In this season of Celebrity Podcast, we’re thrilled to feature Kat Roshan!
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MusicTranscript
00:0014 years old, me being this naive little girl. I was like, gosh, I really am nothing without this guy.
00:15Hi, I'm Cat Rochelle. This is My Celebrity Podcast, and this is episode one.
00:20Okay, so obviously, I was born locally, from KL. But for the first, like, 16 years of my life,
00:39I grew up in international schools. And obviously, my mother tongue is English.
00:47And so I predominantly write in English. And I have all this great diverse cultures being
00:55introduced. My mom's Chinese, my dad's Malay, so I get the best of both worlds.
01:00I mean, I had a normal upbringing. Like, yeah, my childhood was really fun. I had the opportunity
01:07to travel to different countries, which, of course, has impacted my upbringing,
01:14different cultures, you know, you learn to empathize with different people.
01:18Um, but yeah, it was, it was a nice childhood. But like, bringing it to now, I feel like
01:29I'm like, scared of, I guess, people accepting me in Malaysia. Because I don't really speak Malay,
01:39I'm really trying hard to. Yeah, and I just like, get really scared people are gonna judge me or
01:45not. But I've learned from just writing and their experiences with the media and just my fans,
01:52just to be myself and really try my best.
01:55Okay, so start at five. Well, I didn't really enjoy piano as much because I went through the
02:03ABRSM exams. So it was very rigorous and tedious to kind of just memorize the whole pieces,
02:10be really like pedantic on the different notes and staccatos on one note.
02:18So I quit, like after grade six. And then I started just improv-ing on my own and just
02:26freelancing on the piano. And then I took up violin. I don't know why. I just had like,
02:32an inkling to kind of just go with like, the nice like, because I think like violin like,
02:38sorry, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at this. I'm not good at this. I'm not good at this.
02:44Like, because I think like violin, like, sorry, not intimidates, imitates a person's voice. It's
02:51like, it's very vibratory and stuff. And I grew in love again. But then I did the ABRSM thing,
02:59and it just did not work out. Yeah, and I wasn't really supposed to be a musician.
03:06At the time, I was very into sports. So I was doing like athletics, basketball, football,
03:11swimming, like tennis, you name it. And I was competing in, what's it called, like state level
03:20for long jump and 100 meters. So my pathway was really to be a sports person. But then I met
03:31Uncle Asus, who is my dad's friend. He had a connection to Pak Trosi, Trosi Pratama, which
03:38is an Indonesian producer. And I somehow got connected to him and we did a song together.
03:45And I was like, Oh, maybe, maybe a musician career would work. I don't know. I was like,
03:55we'll just go with the flow and see like, what's up.
03:57Most of my music I write is about my experiences. Mostly about breakups. Taylor's was 2.0. Yeah,
04:15so every time I would go through a really harsh breakup, or just be in a very dark place,
04:21I would just try and write all my emotions out. But a lot of my other, other half of
04:30my later English songs are about anxiety, which I think is quite, well, now it's not really taboo,
04:37but it used to be very taboo to talk about. And in the pandemic, I was having like maybe like one
04:44once a day a panic attack. So I just thought maybe like, it would be a cathartic way to put
04:52how I was feeling and try and get it all out instead of just bundling up to just explode in
04:57a different way. But yeah, mostly about my experience. What was it about? It was called
05:11You, Y-O-U, like you in big capitals. And it was about me trying to beg this guy to stay,
05:22which obviously is not the greatest option there is. Don't go begging, because that's really bad.
05:30But yeah, because I was so in love because he was like, my first true love, let's just call it.
05:37And so I was like, maybe if I send it to him, he'll like it. But I didn't end up sending him,
05:45sending it to him just because I was like, you know what? No, you don't have to hear it. Other
05:50people can hear it. So they know it's about you and I can shade you. So yeah. I think the first
05:57line of the chorus is like, without you, I am nothing. Because at the time, at 14 years old,
06:05me being this naive little girl, I was like, gosh, I really am nothing without this guy.
06:13So embarrassing. But like, you know, you go through breakups all the time. It happens in life.
06:23You learn from the previous relationships.
06:35I was actually really intimidated because I was at such a young age. I met him and I was like,
06:43oh gosh, he's such a legendary composer and producer. I've been given this opportunity
06:51to work with such a big name. But the couple of sessions I did with him, we recorded Rahsa,
06:57which is actually my first Malay song as well. Yeah, he scolded me because I wasn't practicing.
07:04And he actually left to Indonesia to come back three months later to try and regurgitate the
07:12song again because I really wasn't disciplined. I was like, you know what? Like singing is easy.
07:18Everyone can sing. So I was like, I'll just go in and record. Don't have to do any practice.
07:22Don't have to expand my vocal cords at all. But then I realized three months after I was
07:28disciplined and started practicing that song every day and really analyzing it,
07:32that it actually does make a difference in the quality, but also like the expression of the
07:38different words. Also because it was in Malay and I really had to try and understand it and
07:44then convey it in the song itself. But he now is like my grandpa. He means the world to me. So
07:54every time I got to see him, it's like really special.
08:06I think a crucial lesson that I have learned and I'm still learning to this day is that
08:14nothing comes for free or that you need to really be careful with who you surround yourself with
08:23and whether or not they want to take advantage of you in that sense. Just because like if you
08:30trust someone and then they break that barrier, then it's quite hard to piece it back together.
08:36Yeah, just being careful with what I give out to people.
08:44Thank you for listening. If you made it this far, I'm really grateful.
08:48Stay tuned for episode two for me and my podcast.