From stage to screen to school, singer-songwriter Khally juggles multiple roles
The TL;DR: Budding singer-songwriter Khally blends deejaying into her stage performances, stars in a local drama series and studies building and project management part-time at a local university.
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Khally (centre) performing at the South Beach Tower Fountain Plaza stage for District M in October 2024 with Zaki Yazid (left) and Ruben Lee.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF YALLA
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SINGAPORE – If you find Khally familiar, you might have seen her in one of her many roles.
The 24-year-old artist, whose real name is Khallyshah Fahmi, is a multi-hyphenate: an R&B and neo-soul singer-songwriter who also acts and deejays.
She recently performed at the Esplanade for All Things New 2025, a music event where local acts play throughout the month of January. Her gig on Jan 25 was her first solo performance with a live band.
Since 2024, Khally has seamlessly combined singing and deejaying in her performances. One standout moment was Jam Off, a Hong Kong street culture festival that made its global debut in Singapore in September at Somerset Belt.
She performed Get Loose, a collaborative track with artists TENGY and PravOnTheLoose. The collaboration was an initiative by Dreamfellas, a dance collective, and the performance featured dancers represented by Dreamfellas.
“I’m merely using this medium of singing while deejaying as another form of musical expression, but I think it’s something new for Singaporeans, or even myself, to kind of get used to,” she said.
Khally credits her father, who was a deejay in his early years, for sparking her interest in deejaying.
She is also known for playing the lead character Raina in the Mediacorp Malay drama Kahwin Satu Keluarga (One Married Family), which returned with a second season in January. She got the part after being invited to audition by a director she had worked with before.
Her flair for performing started when she was young and karaoke was one of her family’s favourite pastimes. They would often sing Zombie by The Cranberries and Adele’s hits such as Rolling In The Deep and Someone Like You.
When she was in Temasek Polytechnic, Khally joined Music Vox, the school’s music co-curricular activity (CCA), which sparked her foray into songwriting. Members worked in small groups to write original songs, and Khally contributed by writing lyrics and performing alongside her group members during the CCA’s annual show Unravel.
She continued writing more songs, mostly for her own releases on Spotify, while also creating advertisement jingles and tracks for other producers.
In November 2021, Khally released her debut EP, Let’s Talk About Love, a nine-track project in which she was actively involved in the songwriting. The EP was produced by Prodbydan of Allure Records, which she was signed to at the time. But since 2023, she has been with management agency YALLA and publishing label Homeground Music Publishing.
One of her career highlights was the Let’s Celebrate 2024 party at The Promontory @ Marina Bay, where she performed in front of thousands of people for the first time.
She sang a few of her compositions alongside local rapper omarKENOBI, with whom she had been collaborating.
“It was nothing short of a dream come true,” Khally said. “As any Singaporean kid, you always turn on your TV and count down to that one particular channel. When watching those performances, I didn’t expect myself to one day be on that stage, too.”
At one point in her career, she struggled with imposter syndrome, feeling she did not deserve her achievements or the compliments she received.
“There were times when people were like: ‘You sound so great.’ And instead of feeling proud, I would go back and (ask myself): ‘Am I really as good?’”
Since 2024, Khally has seamlessly combined singing and deejaying in her performances.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF DREAMFELLAS
Accepting that she does not need to be perfect has been an ongoing journey for her.
While juggling her artistic pursuits, Khally is also doing a part-time degree course in building and project management at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
Even though she would love to make music her full-time career, she said: “Being a Singaporean trying to survive in this economy, I do have to kind of reality check myself and have a backup plan.”
Although Khally knows that the music industry tends to favour “commercially viable” genres such as pop, she is not afraid to explore different genres, incorporating styles like bossa nova, reggae and jungle into her music.
“My motivation is to challenge the boundaries of mainstream music by introducing sounds or styles that may be kind of unfamiliar or not really appreciated locally but are celebrated globally everywhere else,” she said.
