BOY SODA, it's nice to meet you

For BOY SODA, his debut album, SOULSTAR, isn’t just a collection of songs—it’s a statement of arrival

Best known for his soulful hit, “Lil Obsession”, recently nominated for Best Soul/R&B Release at the 2025 Aria Awards, the rising Australian R&B artist describes SOULSTAR as the most transformational work of his career. In an intimate conversation with ShelfMAG, BOY SODA revealed that writing and recording his debut album not only taught him to trust his intuition, but also confront his deepest vulnerabilities and lay himself bare for listeners—for the very first time.

That story spans his complex Samoan heritage, his tender relationship with his father, the sharp edges of his own mental health, and the joy of discovering his own original sound after years of channeling early 2000s R&B idols. SOULSTAR is equal parts healing and “planting his flag in the sand”. In his own words, SOULSTAR is simply BOY SODA’s way of saying: “Nice to meet you.” Out October 3rd, the first four singles from the album are now available to stream on all platforms.

@zjaffa: What did you learn about yourself in the process of writing SOULSTAR?

@BOYSODA: It's been probably the most transformational project that I've made in my life. It taught me to trust my kind of creativity and my intuition with every decision. Whether it was “is this music right” or “are these the visuals that I want”, it was always a process of going back to the first thing that I wanted and just trusting that—removing cooks from the kitchen or other people's opinions. Making it is real proof to me that my ideas are good. And it helps when you get some streams that are nice and validating as well.

It was also a really healing journey for me. Being able to write about things that I was a little terrified to write about or open up certain cans of worms talking about relationship, between my dad and my Samoan culture. I don't speak to that side of my family, but shouldn't affect the way that I interact with Samoan culture, for example. So being able to talk about how much I love my dad, and also being able to talk about the kind of identity formed because of that trauma—it's part of my story. I haven't felt equipped to talk about that properly or do it justice, but I got to talk about it on this album. I got to talk about my mental health and how fucking mean I am to myself internally. Until I wrote the opening song on the album, I didn't realize my inner voice was actually that critical. It showed me so much emotionally.

@zjaffa: When you're making a project, you're being vulnerable and really kind of laying yourself bare—it's hard to do, but I feel like it's very rare that it's not well-received. I'm curious if there was advice or something that triggered you to build the courage to put it all out there?

@BOYSODA: It was a real push from my manager to make an album. In the past, I've done an EP, an album length mixtape, so many singles. And he was like “you need to just put a flag in the sand and really like decide who you are and present a project where you're not hiding behind any visuals. People just need to meet you at a human level through the music.” And he was like, please put your face on the cover, and I was like, fine. And it turned out to be really good advice because that concept of really putting my name on something fed through the process. The other thing that really helped me in making the album was that in the process of making music, I hadn’t considered whether I would listen to it or not. Which sounds crazy.

I was holistic and open about writing music before that. I was like, I'll make a song, but it's coming from the universe—I'm just a vessel. So maybe it's not mine, or maybe it's a song for someone else. But that stopped me from being refined. Asking myself “what is my music? would I listen to this?” helps so much of the intuition behind the process.

@zjaffa: Perceiving yourself as a vessel for the music—that's such an interesting concept. If you want listeners to take away one thing from the project as a whole when it drops, what would it be?

@BOYSODA: Nice to meet you. When you listen to this project, you're going to know me quite intimately, and I think that was the goal of it. It’s an album made with so much love. It talks about so many different things in the human experience that are prevalent to me at 27—grieving relationships, grieving death—just fully encapsulating the human experience without pulling any punches.

@zjaffa: “Nice to meet you”. I love it. Are there other introductory, debut albums that you took inspiration from, or other projects that you listened to that helped ground you while you were recording?

@BOYSODA: It was a lot of jazz, to be honest. A lot of jazz musicians were playing on the record and we gave everyone a lot of space. But everyone is just so good in their own right. If you're going to collaborate with people, give them the space to fill up. It was really easy collaborating with a lot of them. And on a technical level, I'm not classically trained in jazz or anything, so I'm learning a lot and my ears are changing listening to them.

@zjaffa: Is that what you grew up listening to?

@BOYSODA: No, not really. I've always loved jazz, but my curiosity around it [has peaked] since moving to Sydney and finding all of these players that are the reason that I have this album that's so full of live instruments. I grew up on a lot of 2000s R&B, ironically, Neyo and Trey Songz and Lloyd and Wale and Miguel and Frank [Ocean] and all of that. So I was replicating that for a long time. And this is the first project where I feel like there's original source material coming out of my body that isn't super reminiscent of the people that I've listened to.

@zjaffa: In a similar vein of, aspirations and inspirations. If you could stalk any person's Shelf—dead or living, who would it be and why?

@BOYSODA: Who has great taste?

@zjaffa: So many people.

@BOYSODA: I wouldn't mind having a gaze at what Rick Rubin's got going on because I feel like there would be a wide range of things. I feel like this is a wasted opportunity, though.

@zjaffa: You can say multiple people.

@BOYSODA: I feel like if I looked at Prince's Shelf, it would just be his own music.

@zjaffa: What would you say is the last piece of media—a song, an album, a book, a movie, etc, that truly made you feel something.

@BOYSODA: That's a hard one. I'm a sucker for certain Instagram reels or TikTok's where it's just really wholesome. Like, hope core.

@zjaffa: You're just a boy at the end of the day.

@BOYSODA: I'm just a boy. Exactly. I do love this one. And maybe it was a subconscious reason that at the end of “Never the Same”, which is the song I just dropped, it's a voicemail from my Dad. It's called “Dear Ben” by Loyle Carner. And it's got his mom on it. She's reading a letter out that she wrote him, and that shit just gets me so emotional. I love my parents so much and my relationship with them and hearing that on that album…I'll cry just talking about how much I love that song. But I really took inspiration from that.

I see so many “baby, come back here I miss you” voicemails, and it's like, nah I put my dad on there being like, “Hi, darling. Good morning” Like, I want people to know that, that's how me and my boys are. “Hi, darling. Hope you have a beautiful day.” I love that about my relationship. There's no veil of masculinity there. And it’s definitely been inspired by things like, “Dear Ben”.

@zjaffa: What would you consider a red flag if you saw it on someone's Shelf?

@BOYSODA: Morgan Wallen? No.

@zjaffa: Oh, that's hilarious.

@BOYSODA: There's no genres necessarily where I'm like, “it's a red flag”, but I think if there's a lack of variety, that’s a red flag. Where's your taste? Where's your range?

@zjaffa: What are your extreme ends of the spectrum?

@BOYSODA: Probably ambient music to tech rock or something like dubstep with live drums. Or weird cultural music. I love world music. Like finding different pockets where the percussion is so different. Like ballet funk. Or more reggae shit. What are your extremes? Just out of curiosity.

@zjaffa: Oh Lord, not you flipping it onto me.

@BOYSODA: You don't have to answer, I just feel like you would have some good answers. I feel like you have a good far left and a good far right.

@zjaffa: I'm thinking now. I went to school in the mountains of Virginia, so I really got into some, like, folkish, country-esque, alternative music while I was there. Not Morgan Wallen. I really love Samia. I think she's great. And this band called Houndmouth. The other end of the spectrum would probably be some underground rappers. Like playthatboizay. He's really great. There's this song called “RATATAT” that I’m obsessed with. He's got a couple songs with Denzel Curry, another rapper I love.

@BOYSODA: When you said soft folk music, I had a really strong Men I Trust moment. And Orion Sun.

@zjaffa: Orion Sun is great. I love them.

@BOYSODA: They smile so much—everyone needs to be more like Orion Sun. Show some teeth and smile and have a good time. It's so contagious and infectious while everyone's trying to be too cool. I love them a lot.

@zjaffa: “Space Jam” is such a banger. Last question I have for you, what item on your Shelf is most likely to stay there forever?

@BOYSODA: The Beyonce self titled album. That'd probably be in there, just because I love the people that are involved in that album. Like “Rocket” is co written by Miguel and like there's just all these tasty little things. There's so many. Blonde by Frank obviously, but that's too emotional for me. I can't listen to Seigfried anymore.

@zjaffa: Wait, are you a Blonde or Channel Orange guy?

@BOYSODA: Both. They're like two different artists to me.

Curious about what else BOY SODA is into? Get real-time updates at shelf.im/boysoda