MIO-ERA Explores Identity, Impermanence, and the Beauty of Letting Go on New Album

Shanghai-born singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist Yifei Zhou introduces listeners to an intimate world of self-discovery with MIO-ERA, a ten-track alternative folk album exploring heartbreak, identity, resilience, and the complex emotions that come with growing into yourself.

Released under her creative project MIO-ERA, the record brings together English and Mandarin songwriting, experimental arrangements, and deeply personal storytelling.

Founded in 2024, MIO-ERA reflects Yifei Zhou's expansive musical background, drawing inspiration from traditional Chinese folk, Brazilian music, jazz, classical compositions, and experimental soundscapes. As the project's primary songwriter, producer, vocalist, and instrumentalist, Yifei Zhou approaches music as an extension of visual art, movement, and personal expression.

The album unfolds like a continuous emotional narrative, beginning with the unresolved questions of “Intro” before moving into the introspective “Wandering” and “原地踏步” (“Standing in Place”). The two-part “Running Out Of Time” explores fleeting intimacy and emotional attachment, while “March 23” captures the tension between desperation and hope.

Among the record's most compelling moments, “鱼” (“Fish”) examines memory, forgiveness, and the nonlinear nature of healing. “Maybe One Day” finds reassurance in nature, while “RESISTANCE,” inspired by Audre Lorde's poetry, transforms survival into an act of courage.

The closing track, “Final Goodbye,” brings the journey full circle through reflections on regret and acceptance.

Rather than offering easy answers, MIO-ERA embraces life's uncertainty, presenting a thoughtful introduction to an artist whose creative vision extends far beyond conventional songwriting.

Your album MIO-ERA explores the emotions and uncertainties of navigating your twenties. Looking back on the experiences that inspired this project, what did creating the album teach you about yourself that you hadn’t fully understood before?

I think, like most people in their 20s, so many overwhelming truths about the self start emerging in a very confusing way, because everyone’s experience is unique. Therefore, there isn’t a cure that can just point you in a direction and make you feel fine. A lot of these feelings revolve around finding out who we are: What is mine and what isn’t? What is love? Meanwhile, we’re interacting with the world on our own for the first time. A lot of uncertainty, a lot of questions, a lot of changes, and a lot of regrets all came in at the same time.

For me especially, it was extremely difficult, because I left home and moved to a new country alone as a young teen, with no family here. A completely new musical language, a completely new spoken language, and a culture I wasn’t familiar with at all. I came here with a love for American music (the entire continent) and wanted to know more about it, but I didn’t expect this level of difficulty with my own identity.

In particular, I was dealing with a certain level of trauma in my own native tongue, and also couldn’t express myself fully in a new language. I felt like I was in jail. An emotional jail where nothing felt right and I couldn’t find words or things to relate to. My sense of self was completely fragile and broken, which led me to rush into relationships as a solution.

Initially, when I wrote these songs, I didn’t really know why I was writing them. I would just write every day and sing before bed, during and after a very personal period of mental difficulty and a difficult breakup (somehow the feelings of both combined).

Like a lot of girls, I also felt completely lost after that. My sense of self was already fragile from facing constant criticism of my own culture and Western narratives, and from constantly moving between places where I never felt truly safe to express myself, ironically even in music. Growing up, I was constantly told I had no talent in music, or that I was too sensitive, and that I should quit music. A lot of it revolved around my own personal traits not being accepted or allowed. So it was pretty hard to even want to make this album and believe I was worthy of speaking.

In summer 2022, I decided to just write down everything I had in mind. I was so sick of not being able to feel how I felt safely, and of lying about my feelings. It was a truly scary experience, because I had all these feelings in front of me that I had never actually sat with, and they felt overwhelming, confusing, and almost devastating.

I am still constantly learning about myself and the world through the songs I’ve written and through other people’s songs. I like to document things a lot and ask a lot of questions. When I first started making these songs, I thought they were just a place where I could speak freely without people constantly shutting me down or making me feel small. They were some of my best friends during those moments. Then I performed them from time to time with different people and made so many versions. I ended up learning a lot about how I felt about those moments, and how they hold so many meanings and feelings.

Since then, life no longer feels dim and colorless. Even in difficult times, it’s still very colorful, and that has been the biggest gift I’ve received in life: the ability to feel big and small feelings.

I think these songs are about more than just grief, love, loss, passion, etc. They aren’t negative or positive, like the yin and yang in my own experiences. 

They gave me a lot of strength and care, and showed me that I can only become who I am and who I want to be if I accept and love the old me. I spent years trying to run away from her and remove her completely. In this very moment, I feel a lot of love, contentment, and forgiveness.

You move between English and Mandarin throughout the album, drawing from both your Chinese heritage and your experiences studying music in America. How do these different cultural influences shape your songwriting, and are there emotions you find easier to express in one language than the other?

As I mentioned before, it is HARD MODE. You can learn a musical language and love certain music, but at the same time feel completely different from what it was meant to feel like. I admit I have extreme difficulty writing in Chinese, despite the fact that I started writing short novels for fun at age 12. I’ve had so many feelings since I was very young, but I always cover them in stories. I never talk about how I feel directly. I still kind of can’t. I need a story or a scene to provoke my brain and feelings.

I think, in general, a lot of us in China are like this. Even love is a very unspoken language; it hits very deep, but we are too shy to say “I love you.” The history of poetry has always used images and the things around us to evoke a feeling rather than being specific. I think it’s beautiful, because I can explore feelings in a really deep way through how they relate to their surroundings, while still being relatable. It almost feels like a movie, or a time capsule. English, my second language, is very expressive to me too. I have spoken it almost every day for the past 8 years.

I don’t have that much deep vocabulary, which I’m trying to improve, but I also feel very close to it. Because there’s less judgment toward expression, using the words I know in English actually helps me understand my feelings more easily than imagery, especially when I still get confused about them. The combination of both is so crucial and important to me, and I feel very lucky to be able to express myself in two languages.

Culturally, these two languages are also the bones of what makes the music different. Chinese music is very much based on words, especially if you look at traditional music. Our scores are basically words; words create melody. I personally think my sense of melody and harmony in songwriting is very Chinese-influenced. English has a very different flow, which I’ve been trying to learn more about too: lots of room in phrasing, which ultimately contributes to grooves, etc. I think there’s a lot of room for both musically.

Rhythm, melody, harmony, and sensibility are very different because of the language difference. I can feel my brain fighting sometimes, but it’s good fighting, because there are so many questions yet to be answered. I want to learn about the things I love without losing where I came from.

Rather than approaching MIO-ERA as a collection of individual songs, you envisioned it as a continuous emotional journey. How did you determine the tracklist’s progression, and what connections do you hope listeners discover as they move from “Intro” to “Final Goodbye”?

For me, “March 23rd” is an interlude track. All of the songs are in chronological order, because each one took inspiration thematically from the previous track. It’s meant to start with the intro and then end with the intro again. It’s like reincarnation. The first part of my songs talks a lot about standing in places: standing right here waiting for it, I can’t rewind time, yesterday is past. The second half is very fluid. “Fish” is about feeling freedom through the journey, and “Maybe One Day” and “Resistance” are pretty similar to me in a way.

The only thing you can do is believe and try, despite not being sure what will happen. It’s kind of like the seasons: spring to summer to fall to winter. I grew up with seasons, so the feeling of seasonal transition means a lot to me. Nothing lasts forever, and no matter whether it’s good or bad, things always come back. It’s a natural cycle. The fact that nothing is permanent is the reason life is so precious. This is also very influenced by my Buddhist practice. This is how I felt even in my darkest times; this feeling really grounded and supported me.

Last but not least, even though the last track is “Final Goodbye,” it’s not the end. Memories and people from the past become part of you and stay with you forever, and we keep going. That’s why it returns to the intro: even after finishing the album, answering the first question I had in life doesn’t mean I know what’s next, and that’s OK. I hope this album gives whoever is listening the strength to live in the moment, along with love and courage.

“RESISTANCE” draws inspiration from Audre Lorde’s poetry and explores the courage required to speak up in a world that doesn’t always make space for everyone. Why was this message important to include on the album, and how has your understanding of resistance evolved through your own experiences?

Audre has been one of the most important artists in my journey. I listened to her recite this poem over and over again during difficult times. We have different experiences. Her experience as a lesbian African American woman in America during her time was not easy, and yet she still inspired and saved so many of us.

This poem is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read. In an interview, she talked about how none of us are free until everyone is free, and how we cannot stay silent. I think this is very relevant to a lot of things around us globally. But on a personal level, she also talks about choosing to live, and more importantly, living with joy as resistance against the system that tries to remove us. The system wasn’t built for us or with us in mind. The truth is, whether we try or not, we were never meant to survive, so it’s better to speak, sing, dance, love, and live!! That’s a very important message I want to bring to my audience: don’t give up, you are not alone.

As a multidisciplinary artist involved in nearly every aspect of MIO-ERA, from songwriting and production to choreography and visual design, how do you translate emotions into different creative mediums, and what can audiences expect from the visual world you’re building around this album?

I think I am a full-time dreamer and half-time artist, because I’m not actually that good at most of these things. They’re mostly just dreams I want to pursue. As I said before, I experience my emotions and life through senses, movement, color, sound, textures, visuals, etc. I document them a lot; I have so many different journals for different things as I live my life. I sketch every day, write every day, and dance too, so these media actually came about at the same time as the songs. They aren’t actually separate. I feel insecure about this from time to time, but at the same time I think if I can do it, everyone can do it, literally everyone.

Art is expression, and it can be expressed in any medium. This is also what I want to encourage in my audience, because it is so fun to explore. Art is safe; there’s no big consequence if you mess up. I didn’t really know how to do any of these things before making this album, or at least not professionally at all. But I ended up learning a lot, and making this album and all these media was one of the best parts of my early 20s.

I am very lucky to have my best friend and partner Cash, who helped me fully record and bring my music vision to life, and also Ella, who helped bring my MV vision to life. I created this because I experience the world in this way. It’s a 4D world to me, and I think it’s powerful and so colorful.

As for the audience, I don’t have expectations. I just give out as many forms of media and experience as I can, and people can take it however they want to feel, or not feel, and that’s also fine.