But she kept writing songs, and is back with a new album Love Letter. <\/p>\n
She joined CBC’s On the Coast to talk about the journey. <\/p>\n
WATCH | Wanting Qu releases new album after 9-year hiatus:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1787424611_818_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
After taking 9-year hiatus, Vancouver singer Wanting Qu is back with new album<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
What can you tell us about your new album?<\/p>\n
I’ve lived so much life in the in the past nine years. I’ve experienced so much, lots of loss and grief. <\/p>\n
I also felt like I gained a lot too through that experience … I feel like the muscle in my heart has grown bigger and bigger, I feel more compassion for others. <\/p>\n
Like, I love my fans and love people who love me, but I also have the love for people who may not like me or love me. I have love for everybody right now. <\/p>\n
Can you take us through that journey?<\/p>\n
After the last record, a lot of things happened in my family, something happened to my mom and it was so devastating and it’s still ongoing. <\/p>\n
It’s kind of a loss, but like with like [an] edge to it … I had a lot of built-up feelings inside. <\/p>\n
I just didn’t want to be happy because I felt like if a family member’s suffering through something really tough, I shouldn’t be enjoying my life. <\/p>\n
It definitely caused my health issues. I had breast cancer six years ago, and that was also a form of loss to me, because I had to get a single mastectomy of my left breast. <\/p>\n
It was definitely a moment where I have to look at death in the face, where I go like, ‘OK, what do I want to make out of my life?’ <\/p>\n
And then I wrote a song out of it. It’s called One More Day. It’s on my album. And then, I also met love of my life, River.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
How did your mother’s arrest affect you and your music?<\/p>\n
I learned that I’m not the only person that goes through things like this. Through songwriting, I connected with a lot of children, basically kids who go through things like this, or family members who have went through things like this. <\/p>\n
I feel like the universe has given me an opportunity to turn my experience into something beautiful and healing for other people.<\/p>\n
What can you tell us about your battle with cancer?<\/p>\n
It shifts your perspective about life. You were looking at life like, ‘OK, what’s more important? Do I not live my life because someone else is suffering?’<\/p>\n
My mind and my heart, my soul [were] just not aligned anymore, and I [was] just basically a walking dead person. <\/p>\n
It was a perfect moment to just break out. Like, ‘Here you go, here’s cancer. Deal with that.’ Because before that it was all, ‘Oh, what about my family? What about this person I care about?’<\/p>\n
In that moment, it was all like, ‘OK, I got to exercise. I got to get this thing out. I got to eat differently. I got to live.’ From that moment and on, I just felt like I’m starting to live versus just dying.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Wanting Qu performs in Vancouver:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1787424612_791_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Wanting Qu performs in Vancouver<\/p>\n
How did you use music to process the experience?<\/p>\n
One More Day, it’s a love song I wrote for my left boob, and I just want to say goodbye to her before I do the surgery, because I actually chose … the flat closure versus, what do you call it? Implants. <\/p>\n
I didn’t want to take something cancerous out and put something else in my body and potentially cause another type of cancer. I was just like, ‘OK, that’s it you, I love you, but you have to go.’ <\/p>\n
I wrote it in a way that if even if you don’t know my story, you can still listen to it and find some something or someone that you can relate to. It’s just something, like, toxic in your life. Maybe it’s your relationship, maybe it’s your addiction or maybe something that you, or maybe the past version of you, and you just want to let go. <\/p>\n
Why release your your new album now?<\/p>\n
I’m at a good place now. My mom thing has been going on for 12 years now. And my cancer had been taken care of.<\/p>\n
I’m in my early 40s, I feel good to share these stories that I’ve experienced, hoping to help someone who’s still going through things like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Wanting Qu released her 2012 album Everything in the World, the Vancouver-based singer songwriter looked ready to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-867702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}