwriting aside, this recent album also gave her the opportunity to take her creativity beyond the realms of just lyrics and melodies. From the way the physical album was put together and its mesmerising photography to the thought-provoking poetry between carefully laid-out pages of lyrics and the stunning videos that accompany the tracks, it’s clear that every aspect of Rage in Peace was carefully designed and choreographed by Serrini and her team. She also collaborated with artists abroad, recording “Faery Queen” in the UK while working with a group of Dutch producers on “Into the Forest”.

“I’m a big fan of getting coherent work out,” she explains. “No offence, but I don’t want to just put singles out. I need coherence, whether it’s with the poetry, writing or photography. The journey I took with this album taught me how to consolidate my thoughts into a great, unified piece of content, and it’s the embodiment of me speaking to my artistry. It’s a little comma before I embark on my next journey.”

What that journey might look like and where it might take her, she doesn’t quite know, but one thing she’s sure of now more than ever is her decision to remain independent, no matter how successful she’s become.

“I’m getting more independent by the day, and it’s something I strive for,” Serrini says with conviction. “I want this to be fun, and I want to love doing what I’m doing. What’s the point if I don’t love it? I don’t want it to become work, so that’s why I want to keep myself independent.

“Oh, and I don’t need a board of men telling me how to write about my feelings – you can quote me on that.”