I am a honey bee, shun out from the colony and they won't let me in...
That's what has been playing in my head for a couple of weeks now. Together with songs that goes like *ahem*.... "You were sitting at the coffee table where you're reading Kierkegaard... Minutes later, you proceeded to say something that almost broke my heart..."

For those who doesn't know, the singer is non other than Malaysia's very own Zee Avi. Her music is simple mixture of jazz and ukulele melodies with simple straightforward lyrics. It's pretty down to earth and are easy on the ears.


You can see her poster outside of Speedy Music Store in Mahkota Parade with the captions "And she's Malaysian!". Truthfully, that was what had caught my eye in the first place. Interested, I went home and googled about her. How Zee Avi came to record her debut album in LA was quite a story. Born Izyan Alirahman in Miri, Sarawak which all of you would know it's in Malaysia (haha... mat saleh website put "...on the island of Borneo" which is also true but that made it sound like it's not from Malaysia... hehe), Zee Avi became famous when she uploaded a video recording a song she wrote on youtube for a friend to comment. Earlier she had wanted to remove it once he has seen it but her friend advised her to leave it up for a while and soon it began to gather some fans.

According to her official webpage, the day before her 22nd birthday, she posted what she intended to be her last video called, "No Christmas for Me" which was later included in "A Brushfire Holiday Vol. 1 - This Warm December".



By the time she checked her e-mail, Zee Avi had almost 3,000 messages including a slew of label offers. One email came from Ian Montone, who had been shown the YouTube clip by Raconteurs' drummer, Patrick Keeler, prompting Montone to get in touch and offer to release her music on the Monotone Label. Soon enough, she's off to LA to record her first album.

Her music has a very unique feel to it especially when it comes to the ukulele part. I'm always a fan of ukulele music. First heard it from an episode of Scrubs, "My Lawyer's in Love" where a cute ukulele girl caught Ted's attention.


Zee Avi (2009), her debut album, hit #130 US Billboard Hot 200 Chart and #2 US Billboard Top Heatseekers Chart, and sold 6,000 copies in the United States in its first 2 weeks of release(as of June 9, 2009) according to Nielsen SoundScan. Her first single, "Bitter Heart" spent 3 weeks on Japan's Top 100 Singles chart. It entered the chart at #82 and peaked at #63, where it stayed for 2 weeks. She even had a song, "Monte", featured in the second season finale of Private Practice.


This is the cover of her self titled album with tracks like Bitter heart, Poppy, Honey Bee, Just You and Me and Kantoi.

To most Malaysian, the moment you hear the word Kantoi, you'd be like, "Hey I know what it means...". To those who doesn't, it means "Busted". Something different about "Kantoi" is that it is sung in Manglish - our very own Malaysian-English. Proud or not? Hehe... It's a mixture of the modern Malay language with English which is how it is spoken today. The song talks about a girl finding out that her boyfriend is cheating on her but in the end we know that she's cheating too.... kantoi la...

To listen to more of her music, you can go to http://www.zeeavi.com/music/

Hmm.. all this talk about ukulele, maybe I should go get myself one too... *ponders*