Peter Sun has always loved music and is now stepping into his own creative sound. We talked with him about inspirations, upcoming projects, his time in music school in Virginia, and more. Read on to find out more about Peter Sun!
Hey! Introduce yourself. Where are you from?
My name is Peter Sun. I’m an 18 year old indie alternative pop artist from Virginia Beach, Virginia.
When did you start making music?
I started making music after I went to an arts school called Young Musicians of Virginia. I took a class on music production just because it sounded fascinating and we were required to record songs as a part of the assignments. I chose to write mine rather than just doing covers so it led to routinely writing original music.
Who inspired you to start making music?
My grandmother was the first person to ever inspire me to make music. Teaching me piano when I was five, she was my first music teacher. In recent years, my music production teacher, Gary “Juju” Garlic was the one who pushed me to start writing and recording my own music. It’s a funny story actually, back when I first started his music production class I was overwhelmed and wanted to quit within the first week. He encouraged me to keep going and offered that if I didn’t end up liking the class, he would cover that month’s tuition. I started to grow a passion for music production and continued to be in the class for five more years.
How would you describe your music style?
This is a question I get asked a lot. I’ve always been exposed to extremely different music styles and I genuinely appreciate so many types of music. I describe my music style as indie alternative bedroom pop. I like to add different inspirations or flavors within the songs, like for example, my song Take It Easy On Me has more of a classic jazz sound to it, whereas Backseat is just straight forward alternative pop.
Who are you listening to now?
I listen to so much but at the moment I’ve been really into Andrew Bird. I love his musical flexibility and with every album you never know what you’re going to get. You don’t always see that level of artistry so when you do it’s pretty special. I also listen to a lot of Brian Wilson as well. The Beach Boys are most definitely my favorite artists to listen to and I was extremely thrilled to have met Mike Love and Brian Johnson back in 2014. I’m a sucker for harmonies and experimental musical arrangements.
What’s your best project or single so far?
I’ve only released singles but I’m working on an album. It’s hard to say what I think my best song is. They’re all extremely personal to me and I appreciate them for different reasons. Overall though, I think my song Take It Easy On Me has to be my favorite. That was the first song I released this year in 2022, and has set the pace for further releases this year.
Any upcoming releases from you to look out for?
I just released a song called How’s New York on March 25th. It’s definitely a song for the “feelings” as they say. I was pretty down and out for a few weeks in February. I think when you’re forced to rest you have no other option than to confront a lot of things you’ve been able to ignore while you’ve been busy. I had this inspiration based on a long distance relationship I had not so long ago so I wrote and recorded How’s New York. It really turned things around and that song means a significant amount to me just based on the context it was written from.
Have any shout outs?
I really appreciate everyone who has been listening to my music and been following the journey. I’ve gotten the kindest messages on instagram and tik tok where people have been telling me what the songs have meant to them. It’s also been neat to have people come up randomly while I’ve been out and tell me about their favorite songs that I’ve released so far. I’ve only put out a handful of songs but all the support has really meant a lot to me you know?
Need more from Peter Sun? Check out his work on Spotify.