Intro
Alyssa Lie skipped university at 18 and auditioned her way into musical theater at LaSalle with almost no training. Ten years later she is a singer, a content creator, and her own manager, and she has spent most of that time working out which parts of the person people love online actually belong to her.
In this episode we get into what happens when the thing that made you go viral is also the thing making you miserable. Alyssa talks about choosing plan A when the adults at the dinner table were split, being told in her first year of school that she did not deserve to be there, and the slow slide from posting for joy to posting for the algorithm. She walks through a burnout that arrived while every metric was still going up, the comments accusing her of faking her own positivity, and a lunch in Bali that cracked something open. This is a conversation about getting very good at performing a version of yourself, and what is left when you stop.
Story Highlights
- Choosing musical theater at LaSalle over university at 18, with two or three singing lessons, one monologue coaching session, and no dance preparation before the audition.
- Learning years later that most of the audition panel thought she was too young and too inexperienced, and that one teacher pushed for her anyway.
- Surviving a first year where a classmate told her repeatedly that she did not belong, while she was already carrying her own imposter syndrome.
- Leaving school with the craft and none of the business, and realizing the gatekeepers she had been trained to wait for no longer held the gate.
- Going viral on TikTok in 2020 with accents, skits, and comedy, then watching joy turn into a formula she had to keep feeding.
- Burning out while the metrics, the money, and the campaigns were all working, and having no explanation for why.
- Reading comments that said her positive energy was an act, and starting to wonder if the commenters were right.
- A lunch in Bali with someone she hoped would be further along than she was, who told her she was hiding something and offered to put her in denim.
- Splitting the work in two so music never has to pay the bills, and building the business around it instead.
Quote
“As the algorithm gives you this dopamine hit, and, like, this feedback loop, you start forgetting what actually brings you joy, and you start thinking what brings the algorithm joy.”
About Alyssa Lie
Alyssa Lie is a Singapore-based singer, content creator, and her own manager. She trained in musical theater at LaSalle after choosing performance over a university degree at 18, and has spent the decade since running every part of her career herself: the branding, the packaging, the pitching, the back end. She built an audience on TikTok through comedy, accents, and voiceovers, then rebuilt it around mental health, creative work, and what it actually takes to manage yourself as an artist. She still releases music, organizes her own concerts and shoots, and is now building a community and working toward a book. You can find her as Alyssa Lie on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Spotify, and Apple Music.
Why This Conversation Matters
Most stories about burnout come with a visible cause. Alyssa’s came while everything was working, which made it harder to name and much harder to explain to anyone else. What she eventually traced it back to was not the workload. It was how much room she had given other people to decide what was real about her, and how well the thing they liked most had been paying.
Turning Points
- Sitting at the dinner table at 18 while her aunt and uncle argued over plan A and plan B, and deciding she had never lived with a plan B.
- Calling her former counselor at the end of her first year to ask whether to drop out, and working through what she stood to lose in each direction.
- Noticing that she felt angry while making content, and still making it anyway because it was easy.
- The lunch in Bali, the drive home, and the five phone calls after it.
- Letting go of the content identity that worked, and posting the deeper material knowing the audience did not ask for it.
Key Lessons
- One person seeing something in you can be the whole difference. Alyssa got into the course on a single teacher’s insistence.
- The people who take shots at you are usually telling you about themselves. Getting to indifference took her two years and an instruction from her teacher she did not want to hear.
- Craft is not a career. Nobody taught her the business side, and the ceiling she kept hitting turned out to be a branding problem, not a talent problem.
- Never make your art carry the money. Once music had to fund everything, every creative decision became a commercial one.
- Nobody else gets to certify what is real about you, including the people who look healed.
If You Enjoyed This Episode
You might also like:
- Behind the Red Nose with Shanice Stanislaus on the one person who believed in her, and what she found when she stopped performing what was expected. Alyssa brings this episode up herself.
- Facing My Mask with Charlene Chew on visibility, the version of yourself people meet, and what the mask costs to keep wearing.
