When your coworker asks you ‘what EP are you listening to?’ at your corporate job, respond saying, Corporate Composer by TEYA. The 25-year-old Austrian singer releases her second EP delivering confidence, sass and making boss moves.
So put on your headphones at full volume as you stay busy during your nine to five and let TEYA explain the pros and cons of her busy artistic life. In the first track “Talk That Talk” she sings about haters or people discussing negatively about her lifestyle. With percussion beats and piano chords she sings, “I'm so sick of trying to keep myself small ‘cause I am so in love with life. I wanna feel it all. I’ll scream and shout 'til my lungs give out and all I hear is ‘blah, blah, blah’ Won't you please shut your mouth? (Zip it). Talk that talk, walk that walk.” She is shutting out any haters and isn’t going to stop chasing her dreams. In the end, people will still hear her songs anywhere, as she further sings, “Got a sick beat, call me sicko. You don't like me, I say ditto. I'ma sing songs, yeah, I write that hit. I’ma watch you dance to them in a disco.”
Many artists do music for the love of the art and the creativity they have to tell a story through their music, but as any industry money and image will always be a priority if you want to make it big, a theme TEYA sings in “Bourgeoisie.” Through more percussion, piano and strings included, she sings about her frustration, “I wanna make art and not just make content. Nobody gets paid if I did what I wanted. ‘This song is a banger? I don't really know her’ Made two in a day, I'm a corporate composer. My creativity is a factory. They bleed me dry, it's a tragedy. God gave me a gift, but you profit from it.” TEYA pays a price for signing a deal and she knows the rich are going to do what they do best, which is getting richer through her music and image. This is the new life she has entered and is allowing the listener to enter into her world. “Welcome to the bourgeoisie, baby, please. You got the money, let it rain on me. B-Bourgeoisie, baby, please. You got the gun and I'm on my knees.”
Besides money, TEYA also explore the theme of sexuality in “Girls Like Girls,” and describes how she is still a normal girl despite being a music artist. Through her vocal harmonies and playful claps, TEYA sings “We're blessed from above, like pieces of art and we've got nothing but love. Drunk in bathroom clubs where girls like girls, girls like girls. Nighttime on the sidewalk, girls like girls, girls like girls. Compliments and kisses, girls like girls, girls like girls.” She sings how she can still have fun on a girls night, filled with love and not let anyone kill the vibe. This is one of the most playful and happy songs on the EP.
That quickly changes in the last track, “Waxing Salon,” which is a slow ballad song with just TEYA’s vocals and a piano solo. Here she describes the challenges of being a woman and a human surviving in this world. Yet, she admits she wouldn’t change being a woman for anything with lyrics, “And sometimes it's hard to be a woman. Hard to be a human. Living to survive but if I could I would always choose this. Body and abuse be me in every life. A woman I'Il die.” The waxing salon is a metaphor for constantly fixing what is ‘wrong’ with her image. She further sings about having to constantly going through a phase of healing and overcoming pain. "This world has been broken and broken again. But it's always been women that heal in the end. This earth is a mother that's destined for death. It runs around circles of horrible men. But we rose from the ashes, fought off the Flames. I'm proud to be born from suffragette veins.” The track is a reminder to listeners in how draining it can be being a music creative in the industry especially as a woman, where there is always demand to be, act and look a certain way. TEYA confirms she wrote this song while getting a Brazilian wax on her Instagram.
With this 4-track EP, TEYA proves women can create anything without needing a huge music production and she isn’t afraid of anything or anyone, as she is only going to keep creating. The EP is also a reminder to the listeners that music artists are still human despite the lifestyle they chose.
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