K-pop Goes February: Day 26- Eric Nam

It’s Friday, and the end is in sight my dears! Not that this hasn’t been fun, you know, I’m just looking forward to having everything all tied up in a nice bow. This will also, coincidentally, mark my fiftieth post on this blog, a fact I’m disproportionately proud of, so like, go me. And for this fiftieth, we’re back to the boys as Soloists Week continues. Please welcome to the stage, Mr Eric Nam.

Who is Eric Nam?

It’s so convenient that you always ask me that, imaginary audience in my head. Eric Nam is a Korean American singer born and raised in Atlanta, who rose to fame from a reality talent show in Korea called Star Audition: Birth of a Great Star 2. Not the catchiest name, I’ll admit. He got invited onto the show after singing a cover on YouTube that went viral (ah, for a time when ‘viral’ only really got used in an internet context), and subsequently placed fifth. Wikipedia doesn’t tell me exactly when this was, but it does say that he was signed to B2M Entertainment (all together now- I don’t know who they are! Except actually, I do: they were bought by Stone Entertainment, who manage IZ*ONE, ATEEZ, and now Eric) in 2012. He debuted the following year, and has also worked as an extremely popular presenter (or MC as they are more commonly known in Korea) since then. What this tells me is that Nam must be a pretty magnetic personality, if he’s been able to come up in the entertainment world in both of these ways, and have success while doing it. I can’t see a huge indication of his style, though Wikipedia lists EDM, Acoustic and R&B alongside K-pop as the genres he works in. Not super helpful when you consider how much overlap those styles have, but thanks for trying I guess. He also writes a lot of his work, always worth noting. Without further ado, let’s see what GQ Korea’s 2016 Man of the Year (ooooh) has to offer.

The First Song

Eric Nam released his first single, Heaven’s Door, in January 2013, in the last days of the Second Generation era. You can really feel that when listening to the song, and especially looking at the video. It’s an unexciting mid-tempo smile of a song, though I like the use of the loud, insistent drum to create the rhythm- it’s stronger than this song needed. The guitars are soft and Nam’s voice is sweet, hitting nifty little high notes in the chorus, stronger than Jay Park’s voice yesterday. But I can’t say it really does anything mind-blowing: it’s a very standard version of what it is. The video gives us an aggressively charming Eric, all thick glasses and perfectly fluffy hair as he frolics in the snow with his adorable husky. It feels very much like One Direction in the snow, and the only part that really struck me was the song’s very final notes, which are a nice, unaccompanied harmony. This is fine, but not inspiring.

Five of the Big Hits

Reddit didn’t seem to be as forthcoming here (I think soloists just garner a little less interest in general), so I had to do some work, like a peasant. Ugh. Looking across YouTube and Spotify, I collated the following as Nam’s big five: Perhaps Love, Honestly, Spring Love, Cave Me In and Ooh Ooh. The last of these I put in purely because someone on Reddit said that one of Nam’s friends likes to use it as a meme, which is reason enough for me.

First up is Perhaps Love, a duet with a female artist who is legitimately called Cheeze (?!), from 2017. Odd name choice aside, there is really nothing that stands out for me here either unfortunately. It’s another mid-tempo track, this time with electric keyboards and violins providing the perfect instrumentation for background café music. The most exciting part of the song is honestly in the beginning of the chorus, where the sung melody and accompanying violins briefly match each other and form a wonderfully rich sound. The rest is undoubtedly nice, and Nam and Cheeze (seriously what the fuck with that name?) are clearly talented singers, but that can’t help how generic this all ends up feeling.

Next in line is Honestly from 2018. This song leans more into the EDM style, with guitars overlaid with a slightly tropical beat that picks up in the chorus. Again, it’s pleasant, and I enjoy the more dancey element, but still, my socks remain firmly un-blown off. Nam seems to favour a very gentle approach, even here, in what could just be a little bit bigger a song. It has that anthemic echo to it, especially in the chorus, but I’m still not really sold.

My hopes are not high for my next choice, Spring Love, a duet with Red Velvet’s Wendy from 2016. Maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical, I mean, Wendy is an absolute powerhouse vocalist. But I have to be honest, like Eric in the last song, this one is completely uninspiring to me as well. It’s a gentle acoustic love duet, working very strongly with the angle of ‘cute’. There are guitars, a gentle beat from the second verse, and a chorus slow enough to be easily sung along to. It’s certainly charming, but again, something you could hear in just about any café here in Seoul, and forget about pretty instantly. To be fair to Eric, this song was made as an SM track, and thus is really showcasing Wendy over him, but still, there isn’t even any belting! Come on guys!

I am starting to regret my choices as I move onto the fourth song, 2014’s Ooh Ooh, also with a featured artist, this time Hoya from Infinite (remember them?). This is the one that the Reddit person said was made into a kind of meme, but good god who cares, we finally have some RHYTHM! This is some Bruno Mars-lite brassy funk pop, with trumpets blasting through the choruses and verses, and funky guitar strumming away underneath. The singing is snapping on the beat, and Nam is having some damn fun! Hoya’s contributing rap verses are a great dose of confident attitude, and the chorus’s central ‘ooh-oohs’ are, I think deliberately, very Michael Jackson. We are finally starting to take a walk up my street!

The last of the five hits I chose purely from its listen count on Spotify: Cave Me In currently has over twenty-three million streams, behind only Perhaps Love. This song is from 2016, and is yet another collaboration, this time with Gallant and Tablo (nope, no idea, you know me). It turns out that Nam is only really in the final third of this lo-fi neo-soul track, with the other two leading the first two sections. I liked the sparse synths to open, and kind of wanted them to be stronger in the rest of the song. I will say that Nam’s vocals are at their most distinctive here for me; there is a studied control in his gentleness. This song is ‘chilled-out vibes’ right down to its bones, but it’s one of the better showcases I’ve heard for Nam’s voice.

The Latest Song

Hey, I actually picked something that Eric sings himself! I feel bad that so many of my choices were collaborations, and thus I don’t think I’ve really heard what he can really do when he’s in the driver’s seat. But hey, I was picking the popular stuff, and this was it. His latest release is July 2020’s Paradise, a tropical jaunt similar to Honestly. The beat is more bouncy dancehall here, beginning with a nice little piano hook, and building to some scratchy synths livening up the second half of the chorus. This is an example of calm groove from Nam, and he handles it well, though once again, I don’t really feel he’s allowed to stretch his wings much here. There’s no real flourishes with the singing, and the music doesn’t ever really grow to any kind of exciting point. This song will get you moving, but not losing your mind. It’s no Ooh Ooh.

The Latest Album

Soloists seem to like blessing me with shorter track lists, and for this, I thank them. Eric Nam’s latest collection of songs is The Other Side, also released in July 2020, and has just five songs, including Paradise. Can you tell I’m getting near to the end of my project?

We open with Trouble With You, a more EDM-based song, spreading the echoing synths more liberally than we’ve heard from Nam before. The chorus here is much richer through Nam’s vocals, with gorgeous harmonising over the song’s title. I particularly like the shaky little electronic hook that rides along with the vocals through the verses and into the chorus. One song in, and I’m already enjoying this one more than most of what I heard above. Clearly, getting Nam on his own is a good thing. Paradise is track two, and How You Been follows. This is effectively a ballad, all gentleness and pianos in its verses. However, as it builds to its chorus, the beat becomes more prominent, guitars strum into life, and Nam’s voice strengthens. By the chorus, we’re in eighties soft soul territory, but with a hint of dance thrown in. I really like the build here, adding colour and drama to a song that really could have just slid away.

Track four is the most minimalist dance track yet, Down For You. There is a gentle, beating electric melody under Nam’s vocals in the verses, which disappears for the first half of the chorus, relying on only a deep bassline and the song’s rhythm. This stripped-back approach is really interesting, though it chickens out of sticking to this by ushering the synths quickly back in the chorus’s second half. The vocals here are R&B in flow, melodic, gentle, with some neat little runs as Nam seductively sings about being “so down down down for you”.

We finish up with Love Die Young, and god damnit it’s a bloody ballad. I can’t deny that it’s a sweet one, resisting the urge to crank up the backing instrumentation with too much drum machine or violin. There is a lovely echo in the chorus’s vocals, a clap-along, swaying chant of “please don’t let this love die young” that, of course, would be a great concert closer. In fact, the singing throughout is beautifully delicate, cascading, running and harmonising to pleasing effect. Socks are still not blown off, but it’s a well-crafted take on the emotive, come-together ballad staple at the end of K-pop collections.

Thoughts?

Well, primarily, I think I should have picked more songs where Eric was the centre of attention- sorry about that m’love. My theory about the prevalence of ballads in K-pop soloist work is bearing out, and sadly nothing sweet little Eric did, aside from Love Die Young, really made me feel any differently to my usual indifference (at best) to this style. I also wasn’t especially entertained by much, again excluding the joyous Ooh Ooh and the rich Trouble With You. These two songs just seemed to have a lot more energy to them, which, I will admit, is more to my taste. I think largely that’s the point of difference here: Eric Nam makes more laid-back music than I really love to listen to. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I just like to see a bit more flair, more pizazz (*does jazz hands*) from this genre. There is every possibility that I could find this if I dug into Nam’s discography more, and I do feel that’s more necessary here than it has been with other artists, given how much collaborating I seemed to find. Sorry about that Eric, and sorry for not vibing more. I recommend more trumpets.