“House on a Hill” by Eric Nam, Saturday, April 27, 2024 (repost)

 Eric Nam released his first English mini album, Before We Begin on January 18, 2019. The Atlanta-born, Seoul-based singer-songwriter was beginning a new phase in his career. Prior to Before We Begin, Nam had been busy as an entertainer in South Korea, starting with finishing in the top 5 of a Korean singing competition show and debuted his first single “Ooh, Ooh” in 2014. Nam has talked extensively about his experience as a first-generation Korean American who was not fluent in his parents’ language, yet became a pop star singing in Korean. Learning Korean on the fly, he was featured frequently on Korean television both promoting his music and later interviewing celebrities who came to Korea for press tours.

THE GRASS IS GREEN, BUT I WISH IT WAS GREENER. Eric Nam’s dream was to be a pop star in America, yet with almost no Asians on the pop charts from his youth in the ‘90s and the ‘00s to his young adulthood in the ‘10s, he felt he couldn’t achieve his dream so he went to school and began work as business analyst in New York. Nam decided to try music in South Korea, and he happened to get very popular. But with his popularity, he got really busy with roles that diminished him as a musical artist. He was so successful as an interviewer, he even named his 2016 EP, Interview. Being an interviewer had become his identity, but he wanted to focus on his music. Recording and releasing music in English was a splintering from the K-pop Idol world. His musical choices echo the trends in America rather than the trends with K-pop Idols. In 2021, Nam fulfilled his contract with CJ E&M. It was then that Nam decided to be a fully independent artist.


WHAT IF BEING HAPPY ISN’T WHAT I THOUGHT? In addition to Eric Nam’s music career and television appearances, the singer has also become a podcast personality. Unlike the Korean TV show panel appearances and interviews shows, Nam’s Dive Studios are more of the singer’s creative output as he interviews K-pop celebrities on the Daebak Show, often focusing on fellow English-speaking K-pop celebrities. On several podcasts, Eric collaborated with his two younger brothers Eddie and Brian, giving fans an insight into the brothers’ upbringing and family dynamic. Somehow, these podcasts cast a light on his brothers and family life, yet Eric, always the interviewer, allows us into his brothers’ lives but we don’t see much of his personal life. But last year, Eric released his second LP, House on a Hill. The title track deals with the problem of chasing fame. The song speaks truth in clichés, and feels like the closest we’ve ever been to Eric as an artist. The album builds on these confessional themes, as if Nam is finding his voice after singing others’ songs for so long and after interviewing and reflecting others’ thoughts. “House on a Hill” is a song for everyone chasing success, but is afraid that it might actually happen. Nam suggests that happiness isn’t in the achievement and that he, and we, need to find other measurements to gauge our own fulfillment.


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