Singer-Songwriter Josh Makazo Wants To Make Music That Matters

It’s eight in the morning, and Josh Makazo is hanging out on a chair in the studio, doing his best to stitch himself together with meds while getting his hair and makeup done. He’s just flown back from Japan the night before, and now—jet-lagged, a little under the weather, and wrapped in enough layers to qualify as a soft-boiled dumpling—he’s powering through a fashion shoot like it’s nothing.

If this were anyone else, you’d call it impressive. But with Makazo, 23, it just feels typical of his work ethic. Quietly driven, a little shy and devastatingly earnest, he strikes you as the kind of person who can be fully present in a room while also disappearing into his thoughts.

He listens with his eyes. When he speaks, he doesn’t rush. He’s not here to perform sincerity, he’s just built that way. And that’s what you hear, too. His music—emotional, slow-burning, shadow-tinged—has earned him a devoted following across Southeast Asia. Fans know him for his breakout hit “half of my heart”; for his lush, brooding debut album GRADIENT, and for the way his voice seems to float through your most vulnerable moments. There’s a reason people call him one of the new faces defining Southeast Asia’s pop sound. His work sits with you. Sometimes it hurts a little, and sometimes that’s the point.

Later this year, Makazo releases his sophomore album ULTRAVIOLET, a record that picks up where GRADIENT left off, and carefully, purposefully begins to rebuild. Yet, if you ask Makazo when he knew music wasn’t just a side hobby, his answer is frank: “I realised it when I stopped thinking about what I wanted to be known for, and started focusing on what I needed to make for myself.”

Lofty in the way that it sounds, but there’s something honest to the way he unwaveringly believes in that too. It neatly sums up who he is: an artist who chases feeling, not fame. As he puts it, “If I were to be known for anything, it would be for protecting that sense of sincerity for myself and my audience. For making music that remains intentional and rooted in feeling, no matter what.”

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You can hear it in how he approaches production too. Makazo doesn’t just write and sing, but he produces his own tracks, often obsessing over the smallest sonic details. “Producing has taught me patience, resilience and the power of detail,” he says. “It trained my ears to respect subtlety, and how one texture can change an emotion or silence can be as loud as a drum.”

He often mixes his demos in complete darkness. “I close my eyes, reduce other senses, and feel the music in its purest form. When I open my eyes again, that’s when I decide if a song is worth sharing.”

From One Chapter To The Next

GRADIENT was a slow build, aurally. On its surface, it was a moody, R&B-leaning alt-pop record, but underneath, it goes deeper as a meditation on emotional decay. “If you listened to the album in order,” Makazo says, “you’d move through emotions of anger, escapism, denial, and eventually, acceptance.”

And the success of GRADIENT wasn’t just a numbers game, although the album amassed a whopping 32 million streams. It happened while he was still in national service. “I was in the jungle, sweating through my face camo,” he laughs. “Meanwhile, thousands of people were listening to my music, and I had no idea.”

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Yet when the streams started climbing, he admits to getting caught up in the metrics, if only for a while.

“I realised how fragile validation could be,” he reflects. “What stayed with me wasn’t the numbers. It was knowing someone out there was listening to my song and feeling understood.”

ULTRAVIOLET continues that story. If GRADIENT was about falling apart, ULTRAVIOLET is about piecing yourself back together. “It explores what happens after you confront hard truths and when you start rebuilding. It’s quieter in some ways, but also more hopeful.”

Prior to working on his second release, Makazo took an eight-month break before this next chapter, which the singer calls a necessary pause. “I’d spent three years wholly dedicated to music but in that time, my family and friendships were neglected, my health was dismissed and I kind of felt my passion turn into obsession.” He shrugs. “At one point, I was severely underweight, and even though I could make songs faster than ever, I realised I was losing the reason I started in the first place.”

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That clarity didn’t come easy, admittedly, but it came with a sonic payoff. And ULTRAVIOLET feels like a musical response to it all, because where GRADIENT was heavy with unprocessed grief, ULTRAVIOLET breathes. The production is lighter, there’s more air between sounds, and sonically, feels more spaced.

“I was less interested in filling every gap and more interested in letting moments breathe.” That’s also how he’s approaching his return: with an understanding of who he is as a young, growing artist. “I didn’t want to come back louder,” he says, “I just wanted to be clearer and to make something that felt true to where I was.”

Not Just Another Sad Boy

Makazo’s music often gets called “sad,” but it’s not actually wallowing. There is a precision, reflectiveness, and emotional articulation that comes with his work, and this is a trait that he’s acutely aware of and how that lands with younger listeners.

“I think my voice reflects a generation that is constantly online yet deeply lonely,” he says. “There’s this confusion between information and processing, knowledge and understanding, wanting to be seen and wanting to disappear.”

That contradiction—of being emotionally saturated yet just as starved—is something Makazo articulates well, especially in the cultural context of Asia where feelings are often managed quietly. His music resonates, but only because it gives shape to things many people don’t have the words for.

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“We move fast. We’re taught to be practical, but we carry so many unspoken emotions,” he says. “I try to give sound to the things we were never taught to articulate. GRADIENT sat in darker, more suffocating spaces. ULTRAVIOLET has more air. It’s still moody, but less weighted down.”

Thematically, it’s an album about being in the liminal: a space where you’re not mended, but aware and healing.

“I want listeners to feel like they’re stepping into a space that understands them without needing explanation,” he says. “It’s not a solution or a fix. It’s a reminder that it’s okay to be becoming.”

And that’s what Makazo does best: make music that lives in the private spaces most people try to avoid; not as a way to solve these painful moments, but to sit in them for a while. His music tries to hold a conversation not in a way that chides or critiques, but to let his listeners recognise their feelings and feel them in their entirety.

While the singer still has a ways to go, for now, he’s happy to let nature take its own course, with him in the tow. Planning, the musician says after a pensive pause, is not something he wants to do for now. “I try not to map the future too tightly. When I over-plan, I start creating from expectation instead of instinct.”

What he knows is that he wants his art to evolve as he does. “Each album is part of a larger emotional thread, and I’m just continuing to follow it.” It’s a simple philosophy, but with Makazo, that’s often where the meaning lives: in the simplicity and the conviction to always hold space for feeling, without rushing to explain it away.

Editor-in-Chief: Kenneth Goh
Photography: Feedbeng
Art direction: Sheryl Seah
Styling: Aaron Kok
Grooming: Kenneth Chia, using Chanel Beauty and Kevin Murphy
Photographer’s assistant: Xie Feng Mao
Stylist’s assistant: Laila Mishazira