Words matter. These are the best Eric Nam Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Typically in Korea when I perform I have a full band, a ten-piece band, and that’s a completely different monster in itself to prepare and rehearse.
I think representation is something that’s absolutely needed. I felt like with K-pop being so hot, we could leverage that to potentially do something bigger with music in the States that people could latch onto.
I’m active on social media because that’s such a big reason why K-pop and Korean music performs the way it does.
So the first thing I do when I get out of bed, I will check my phone real quick because I live in Korea, but my stuff is split between L.A. and Korea.
Even within K-pop, there should be more representation. It’s not just groups, and it’s not just incredibly produced, highly choreographed pieces. There are vocalists, there’s R&B, there’s hip-hop, there are other types of people and voices. There’s space for all of that to be shared and to be appreciated.
I was part of the Atlanta Boy Choir probably like fourth and fifth grade. I personally didn’t enjoy the type of music that we were doing. I was more into like whatever was on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.
Living in Korea was a big adjustment because a coffee is going to be a little more pricey than what it is in the States. Wages aren’t as high either.
My actual goal when marrying in real life is to live like friends even after marriage.
The coolest thing for me now is when I’m in the States and I meet other Asian-Americans who are like, ‘Dude, thank you so much for doing what you do. I love your music, I love whatever. But whatever you do, we’re gonna support you because there aren’t many Asian faces doing music.’
A lot of my peers, be seniors or juniors, they’ll text me or they’ll call me and they’ll say, ‘Thank you for doing the music that you do because it pushes the genre forward in different ways.’ It’s a very rewarding thing to hear.
Asian-Americans are fighting for space and fighting for visibility and for acceptance.
Yes, I speak English ’cause I’m American.
I try to be honest with myself.
In the States I might be an Asian face, look different from everyone else in TV and in music, but in Korea I look like everybody else, in Asia I look like everybody else.
People around me tell me that I need a bigger persona and to act a little more A-listy because ‘that’s where you are but you don’t act that way, so people undervalue you.’ But that’s not me.
I thought it would be so cool to be a musician, but I always thought it was impossible, because I would never be accepted in mainstream media. The fact that I’m able to tour North America and around the world is an incredible blessing, and I am thankful every time I do it.
I’m a very blunt person.
It’s become hard for me to trust people and though I’m the type to go, ‘everybody is born good,’ you come to question that.
It’s so wild to be able to say that I can do shows in front of thousands of people and have them sing my songs in Korean and in English – that is wild to me.
When people outside Korea think of ‘K-pop,’ most of them expect ‘idols’ with several members in a group, dancing in sync.
I love BTS, they’re my friends.
I know people love Supreme. I never got on the wagon.
I learned Spanish as my second language from middle school through high school. I grew up volunteering at homeless shelters and tutoring kids of Latin immigrants in Atlanta, who didn’t speak any English. That prepared me for when I traveled.
When you first make money, you’re just excited that you have it and just buy things on a whim. You don’t really think about the implications that taxes have, because when you owe money, all of a sudden all of the money in your account – it’s gone!
Whenever I write my music, it’s always been in English first and then I take it into Korean.
I think up until the ‘Honestly’ album it was very much label-company lead, of ‘this is a sound that we need, this is what you need to do. You need to do ballads, you need to do a million different types of love songs,’ and I hate ballads and I hate love songs.
Even throughout college and post-college, I’ve always been incredibly hyperactive. Even at Boston College, I was involved in so many different organizations and initiatives.
It’s always good to dream big, right?
Sunbae-hoobae seniority is a very tricky, weird kind of thing.
I think there are probably ghosts in the world. I have not seen one but I feel like I felt the presence of one. In Korea there’s been a superstition that ghosts love music, so they’re always in a studio or a dance-training place.
It was a dream to be a singer/performer, but I never thought I had a chance or had a real shot; I never thought I was good enough.
When you think of Gallant’s music and his voice, you don’t automatically think, ‘Oh, Eric Nam would be great a fit’ or ‘Hey! Tablo would be an amazing fit.’
Coming to Korea and becoming a singer, I always had two big goals personally. One was to be able to make it at some point so that I could do good things – I was always raised with an interest in social impact, philanthropy. The other thing was to be able to take my music and do it on a global scale.
I had accepted a position as a business analyst at Deloitte Consulting in New York. But before I went into that workforce, I decided to take a year off and went to India to do a social enterprise fellowship. It wasn’t the best fit, but that was where a TV show in Korea found me and invited me to first come perform.
Even if you look at ‘American Idol,’ or ‘X-Factor,’ or ‘The Voice’ or anything, it was always difficult to see an Asian or an Asian-American make it to a certain point.
I want to position myself as a great singer/songwriter in Korea, then jump off that into different markets. South-east Asia, China, Japan – I’ve done nothing even though I speak four languages – English, Korean, Spanish, and a little bit of Mandarin.
I’ve always been very passionate about trying to have Asian-Americans or Asian faces be more prominent in mainstream media.
From a strictly business perspective, it’s like, ‘Even if you leave Eric alone, he’ll do stuff. He puts his own album together, he gets his own gigs, he does everything on TV. Let him be, he’s fine.’
What works in the States doesn’t easily translate to the Korean market.
Korean-Americans, Asian-Americans are so unbelievably underrepresented in the U.S. entertainment and media industries and I don’t think we are given a real shot.
