Clarity Liao Turns the Pain of Never Being Noticed Into ‘Have You’
- Dave Bedford
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Emerging singer-songwriter Clarity Liao has shared her latest single, ‘Have You’, offering another glimpse into the deeply personal world of her forthcoming seven-track EP, Dear….
Blending bedroom pop intimacy with warm indie-pop production, ‘Have You’ explores the familiar but painful experience of falling for someone without ever finding the courage to tell them. Written as the love letter Liao never sent, the track captures the emotional limbo between friendship, longing and the hope of finally being noticed.
“‘Have You’ is a love letter to a boy I was friends with, but never had the courage to tell I liked him,” Liao explains. “It came from the feeling of caring deeply for someone while keeping it hidden, and trying to become someone they would notice.”
That desire to be seen became increasingly consuming, with Liao recalling how she changed aspects of herself in the hope of catching his attention.
“I changed my style, put more thought into how I looked, and gave so much of myself, but still couldn't have him,” she says. “The song captures that heartbreak of wanting someone who never fully sees the effort behind it.”
Rather than looking back on the experience from a distance, Liao places listeners directly inside those feelings. The lyrics take the form of an imagined letter, giving voice to everything she was unable to say at the time.
“I wanted the lyrics to feel honest, vulnerable, and a little obsessive in the way real feelings can be when you like someone deeply,” she explains. “I also tried to capture his music taste so it would feel personal, like something he might finally understand if he ever hears it.”
That sense of intimacy carries through to the production. Understated instrumentation and a spacious arrangement leave room for Liao’s vocals and lyrics to take centre stage, with the singer deliberately avoiding an overly polished approach in favour of something that feels closer to a private conversation.
“I wanted it to sound like a quiet confession, with enough space for the feelings to come through clearly,” she says. “The overall sound was shaped to support the emotional tension of waiting, hoping, and not being able to let go.”
Despite being at the beginning of her solo career, Liao has been writing music since the age of seven and has already earned recognition for her songwriting. As principal songwriter for Navillera, she helped shape the band’s debut single ‘Too Young’, which received the 2024 Yamaha National Best Popular Music Award, while her composition ‘I Need You’ took first place at the YMS 2025 National Composers competition.
Her solo material sees her expanding that songwriting foundation across indie pop, bedroom pop, R&B and modern doo-wop, while keeping personal storytelling at the centre of her work.
‘Have You’ will feature on Liao’s forthcoming EP Dear…, a seven-track collection structured around the idea of musical love letters. Exploring love, jealousy, rejection and loss, the project brings together conversations that never happened and emotions that remained unspoken.
Each song examines a different side of intimacy, with love presented as something capable of providing comfort while simultaneously becoming confining. It is a concept particularly evident on ‘Have You’, where hope and heartbreak exist almost inseparably.
With its stripped-back production and diaristic songwriting, ‘Have You’ finds Clarity Liao turning a confession she never made into one of her most revealing releases yet — and offers another indication of the emotionally candid storytelling listeners can expect from Dear….
