At just 19 years old, trans musician Xoralynn Rhapsody Paloé (known mononymously as paloé) is making her mark in music and building an inclusive community along the way. In a world where we’re encouraged to hide what makes us different, paloé is unapologetically herself and has successfully grown a combined following of over 50,000 across platforms in less than two years.
In The Beginning…
Before there was paloé, there was a little girl discovering music for the first time.
“I remember the first song I got hooked onto was “Boyfriend” by Justin Bieber, and my mom got a video of me singing it during my wait for the school bus.”
By 5th grade, the young girl had already delved headfirst into music and performance. Before long, her passions began to blossom.
“That [passion for music] particularly started with me always participating in choir
and theater. I was a big theater kid at the time.”
Throughout middle school, paloé began learning piano and discovered she has perfect pitch. After she learned “Chopsticks,” she found herself consumed by a passion that she couldn’t ignore.
“After that, I indulged myself in music theory so much, wanting to be like a prodigy, like theory-wise.”
Indulging in Music
Music production can be expensive. Just recording a song in a professional studio alone can cost thousands of dollars. Still, paloé proved with her first song that you can create music on any budget.
“In early 2019, I wrote my first song, which is called ‘my life.’ I made the beat using all Apple Loops and recorded the verses on my wired earbuds mic.”
After writing this first song, she began indulging her love of music and writing more consistently, beginning in late 2020.
“I would, like, [take] a lyrical subject and a chord progression to start with and get writing every single time.”
Inspiration could also come spontaneously, which required a mobile solution. Whenever inspiration struck, paloé could simply pull out her iPhone and record whatever came to mind.
“I would record, like, all my demos, all my voice memos whenever there was a certain, like, song section or, like, melody that popped up in my head randomly.”
“formeisnothing”
In her high school years, paloé recorded a staggering 21 demos inspired by mental health struggles. Mental health issues are not uncommon for young transgender people. According to a study conducted by Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Research & Evaluation, trans youth observed between 2006 and 2014 had “3 to 13 times the mental health conditions of their cisgender counterparts.”
“During high school, I had one of the worst times of my life mentally, and that brought out a lot of songs in the process to cope.”
While going through this difficult time, paloé came up with a mysterious abstract phrase, “formeisnothing,” that the audience can interpret how they see fit.
“Like, that phrase can be arranged to, like, ‘oh, nothing is for me’ or, like, ‘is nothing for me?’ or ‘for nothing is me’ or ‘me is for nothing,’ and it’s just, like, yeah, you can just, like, arrange that.”
Like her music, paloé’s “abstract phrase” evokes a raw sense of questioning and discovery, a big theme in the young artist’s career and life. It (“formeisnothing”) will also be the name of her debut studio album, where she will release those aforementioned 21 songs.
“semicolonavenue” and the birth of paloé
In 2023, paloé met rap producer and eventual collaborator Dave Sperduto, a.k.a. MadDave.
“[I] met him in December 2023 after seeing a poster on the campus, pinned on a wall, of him looking for other artists to work with being inspired by old school hip hop…a year later, we wrote, produced, mixed, and mastered an entire majority-hip-hop EP that marked the start of my music career.”
Her hip hop EP, “semicolonavenue,” is an evocative, raw look into self-harm and recovery, suicidal ideation, and struggles with concurrent marginalized identities.
“The semicolon sign is basically continuing. That’s not the end of the sentence. And it’s—that symbol has grown in the mental health community as, like, your life is not over. You keep going. It’s a sign to keep going.”
The Importance of Identity and Visibility
It’s no secret that life is worse for marginalized groups under the second Trump administration. Whether it’s RFK’s mental illness “farms,” changing attitudes toward trans rights, or funding cuts to programs that help those of us in need, existing in a minority group is especially difficult right now.
“There’s just like so, so much, especially in Black trans women like myself. It’s like, I mean, I can’t even really like name all of it. It’s just like, I mean, people like us [black trans women] are getting killed every day.”
Since trans women of color face higher rates of violence than their cis, white counterparts, many have to worry about “passing,” which is the ability to be perceived as cisgender, or someone who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth.
In 2023, paloé began her transition through hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
“When I started my transition I just, I got called like the F-word like all the time. It’s like I kind of tried my best. I kind of just, it kind of pushed me to like be so hyper-feminine.”
Despite all of the challenges paloé faces, she urges us not to allow the current political climate to silence marginalized groups.
“Being alone is never fun and [it’s] detrimental. Making yourself visible creates a domino effect [on] someone who discovered you and [inspires] them to become visible too, and so on.”
Future Projects for paloé
With her career just taking off, paloé has a lot planned for this summer and beyond. She is currently working on a new EP that will release this summer and a pop single that she describes as “dancey” in the coming months.
“I’m in the process of loading up recorded music in my vault, so I can always have something to put out. My goal is for every release I have coming out, I always have 3 songs unreleased in advance.”
To listen to her music and keep up with future performance dates and releases, you can follow paloé here.
