Miist was 34, working as a bookkeeper, when a friend kept insisting she could write a song. She sat down at a piano to prove him wrong and wrote three. That was 2022. Since then she’s written over a hundred more, collaborated with producers whose credits include Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Andrea Bocelli, became the first native Chinese artist to break into Billboard’s Top 25 Pop/AC chart, and built a global movement around a song inspired by a man in Tokyo who died alone and went unnoticed for weeks.

Her new single “Love Will Show Us Our Way“ launches The Love Project, her 2026 creative arc. Co-written with Mauro Malavasi, the Italian producer behind Bocelli’s Romanza, the video is built entirely from footage her audience submitted: strangers helping strangers, filmed in living rooms, hospitals, classrooms, and city streets across the world. Miist isn’t in it. She survived abandonment at five and a terminal cancer diagnosis in her late twenties. This is what she makes now.

Miist, hi — thank you for this. Your new single “Love Will Show Us Our Way” was co-written with Mauro Malavasi, the Italian producer and songwriter behind Andrea Bocelli’s landmark 1997 album Romanza. What was it like sitting across from someone whose work has already proven that love can translate across every culture, and writing toward that same idea together?

First of all, it felt surreal. I kept asking myself “Am I really meeting and working with a master like Mauro?”. Then, I’m also amazed by the humility of him. He cares more about the message, the music, people and this world than working with a big name. It’s always wonderful to work with people who share the same goal with me, and working with Mauro on a message that I already believe in is just another level of excitement and brings more hope and warmth to my heart. Also, because of that, I knew it would be an amazing experience and it would turn out great before I even start working on it…..even though I had no way to foresee how exactly it would happen! 

I did have an imposter syndrome attack writing this song though because it was Mauro Malavasi the producer/writer of one of the greatest albums ever. It got in my head. I couldn’t convince myself that anything I would write would be good enough. Even after I wrote the song, I wouldn’t show it to anyone. My husband eventually convinced me to let the team listen to it. I think he actually sent it to Mauro before asking me and then didn’t tell me until he heard back. When Mauro said “He loved it.” I felt a huge relief!

So…it’s a very complex feeling working with Mauro to say the least. 

Instead of putting yourself at the center of the video, you built it entirely out of footage your audience sent in, strangers helping strangers, filmed in kitchens, hospitals, classrooms, city streets. That’s an unusual choice for an artist with a single this personal. What made you decide the song needed other people’s faces in it more than it needed yours?

The song is written for everyone, so the decision on focusing on them came very naturally. Once that was decided, we started asking fans all over the world to send us photos or short clips and videos of moments when they felt love or kindness. Nothing connects us more than seeing people just like us experiencing the same joys and the same pains. It doesn’t matter where they live or whatever language they speak.

This world tries to teach us that people from different cultures, people who don’t look like us or share the same opinion with us are dangerous to us or are our enemies, but Mauro and I are here to remind everyone, that is not correct. We all belong to the same human family. Hurting others eventually hurts ourselves and contrastingly; loving others will benefit all of us, especially ourselves. I just visited the Anne Franke museum in Amsterdam and her horrible experiences and death reemphasized to me the need to remind people that we are all a single human family. 

You didn’t write your first song until you were 34, after a friend dared you to try. You’ve said that if the gift had come earlier, you wouldn’t have had anything to write about yet — that you needed the life first. Now, with The Love Project, you’re asking other people to send you their lives in thirty-second clips. Do you think you’re looking for the same thing in their footage that you found in yourself at 34 — proof that an ordinary life is already full of material?

I really appreciate this question as I’ve never thought about it that way until you asked. I think you are right. I didn’t fully understand what I was seeking in songwriting until recently. I knew songwriting and singing were an emotional outlet for me (it’s extremely therapeutic) and I feel great satisfaction when others understand and feel what I’m saying in the songs. However, recently I see it more clearly, especially through my podcast and book as I went into detail on the topics I wrote about in the songs. I started to see that everything I do is about feeling connected to others. To answer your question, yes, I am hoping that other people remember or discover that our lives have meaning and purpose not just in the big goals but in the little moments that we experience every day. Those moments make our lives lighter, our hearts happier and help us to put the world’s problems in perspective. As I mention so often in my podcast and book, we may not be able to change the world today but we can change OUR world in just a few seconds of conscious action. I want people to look for the simple ordinary moments of life that show us there’s gratitude, kindness, resilience, love, hope, … things that connect us and make life worth living even in difficult times.

You’re working on a forthcoming book, Make Me Smile with Miist, which translates the ideas from your podcast into short chapters with music built directly into the reading experience — so the reader isn’t just reading about feeling something, they’re meant to actually hear it while they read. That’s an unusual format. What made you feel like words alone weren’t enough to carry what you wanted the book to do?

The music actually came first and gave birth to the podcast which is currently #4 in the USA (Mental Health).  Two years ago the CEO of the biggest music podcast company in the world, Pantheon Podcasting, came to a showcase of mine and was really touched by my music and the stories I was telling. He told me to reach out to him whenever I have a podcast idea, but at the time, I didn’t have one. However, about a year or so later, as I wrote more songs to tell my stories, I started to feel there was much more to tell about the songs and I wished there’s a way I could talk about how they came about and what they mean to me. That’s when I remembered Pantheon, and reached out. They loved the idea of building each episode of the podcast around a song, and going into detail on each topic. I’m very interested in everything but especially psychology and understanding why we do the things we do. So the podcast is more like a TED like talk with my original music intertwined into it. The book version has QR codes which enable the reader to experience the songs as they are reading. I think it is a unique way to tell the stories that I wanted to share.

The Smile Project grew out of the true story of a man in Tokyo who died alone and wasn’t found for weeks. That’s a brutal origin point for something that became 16 language versions and millions of views. How do you sit with the fact that one of the loneliest deaths imaginable became the seed for one of the most connective things you’ve ever built?

The young  Japanese man’s story was what I wrote the song about but his lonely death also guided and motivated me through every creative decision I made on the song. My goal was to draw a world in music where everyone could feel the responsibility to smile at one another. To be kinder and more compassionate in our everyday lives. I wanted the song to pull at the heartstrings of every listener and make them want to do something. We ended up releasing the song in 16 language versions because that young man is living in every country, every neighborhood, every home. We not only translated the song but adapted it to each of the cultures that were represented. We found local singers to convey the message in their mother tongues and added local instruments in some cases in order to make the song more localized. The young man lonely death was the symptom of a disease that is global but it is a disease that can be defeated with actions as simple as a smile.

Your podcast ends every episode with a “15-second action” — something small and immediate the listener can actually do. “Love Will Show Us Our Way” seems to work the same way: not a grand philosophical statement, but something closer to an instruction. Do you think a song can function the way a 15-second action does — give someone something to actually do with what they just felt?

Absolutely, Could You Lend Me A Smile and Love Will Show Us Our Way were both written intentionally to provide simple actions that are extremely powerful. A smile is so simple but so inherently human that it can transform the way we and others feel. Showing love is the ONLY thing more powerful than hate. Hate seems to be pervasive in the world today. But hate feels horrible. It is destructive and makes us selfish and fearful. Showing love, accepting love and sharing it makes us happy. It gives us purpose and helps us feel connected not just to each other but to the natural world. Using music to convey these thoughts is intentional as music can change people’s emotions in a matter of seconds. It is the only medium I know of that can do that.

I’m not the first to write songs to try and get people to change. “We Are The World”, “Imagine”..countless others have been written with that intent. Most of these kinds of songs have big goals, ending war, hunger, inequality. We need those solutions but for most of us those goals seem unattainable. I wanted to provide motivation to do things we can do right now. Actions that take only a few seconds but that have huge impacts.  There is nothing new in my ideas. Smiling and showing love have always been powerful but it seems the world needs a small nudge to remind us how important and life altering those actions can be. That is what I want to achieve.  

You grew up self-taught, singing along to Barbra Streisand and Adele with no formal training, calling it “dramatic and cathartic.” Now you write with people who’ve shaped some of the biggest vocal performances in modern music — Narada Michael Walden, Mauro Malavasi. When you’re in a room with someone like that, do you still access that same raw, untrained instinct, or has collaboration changed what singing feels like for you?

I find that using my raw, untrained instinct, is more powerful and authentic for me. I have no music education but I do feel deeply and not being constrained by formal ideas about what a song should be or how it is supposed to be composed enables me to write unfiltered. I rely on that method as that’s how I connect with my listener, through the heart – not the mind. I believe that is also what Narada and Mauro love about my voice and my songwriting, the raw energy and the out of box kind of creativeness. 

You’ve written about your father leaving and about the physical trauma of your childhood in China with real specificity — not metaphor, but the actual bruises, the actual absence. “Love Will Show Us Our Way” feels more universal, more outward-facing than those songs. Was that a deliberate choice — to write a song that holds the whole world instead of one wound — or did it just arrive that way?

It’s both a deliberate choice and the also the fact that I’ve passed the stage of writing about my personal wounds. I wrote a lot of those songs though! My songwriting and my self discovery journey intertwined with each other. As I unpack past traumas and process emotions, songwriting has been a powerful part of the healing, also, as more personal traumas got processed, I was able to focus on bigger issues that I care about. When I wrote Love Will Show Us Our Way, I already had been working on The Smile Project for about a year focusing on using my experience and music to help others either in preventing lonely death through positive simple actions or trying to help others heal and to inspire them to find their true self, so I was ready to write about how choosing love will help us find our way back to ourselves. 

You’ve now used GRAMMY weekend twice to bring in fans instead of industry guests, choosing people for their stories rather than their connections. That’s a strange thing to do with access most artists spend their whole careers chasing. What does it give you, watching someone experience that night who never expected to be in the room?

It has become the highlight of the year and a very emotional and encouraging moment that I look forward to every year. Just a few years ago, I was someone who was even afraid to dream to ever go see the Grammy ceremony, not to mention ever become a songwriter or singer. I have received so much love and support from my family, friends, amazing musicians in the industry, and everyone who loves my songs. I know how amazing it feels and how life changing it could be, so I want to be that person to help someone else dream, believe in them, really see them, and inspire them.

1You call your music “clean pop,” and you’ve said you always end dark subjects with hope. Love Will Show Us Our Way is, structurally, a sentence about the future tense, something that hasn’t happened yet but will. After everything you’ve survived to get here, do you actually believe that, or is it something you’re still in the process of convincing yourself of, one song at a time?

I do believe in the power of true love, but because of the abandonment I experienced early in life, I find myself doubting if I’m lovable and since I don’t fully believe I’m worth loving then I question if I have the ability to truly love others… on that, it’s definitely a one song at a time situation. Again, my healing journey and songwriting go hand in hand, and it’s a power combo, but I still need to be very patient with myself and the healing. I would love it if things would change over night , but they don’t. Sometimes I feel that all the work I’ve done means nothing – when I hit a wall or make a mistake. To all those out there who are also trying to overcome something big and deep rooted, I want them to know they are not alone, it’s ok to struggle, it just means we are trying, as long as we don’t give up, we keep getting up after we fall, we are not lost. 

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