STORIES & SONG NOTES
Rain’s published introductions and release notes, paired with the music they’re about.
27 TRACKS · IN MY OWN WORDS
The memories behind each song, told by me.
This comes from a day in May 2026 that took me between Sunway and KL, through changing plans, unexpected company and late-night food. “Bottle lore” is a running joke with different meanings across different chapters of my life. Somehow, those ridiculous little memories became a song about finding my footing again—and remembering I could enjoy my life without waiting for someone else to choose me.
Listen and read the lyricsI remember the colours of the classroom, my uniform, the camera and the badminton court. This is my 2016–17 school year, seen through details that stayed clearer than I expected. I was trying to understand people and find my place without having the language for everything I felt. Writing it now, I can be gentler with that younger version of myself.
Listen and read the lyricsI started college at fifteen, surrounded by people who seemed further along in growing up. But what stayed with me was surprisingly ordinary: classroom jokes, new friendships, a laptop, a cake for a teacher who was leaving. I wanted to capture that strange combination of acting like I knew what I was doing and still waiting for my sixteenth birthday.
Listen and read the lyricsI finished college in June 2018, when I was sixteen. There were photographs, goodbyes and university decisions waiting on the other side. Around all that were the things I was already drawn to—music, scripts, cameras and making things with people. This song lets me revisit that moment without expecting my younger self to have understood the whole future.
Listen and read the lyricsChoosing a university near home was partly about what I could manage at that age. Familiar roads mattered. Having someone who could send me mattered. Looking back, I understand that decision with more kindness. I was beginning a much bigger life, and being close to home gave me somewhere steady to begin from.
Listen and read the lyricsYes, there really was a spaghetti tower. It came from a first-semester engineering assignment: fragile materials, hot glue and a structure that had to hold up under pressure. Looking back, the metaphor practically wrote itself. I was also trying to build something with limited confidence and hoping it would survive being tested. The uneven bits belonged in the song too.
Listen and read the lyricsThis is the wider picture of my first university year: walkways, food courts, group photos, temple days and family celebrations. I turned seventeen while adjusting to a place that expected more independence from me. I could have a university ID around my neck and still feel very young. The song keeps both of those things in the same frame.
Listen and read the lyricsIn July 2019, I went to Genting on a Good Vibes Festival trip, but I was seventeen and couldn’t enter the festival. My memories became the cooking, photographs, cold air and time around everything else. I wanted to keep that version of the trip. I missed the main event, but I still came home with a story that belonged to me.
Listen and read the lyricsIn 2019, I photographed so much of the life happening around me—friends, cafés, rooftops, food and whatever we happened to be doing that day. The camera gave me a way to be involved, even when I didn’t quite know where to put myself. Those files mean more to me now. They kept ordinary moments I couldn’t have known I would want back.
Listen and read the lyricsThis follows the movement of 2019 into 2020: learning to drive, sharing rides, trips, badminton and evenings around SS15. Then the roads went quiet. I wanted the song to hold the life before lockdown and the smaller routines that followed—plants, cooking, photographs and eventually seeing people again. At the time, none of us knew which ordinary outing would become the last one for a while.
Listen and read the lyricsThis is how I remember the creative momentum of 2021: directing online productions, hosting, managing cues and making things happen through screens. There was a lot going on, and I was actively part of it. I wanted to give that year its own space in the album—to remember the work, the friendships and how capable I already was.
Listen and read the lyricsI wrote this from my experience of misdiagnosis and the adverse effects of treatment, when my reactions and sense of myself became difficult to recognise. Mandarin gave me a way to express how frightening that distance felt. The song asks for something very personal: please remember the person underneath what you could see happening to me.
Listen and read the lyricsMy twenty-first birthday is a memory I can’t put back together completely. I remember pieces, and I know life was happening around me, but I didn’t feel fully connected to it. This song gives that younger self some tenderness. I don’t need to fill every gap to acknowledge that I was there, and that the experience mattered.
Listen and read the lyricsThis is about wanting to reach people while feeling unable to get all the way back to myself. Classes continued, group chats continued, and the world didn’t pause because I was struggling. There was still care underneath my distance. The ending makes room for the return, but it takes time: finding pieces of myself and slowly learning how to live with them again.
Listen and read the lyricsI rented a villa for my twenty-second birthday. The photographs preserve parts of that celebration more clearly than my memory does, and that gap became the centre of this song. There were also people whose small, repeated kindness would come to mean a lot. Looking back at those pictures now, I want to be kinder to the person in them.
Listen and read the lyricsThis comes from a difficult chapter of my life around 2024, when the meaning of home became complicated. A place can be familiar while still leaving you afraid or unable to rest. I wrote about the slow process of recognising that and finding a way out. Some decisions take time to reach, especially when you are still trying to understand what is happening.
Listen and read the lyricsThis draws on the sleepless nights of 2025: messages still arriving, edits unfinished, another idea for a song and a phone battery nearly gone. I could keep responding and doing things while feeling exhausted underneath it all. I wanted the song to leave that contradiction visible. Sometimes what I needed was very ordinary—rest, quiet and fewer things asking for me at once.
Listen and read the lyricsIn late June 2026, I noticed details in music becoming clear to me again: the breath in a voice, the texture of a piano, the space around individual sounds. The song looks back through the longer period leading to that moment. Music is such a large part of my life that noticing those details again felt deeply personal. I wanted to remember what that recognition sounded like.
Listen and read the lyricsBy early-to-mid-2026, I was beginning postgraduate life, working, contributing at home and feeling more present in my own days. I was also watching people around me reach very different milestones. This song grew out of those comparisons and the thoughts I was recording in evening traffic. I was approaching twenty-five, and I was beginning to let that feel like a starting point.
Listen and read the lyricsThis is about my first Phuket trip of 2026. I had stepped away from deadlines and the feeling that I should always be doing something for someone. The sea, a table by the water and a cold drink gave me enough to pay attention to. There’s also the very practical comedy of being vegetarian on a seafood island. I was alone, and I was enjoying being there.
Listen and read the lyricsThis came from noticing how much ordinary kindness could mean to me: sharing food, being corrected gently, having someone help with something without making it a big deal. I didn’t have a clear name for everything I was feeling. I wanted the song to stay in that uncertainty, where affection could grow without needing an immediate answer.
Listen and read the lyricsIn May 2026, comparing academic milestones brought up that familiar feeling that I should have done more by now. It is easy to count degrees and much harder to account for everything that happened along the way. Writing this helped me recognise the work, music, service and rebuilding that also belonged to my life. I wanted to give those things their proper weight.
Listen and read the lyricsI wanted to write about the point when a good moment starts feeling like somewhere you actually want to stay. There’s heat, traffic, an iced drink and the possibility that someone’s smile has something to do with your mood. After so much reflection elsewhere on the album, this song lets me enjoy feeling lighter without having to explain where it will lead.
Listen and read the lyricsI brought the same summer story into Malay because it belongs in the language of my everyday life too. I wanted the phrasing to feel relaxed and familiar, with the streets, weather and conversation close at hand. The feeling is simple: I’m becoming more comfortable with myself, enjoying the company and letting the moment continue.
Listen and read the lyricsThis is the Mandarin version of that same feeling—being less guarded, feeling more like myself and wanting to stay a little longer. Mandarin carries some of the album’s hardest memories, so there is something meaningful in hearing it carry this brightness too. The story still lives in small things: evening air, lowered windows and a moment I don’t want to rush past.
Listen and read the lyricsHokkien is part of my family and language background, and I wanted it to have a place in this brighter part of the album. This version carries the same summer story with the wish to take it slowly: 按呢慢慢過夏天. I don’t need the moment to become a grand promise. I want to be there long enough to enjoy it.
Listen and read the lyricsBy the end of the album, I’ve revisited so many versions of myself: the school kid, student, photographer, singer, person helping in the community and person trying to find his way back. This song brings them together. I don’t have to choose one chapter to explain who I am. They all belong to my life, and I get to carry them forward.
Listen and read the lyrics
Album introduction
Rain introduces I Don’t Quite Know How to Say It, So I’m Singing It as a project written from 2016 to 2026, across English, Mandarin, Malay and Hokkien. The album page brings that introduction and its complete lyric index together.
Rain Lee Music · artist site
Published album note
The published album note follows the record from upbeat pop to quieter, conversational songs, describing closeness that feels natural and unforced.
Rain Lee · personal site
Published album note
Rain’s album introduction explores modern Lunar New Year in Malaysia, with Mandarin and Malay songs about presence, belonging and moving forward. Read the existing notes in English, Malay and Mandarin.
Rain Lee · personal site
Published song note
The published song note describes slowing down, noticing city lights and small moments, and leaving room for a lighter December.
Rain Lee · personal siteLOOKING FOR THE WORDS?
Lyrics, credits and technical details, together with listening links.