From visually striking short-form videos and irresistible hooks to a way with words rooted in Japanese literary tradition and passionate vocals that strike right at the heart of every emotion, Mulasaki Ima shot to prominence on the promise of her outstanding talent. It’s next to impossible to convey just how multifaceted an artist she is. “femme fatale A” and “That Classmate” introduced her to Korean audiences. She navigates the viral landscape more shrewdly than anyone, all while putting serious thought into what music’s truly all about to follow a path no one else has ever taken. In this written interview conducted before she made her second visit to Korea for the Seoul Jazz Festival, the singer opened up like never before about who she is outside the frame of her viral videos.

You’re scheduled to put on your second Korean show at the end of May for the Seoul Jazz Festival. Tell me about what you’ll be doing differently from last time at WONDERLIVET 2025.
Mulasaki Ima: I’m putting together a setlist that really leans into the Black music side of what I do and gives a deeper look into the jazz, R&B, funk, and soul in my sound. I want to bring that out more vividly through my performance, my vibe, the energy I have onstage.

“femme fatale A” charted on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart for South Korea, and so did last year’s “That Classmate,” reflecting how you’ve been steadily and organically building a Korean following. Could you talk about how you felt when you found out your music was reaching people in Korea, and what you make of the response as far as why it’s resonated the way it has?
Mulasaki Ima: I’ve always loved Korean music, culture, dramas, food, and fashion, so it made me so happy to hear that people in Korea were listening to my music. A lot of my songs are steeped in a very Japanese mindset and mood. For “That Classmate,” for example, I leaned into that very Japanese coming-of-age feeling, from the school uniform aesthetic and visuals to a music video that has the atmosphere of a Japanese high school movie. I think that’s probably what people are connecting with and why they’re enjoying it.

Listening to your songs, there’s a real sense that the rhymes and sound of the Japanese lyrics have been very carefully considered. When you’re writing, how conscious are you of balancing what the lyrics mean versus how they sound? And have you ever been in a live setting where you felt something click emotionally with an audience that didn’t speak Japanese?
Mulasaki Ima: I think a lot of people these days enjoy music specifically for the way it sounds. I’m especially conscious of finding words for the chorus that sound catchy and stick with you. I’ve always liked puns and other wordplay, so I think a lot about whether the lyrics sound good, have a strong rhyme, and are interesting enough to hold up as literature in their own right. I think that’s my artistic aesthetic at work. I think, in this day and age, lyrics that are too vapid don’t work, but neither do lyrics that are so excessively literary they lose the catchiness that makes something a pop song and fail to connect with a wide audience. I consider the balance between those two to be really important.

And yes, I did experience something getting through to people who don’t speak Japanese. When I perform “femme fatale A,” there’s a part where I say, “Yoku dekimashita [Well done]!” It’s a very Japanese expression, so a lot of people probably don’t know exactly what it means, but I could tell that the sensuality just naturally came across. It made me so happy seeing the crowd go wild for that.

You wrote the lyrics for ILLIT’s Japanese single “Toki Yo Tomare.” Can you walk us through how that process unfolded, what you had in mind about K-pop’s appeal going in, and what images or words you most wanted to land in the lyrics?
Mulasaki Ima: I always loved idols and grew up listening to all kinds of idol music, so I started with the image of a K-pop group’s debut Japanese single in mind. From there, I pictured the ILLIT members actually singing and dancing to the song and the lyrics I was writing. It was a lot of fun thinking through how to express the group’s concept, image, and what they wanted to convey through the particular beauty of the Japanese language. With “Toki Yo Tomare,” the challenge was finding a way to capture, through the beauty of Japanese, the fleeting nature of youth and those brief, wonderful moments that flash by during it. I’ve always thought there’s something incredibly beautiful about the way Japan depicts being young in such a literary fashion, and I wanted to work that feeling organically into the song.

Late last year you collaborated with yowa from CLAN QUEEN on “Hell and Heaven.” That experience must have felt quite different compared to your usual way of working, where you design and see through everything yourself. Did that collaboration bring any new feeling or other change to your music?
Mulasaki Ima: Considering we’d finally be working together, I wanted to make something that drew out what CLAN QUEEN and I have in common. I wanted to create a kind of chemistry that’s never been seen before. I’ve always been a fan, but this time I listened to CLAN QUEEN’s music almost analytically and spent a lot of time listening to yowa’s vocals while writing. On the production side, I tried out a rock pattern for the drums, which I wouldn’t normally go to, and the whole thing ended up being really exciting and new for me on a personal level.

Your songs definitely have hooks that really stand out on social media, but I personally feel like there’s a twist that only reveals itself in the full songs, like how every part of “femme fatale A” is different, or the way you take the chorus and push it into rock territory in “That Classmate.” How does your creative process work such that you can ensure moments like those will make an impact on short-form media while keeping the full song from feeling thin?
Mulasaki Ima: It’s not like I’m deliberately packing the full song full of stuff just to keep it from feeling plain. Some songs I go all in on the “simple is best” approach, but these days a lot of people only hear a clipped version of the chorus, and if someone goes out of their way to listen to the full thing and walks away feeling exactly the same anyway, I find that a little disappointing and boring. In an age where things are shared around in fragments, I actually think it’s cooler as an artist to have something way deeper, and interesting, and sharp waiting in the full version. That’s the kind of artist I strive to be.

At the same time, I’m a very mood-driven person. I make music almost on adrenaline alone. In the end I work by feel, asking myself whether something feels good, so maybe following my instincts is the most important creative principle I have.

You oversee everything about your songs, from the music itself to the artwork, which gives you strong control over your work, but at the same time seems like it would also mean fewer chances to see your music through someone else’s eyes. Do you take outside opinions into consideration during your process, and are there times where you feel you need to bring in outside help to evoke a feeling you can’t on your own?
Mulasaki Ima: I actually listen to opinions from other people quite a lot. If someone gives me an idea or tells me their opinion and it feels right, I see that as one of my choices. The reason I handle all the producing myself is that what I’m most wary of is my music slowly drifting away from the direction I’m after without me noticing. The idea of someone else’s particular taste or a way of thinking pulling something I’m making all the way in one direction actually scares me more than anything else, so I think outside perspectives and a wide audience are absolutely necessary. In that sense, I think what I’m really after by overseeing everything myself is staying objective and keeping that sense of balance in the final product.

Your first studio album, “eMulsion,” while also trendy, felt like it exemplified your identity as a vocalist and your varied musical roots more than ever before. Now that it’s been a year since its release, what are you most satisfied with about it, and where do you feel like you could have pushed further?
Mulasaki Ima: With “eMulsion,” I made a deliberate choice not to get too hung up on what an album’s supposed to be. I didn’t want to box myself in with the usual ideas surrounding albums or what an album needs to mean. On top of the singles I’d already put out, I wanted to work in every aspect of me and what I’m capable of to say, 
“This is who I am.” I sat with the question of what an album can aesthetically be, and then, going into the next one, I decided I want to push all the way through, even more than now, on what I actually want to do and what I want to say, and put that out into the world.

“eMulsion” is full of moments that resist being pinned down to any one style, including the anime rock song “The last supper of youth,” the overwhelming scale and vocals of “The Rebel Anthem,” and the raw emotion of the piano on “Dearest.” What new things were you looking to show people with the album?
Mulasaki Ima: With my singles, I was always working in an environment where I had to think about streaming and how something would spread across social media. That meant my more delicate, layered vocals, and the kind of big, sweeping emotional delivery I’m capable of as a singer, didn’t always fit with the single format. But those are exactly the things that matter most in a live setting and for showing who I am as an artist, I think. I felt like an album could convey what a single couldn’t quite do. I wrote the songs “Dearest” and “The Rebel Anthem” to really show off my strengths as a singer.

Another thing that stands out about your music is how several of your tracks take on modern issues like lookism, cyberbullying, narcissism, and people comparing themselves with others. Is there a reason you work those kinds of issues into your songs? Also, when you’re writing something more directly aimed at social issues, like “Go for Punch” or “femme fatale A,” what are you most focused on when it comes to balancing the message with keeping it a fun pop song?
Mulasaki Ima: I’ve loved to debate things ever since I was little. There aren’t really that many people you can talk openly with about things that are sort of sensitive like that, and I always found that a lonely and frustrating experience, so I take those topics on in my music and put them out into the world as a way of asking people what they think. And that’s why I build these debates into my songs.

At the same time, I feel like the message won’t even get across if it isn’t a fun pop song. It has to be appealing enough that people listen far and wide and that what it’s saying resonates with them. I want to have that conversation with as many people as possible, and that means making sure it’s a good pop song so the message gets across properly.

Your recent single “New Walk” feels like a step further into certain genres, with textures of jazz and funk, gospel singers later in the song, and a wider vocal range than ever before. What’s been the focus of your exploration through the singles you’ve put out since “eMulsion,” “New Walk” included?
Mulasaki Ima: Where “eMulsion” was about experimenting openly with the things I like, by the time I was doing “New Walk,” I was more conscious of wanting to dig deeper into my own roots and find sides of myself I didn’t even know were there. It’s like how you have to try a bunch of different kinds of food before you really know what you like and don’t. I think with music you have to sit down and make a lot of different things and get through that phase before you can answer the question of who you are. I guess right now I’m at a stage where I’m trying different things out to figure out what I really like and what kind of music is the most “me.”

Between your videos of cover songs and all the tracks off the album, there’s a sense that you’ve constantly been working toward setting a standard for yourself when it comes to singing. What do you consider to be ideal vocals, and what experiences led you to work toward that?
Mulasaki Ima: If I had to choose one vocalist I admire most, it’d be Koji Tamaki from Anzenchitai, as far as Japanese singers go. If we’re talking from a worldwide perspective, the singers that come closest to my image of perfection are gospel singers and kids improv singing to instruments in the street in Africa because they all give you the impression they’re singing right from the soul. I want to be able to profoundly move people when I’m singing live. I’ve been moved by songs like that my whole life, so the idea of a voice with soul in it is something I’m always thinking about. And above all else, I try to put real care into the words I sing.

All of your songs have such strong personality that arranging them into a single emotional arc for a show must be its own challenge. What’s been your focus recently as far as putting on live performances goes?
Mulasaki Ima: Because each song is so distinct, I often hear that they feel like completely unrelated works, or that watching them back to back is like watching totally unconnected movies or music videos. I actually think of that as a challenge for myself. Whenever I’m putting a show together, I try to start by working out the through line, asking myself what kind of flow and feeling I want it to have. I think of it as needing to be a good teacher who can wrangle a classroom full of difficult, strong-willed kids, where the kids are songs in this case.

Some readers will already know you and some will be hearing about you for the first time. Is there anything you’d like to say to your Korean listeners to wrap up?
Mulasaki Ima: Whether you already know me or you’re finding out about me for the first time, I think I’ve got a lot of different things to offer as an artist, so if you listen to a few of my songs, I’m sure you’ll find at least one that you like. And I’d love it if you came out to see me live too! I can’t wait to see all my Korean fans in person!