Q&A: Sophia Yau-Weeks’s Debut Single “Nobody’s Laughing” is a True Labor of Love
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY NICO CHODOR ☆
Photo by Cortney Morentin
SOPHIA YAU-WEEKS MAKES PEACE WITH THE QUIET — on their lead single “Nobody’s Laughing,” released earlier this month. Based in Oakland, CA, she wrote the rest of her debut album Misty Mountain in London, where her music-making dreams blossomed in tandem with the life-altering implications of long COVID. Yau-Weeks became immunocompromised and suddenly felt very much alone. “Nobody’s Laughing,” and the rest of the album, personify isolation and sonic resilience all at once.
Co-produced with Maryam Qudus (Alanis Morissette, SASAMI, SPELLLING, Gracie Abrams), Misty Mountain is the product of slowness and warmth. Yau-Weeks previously worked with her on a three-song EP and knew that she wanted to work with her again to record this debut record. “I think there’s something about working with a woman of color in the studio that just instantly made me more comfortable,” Yau-Weeks tells me. She could be herself and feel respected. Yau-Weeks says Qudus gave her a lot of confidence in her musicality, and this confidence shines through lead single “Nobody’s Laughing” crystal clear.
Yau-Weeks laments turning 26 on this track. More than just your typical birthday blues, they come to terms with the sequestered nature of life with long COVID. “I thought more friends came with age,” they ponder, “but it feels like I’m losing them all.” They can’t help but turn inward, questioning their self-worth and appearance in light of so many friends lost, many because their health now comes before traditional socialization. Yau-Weeks tells me this time period was so hard because “instead of people asking how I was doing, they started saying, ‘I hope you’re well.’ There was just a lack of curiosity about what I was going through, and I didn’t feel solidarity from the people I loved at that time.”
“Nobody’s Laughing” and the music video that accompanies it embodies just how much Yau-Weeks has to offer, even when it feels like the audience is gone. There is an intense, rippling intimacy to their vocals and lyricism, one that both reckons with and then outright defies isolation. Following a sold-out, COVID-safe show at Wyldflowr Arts in Oakland this past weekend, Yau-Weeks is now gearing up for their debut record’s release via Lavasocks Records on April 3.
Read Luna’s interview with the independent singer-songwriter below as we unpack finding their voice in seclusion and the ethos of Misty Mountain.
Photo by Cortney Morentin
LUNA: The music video looked like it was so much fun to put together! It was you and your sister, right? Acting side by side?
YAU-WEEKS: Yes! I recruited all of my siblings, my mom, my boyfriend and my brother’s partner to all help. I’m lucky because my brother and his partner work in the film space, so they have a good eye, but we also grew up making family films together on iMovie.
LUNA: Full circle moment, then.
YAU-WEEKS: Yeah, I just bought like an eight-millimeter camcorder off Facebook marketplace, and I did a little storyboarding in a notebook. We made it happen. It was really fun.
LUNA: Can I ask about the costumes?
YAU-WEEKS: Yeah, I sewed the two clown costumes myself, which was a huge labor of love. I hand-sewed all of the individual polka dots. I was super stressed about making them in time. We ended up filming the music video in Montana because we had a family trip planned. The deadline for that was rapidly approaching, so every night I was on the sewing machine, trying to figure it out.
LUNA: I was just gonna say the video is set in such a beautiful place. I’ll have to check out Montana. I also really liked the use of the camcorder. It ties in nicely with what I read about the recording process.
YAU-WEEKS: I wanted the visuals to be continuous with the analog nature of the album. So, the album art was shot on film, as well.
LUNA: Do you have dreams for other music videos with this record release?
YAU-WEEKS: Yes, I do have plans to put together a visualizer for another single that I’m releasing off the record. It’s the title track, and I’m still in the editing stages of that. Hopefully that’ll come to fruition.
LUNA: Is the album itself complete?
YAU-WEEKS: Yes! It’s releasing on April 3 on vinyl and CD (via Lavasocks Records).
LUNA: That’s so exciting. London was the hub for the writing process, then, and production was in Oakland?
YAU-WEEKS: Yes, that’s correct. So, I lived in London for two years. I wrote basically every song except for maybe one during that time period. And then basically straight after moving back to the Bay Area, I recorded the record. Early last year.
LUNA: Were you playing music prior to moving to London? Or was music something that started in college?
YAU-WEEKS: Music has been a slowly blossoming thing for me. I grew up playing classical violin and singing in school choirs, but it never felt like a creative outlet for me, really. In college, I picked up acoustic guitar just to learn covers, and I didn’t start writing my own music until lockdown. After that, I kind of just slowly met more musicians who encouraged me to perform or to record. I can’t believe it’s been six years. I still feel like such a newbie to anything music-related, but I would say that London was definitely pivotal, in terms of performing live.
LUNA: How would you compare the music scene in London to that of the Bay?
YAU-WEEKS: Ooh, that’s tough. I don’t know. I would say here in the Bay, there’s more of this kind of, like, DIY and community-oriented vibe. I think there are a variety of artists here who are making music for the love of it, versus people who maybe want to get big. I feel like a lot of people that I met in London really saw music as the sole thing they wanted to do. In that way, it felt a little bit more intimidating. When playing in London, I found it really hard to book gigs at first. It wasn’t until I booked one legit venue where then, I felt like I was being contacted by people to play. It took a little bit to get my foot in the door.
LUNA: But then you found the right door.
YAU-WEEKS: I found the door. I tried to talk to people at shows as much as I could. That’s how I met some of my bandmates. I opened for them at one show and then pretended to go to the bathroom because I saw them standing nearby. I was like, “You guys are so good! Want to be friends?” There was a lot of that. I got to play with nonbinary and female musicians, whereas previously I was playing with a lot of guys, which, don’t get me wrong, there are some great male musicians out there, but I felt like I gained more confidence playing with people who I felt more comfortable with. They saw me as a peer and an equal. That definitely gave me a bit of a spark going into recording.
LUNA: I’ve always been so curious about the music scene in London and just Europe in general.
YAU-WEEKS: Yeah, one thing I will say is that a lot of the venues are pubs, so it’s kind of a mixed bag in your audience.
Photo by Cortney Morentin
LUNA: A mixed bag of people who are listening and people who are not?
YAU-WEEKS: Yeah, exactly. It builds character.
LUNA: Have you gotten back into playing live in the bay since moving home?
YAU-WEEKS: Not really, no. I haven’t been as focused on performing live for a number of reasons, one being that I’ve just been so focused on the album. But also, in 2023, I became immunocompromised from a COVID infection. I was playing a lot in London, and I was getting sick a lot, and then I kind of had this reckoning around my health and how my body had changed. I realized that playing live was no longer super realistic for me because I had to focus more on my health. I was learning about long COVIDin real time, and that really shifted my relationship with performing music live. A lot of that processing is in the music. Also, when you’re organizing a show that has extra access requirements, it takes more labor. There are added layers to trying to advocate for yourself.
LUNA: Plus, you’re already doing the labor of putting out the record in of itself.
YAU-WEEKS: It’s hard because there’s this pressure or expectation that I’ve internalized of playing X amount of shows because I have this record coming out, which just isn’t realistic.
LUNA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
YAU-WEEKS: It was definitely a bit of a tense time. I was reckoning with my health issues and how they would impact the way I live my life, but also how they would impact my relationships with other people. I felt like my existence forced people to confront a truth that a lot of people didn’t want to hear, which is that COVID still disables and kills people. And because of that, I felt a huge sense of social isolation. I lost a lot of friends during that time period, or felt my relationships shifting. I ended up spending my birthday alone, and I was like, how can I make meaning of this day that feels rotten?
LUNA: So you wrote a song.
YAU-WEEKS: Yeah, the lyrics are pretty straightforward in terms of what I was going through on my birthday and the day after, while the broader questions feel a bit more universal. And I think those are things that I’m still constantly thinking about, like the idea of who I am in relation to others. Does my relation to people determine who I am? I do feel things are more hopeful being back in the Bay Area. I’ve worked through a lot of the grief around how my life has changed. I’ve also met a lot of really amazing people who share similar beliefs or experiences.
LUNA: The fact that you got to make the visual for this melancholic, existential single surrounded by your close family and loved ones is so telling, too. I think when this comes out, a lot of people are going to resonate with the grief and reflection you’re working through, whether that be people who share immunocompromised identities or those who know what it feels like to lose friends as you get older.
Photo by Cortney Morentin
YAU-WEEKS: Thank you. Yeah, I really hope people can resonate with it. That’s my ultimate goal. I think it’s just important to recognize that there is beauty in isolation. It’s worth going through difficult times to do the right thing, and there are people that you know, don’t know yet, or may never know, who care about you.
LUNA: I also loved what you said about the record as an attempt to embrace slowness and imperfection. I’m still constantly fighting with the idea of perfect productivity.
YAU-WEEKS: Totally. I feel like people are releasing singles or EPs all the time, and it’s hard not to feel like I should be doing that too. I fell into that a little bit when I started writing music. I felt like, for some reason, I was late and that I needed to catch up. So, I put out music without really thinking, and it was, to be honest, stuff that I’m not super proud of (laughs). I feel like with this record, I just made music for the sake of making music, because I love to do it, and then I whittled it down to a body of work that I actually feel really proud of.
LUNA: And you’re not behind. You’re doing things exactly at the pace that you should be.
YAU-WEEKS: Thank you.
LUNA: My last question goes back to the music video…do you get baptized into clownhood at the end? Did I interpret that correctly?
YAU-WEEKS: (Laughs) Yes! To be a little more specific about where the inspiration came from, I was having a lot of conversations when reckoning with my long COVID where I’d try to confide in friends and they would tell me to go to therapy or tell me I was voicing borderline conspiracy theories. I wanted to channel that feeling of being gaslit into this mystical world where I go to my clown therapist, and then I’m recruited to clownhood through baptism [laughs]. Yeah, I don’t know, I was just following this train of thought, and it turned into clown world.
LUNA: I think it’s awesome. You did such a good job with the costumes, and the makeup is super fun.
YAU-WEEKS: Yeah, I really had to bribe my sister, because the camera was so shitty we had to reshoot a bunch of scenes. She had to repaint her face multiple times.
LUNA: (Laughs)
YAU-WEEKS: I owe them.
LUNA: It was a true labor of love.
“Nobody’s Laughing” is out now.
