Q&A: PIAO Writes Through the Pressure of Time on “Dear baby,”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SHEVON GREENE ☆
NOW MORE THAN EVER—the honest conversation about the fear of running out of time and the next generation circles back consistently. Discussions about motherhood no longer feel distant while they’re talked in parallel with identity, career and time itself. There’s a unique and overwhelming aspect of being told your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life, while also feeling like every major life decision is suddenly on a timer.
On LA-based singer-songwriter PIAO’s most recent single “Dear baby,” PIAO embraces and explores those uncertainties and questions. The track is written as a letter to a future child, and it exists in what PIAO describes as the “in-between space” where dreams of career and dreams of motherhood begin to feel like they’re competing with each other. While the song highlights her thoughts of uncertainty, it never fully embraces hopelessness. Instead, it allows itself to live in the gray area of wanting, wondering and worrying.
During our conversation, PIAO explained that the lyrics came almost directly from a journal entry written after an emotional conversation with her mother about balancing career and family. At one point, she even joked that her dream superpower would simply be the ability to pause time for a moment, which quietly becomes one of the song’s central emotional themes.
We chatted with PIAO about “Dear baby,” the pressure of time, journaling through uncertainty and learning how to hold space for multiple futures at once. Keep reading for more on yearning, motherhood and the emotions behind the track.
LUNA: I love that balance of hope and fear within the lyrics of “Dear baby,”. I think it’s going to resonate with a lot of people, especially as a young woman in your 20s and feeling unsure about the future, children, the whole “running out of time” feeling. What inspired you to write directly to your future child instead of just writing about your feelings generally?
PIAO: There’s a whole backstory to how this song came about. Last year, while I was writing this new body of music, there were a lot of conversations between me and my friends about having children and whether that was even something that was going to happen for us. We were also talking a lot about the state of the world and whether we’d even want to bring children into this environment.
Those themes were already bubbling inside of me. Charli xcx has a song called “I think about it all the time,” and I remember thinking, “Whoa, this is such a crazy take on this topic.” Sonically, it was really cool to me too.
But what really inspired me to write this song was a conversation I had with my mom. I’m very close with her, and something really good had happened in my career. She was celebrating with me, but then we had this bittersweet moment where she said, “This is so great, but it kind of sucks that I never get to see you.” She said sometimes she wished I had a more “normal” career so I could be home more and spend more time with family.
That really got to me because it’s this balance between chasing your dreams and realizing your dreams might not coincide with where your family is. I journal a lot, and the lyrics to “Dear baby,” came directly from a journal entry after that conversation with my mom. Literally verbatim.
And then musically, it was this weird universe moment. I went to one of the producers’ studios and when I walked in, there was this womb model toy staring at me (laughs). Like an artificial baby. I was like, “What is happening?” All of these events happened within like three days of each other.
LUNA: The symbolism and foreshadowing is insane.
PIAO: Insane. So I brought my journal with me that day and was like, “Let me try to put a melody to this,” because everything just felt like it was aligning.
LUNA: Honestly, if nothing else, that feels like a message from the universe telling you to write the song. I was really drawn to the line “my enemy is time.” It stuck out to me so much, especially being in your 20s and feeling like you’re running out of time. Was there also a slow build of anxieties leading up to that line since you mentioned talking about it with your friends too?
PIAO: Yeah. “My enemy is time” feels almost all-encompassing. It’s not just about the female anatomy and the ability to bear a child. It feels like my number one enemy in general. I feel like I don’t have enough time to do the things I want to do, or I’m running out of time to get married, settle down, fully figure out my career so I can have a child. Everything has to do with time.
Whenever someone asks me what superpower I’d want, I always say I wish I had that remote from the Adam Sandler movie “Click.” Obviously the movie ends with the lesson of “you shouldn’t have had that power,” but if I could just pause everything for a second, that would be great.
LUNA: I love how soft and vulnerable the track feels sonically, especially compared to “if i am me, then who are you?” It’s definitely a shift. Did you intentionally want to do something softer this time, or did it come naturally?
PIAO: I think it really helped knowing I wanted to make a song called “Dear baby,”. That automatically triggered the producers to approach the song in a very gentle, gingerly way. Something cool about this track is that little motif at the beginning. It was made with modular synthesis, which was really fun. But when we were making it, it sounded kind of hospital-like, like a heartbeat monitor. So knowing the topic of the song definitely influenced the musical choices.
LUNA: I also wanted to ask about the visualizer because I loved the home-video feeling and the journaling shots. How important was it for the visuals to feel nostalgic and personal alongside the song?
PIAO: The journaling aspect was important because I wanted to show how the song originated. That was the actual journal I had written in. I wanted people to see the flour before the cake was made. And with the home-video aspect, we wanted to highlight the nostalgia and make it feel handheld and intimate. Also budget-wise, I think we spent like $100 booking the space on Peerspace. We wanted the outfit to be super simple too; just white, very human and blank. The one accent was the giant hair clip.
LUNA: Which I loved so much.
PIAO: To me it was so baby. As serious as the song’s meaning is, we still wanted to incorporate a whimsical element. The big clip felt like “big world, little me.”
LUNA: How did you even find a clip that huge?
PIAO: If you’ve seen the video for “if i am me, then who are you?” there’s a mini horse in it. Originally we ordered the clip for the mini horse. But it arrived after the shoot, so we just had it sitting around. Then me and my creative director looked at it and were like, “Wait. That is so baby.” So we decided to make it the star of “Dear baby,”.
LUNA: I love that. It’s such a good example of the original plan not working out and then somehow becoming perfect for something else. There’s obviously something really emotional about writing a letter to someone who doesn’t exist yet. Did writing “Dear baby,” change the way you think about your future at all?
PIAO: It definitely helped me process a lot of things and brought a lot of emotions forward. It made me realize reality a little more. It’s different from writing to an imaginary friend. It’s writing to someone who maybe is bound to exist someday. Honestly, it reminds me of writing letters to your future self as a kid.
LUNA: The song balances motherhood and career almost like they’re on competing timelines. Do you feel like that’s a conversation more women in music are starting to have openly now?
PIAO: I think we’re definitely less scared to have those conversations now. The sentiment has always existed, but I feel like seeing more artists have children while still thriving in their careers makes someone like me feel less fearful. I also think the stigma around needing to be married before having children is going away, which I’m like, “Yes, slay.” I was raised by a single mom, and that taught me how strong women can be. It’s fully doable and acceptable for moms to just be moms.
LUNA: I wanted to ask about the lyric “I’m staring at a girl, a shadow.” It feels very tied to identity and self-perception. What did that line mean to you while writing it?
PIAO: Before the song became directed toward a future child, there was a moment where I was confused about whether the “baby” was my future child or me. I treat myself very gently with topics like this. At the time I was writing it, I literally felt like a child. I was like, “What do you mean people 40 years ago had two children at my age, bought houses and were married?” So the line is me seeing myself as both the future mother and still being the child myself. The shadow is the girl leaving me, but also mini me: my future child.
LUNA: That totally came through when I was listening to it. The song still feels hopeful while grappling with uncertainty. Was it important to you not to make it entirely sad?
PIAO: I wanted to keep it open-ended. I intentionally didn’t want it to be super sad because I wasn’t super sad while writing it. It was more wonder than sadness. The saddest line for me was “I’m the closest that I’ve ever been to you,” because biologically I’m technically closer now to conceiving a child than I’ll be later in life. But overall it was more soul-searching than sadness.
LUNA: You’ve mentioned rediscovering the art of being an artist. What does that rediscovery look like for you right now?
PIAO: I had a real waking-up moment this past October. Me and my producer booked this Airbnb in Joshua Tree that required off-roading to get to. No cell service, nothing. It was like 40 minutes from the nearest convenience store. I definitely crashed out a few times there. I was also reading “Wuthering Heights” without even knowing the movie adaptation was coming out. I was revisiting all my favorite period-piece movies, all the Keira Knightley stuff and just fully leaning into yearning and romance. This era is definitely my lover-girl, yearning, romance era.
LUNA: We love yearning. I’m excited to hear the rest of it. What else is coming up for you after the single?
PIAO: At the end of this month I’m performing at Stay In Bloom in New York City, which will be really fun. And then I’m going to start putting out all the lover-girl songs. I feel like they’ll really fit summer. And I’m doing headline shows in New York, Toronto and LA this fall in August, which will all coincide with more music releases.
