When Paris WYA talks about music, she often returns to one question: how do you hold on to yourself when every city and audience expects something different from you? Having grown up between Shanghai, Paris and New York, Paris WYA knows that tension closely. It runs through “MANNEQUIN,” an EP where glossy synthpop and high-fashion imagery meet anxiety, self-doubt and the desire to take control of your own story.

Alongside her music career, Paris studied business at Cornell and learned to approach every release with purpose. We spoke with Paris WYA about the mannequin image, the cities that shaped her, the line between honesty and content, her plans to bring Mandarin and French into future songs, and the new creative chapter already taking shape.

Paris WYA, hey, good to see you. Your newest EP is called MANNEQUIN — and that word carries a harsh contradiction. A mannequin is flawless on the outside but completely hollow within. In the fashion industry, it’s a tool for selling; in art, it’s a metaphor for alienation from yourself. Your music video has hit half a million views, and in it you look simultaneously like an object of haute couture and a person trying to break free from that object. What does this image mean to you — is it the story of how the world sees you, or about how you stopped recognizing yourself in the mirror?

I think it’s a little bit of both.

For a long time, I felt like I was living according to other people’s expectations rather than my own. From the outside, everything could look polished and put together, but internally I felt disconnected from myself. That’s what the mannequin came to represent for me. It’s beautiful, but it has no voice, no agency, no life of its own.

At the same time, I don’t think MANNEQUIN is just about losing yourself. It’s about realizing you’ve drifted away from who you are and choosing to come back. The EP became my way of exploring that journey. It wasn’t about having all the answers, it was about asking the right questions.

Looking back now, I think MANNEQUIN captured a chapter of searching. The music I’m creating now feels different. It’s less about asking who I am and more about discovering what I’m capable of becoming.

Shanghai, Paris, New York — three cities, three cultural gravitational fields, three completely different ideas of what it means to be a young woman in public space. Pop artists usually build their identity around one place, because Billie Eilish, for example, is LA, and Rosé is London through Seoul. But you aren’t anchored to any point on the map. Is that freedom — or do you sometimes feel like you don’t have a “home” in the cultural sense, and music became your attempt to build one?

It was an incredible privilege to grow up across different cultures, and I’m really grateful for that. At the same time, I often felt like I existed between worlds rather than fully belonging to one.

Over time, I realized that it didn’t have to be a weakness – it could actually become my greatest strength. Each place shaped me differently. Shanghai taught me discipline, Europe taught me to find beauty in everyday life, and America taught me to dream without limits. Together, those experiences became the foundation of who I am as both an artist and a person.

Paris WYA became the space where all those different parts of me could coexist. It’s less about representing one place and more about creating a world where people from anywhere can feel like they belong.

Your earlier material has a more digital, experimental approach, but on MANNEQUIN you’ve arrived at synth-pop with an ’80s texture — warm, analog, almost cinematic. Usually artists go the opposite direction: they start accessible, then veer into experimentation. You went from complex to something that sounds simpler but feels deeper. What happened between those recordings and this EP that made you need a different sound?

Earlier in my career, I believed I had to be different to be noticed. I was experimenting with different sounds, trying to figure out where I fit and what kind of artist I wanted to become. There were a lot of different voices around me, and I hadn’t fully learned to trust my own instincts yet.

Somewhere along the way, that changed. I realized I didn’t need to go out of my way to make something different just for the sake of being different. I think your most unique work comes from making the thing that feels the most like you. Ironically, that’s often what ends up sounding the most original. Your own voice, your own sound, and your own identity aren’t things you can force because they reveal themselves over time.

That’s what led me toward the world of MANNEQUIN. I was drawn to synth-pop because it has this beautiful balance of intimacy and scale. It feels cinematic and immersive, but it never loses sight of the emotion at its core. I think I was finally making music that reflected who I was, rather than who I thought I needed to be.

The visual world of MANNEQUIN looks like a major fashion house campaign escaped from the pages of Vogue and became a music video. How do you personally distinguish the moment when a visual expands the meaning of a song from the moment when it just looks good in Stories?

For me, a visual should reveal something the music can’t say on its own. Beautiful imagery can catch someone’s attention, but if it doesn’t deepen the emotional experience of the song, I don’t think it stays with people for very long.

When I’m developing visuals, I’m never asking, “Does this look cool?” I’m asking, “Does this make me understand the song differently?” If the answer is yes, then I know it’s serving the story rather than just decorating it.

I’ve always been fascinated by artists and fashion houses that create entire worlds rather than individual pieces of work. That’s what excites me creatively. Music, fashion, cinematography, and storytelling all feel like different ways of expressing the same idea. I never want the visuals to exist separately from the music; I want them to feel like they’re part of the same universe.

You study at the business school of Cornell — one of the toughest Ivy League universities — while simultaneously releasing an EP. Does a business education change the way you make decisions in music, or do you deliberately keep those two halves of your brain in separate rooms?

I studied Hotel Administration at Cornell, so I spent a lot of time thinking about business, leadership, and entrepreneurship. I don’t think those two sides of my life are separate at all. If anything, they make each other stronger. Creativity gives me the vision, and business gives me the tools to bring that vision to life.

I also think being an artist today is inherently entrepreneurial. You’re building something from the ground up, bringing together people around a shared vision, and asking others to believe in what you’re creating. One of the biggest things Cornell reinforced for me is that having a great idea is only half the equation. You also have to know how to communicate that vision, build the right team around it, and inspire other people to believe in it too.

When I’m writing a song, I’m not thinking about marketing plans or spreadsheets. That part has to come from instinct. But once the song exists, I become much more intentional. I think about how every decision, from the visuals to the rollout to the people I collaborate with, supports the bigger vision.

I’ve never wanted to just release songs. I’ve always wanted to build a world that people can step into. For me, artistry and entrepreneurship aren’t competing ideas. They’re both essential to turning a creative vision into something that people can genuinely connect with.

There’s a lot of vulnerability in your songs — anxiety, feeling lost, trying to put yourself back together. In 2026, “vulnerability as aesthetic” has become an entire industry: openness sells, personal pain gets monetized, and the listener can’t always tell confession from marketing anymore. Where do you draw the line between processing your experience into art and inadvertently turning it into content?

For me, it always comes back to intention. I don’t sit down and write a song just to create a vulnerable moment. I write because I’m trying to understand something about myself. If that ends up resonating with other people, that’s the most rewarding part, but it isn’t where the process begins.

The beautiful thing about music is that people don’t have to relate to the exact story to see themselves in it. They bring their own experiences to a song. Two people can hear the same lyric and connect with it for completely different reasons, but they’re still feeling the same emotion.

I’m much more interested in telling the emotional truth than documenting every detail of my life. I’ve never wanted my personal life to become the product. I think the goal is to take something deeply personal and transform it into something that feels universal. That’s when it stops being content and starts becoming art.

I think that’s what great art does. It starts from one person’s experience, but somewhere along the way it begins to belong to everyone.

You’re a trilingual artist, but you write and sing in English. That’s a conscious choice, but it’s not a free one: every language you don’t use in your music is an entire layer of yourself the listener never hears. Rosalía proved that Spanish can be a global pop language; 88rising showed that Asian artists don’t have to sing in English to fill arenas. Have you ever wanted to write a track where languages switch as naturally as they switch inside your head — or are you worried the audience isn’t ready for that?

I actually hope that’s where my music naturally evolves. I grew up thinking, speaking, and dreaming across multiple languages, so it feels very true to who I am.

Right now, English is still the language that feels most instinctive when I’m writing songs. It’s the language I’ve spent the most time expressing myself in creatively, so that’s where I naturally start. But I don’t see that as a permanent boundary.

I’d love to start weaving Mandarin, and maybe even French, into my music in ways that feel organic. Sometimes there are words, idioms, or expressions that carry a feeling you simply can’t translate into English without losing something. I think those little moments can add so much richness and authenticity when they happen naturally.

At the end of the day, emotion doesn’t really have a language. If someone feels something when they hear a song, it doesn’t matter whether every single word is familiar to them. My hope is to build a truly global pop project where different languages can coexist as naturally as they do in my own life.

Critics compare you to Ariana Grande, but with a caveat: you have more art-house sensibility. Is there an artist — or even an entire world beyond music, like film, literature, architecture — that describes what you do more accurately than any comparison to another pop star?

I’ve been an Ari fan since Victorious so that’s definitely music to my ears! A huge compliment to be compared to her.

I grew up looking at the Shanghai skyline almost every day, and I don’t think I realized until much later how much it shaped me. To me, it always represented possibility. It’s futuristic and ambitious, but at the same time there’s a sense of timeless elegance and beauty to it. I think that balance has naturally found its way into the music and visual world I’m trying to create.

I’m also inspired by fashion houses like Miu Miu or Alexander Wang because they don’t just create beautiful collections, they create worlds and statements with their point of view. The same is true of great cinema. Every visual choice, every detail, every frame contributes to a larger emotional experience. That’s ultimately what I want Paris WYA to be. More than a collection of songs, a universe people can step into.

Pop music in 2026 has been fragmented by algorithms into micro-niches — two people in the same room can live in completely different sonic universes and never cross paths. You grew up between cultures, and the very idea of connection across borders clearly isn’t an abstraction for you. But the industry is set up to shove you into one category anyway: “Asian artist,” “indie pop,” “Gen Z.” Do you believe a pop song today can still exist outside a niche — or has the idea of music “for everyone” become a utopia?

I actually think people crave universality now more than ever. Algorithms are great at helping us find communities, but the songs that stay with us usually transcend the categories they’re put into because they speak to something fundamentally human.

I am an Asian artist, and that’s a part of my identity that I’m incredibly proud of. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted to hide or distance myself from. But it’s one part of who I am, not the whole story. I don’t want people to connect with my music only because they’re looking for an Asian artist. I want them to connect with it because it makes them feel something. If my background gives the music another layer of meaning, I think that’s a beautiful thing, but I hope it isn’t the only lens through which people experience it.

I’ve always wanted to build a truly global pop project. One where people from completely different backgrounds can hear the same song and each find a piece of themselves in it. To me, that’s what pop music has always been at its best. It reminds us that even if our lives look completely different, our emotions often aren’t.

Last question — and it’s probably the most direct one. MANNEQUIN sounds like a record made by someone asking themselves a fundamental question about their own identity. It’s an EP of searching, not answering. But the search can’t last forever — at some point an artist either finds themselves or decides that the process of searching is the answer. Are you closer to finding it now — or does it scare you that if you do, you might lose the main fuel for your music?

I don’t think finding yourself is a destination. It’s not a moment where everything suddenly clicks and you have it all figured out. I think it’s about learning to trust your instincts a little more every day.

MANNEQUIN was a record about searching. It came from a period where I was asking myself questions about identity, expectations, and who I was underneath all of it. I’m really grateful for that chapter because I couldn’t be the artist I am today without it.

But those questions have definitely evolved. Lately, I’ve been really inspired by the idea of romanticizing life, finding beauty in everyday moments and allowing myself to dream bigger. I can feel myself stepping into a new chapter creatively. It’s bolder, more confident, and more expansive. But it doesn’t feel like I’m becoming someone else. It feels like a more unapologetic version of who I’ve always been. Earlier in my career, I think I tried to make statements before I fully understood my own voice. This time, the confidence comes from knowing myself better, not from trying to be someone I’m not.

Change always comes with a little uncertainty, but for the first time, I think I’m meeting it with more excitement than fear. It doesn’t feel like I’m losing the thing that inspires me. It feels like I’m discovering a new source of it. I’m not asking, “Who am I?” anymore. I’m asking, “What kind of life do I want to create?”

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