Jelex Writes The Things He Can’t Say Out Loud

The Singapore-based musician began making music in high school before scoring his first hit single. Now, he uses music to express the feelings he doesn’t want to burden others with.

Before Jelex scored his first viral hit, he was far from the music industry participating in basic military training in Singapore, where men are required to serve for 2 years. Jelex was an experienced musician at this point, and he had developed a working rhythm for his time in the camp. “Winter Girl$”, his first track that would eventually blow up, was made on a weekend trip at home, where he would quickly produce, mix, and record music before returning to camp.

Jelex didn’t think much of “Winter Girl$” when he released it. He had been recording music on and off for years to varying degrees of success, and it mainly served as an outlet to get his mind off training. So, after hitting upload, he told me, “I hopped on the bus and headed to the jungle for an outfield exercise. The first night, we slept in the grass, and I hated every single minute of it,” he said. “I was a little bald kid in the middle of the jungle, and I was digging a shell scrape while contemplating my life choices.”

But while Jelex was serving, the numbers started to blow up: first 100,000 streams, then 500,000, and eventually over a million. Jelex was shocked. “I'm really grateful that I was able to witness the track getting more numbers and see my first milestones being reached,” he told me.

Five years later, Jelex has leveled up as a musician. He began making aesthetic hip-hop, a genre which “Winter Girl$” is clearly rooted in, but lately he’s moved toward  a blend of EDM, hyperpop and indie pop. “I listened to a lot of EDM during middle school. It really impacted how I listened to music,” he recalled. “Porter Robinson, Skrillex, definitely a lot of EDM artists and DJs that helped shape my childhood."

Collaboration has become a key aspect of Jelex’s music. While he’s based in Singapore, the singer frequently reaches out to musicians across the world with whom he wants to work. “I always try to reach out to different people because I feel like maybe I alone won't make a track as good as someone else who I believe has the talent. I always reach out to people and see what they would do on the track itself. I feel like it elevates it,” he said, emphasizing, "It's not about getting more popular or getting more fame or recognition. " It's about creating art.”

He considers his newest music, tracks like “i know” and “two days ago,” to be his best. The tracks are less vague about love or girls. Instead, the lyrics are straightforward as Jelex dissects a fresh breakup and the process of falling out of love. “Blending EDM with lyrics about love and my emotions helps me let the world know how I feel,” he said. “I'm not able to express this through words, but I'd rather express it through music.”

Jelex was born and raised in Suzhou, a city in mainland China. From an early age, he was exposed to other cultures, first at an international school and then through the education his father provided. The multicultural environment Jelex grew up in largely shaped him into the open-minded person he is today. He theorized that “because we're third-culture kids, we don't really have a place where we fully belong.” He continued, adding, “But having that experience helped shape us. We're not so narrow-minded. We're more open to experiencing different things.”

At home, Jelex’s father became a “main connection" to his music education, where he would play records by A-ha and Pet Shop Boys. But the most immersive experience was the live music Jelex saw with his father. When he was in middle school, Jelex’s father would bring him to bars to hear local musicians. (China didn’t have an age limit for bars, so Jelex could legally be there – even if he was an odd sight.)  

“He brought me there just to listen to the live bands, and that really made me fall in love with music because of all the ways they were playing,” he explained. “I saw guitarists play with only three strings because the other strings broke. It was very influential on how my mind connects with music now.”

Looking back on that time now, Jelex wondered with a laugh, “What was someone thinking when they went into a bar and saw a little kid sitting there with a cup of Coke, just watching the music?”

The experience made Jelex curious about the kind of music he could create. He developed an appreciation for music from the 80s and 90s through his dad, but as his taste evolved, he began to find pop punk fun too: Jelex loved blink-182. Then he found metal and the ferocious rock music of Slipknot or Black Sabbath. By middle school, he loved EDM and pop music too: Tobu, The Vamps and Owl City all made it onto his playlists.

Jelex began to catalog every artist he came across, and by the time 2020 rolled around, he was putting his education to good use. The first few months of COVID were lonely. Jelex and his mother were living together in Suzhou, so he tried to keep himself busy because of how bored he was at home.

Jelex’s friend had built a home studio where the pair would mess around, recording beats and writing lyrics. “I thought, ‘What if I just continue writing music?’ because I enjoyed the process of songwriting and finding different melodies to sing over lyrics.”

“From then on, I was traveling to my friend's basement, where the recording studio was, and we would record on weekends,” he said.

Jelex was most inspired by melodic emo-rappers like The Kid LAROI and iann dior. He liked the genre-building music they could create, something that appealed to the sensibilities he picked up in the bars his dad took him to. This eventually made COVID less boring because in making music, Jelex realized how free he could feel and how fun the process could be. 

As the restrictions lifted, Jelex recalled with a laugh, “I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I'm going outside.’ I started visiting my friends.”

From the start, Jelex worked with artists from around the world. “I never really tapped into the music community in China,” he said. “I was more tapped in with people internationally.”

He liked audio engineering and configuring the mix of his vocals. It was fun to experiment with vocal presets or to try different plugins. “It was my two other friends and I in my friend's studio experimenting with compression, EQ, everything,” he said. “We were just messing around.” But the music was turning out pretty good, and Jelex felt like he had potential.

By the time he joined the military and began releasing music more regularly, he had developed a system for making music. At camp, he would write the lyrics and check the beats. Once he went home, everything was written down and planned, so he was ready to go. “I would record, master, mix, and distribute all within those two days,” he said. “It was very compact, but I had to schedule it really nicely because sometimes, even on weekends, the military would ask me to go back for guard duty.”

Jelex felt that being in the military “was a good distraction” from looking at his phone or obsessing about the numbers. It taught him time management and how to work efficiently. “Then I went back home,” he said, “and I got to do what I really wanted.”

Jelex decided to extend his gap year after his time in the military ended. “I wanted to figure out what I really wanted to do in life,” he said. During that year, he attended networking events and learned new musical skills that could propel him further before eventually settling on going to university while making music. That year, he said, “really helped shape how I perceive the music industry and how I communicate with people. It helped with my interpersonal skills.”

Over the years, Jelex has tried to grow as a lyricist too. In the beginning, when he tried rapping, his music could be vague or sound impersonal. But this year, Jelex has worked to be as direct as possible when writing lyrics.

“I don't really like telling people how I feel or venting. I'm not really a person to do that,” he said. “I think the better way I express my emotions is through writing lyrics and being able to express them through songs, rather than sitting down with someone and talking about my feelings.”

Talking about his feelings sometimes makes Jelex feel like he’s a burden to others. But when he writes, he’s not asking anyone to fix something for him or to share his pain. He’s simply releasing what’s bothering him.

Things seemed to click in 2024 when he wrote “October,” a song about a relationship starting to unravel. His favorite line, he’s told me, referenced how underappreciated and misunderstood he felt in the relationship. “Because when I tell you what's wrong, you say I'm not supportive,” he admits in the song, “And I pour my heart only for you to throw it.”

“I feel like it really resonated with how I was feeling through different relationships,” he said. “It really captured what I was feeling when there were quarrels and fights happening.”

Jelex with friends
left photo: kimmyt, CLXUDIA, and levitxcus right photo: isaacprease

He released the song at one of his lowest points after his first major breakup. “Writing down those lyrics really helped me express how I was feeling,” he said. “I'm glad I made it into a song and that it was able to express how I was feeling. Looking back now, it really captured my emotions then, even through how I sang the song.”

Jelex continues to see his collaborations as a key reason he loves making music. The majority of the music he’s released this year has been made with friends: T-LOG and stvphn were involved in the production of his latest single “i know”, while he recorded “two days ago” – another song about his breakup – with his friend isaacprease.

But SUPER SWAG MUSIC, the EP by fragments, is perhaps the best representation of what happens when Jelex and friends get together to make music. The music came together extraordinarily fast, as the two music directors stvphn and Davin Dot, worked quickly to produce beats and gather friends to record verses. Jelex participated in “WORLDS APART”, an EDM track produced by stvphn and featuring brynne.

“When Steven showed me the sample and the instrumental, it just clicked in my head. I recorded it within one afternoon,” he said. “No one was really procrastinating. We were all in it for one goal: to create the best music ever.”

If there’s anything this year has taught him, it is that music can be an outlet to be heard, to be understood. It’s been gratifying to learn that others have found his music just as moving or impactful as he felt in his most traumatic moments. 

Jelex considered this as he explained that it’s nice to finally share his story and to mine his trauma into art. “I'm not really a person who can express my emotions thoroughly in real life, but every time I pick up my computer or write in my notes, I'm able to convey what I'm feeling through lyrics and music,” he said. He paused for a moment and thought about it. “That's why music is so important to me.”