We were lucky to catch up with Vaishalini Sitaraman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Vaishalini, appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

Sometimes I do wish I had started earlier. I remember somebody showing me a casting call for some Disney thing when I was in school and I begged my dad to let me go be a Disney star so I could be a popstar later and he obviously said no because that’s a pretty difficult environment for someone to go through their adolescent years. I still look back on that and wonder what my life would be like if I had tried that, and somehow became a Disney kid instead of a random girl from Arizona.

But I’ve grown to really enjoy the slow climb. I think a lot of people talk about how “if it rises fast, it can’t last” and I do think (knock on wood) that by growing an audience organically I’ve connected with people to become one of their favorite artists for a long time. I also have more life experience under my belt now than I did when I first started making music when I was like 16 or 17, and that has given me time to learn and grow as an artist, and really hone my craft as a producer, songwriter, and vocalist. I always have more room to grow, both in learning and achievements. I never feel like my best stuff is behind me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hi! My name is Vaishalini, I’m a singer, songwriter and producer from Arizona! I’ve released primarily pop, R&B, electronic, and experimental music, but I like to explore more and more genres as I grow as an artist. I grew up singing and dancing Indian classical art forms, and I was also surrounded by music my whole life. My dad would play jazz and rock in the car to school everyday, and I got really into pop music when I was a kid. I love to make my music very dramatic and cinematic, and I think that a lot of the fans seem to pick up on that as well. Sometimes I get comments about how certain songs remind them of scenes from a particular movie or just generally make them feel like they are the main character in a film, and I love that. I love hearing different interpretations of the music… I spend a lot of time on my Instagram just talking to the fans who listen to the music out how a song makes them feel and that “makes me feel like I’m in a movie” vibe seems to be the overall consensus.

I think my music is unique because I don’t try to follow mainstream music trends. I think music is supposed to be something that is individualized and while I think following trends can be cool when it comes to growing and learning new techniques, I think it can stifle your creativity and not make it the artistic expression it should be. I love creating long-form songs, I love creating songs that don’t necessarily follow the classic “Verse/Pre-Chorus/Chorus rinse and repeat” formula. I love creating songs that have random switches half way through and that feel like a full story arc, and I also love creating random interludes with expansive vocal stacks. I don’t really like to try to put myself in a box and I feel like if I tried to follow a trend to closely it would make the music feel suffocated.

I’ve also never really made the same song twice. Within R&B and pop I’ve explored a lot of subgenres, and you won’t ever catch two of my songs sounding exactly the same or me repeating the same beat. I love changing and evolving and I don’t think I will ever be the kind of person that makes the same recipe over and over again. There’s a bunch of songs in my “vault” (to borrow from Taylor Swift) for future albums that are from totally different genres than what I have released so far, and I’ll always keep experimenting with my style.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I’m still a small artist but the biggest thing I try to remember is to never be afraid of being cringe, especially when you’re on the internet. Putting yourself out there and doing something new is cringe and it will be cringe and that’s just how it is but you aren’t gonna get anywhere unless you are comfortable being cringe. Especially as an independent artist, you are the only person holding the reins in your career and you have to just keep pushing. We don’t have the luxury of being shy or waiting for someone else to promote our music for us, we have to just go at it ourselves. Also don’t ever give those reins to someone else unless you fully trust them (and even then be careful).

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think every music achievement is so special to me and rewarding in its own way especially because I’m an independent artist, so every single music achievement comes from my own work and the connection I have with the fans and it’s so gratifying. I am very much an independent musician and girl in general: I compose and write and produce all of my music and I think it’s just so wonderful seeing other people connect to that music and love it as much as I had hoped. I want to become the kind of songwriter, composer, and performer that people can see a little bit of themselves in and when they feel down they can turn to my music to feel understood or powerful or feel safe with their emotions. Every time I release a song, I know that I am the person behind all of the music and all of the promotion and every time someone connects with that music they are connecting with me specifically.

The fans are 100% the most rewarding aspect of being a singer. I know that’s corny, but I think connecting with people who love your art can really help you grow because everyone has different interpretations of your music. I grew up being a really big popstar fan– like I loved Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift and Katy Perry and Rihanna and the Weeknd (often to very cringy levels, even to this day), and being in a fanbase is so cool because you connect with other people just through music and through your interpretations of that music. Being able to sort of foster that kind of fanbase (although it’s still a very small one) and slowly grow it has been so cool because I know how fun it is to be on the other end and now I get to see what it’s like to be the artist. Seeing people in my Tiktok or Youtube comments or in my Instagram DMs talk about their interpretations of the music has made me feel like music is something that can be bigger than me, and feels like something I can “give” for lack of a better term.

I think the coolest thing that has happened so far has been people buying my CDs. It’s been a huge dream of mine for a really long time to be a popstar and when I think of a popstar I think of their picture on a CD in someone’s room and I was just so excited when the first person bought my CD because now I’m in a CD in someone’s room! And that’s so crazy to me. I love it when people get CD’s also cuz it’ll be someone in a city or state or country that I’ve never been to and it just is so immensely cool finding out that someone so far away can connect to some sounds and lyrics that I made all the way here. It’s just so cool!

Contact Info:

• Website: vaishalini.com
• Instagram: @vaishaliniofficial
• Facebook: facebook.com/vaishaliniofficial
• Twitter: @thevaishalini
• Youtube: youtube.com/Vaishalini
• Other: tiktok.com/@VaishaliniOfficial [email protected]

Image Credits
©️ Sitaraman Studios LLC