Imagine listening to music and seeing colors. Yes, you read it right.
That’s exactly what happens to singer-songwriter Tamera because of a neurological trait she has.
It has something called synesthesia – a condition that fuses your senses so that instead of experiencing them separately and involuntarily, they automatically become connected.
For Tamera, this means that she has a “color palette in her head”.
“Usually when I listen to RnB I see deep blues and purples, emerald greens,” she tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
“When I listen to Afrobeats, I see oranges, like burnt oranges, yellows, and really bright lime greens.”
It is said to affect around 4% of the population and can manifest in many forms as it can affect tastes, smells, shape or touch.
The Radio 1 Introducing Artist of the Week says synesthesia helped her with songwriting.
“Personally, I’m very visual when it comes to music or sounds,” says Tamera.
“I think it really helps me when I’m in the studio because I can hear a beat right away. I have something like a color palette in my head.
“I just feel colors and sometimes I see like a whole movie scene, I would describe it like a whole scene, a set up and what I think would happen with that music.”
The 25-year-old says she only recently discovered synesthesia was “a thing,” but she’s not the only musician with the condition.
Pharrell Williams, Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga also have synesthesia.
For Billie Eilish, it inspires her creative process.
“All of my artwork, everything I do live, all of the colors for every song because that’s the colors for those songs,” she said.
Pharrell has previously said “that’s the only way he can” “identify what something sounds like”.
“I know when something is in key because it’s either the same color or it’s not. Or it feels different and it doesn’t feel right.”
The British Synaesthesia Association says that synaesthesia is not an illness or disease and is not harmful at all.
Some research has shown that synesthetes self-report as having greater visual imagination than the general population, and some specific memory benefits have also been measured.
“It’s always been normal. It’s always been like that,” explains Tamera from Gravesend, Kent.
“It’s a tool that’s helped me write songs for a long time.”
Tamera, who you may remember reaching the X Factor finale in 2013 as a 16-year-old, describes how sometimes when she’s in studio sessions she writes about what she sees instead of what she what she feels.
“I feel like writing can be a very visual thing,” she continues.
“Whatever the craziest scene brings to my head or a beautiful color palette that gets me and my feelings, I just write along with it.”
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The condition has influenced her latest project Afrodite and its music video.
“When a song gets released, it was 100% obsessed with me when it comes to the visual side.
“The colors surrounding all the singles were red, orange and brown and that was 100% intentional because that’s what I saw the entire time I was writing the project.”
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