She is young, beautiful, famous, with a face that is almost supernaturally photogenic and such an excruciating beautiful voice . It’s no surprise that Gaia Cauchi is one of the most influential and popular names in local music industry. Gaia took the time to catch up with Atelier on her latest endeavors, her influences and how fitting in was not easy.
Seven years passed since your success at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest with the song “The Start”. Have you grown older or even wiser?
I have grown older for sure as I’m now 19 years old – on the way to not being a teen anymore. Growing up, life started throwing a lot of difficult challenges and choices at me as it does to everyone. This does eventually make you grow up, older and even wiser. I’m now a young adult and have responsibilities and decisions to make on my own unlike when I was still an eleven year old.
In what way is mum your source of inspiration?
My mum is my best friend. She’s always there to listen and give the best advice. She also tries to make me happy and fulfil my dreams. I look up to my mum as she’s the most courageous, genuine and generous person I know. She will do anything in her power to see the people she loves, happy. You will never see her without a smile on her face. She appreciates the tiniest of things and that amazes me.
In a recent interview you noted, “Fitting in was never easy… I always felt a bit weird as a child because I never did things people my age did.” Can you elaborate?
Growing up I was always going to shows to sing or trying to entertain others – this led to missing out on little things that an 11 year old girl would want to be doing… such as: hanging out with friends, going to school to enjoy time with friends. I’ve missed days of school or nights out with friends just because I had to travel, or I had an interview or I had to go sing somewhere. This led to me always being more comfortable spending time with people older than me as I felt like I matured quite quickly for my age because of certain life experiences.
Eleanor Roosvelt once noted, “If life were predictable it would cease to be life and be without flavour.” To what extent do you agree?
As much as I would love to know where I’ll be 10 years from now, it’s always so exciting to not know what beautiful things life is going to make you experience. We have no idea what tomorrow will bring but what we can do is be grateful for today and every other day.
What makes the 1950’s an interesting time to travel back to?
I’m obsessed with 1950’s fashion!! If only we could dress up like that every day!
Hopefully future trends will have something to do with 50’s fashion 🙂
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
You cannot please everyone!! I found myself often trying to make everyone around me happy, but this was draining the life out of me. We come here alone and go alone – sometimes you have to be selfish and think about what YOU want to be doing and what is going to make YOU happy, and not the people around you. Life is too short to do things that make you unhappy in order to satisfy others.
What’s next for you?
I’ve been working on my own songs for the past year. I was supposed to release a few songs, but the music industry is far harder than I thought it would be when you’re working with people from different countries. Hopefully if everything goes as planned, by next year I should start releasing all the music that I’ve been working on.
Photographer: Bernard Polidano
