Eve Ai’s Confessions: Regret

“Repenting is actually something I do every day,” Eve Ai tells Apple Music. As an artist, Eve Ai often uses her music to confront the pitfalls of love, breakups, regrets and personal failings. This week’s playlist tackles similar themes head-on. To mark the release of her fifth album, How Come I Still Remember All, she joins Apple Music to share four exclusive playlists titled “Eve Ai’s Confessions”. The third in the series, “Regret”, is about acknowledging and articulating regrets both big and small—and growing into a more confident, self-aware and responsible person. “Although ‘regret’ sounds very serious, it actually appears seamlessly in our everyday lives. When I get home every day, there’s one thing I always do: feel remorse for something,” she says. “I spend five minutes before going to bed—or sometimes a lot longer, so long I won’t be able to sleep—reflecting on whether I’ve said or done something stupid today, whether I’ve offended anyone or whether there was some part of my work I didn’t give my all to. It’s a pre-sleep remorse where I put all my little regrets into a box, so that my box of regrets has become pretty big and heavy.” Far from being a burden, Ai sees this as ultimately leading towards greater creative expression and personal fulfilment. “After this procedure of regret, not only does my heart feel at ease, but I’ve also learned something. It also spontaneously becomes an inspiration for my songs. Indeed, songwriting is a kind of repentance, and a kind of self-empowerment. It’s just that I hope these regrets don’t stay with me too long, because I believe I’m advancing every day,” she says. “Therefore, regret actually isn’t a bad thing; rather, it’s just a form of honest self-reflection. No matter how big your ego is, you must always be honest when confronting yourself. Once you’re able to go about this process calmly, you realise that this honesty is harmless—and remorse is harmless too. Your state of mind will become lighter and more content, and this self-confidence and joyfulness will affect the people around you. Who says regret isn’t the path to happiness?”