In a London studio, there’s a murmuring team, one budding superstar, and a fuckton of potential. Chloe Qisha stares fiercely into the camera, Sabrina Carpenter and Troye Sivan blast in the background, and she’s modelling with the conviction of a seasoned Vogue regular. For someone so early in their career, the photographer remarks that it’s “really rare”: “You look at the shot and it already looks like a cover.”
Chloe Qisha on The Cover of NME. Chloe wears a top and chaps from the stylist, jewellery by MQT, shoes by Miista, and pants by Calvin Klein. Credit: BLACKSOCKS for NME
Last July, the 27-year-old debuted with her tender single ‘VCR Home Video’, and shortly after dropped her most successful song to date: ‘I Lied, I’m Sorry’. Its winking chorus and starry synths beckon you to hang your arms in the sky and relish Qisha’s dreamy vocals: “When I said I missed you, yeah / I lied, I’m sorry”. That November, her self-titled debut EP would land a four-star review from NME, followed by the ABBA-esque uppercut ‘21st Century Cool Girl’. And though lyrically melodramatic, Qisha’s songs are so joyous that Coldplay’s Chris Martin recently namechecked her music for helping combat his depression.
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There’s every chance she’ll skyrocket further when she drops her second EP, ‘Modern Romance’ next month. As she poses in an outfit we can only describe as cowboy-cum-Comme-des-Garçons, her manager aptly says the singer was determined to “go hell for leather” when they first met her in February last year. “Go big or go home,” Qisha tells us later. “This job is so demanding, you have to be giving 300 per cent at all times”.
“Every song doesn’t take itself too seriously – it’s weird, funny things you wouldn’t think to put in a pop song”
After the shoot, Qisha emerges in a much more casual outfit to speak with NME. She’s dressed like the London cool girl you’d pass by on the street: a grey jacket, jeans and some Adidas Sambas. There’s an air of quiet confidence around her; perhaps it’s her thoughtful, articulate manner, or her smooth American intonation dampened by the occasional British vowel.
Much of Qisha’s music draws from her upbringing in Malaysia and the UK. Initially educated at an international school in Kuala Lumpur, she chose to attend a boarding school in the heart of Cambridge for sixth form. “Usually when you think of boarding schools, it’s out in the boondocks, but I wanted to be somewhere near civilisation so we wouldn’t go crazy,” she explains. “It was honestly the best time, and that’s when I started reigniting my love for playing music.”
But where most traditional boarding schools would force you to learn classical music, Qisha says her school was more into “acoustic, unplugged sessions”. “They had an after-school activity where you could get together and play pop songs with each other,” she reminisces. “Then they’d do a yearly talent show of sorts, and it slowly got me into it. They also had this school café where you’d pick up a coffee, and every week they’d have someone play there. They unknowingly built my confidence.”
Credit: BLACKSOCKS for NME
Boarding school was also instrumental to her music for another reason: drama. “It’s so unnatural to be living in such close quarters with 20 other women for two years of your life,” she observes. “And then you’re all dating the same pool of mid boys – it’s a ticking time bomb, basically. Drama is always bound to happen! I think I made it [out] relatively unscathed.”
From there, Qisha would write for almost five years while completing degrees in psychology and communications. Though she was eager to release music, her sustained dedication eventually grew into an impressively cohesive look and sound that has resonated from the minute she dropped her first single. She calls it “the best thing I could have ever done”.
“I see it as 50 per cent me taking my time and not settling for anything I wasn’t totally happy with, and also 50 per cent the universe being like” – she adopts a goofy, mystical tone – “‘Nope. Not noooow. You will wait until a man named Rob Milton comes into your life, and you will write amaaazing songs.’”
Chloe wears a top by Leo Prothmann, shorts by Guess USA, shoes by Christian Louboutin, and a ring by MQT. Credit: BLACKSOCKS for NME
Milton [The 1975, Holly Humberstone] discovered Qisha through a Rachel Chinouriri cover she put on TikTok; she now fondly calls him her “music husband” and has since written most of her songs with him. If there was ever a sign their hard work was paying off, it was when they found out Kelly Clarkson had covered ‘I Lied, I’m Sorry’ on her NBC talk show this February. They watched it in the same studio they wrote the song in, and almost a year to the same day they had written it, too.
“I still dissociate every time I watch it,” Qisha sighs. “It doesn’t seem real. Like, Kelly Clarkson is this fantasy unicorn that you know exists somehow, but you just don’t connect the dots… I don’t know how it happened. I’m so honoured, and she absolutely slayed it.”
“One day we shall meet, hopefully,” she adds. “I feel like I need to cover one of her songs now and call it ‘Chloeoke’…”
“I know who I am, but it definitely takes a while to get there – to accept yourself and your previous iterations”
Chloe Qisha strikes a delicate balance between impossibly cool and approachable, partly due to her unique style. She often pairs formal dress shirts, pinstripe trousers or ties with racerback tops, sporty undies, and loose lingerie shorts. The suits, Qisha explains, represent “the more masc side of me”, which complements her “slightly more femme side”. “But I wouldn’t even describe it as femme,” she continues. “It’s skin, it’s sweat, it’s sexy but without exuding sex exactly. I don’t necessarily feel sexy, but I feel very… empowered. It’s an ownership of your body and feeling comfortable in your skin.”
We put it to Qisha that her fashion parallels her own music: a suit of armour mirroring her slick pop production, masking a naked rawness underneath. “I love that!” she smiles. “A big thing Rob and I love is humour. Every song doesn’t take itself too seriously – it’s weird, funny things that you wouldn’t think to put in a pop song, because I think that’s what Chloe Qisha is about. There’s definitely that in the fashion as well; I am a perfectionist, so I think I do present that to be as perfect as possible. But obviously no one is ever that 100 per cent of the time.”
Though Qisha may come across as effortlessly confident today, she’s had to go on a journey to get there. She remembers watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows with her classmates every year in Malaysia; half the students were expats, typically from Australia, Britain or Canada, and the other half locals like her.
Chloe wears a top by Miista, and a jacket and trousers by Leo Prothmann. Credit: BLACKSOCKS for NME
“It was only until the later half of my teens that they introduced Chinese models, but for the longest time it was just a really skinny white girl who had great boobs and a great ass and it had no relevance to like, half my school,” she tells us. “It really had an impact on how I viewed myself, preferring Eurocentric features over my own – which is crazy because I look at myself now and I’m like…” She cocks her head and jokingly concludes: “Slay!”
“It’s more an appreciation of the shape of my eyes, my nose, my jawline, all this stuff which took me so long to appreciate,” Qisha continues. “But I’m really proud of my Asian heritage. If this all works out, I can hopefully be added to the growing number of East Asians in pop.”
That’s why Qisha writes songs like ‘21st Century Cool Girl’. The modern cool girl has more than a veneer of confidence; she wears her heart on her sleeve, too, and that becomes its own superpower: “I’ll be your 21st century cool girl / Baby, I’ll forever be tragically insecure / But if you’re ready to love me, then I’m all yours.”
“People love a world of really strong personality and characters they can relate to”
“I know who I am, but it definitely takes a while to get there – to accept yourself and who you were in your previous iterations,” she explains. “That’s also learning to love the more cringy, embarrassing things that have happened along the way. Once you learn to laugh at those moments, you start to appreciate the skin you live in.”
Qisha reckons that humorous aspect is what endears so many fans to her music. There’s the rota of girls her pathetic boyfriend “drools” over in ‘Sexy Goodbye’; ‘Stacey from Yoga’ has become the most well-known of them all, to the point where fans have begged Qisha to release more merch with her name on it (“More will come for sure”). Meanwhile, ‘Evelyn’, a song about Qisha’s jealousy over her crush’s love interest, has “also taken on a life of her own”: “People love a world of really strong personality and characters they can relate to.”
Though Stacey from Yoga and Evelyn are lovable in their own ways, it’s Chloe Qisha herself whose ambition and energy present the most compelling character of them all. As our chat wraps up, she thanks us for our time and hurries over to her team, keen to see the shots from today. Her manager laughs and gently suggests some patience. But Qisha is clearly raring to shoot for the stars. “I’ve never envisioned a glass ceiling,” she affirms. “I’ve always been like: ‘let’s go wherever this takes us’.”
Chloe Qisha’s ‘Modern Romance’ is out May 15 via VLF Records.
Listen to Chloe Qisha’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Alex Rigotti
Photography: BLACKSOCKS
Makeup: Yolanda Dohr using Armani Beauty
Styling: Lewis Munro
Styling Assistance: Miranda Mikkola
Label: VLF Records
