Name: Hannah Sopacuwa 
Nationality: Dutch-Moluccan
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, bassist 
Current release: Hannah Sopacuwa 's latest single "All Okay" is included on Vokall Records' September Sampler, out now. Catch her EP here. 
Hometown Recommendation: I live in Amsterdam, and I would really recommend visiting the Harry Mulisch House. Harry Mulisch was one of the Netherlands’ most famous writers, and his house has been preserved, so you can get a glimpse of the environment in which he worked and lived once every 6 months. I find it inspiring to see the physical surroundings of someone whose work you know. It makes the process of writing feel a little less abstract. You suddenly see the desk, the books, the objects and the room where all of that thinking actually happened. 
Things I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: I have a slightly unreasonable fascination with the different shapes and colours of fruit and vegetables. I genuinely think vegetables are beautiful. The fact that a tomato can be red, yellow, green or almost purple, or that carrots can come in completely different shapes and colours, makes me disproportionately happy. I don't really have a sophisticated explanation for it. I just think there is something very nice about how much variety exists in things we see every day.

If you enjoyed this Hannah Sopacuwa  interview and would like to know more about her music, visit her on Instagram, and tiktok. 



Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in writing lyrics or poetry? How and when did you start writing? 

I read a lot as a child, and I think my relationship with language started quite early. From around the age of six I had a little notebook in which I wrote very short rhymes, usually accompanied by a small drawing. I just really liked making things rhyme and playing around with words. 

The actual content wasn’t always particularly profound. Some of those early poems were basically along the lines of “the dog has a funny butt (in Dutch this rhymes)”, but I think there was already something there in the enjoyment of putting words together. 

Looking back, I think that curiosity about language has always stayed with me, even as the things I write about have become a little more serious.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music and literature have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to writing?

For me, writing is mostly a way of making sense of things. Sometimes I don't even realise what I'm feeling until I try to put it into words. 

I also really like that writing allows you to look at something ordinary from a slightly different angle. You can take a very small feeling or moment and give it a whole world around it. And I think there is definitely an element of escapism in it too. 

When I write, I can exaggerate things, make them more beautiful, more dramatic or sometimes simply stranger than they are in real life.

What were some of the artists and albums which inspired you early on purely on the strength of their lyrics? What moves you in the lyrics of other artists?

Stevie Wonder is definitely one of the artists that comes to mind. I find the way he describes things incredibly visual. When I listen to his music, I sometimes feel like he's taking me to the very spaces he's personally experienced. That’s something I still have a lot to learn from.

I also really love the lyrics of Carol King. There is something very observational and funny about her writing, I think she can describe a person, a place or a very small interaction and suddenly you understand a whole emotional world around it.

It is sometimes said that “music begins where words end.” What do you make of that?

I like that idea, and I think this is true in a certain way, although I don't think the two are necessarily separate. 

Sometimes words can take you somewhere music alone can’t, and sometimes a melody can communicate something that would sound almost ridiculous if you tried to explain it literally. 

I think the interesting part is what happens in between the two. The words can say one thing, while the music gives it another meaning.

I have always considered many forms of music to be a form of poetry as well. Where do you personally see similarities? What can music express which may be out of reach for poetry?

For me, the biggest similarity is that both are interested in rhythm, imagery, feeling and the way a few carefully chosen words can create something much bigger in your head. 

Music has the advantage of being able to change the meaning of those words almost instantly. You can sing a sentence that looks quite simple on paper and, because of the melody, harmony or the way you sing it, suddenly it feels heartbreaking, hopeful or funny. 

Poetry can obviously create that kind of emotional ambiguity too, but I think music adds another physical and emotional layer to it.

The relationship between words and music has always intrigued me. How do you see it? In how far can music take you to places with your writing you would possibly not have visited without it?

For me, they are almost inseparable. I very rarely write lyrics completely independently from music. A melody can suggest a certain emotion before I even know what the song is about. 

When writing I’ll be singing meaningless sounds and there is suddenly one word or one sentence that feels right, and that becomes the starting point for everything else.

What are areas/themes/topics that you keep returning to in your lyrics?

Very simple: Love. But I don't only mean romantic love. I’m interested in love in a much broader sense: family, friendship, loving yourself, loving life, losing love, needing love, and all the slightly complicated things that come with it.

I think I keep returning to it because it’s something that can be incredibly ordinary and incredibly dramatic at the same time. Everyone understands it, but everyone experiences it differently. And for me, it’s one of the biggest parts of life.

On the basis of a piece off your most recent release, tell me about how the lyrics grew into their final form and what points of consideration were.

The lyrics for ‘All Okay’, my latest release, honestly felt like they wrote themselves. 

It was one of those songs where I didn’t have to force the words into place. The feeling of the song was already quite clear to me, and the lyrics seemed to follow that feeling rather naturally. 

I usually edit and rethink things quite a lot, so when a song comes together quickly, I try not to interfere with it too much. Sometimes the first version has a kind of honesty that you can accidentally write out of it by overthinking. That’s what I managed to prevent when writing “All Okay.“

Do you tend to start writing with what will be the first line of the finished lyrics? The chorus? At a random point? What are the words that set the process in motion?

I usually start from a melody. 

I’ll sing something before I necessarily know what the words are going to be, sometimes with completely nonsensical sounds. Then a word or a phrase appears that feels like it belongs there, and I start building around it. So the lyrics often grow out of the sound of the words first. The meaning comes into focus afterwards. 

I really like that process because it means I’m not always completely in control of where the song is going.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

I think a lyric can look beautiful on paper and still feel completely wrong when you sing it. The sound of a word, where the emphasis falls, all of that matters.

I think I’m quite sensitive to how words physically feel in my mouth when I sing them. Sometimes I’ll change a word simply because another word feels better to sing, even if the original word was technically more precise.

And I think with someone else’s song, there is also something interesting about trying to find your own relationship with words that originally belonged to someone else. You have to make them feel true in your own voice without forgetting the world they came from.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

Definitely. I actually really like hearing what people think a song is about, especially when their interpretation is completely different from mine.

Sometimes someone will tell me a very specific story they associate with a song, and I realise that I hadn’t consciously thought about it that way at all. I don't necessarily want to correct that interpretation. Once you put a song into the world, it becomes part of someone else’s life too.

And sometimes people notice something in a lyric that I probably put there subconsciously. Those conversations can actually teach me something about my own writing.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing song lyrics or poetry is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I don't know if I would say that creativity is inherently more present in writing than in making coffee. There is something creative about caring how you do ordinary things too. 

The difference for me is probably that music gives me somewhere to put feelings that don't really have a practical destination. You can be sad, nostalgic, completely in love or confused and there isn't necessarily anything useful you can do with that feeling. You can write a song about it, though haha.

And then, of course, you can drink the coffee afterwards.