A disenchanted adult was once trying to persuade me not to become a lawyer (unnecessary!). To make his point, he said all lawyers wrote detective novels in their spare time because they were so dissatisfied. Maybe that's true. But it's not every lawyer who can leave the legal profession for a successful career as a singer.
That's the pattern of Yuna Zarai's C.V. She graduated in 2009 with a law degree in her home country, Malaysia. She started playing guitar to offset law-school apathy. Now she's got a foothold on the Billboard charts, with Usher backing her up on her sultry "Crush." It's like the sound of sitting outside with someone pretty while everyone's wearing diaphanous linens.
Zarai briefly visited New York before the release of her fifth album, Chapters, which she reports is a release of pent-up energy.
"I’ve always been considered this nice, perfect Muslim girl from Malaysia," she says. "I couldn’t really express how I feel. There was a limit. I had to hold back a little. I grew up in the music industry in Malaysia. That’s conservative.” Chapters, she says, marks the time “I decided to let go of my insecurities.”
With the sunshine-filtered "Places to Go" and "Crush," she's also carved out her exact musical style—a gentle companionship of folk and R&B. It took her a minute, she says, especially when she moved to the States. "EDM was really confusing for me. I couldn’t embrace it."
She pauses, like she's about to make a confession: "I have a lot of friends who do EDM music,” she says. She lives in L.A. now, where EDM makers run amok. "They had to tell me what a drop was. I come from a jazzy, acoustic, folky background. Everything has to work with melodies, the words have to have meaning." If you detected a subtle criticism there, it isn't anywhere to be found in Zarai's kind tone. Rather, her surprise that melody and meaning have been abandoned in popular music makes more of a statement about her core as a songwriter.
Zarai's maturity is also displayed through fashion: She has a clothing line coming out in August. "I know how to wrap my turban a little better now," she says. "In the beginning, it was a little weird. Music and fashion go hand in hand, as much as you want to think that you don’t need to be attractive. To have a sense of style, it shows you know yourself. People like that."
The law degree, though, has not been dusted off. The only use it has, she says, is that she respects the power of legal agreements and signing her name. "At least I come from a place where I know that thing is important," she says of her signature. She shakes her head. "A lot of people are like, 'Your degree will come in handy for the contracts,'" she says, laughing. "Not really!"
