Helena Gao has trailblazed a trajectory that’s uniquely her own.
Danish-Chinese, trained in classical jazz, and sharpened by years spent moving between the bustling scenes of London and Shanghai. This year, she co-wrote and co-produced nine tracks on Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun—an album that earned Larsson her first Grammy nomination and made her one of the most talked-about pop girls of the year—and appeared alongside names like Tyla, Shakira, and PinkPantheress on the Girls Trip remix album.
And then, just two months later, she released “lao shi”—a self-produced track blending English lyrics with a Mandarin chorus, which quickly became a top-three social media dance trend, and… sparked a bit of controversy. We interviewed Helena Gao herself to gain some insight into the recent phenomenon, as well as a glimpse into her musical journey.
RADII: A lot of your most significant work has occurred behind the curtain. What lessons has that taught you, and how is it influencing your own work?
I think most of an artist’s work happens behind the curtain! Whether it’s writing for other artists or doing your own project. I’m very used to separating these spaces, as I feel that if you, in any capacity, think about outside perception while you’re supposed to have a free and expressive space, you’ll end up limiting yourself, whether intentional or not. I really try to treat my initial creative processes as a laboratory where I get to be as freaky with it as I like, and then narrow in on what gets presented to the world.
The biggest difference is that my songwriting work is often in collaborative spaces, whereas my solo work is only me. If I have to say one thing, I might’ve gotten a stronger sense of concept from the beginning when working alone. ‘Cause when you collaborate, you have to communicate what emotion or experience you’re creating from, so that awareness might’ve seeped into my solo work as well.
The debate in various videos and comment sections was largely about whether the chorus “老师可不可以教我怎么爱” (lǎoshī kě bù kěyǐ jiào wǒ zěnme ài — “teacher, can you teach me how to love?”) was too sexual in nature for a Mandarin-language track. Interestingly, it reveals something particular about how Chinese audiences receive their language when it arrives from outside the country itself. It’s not that the song is particularly explicit by most global pop standards; it’s actually rather tame compared to what the past decade has produced. Rather, it seems that hearing Mandarin deployed in this way, a much more Western way, feels, to some listeners, like a boundary crossed—pushed too far. The only thing is, this boundary was invisible until it was traversed.
“lao shi” traveled further than most artists anticipate. It landed globally but also, of course, in China—two spheres that often remain separate. How did the reactions, both good and otherwise, impact you?
I think it’s been so, so, so interesting. The traction it got in China kind of came out of nowhere. I just posted two videos on Douyin, and it became a top-three dance trend. I was so new to the app too, so I didn’t really know what to expect.
To be honest, I’ve always seen myself as an artist who’s alternative-leaning—especially in China. But when a song becomes a trend like that, it’s not niche content anymore, and anyone will start to form an opinion about it because it keeps getting pushed to them.
In a way, it’s so insanely cool that people in minority groups in Yunnan might’ve stumbled across an experimental pop track like “lao shi,” but it has also meant that people who really dislike the song have gotten it fed to them continuously, haha. And they’ve been quite vocal about their discontent. I am, fortunately, in this case, not able to read the comments, so it literally has no impact. I can use translation apps, but it always makes it slightly weird—and for an aggressive hate comment, that really softens the blow.
Mostly, I just feel the love. An awkwardly translated love comment still feels like a warm hug, haha. And the dance videos—omg. Seeing so many people in their amazingly fashionable getups twirling to my song with dance moves I made in my bedroom has been absolutely mind-blowing.
Gao is definitely not the first artist to move between Chinese and Western musical worlds—singers and rappers Lexie Liu and Jackson Wang have built their careers in this niche, rapping in mixes of Mandarin, English, and Cantonese — but she may be among the first to do it from entirely outside the C-pop system, without Chinese label infrastructure, and as someone not from, nor living in, the country full time.
Gao Dan Dan, her forthcoming EP, out on September 10, is self-produced and rooted sonically in Shanghai’s underground nightlife and Scandinavian alt-pop simultaneously, exploring what it means to be Chinese while growing up on the periphery. The title takes her surname and reduplicates it—gāo dān dān (高单单)—a playful self-naming that puts her Chinese identity front and center. Living between worlds, yet increasingly embraced by both equally.
RADII: You’ve said writing in Mandarin feels like “opening a door that has a hundred locks.” What’s on the other side?
Self-acceptance, haha. No, I guess it’s beyond that. I had this chat recently about how you need to find a way to take the thing that makes you an anomaly and make it your superpower instead of your insecurity. I grew up in a city of 300,000 people in Denmark, so obviously, being half Chinese was an anomaly. I don’t think I properly accepted my Chinese identity until I was around 18. Making it my superpower, though, didn’t happen til many years later when I started writing in Mandarin and seeking out the underground nightlife scene in Shanghai.
The question the EP raises—and that the reception of “lao shi” has thrown into the picture—is what happens when that reconnection is actively witnessed by and engaged in by the very culture you’re reconnecting with. Gao Dan Dan is, in a sense, the answer to the questions that were raised by “lao shi.” A full-circle moment.
You describe your upcoming EP’s sound as “living in those in-between spaces around the club—the transit, the anticipation, the comedown.” Is there a metaphor referencing something bigger?
I feel like most of life happens in between things. Any kind of milestone we can think of will have a ton of lived experiences, days, and hours in between. I always try to make music that is based on something real I’ve felt, and I think real feelings often consist of a bunch of things at once. Like sometimes we cry-laugh, sometimes we can barely keep our eyes open, but still feel restless at night. That’s why I like it when my productions feel melancholic, invigorating, brash, and soft all at once.
As it stands, Helena Gao doesn’t seem particularly interested in resolving the tension, nor should she. Perhaps that tension is exactly what makes her music and place in the scene so interesting and special in the first place. This cross-cultural musical experiment is here to stay—and so is she.
加油!
Cover image via Helena Gao.
