How chromesthesia gives singer songwriter GAYLE her voice

When singer songwriter GAYLE hears a song, she sees colors.

Many of us equate music with colors. We’ll say a sad song makes us blue. For GAYLE, however, listening to music not only impacts the part of her brain that manages sounds, but it also triggers sight — causing her to associate, and see, songs with actual colors.

“I wrote a song I liked, and for whatever reason I always came back to it thinking there was just something about it. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t - and couldn’t - love this song. It was the most vulnerable song I'd ever created and then it hit me - I didn't like the color of it, and I didn't know how to explain it to people,” GAYLE says. “What does not liking the color you see when you hear a song even mean?”

What is Synesthesia and Chromesthesia?

This phenomenon isn’t just a figment of the imagination, it’s a real thing called Synesthesia: an overlap of the senses when someone experiences one through another. Some people may hear a specific word, and immediately see a color, which is known as chromesthesia. Chromesthesia, or sound-to-color synesthesia, happens when sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape, and movement.

Chromesthesia is exactly what happens to singer songwriter GAYLE when she hears a song. It both influences and inspires her creativity — and gives her a very confident sense of self. GAYLE, now 17 years old, didn’t even realize she had the condition until she was 14. Although it doesn’t guarantee creative success (recent studies estimate about 4% of people have some form of synesthesia and that most are born with it but outgrow it by the time they hit eight months), GAYLE, whose hit single abcdefu has over 16.5M streams on Spotify, uses her Chromesthesia as an advantage – to make her craft better and set her apart.

“I didn’t even realize that I had chromesthesia until there was this one song I wrote, and I couldn't figure out why I didn't like it. I liked the lyrics, and I liked the melody, but I was like - why can't I like the song?” she remembers. “Then it hit me - I realized I didn’t like the color of the song when I heard it, which is incredibly confusing – what does that even mean? Then I realized every time I heard a song, I saw a color.”

What do sound-color synesthetes actually see when they hear music? It's not exactly a one-size-fits-all condition. Each synesthete has a unique color palette with unique triggers, and the colors and types of sense associations are always in flux. When it comes hearing music, certain artists’ songs are literally more colorful than others and trigger different ones, based on the song.

Finding her voice

GAYLE first started singing when she was seven. She clearly remembers being in school and hearing a clip of Ella Fitzgerald 'scatting’ — a jazz vocal style using emotive and usually nonsense syllables, instead of words, in solo improvisations.

“I was just so entrenched by the fact that you could make up anything on the spot and it could be absolutely whatever you wanted. That was the moment I can pinpoint in my life where I was just like ‘that’s it – this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,’” GAYLE recalls. “Ella and Aretha Franklin just made me feel a way that I had never felt before. I felt so passionately about that feeling that I just wanted to feel it all the time. And I've just been stubborn enough to stick to it.”

GAYLE’s chromesthesia may well be the secret sauce to her sticking to her passion, refusing to compromise her sense of self for anyone, and for giving her a voice she may not have had otherwise. The chromesthesia is always within her, even if there are times when she doesn’t particularly like the color of the song she sees and hears.

GAYLE’s craft is connecting songs with color

Every time GAYLE hears a song, it translates to a color, which encompasses the song. She then extends that color into the visual art of her craft – music videos, and album art. Her chromesthesia allows her to tell the story that she wants, exactly how she sees it, literally.

"Most of the time, I feel very, very, very strongly about the aesthetics and the way a song should look because it's just what happens in my brain,” she says. “I realized color was a really big thing to me. And it was really important to me in ways that I didn't even realize until I started making single covers.”

GAYLE’s chromesthesia propels her forward – she's fierce when it comes to matching up the color she sees with the audio of the song. “It’s very important to me that the right color gets shown inside of the music video or on the cover art. Those elements are a visual representation of what I see in my brain when I create. It brings a uniqueness to my art.”

She's also careful that song colors don’t clash with each other. “Sometimes it felt like the art was green, but the song was yellow – it didn’t fit. I started to use my chromesthesia to my advantage when it came to what I wanted to do visually, and it made me better.”

For GAYLE, her chromesthesia has become a part of who she is – as a person and an artist. "I made everybody in my life know that my favorite color is orange. It shows up everywhere for me. But then I had a thought of, do I only do orange? Am I just like orange? When I connect it back to my synesthesia, that’s when I see orange, that’s my perspective and how I see things with an orange tint. Yes, that's me. That makes me stand out. I try my best to always keep an orange theme to things.”

Creating remains an emotional outlet for GAYLE and a source of comfort and relief when she’s able to express herself and let her ideas flow freely. “When I just feel like I have these ideas swirling around in my brain, it can feel like a lot to be holding onto. So when I'm able to express myself and get it out, it's very relieving. And it's really nice to have a community of people that are able to look at it and feel like maybe they too have the ability to express themselves with that as well.”

The last word(s)

We asked GAYLE three questions to give us a little more insight into her personality and how she works. (We’ll ask these same questions of any of the upcoming creators we’ll interview.)

What can't you live without?

• Food and water.

What's your ritual before writing a song?

• I usually show up late, with a coffee - that made me late. I try my best to stockpile concepts for sessions but sometimes I don’t. And I always bring my notebook.

What are you most excited about right now?

• I'm really excited to go on tour and go to places I've never been before. I'm really excited about my new setlist. I'm currently producing out songs and once they’re finished, I can’t wait to film the visuals and make the single covers.

GAYLE x Adobe

Ready to create? GAYLE teamed up with Adobe on two exclusive Adobe Express templates.

Use the templates — designed in close collaboration with GAYLE to represent all parts of her life and work — to add graphics to your Instagram reels and TikTok videos, or use it to ‘green screen’ yourself singing along to your favorite GAYLE song on other social channels.

Make sure to use #GAYLExAdobe when sharing across social so everyone can check out what you’ve created. We can’t wait to see what you make.