Still Here: Ms Mia’s Long Road Back to Music

For Ms Mia, that moment arrived early one morning, mid-songwriting-burst, fuelled by a Kobe Bryant interview about work ethic, and it became the seed of her new single, Still Here.

"I had decided to go on a full songwriting burst after watching a Kobe Bryant interview about work ethic and turning up," Mia says, "because I had for a long time felt that I was late to this game and I needed to make it up, make up that time that I had lost doing other things."

That sense of being "late" runs through the whole conversation. Mia didn't release her first single until she was 39, after a career in engineering, after having a child, after doing, as she puts it, "the things people felt that they had to live, you know, tick the boxes." Music had always been there, calling to her since she was young, but she never quite answered.

"I suppose I started music early, but I didn't pursue it until I'd had a different career, and I'd earned some money, and I did all the other things," she explains. "Then finally, when the busyness kind of crashed, that gave me some space to think, what do I really want out of this life?"

The Middle Space

Still Here isn't a song about arriving. It's a song about the in-between, the stretch after you've torn everything down to build something new, but before you've actually built it.

"It's that bit in the middle where you're sort of tearing down everything to build this new thing, but you're not quite there," Mia says. "So still feeling like, I need to work, but also trying not to regret that I didn't start earlier, and finding a way to move forward, to have that optimism for the future."

She's candid about the tension between practicality and passion that kept her from music for so long. Raised with the mindset that stability comes first, "I guess a typical Filipino" household, she jokes, Mia describes chasing security before she let herself chase meaning.

"Engineering, medicine, all of that, it enables people to live," she says, recalling a line from a film that stuck with her. "But music, love, art is a reason to live. It gives you the reason to live. So, I guess this is my reason to live."

What makes the song's title land, though, isn't the leap itself, it's what came after.

She said, "When you jump and you don't fly, that's when you're like, okay. The keeping on going is probably the hardest part, which I think takes more courage than just jumping." Still Here, in other words, isn't a victory lap. It's a mantra for the daily work of not turning back.

Taking Off the Mask

Where Mia's earlier music leaned into strength, the fierce, self-possessed persona she's known for, Still Here marks a shift, and it's a shift that will carry through to her upcoming second EP, expected next year.

The EP took shape last year, in the aftermath of a short-lived relationship breaking down, during a period Mia describes as deeply reflective. As well as, getting to know herself more after all that challenges.

"A lot of my songs have been quite fierce, the strong woman, defending myself," she says. "This one's coming from a different part of myself, a different voice saying: I don't need to always be that fierce person, that persona, to win, to get my way. I'm okay now."

She frames it as a conversation with her own defensiveness, a way of telling that guarded part of herself it's allowed to rest. "It's just as valid a part of you as the defensive person," she says.

It's a vulnerable thing to put into the world, and Mia knows it. "You're careful of what image you give out," she admits. "You don't want to let everybody into your living room." But for her, songwriting has always been an act of processing, "quite therapeutic", and if honesty is part of the story her music tells, she's decided it's worth telling.

Making It as an Asian Artist in New Zealand

Mia's path hasn't just been shaped by timing and self-doubt, it's also been shaped by identity. Born in Manila, she moved with her family first to Kaikohe, a small town in Northland, before settling in Auckland. Growing up Asian in New Zealand, she says, has meant navigating barriers that aren't always visible.

"Even as an Asian doing anything in New Zealand, you get the barriers," she says. "Trying to make it as an Asian artist, what can people relate to? There are always unknown biases. It's something that's on my mind, but I try not to think about it too much. I just try to do what I can and be as authentic to me, to my culture, my values."

That commitment to authenticity extends well beyond her own catalogue. Mia has spent years supporting other Asian musicians trying to break into the industry, co-founding Asians in Music around 2020, a community and artist-development initiative she ran intensively for about two years.

"The mission was providing a space for Asian artists to realise, oh, there's another Asian artist like me, there is actually a community, and there are people around who can help each other," she says.

While the programme isn't currently running in its original form, Mia says it served its purpose, and she's still thinking about what comes next, possibly shifting focus toward live performance, given how AI is reshaping the industry.

"Especially with AI, I feel like the best use of an artist's time is actually connecting with people," she says. That means looking beyond her own organisation too, talking with other leaders in the space, what collaborative support for Asian artists could look like "in the next year or so."

What She Hopes People Hear

Ask Ms. Mia what she expects from Still Here, and the answer isn't about charts or streams.

"I hope people find some inspiration in it, to keep going," she says. "I hope to find people who might relate to these sorts of struggles, because it's lived experience. If people can relate to it, and it inspires them in some way to keep going and keep being brave, that's the main thing."

It's a fitting note to end on for an artist whose whole story is about persistence over performance. Mia spent decades circling the life she wanted before she let herself have it. Now, with Still Here out and a more introspective EP on the way, she's not chasing a single big leap anymore, she's just doing the quieter, harder work of continuing to show up.

"Having expectations for this release, it's just, I want people to hear it," she says.

-Asia Media Centre