Why singer Kira Peace embraces rejection

SINGAPORE – “Can I sing you a song?”

Singer-songwriter Kira Peace, 20, boards random double-decker buses plying Orchard Road and poses this question, or a variation of it, to passengers.

If she gets an okay, she serenades the commuter with her latest original song, I Could Die Tonight, in which the lyrics speak of not wasting time in chasing one’s dreams.

Some passengers have been known to stand up and switch seats. Others stiffen and turn away, their body language shouting “no”. Heads tilt down to mobile phones.

About 70 per cent of the responses she gets are “timid, unengaged and non-interactive”, she says.

Typically dressed in short, tight outfits, with glittery eye make-up and guitar in tow, Peace engages in light banter, thanks everyone she speaks to and apologises for any inconvenience. If it is a Friday or weekend night, she might head to Boat Quay for drinks afterwards.

The short videos she posts on her social media accounts, @kirapeace, which showcase these encounters, elicit strong reactions from locals.

Instagram and TikTok users’ comments include “Kira Peace not giving anyone peace”; “I’m sorry but literally Singapore is somewhere where they will say u are a siao lang (‘mad person’ in Hokkien) doing this in bus and they just want to be quiet”; or “Why are you doing this, everyone already tired from work”.

One of her TikTok clips, which clocked up 1.4 million views, showed a disapproving “uncle” telling fellow passengers in Mandarin to ignore her.

There are a few welcoming online reactions, such as “Singapore needs someone like her! She brings so much joy and fun!” and “Bro why is everyone hating, she is just trying to maybe relieve their stress”.

Peace, a New Zealand national who started singing in buses in March 2025, is no stranger to controversy here.

In recent months, an SBS bus captain asked her to “sit and sing”, possibly because of official guidelines warning passengers not to stand on the upper deck of the bus.

In 2025, she was seen singing while striding on a platform that was level with the tables at a foodcourt in a polytechnic. The footage went viral, with some online commentators wondering if she was allowed to perform there.

Peace, who also performs at bars in Boat Quay and other venues, has put on concerts of her own, funded by her entrepreneur father, Brian Peace.

Her first Kira Rising concert at *Scape in Orchard Link in 2022 drew 1,000 fans. Her latest Kira Resurrected show at a bar-restaurant in Kampong Glam in November 2025 saw a 200-strong turnout.

Before she started bus-hopping, her Instagram account had about 5,000 followers. Now, she has 46,800 followers. Her TikTok account also swelled from over 60,000 to 101,100 followers. Her social media videos carry titles like “To be cringe is to be free!”

She notes: “I feel like the more popular I get online for this bus extravaganza, the less people are willing to engage with me. You could just say, ‘no, I don’t want a song.’”

Attributing the negativity she encounters to “cultural” differences, she says she was scolded and shut down more harshly in Japan, when she tried singing on a public bus in Tokyo, during a holiday in May 2026.

She tells The Straits Times that her edgy persona is a deliberate choice made after childhood bullying threatened to silence her into conformity.

Early success

Peace, who turns 21 later in 2026, moved to Singapore with her family at age 12. She was born in France and raised in places such as Namibia, India, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia by her New Zealander parents. They moved around the world for work and are now divorced.

Peace, whose real first name is Shakira, always wanted to be a singer. She recalls singing in the car and going for singing lessons and competitions in Phuket as a child.

Peace and her 18-year-old brother live with their 68-year-old businessman father in Bukit Timah, while her mother, 58, is based overseas. Her sister, 23, is studying in London.

When Peace was 12, she took part in a convention organised by the International Modeling and Talent Association (IMTA) in Los Angeles, where she won a singing contest in her age category.

While she was there, she also recorded a song and a music video for her debut, Just Like A Movie (2018), which has since drawn 169,000 views on her YouTube channel.

But when she returned to Singapore, fresh from her triumph, schoolmates at Stamford American International School (SAIS) sent her spirits crashing.

In class one day, the introduction from her song blasted from the back of the room, where the popular boys sat, she recalls. Everyone burst into laughter.

“I felt frozen with fear and tears were streaming down my face. I didn’t even have the balls to stand up for myself or confront it. I wanted the floor to swallow me whole,” she says.

“I was devastated because I’d made something I was so proud of, and I was excited to put it out there. But it was just a joke to them.”

The bullying expanded online, where comments like “This video is worse than jumping off a 10-storey building” were posted beneath her YouTube video. The usernames were her classmates’ names.

“It hurt my self-esteem and made me self-conscious of my voice. And it was then that I broke down in front of my dad and I was like, ‘I don’t want to ever sing again.’ I just wanted to be normal and I wanted to be liked,” she says.

Reaching out to bullies

After a year or so, she regained her confidence with the help of her first boyfriend whom she met at 14. He played the guitar and asked her to sing with him, praising her ability.

Around this time, her father, who plays the saxophone, rounded up a bassist and a drummer and formed a band called Mad Honey, where she provided the vocals. They jammed at her home and singing became carefree and fun again, she says.

She also started auditioning for school productions, landing lead roles such as Roxie in the musical, Chicago. “Other people thought I sounded good, which was the validation I needed,” she says.

At 16, she, her father and her siblings took on a family challenge to shave their heads. Her blonde buzz cut gave her street cred. “I became very unconventional, especially at school. I posted a video of my first day at school with a bald head and it blew up because it was cool.”

Still, she yearned for approval from her former bullies, eventually making friends with this group. “Looking back now, it’s clear to me that one of the biggest things that I struggle with is that I crave validation from people who dislike me, or I want to be liked by everyone. And it’s something that I’m still coming to terms with,” she says.

The penny dropped during a party when she realised they had no real connection. “Bullying helped my confidence. I gained a lot of self-confidence from being an outcast to then being liked, and finally realising that I didn’t actually like being with these people,” she says.

“Being bullied gave me a thick skin. I enjoyed being the centre of attention even if people were judging me. I enjoyed causing a stir, which is ironic because that 12-year-old girl wanted the complete opposite – I didn’t want to be acknowledged for anything that could be thought of as being different.”

Before she left high school, she continued to push boundaries.

She once wore ripped stockings and red high heels with her uniform, a move that got her suspended from school for two days.

The Kira persona

Between the ages of 16 and 17, she took a gap year to focus on her music career, writing and performing songs like Pretty Boy (2022).

Her Kira Rising concert at *Scape in 2022 was a “crucible moment”. “That was when I realised that I actually did have fans because people were singing along to my songs,” she recalls. “But it was also when I realised that I really do have haters.”

Glow sticks had been given to members of the audience, but some people threw them at her. One struck her face.

While she had been writing songs and learning basic guitar and piano on her own, she eventually felt that her gap year to pursue her calling in music, fully supported by her father, was not what she wanted. “I wanted to find out who Shakira was, outside of Kira,” she says.

At 17, she went back to her international school at a grade below her peers. She graduated in 2025 with distinctions in BTEC (Business and Technology Education Council), which are vocational qualifications.

The allure of rejection

She now follows a performance artist account on TikTok, @bellemakesart, where the content creator lies on a road with a sign next to her, which reads, “Bet you are too scared to lay next to me”, testing whether any strangers take up the challenge.

At key moments, Peace admits her mental health was impacted when she experienced online vitriol, notably as a young woman called names like “durian” on account of her once-shaven head.

Now, she declines to look at online comments about herself, though she is aware that her content is polarising.

Peace says: “Singing on buses is quite unconventional in Singapore and breaking social norms is something I really enjoy. It scared me at first.

“I find it quite exciting – the rejection aspect. I feel like rejection is such an under-explored emotion. It’s that feeling of butterflies and discomfort in my stomach that makes me feel really alive – to be rejected and be able to survive and live through it. The more I get rejected, the easier it gets,” she says.

“I feel that a lot of people struggle with rejection. They don’t even take a shot because they’re so scared to be rejected. I like being able to showcase rejection through my videos and show that it’s okay to look silly or to be embarrassed.”

Good vibes downtown

Breaking social norms in Singapore is not only about rejection, however.

On a Friday night in late July, Peace meets her friend, Gabriel Gregorio, who takes videos of her bus crawls, at the 313@somerset mall in Orchard Road, and this reporter tags along.

Peace is instantly recognised. “Song, song,” calls out a teen in a hoodie sitting with his friends near a 7-Eleven convenience store.

Inside the mall, she is stopped intermittently by groups of teenagers and young adults – some in school uniforms – who ask to take photos with her. They talk, pose with sideways “V” hand signs and exchange high-fives. A mother nudges her pre-schooler to take a picture with Peace.

Her fans say things like “I love your make-up”, “You’re so pretty” and “If I see you on the bus, I’ll let you sing all you want”.

Finally, Peace crosses the road with Gregorio, and they board the No. 7 double-decker. As soon as she approaches, some passengers avert their eyes, while others give small smiles. A young man on the upper deck says he watches her TikToks and accepts her request to serenade him.

After 15 minutes or so, Peace and Gregorio disembark and catch the MRT to Raffles Place. A few disparate groups of young women approach her for wefies as they walk along the river in Boat Quay.

Gregorio, 32, who works in real estate, says: “Most of the comments online are negative, but in real life, people are happy to see her.” The “aunties” are particularly sweet, he says – they do not want Peace to fall on the bus.

Peace reckons her fans feel like she did, when she saw British girl group Little Mix in concert in Singapore as a girl.

She says: “It’s amazing singing on buses, but that’s not the end goal for me. I want to create performances with my music that encourage people to be pushed out of their comfort zone.”

Perhaps in 2027, she says, she is thinking of becoming a roving performer in Spain and Portugal.

“I would love to be able to financially support myself through my songs and performances, and then one day, be able to support a family through that.”

In the meantime, Singapore has been “a great training ground”, she says.