INTERVIEW: Amber Liu on writing and evolving, from K-pop to new horizons: “I’ve been really taking in the beauty of life – how imperfect it is.”

Words: Emma Driver
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: Friday March 8 2024

Former K-pop star Amber Liu is an exciting solo artist with a pop pedigree that’s hard to beat. After being picked up by South Korean juggernaut SM Entertainment at an audition in LA, aged fifteen, the American native became a member of K-pop stars f(x), touring and recording for four years, and in the process becoming a bona fide media star.

Liu has built on all she learned working with f(x) to produce stunning solo work. In 2015 she released the EP Beautiful, which reached number 2 in South Korea and on Billboard’s World Albums chart. Later releases have showcased her evolving sound – less like the high-key dance genre that K-pop is known for, and more musical exploration: stripped-back gems like ‘Three Million Years’ (2020), honeyed synth-pop in ‘Other People’ (2019) and ‘Paradise’ (2022), and delicate ballads like ‘complicated’ (2021).

Latest single ‘Dusk Till Dawn’ was four years in the making, as Liu and her producers worked to capture the dizzying energy of an unplanned night out, sneaking around the city with someone whose magic you want by your side. “Sneak out, I’ll make it good for you,” Liu sings, and the song builds up from the beat of footsteps – walking the streets from dusk till dawn – to add overlapping vocal lines and guitar rhythms, rising and falling like the voices and echoes of a city late at night.

Women In Pop caught up with Amber on the eve of her first headline shows in Australia, and found out more about her songwriting process, her love for her fans and some of the personal lessons she’s learned.

Thank you so much for your time today, Amber. Your music just makes me really happy. It has a warmth to it, even in your sad songs. It just feels like you’re saying, “Hey, come along, listen to this story.” Is that how you feel when you’re writing songs?
Thank you! I’m always in this mindset when I’m writing – “Will people understand what I’m trying to say?” Because I guess in the writing process, not only am I just writing my thoughts out, but at the same time, I will always think about, “Does this lyric come across the way I want it to come across?” Because, yes, I’m singing for myself, but at the same time I am singing for somebody else. And I think the goal in music for me is to be an outlet for somebody who is dealing with what they’re dealing with. I hope that they feel that there’s somebody out there who also feels the same way.

That’s the way that I grew up with music. I always felt really alone. And I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. But music really gave me a haven to just recede back into. At the same time, I also [think about] “What do I feel and what do I want to say?” Even if someone doesn’t understand. It’s a paradox – no, not a paradox, but an ironic thing about me: I want people to understand, but I also don’t want them to understand, and I also want me to understand but at the same time I don’t understand!

You do have this incredibly natural approach to music, in the best possible way. It’s very you. That’s not something we’re used to see from anyone coming from your musical background, in the Korean idol world. How have the tools that you acquired within that musical area propelled your approach?
I’m definitely still in the process of really finding my humaneness. Growing up in the [K-pop] industry, you’re a child, like a “stupid kid”, like you don’t know what you’re doing. But you’re thrown into professional settings where you really have to put on a face. That’s not against anybody, but when you’re a kid, and you’re in the spotlight, and you’re getting all the pressure that you carry when you become an adult, and you don’t realise it – it’s pretty heavy. You’re being looked at by so many people – how you look, what you’re dressing as, your mannerisms – but at the same time you’re a teenage kid, or even younger. There were people younger than me who started out when they were elementary school kids. For me, I don’t think I was really given the time to be a kid.

So what I brought into adulthood was that I always felt like I needed to be perfect. And when I started writing music, there was this other side of me that was like, “But I’m not perfect, and I can’t be.” I’m trying to find the beauty in myself. On the surface, when I’m on stage, I’m like, “I’m Amber Liu!”, but inside I’m a scared little kid. I know that I’m somebody who is full of insecurity and is always panicking.

I think that’s why, around a year ago, I went to therapy – I really needed to take some time away and reassess. I’ve been really taking in the beauty of life – how imperfect it is. I’m still healing from a lot of things and I’m really trying to keep myself centred and very focused on the goals that I have in mind – not only right now but ten years down the line, twenty years down the line. What kind of life do I want to live?

Within that process of my childhood and growing up in the industry, I think I was given a lot of tools. I was exposed to dance – dance has been such a big part of the way I express myself, which I never thought it would be! Also fashion – in K-pop you’re a chameleon, you’re just doing look after look after look. I’m still just wearing my black hoodies, my black sweats, but putting that dash of colour there, finding fashion pieces that have different cuts and styles– I think was also really helpful for me right now. There were also the no-brainers: language and the power of being able to communicate with your fans, and even just taking the time to learn a couple of words.

Like, in Tokyo – I don’t speak Japanese very well, only baby sentences. But my dancer who is fluent in Japanese actually sat down and took time with me to write out everything. I really like just being able to connect with fans in that way and learn about their culture. And again, touring to all these different places has definitely given me the very big perspective that life is so beautiful. Everybody’s different in their own way, but we’re all like coming together because of music and because we love one thing – which is me. OK, totally kidding!

No, they definitely love you! And on stage, you really do create a welcoming, joyful space for your fans.
I have awesome fans. I love them. Whether they found out about me through my group, or the times that I did YouTube or as the independent indie artist, they’re all just out here to vibe and to have fun. I’m there to perform and put on a show, but I love talking with them and messing with them, and they mess with me back. So it’s very fun and intimate, that time that I get to have with them, especially at shows. I get to know everybody too. It’s great.

For me and my crew, we do this professionally. But why do people go to concerts? It’s after a long day of work, or when you haven’t had a break in a while, and you want to go out and have fun, to rock out and dance away all the stress from work and school. So I remind myself that every night like these people are here because they want to have fun. That’s the one rule at my shows: I always say, “This is a Be Yourself zone. Dance if you want to, sit quietly and just clap, be very stoic or a wildflower – that’s really up to you. The most important thing is to just be authentically yourself at the concert.” So I always want to give them that space because I’m also being given that space, because of them. It’s a cycle, you know – you give, take, give, take.

So you were a nervous kid who found solace in music, but at the same time you wanted to sing, and you loved pop music – and they seem like very conflicting things. Was this need to sing, to express yourself in this way, always in you?
I loved music just because it was just so freeing. It was an outlet, not a professional career that I wanted to pursue. Let me step back … I did really well in school. I love studying, I love math and science. So, school is going well, and the opportunity comes to pursue music. I have the confidence in myself that if this music stuff doesn’t work out, I can always go back to school. One thing that I was always very, very adamant about is that I’ll put my mind to something and try it, and if I fail, I’ll pivot – I’ll figure it out.

With music, it’s always been, “Let’s just jump into it and see what happens.” And I’m still here. Like, when I make an album, when I go into sessions – you never know what’s going to come out of that session sometimes. You’re like, “That twelve-hour session amounted to nothing, and the song was complete poo-poo, oh well” – but you don’t stop. You just keep going. What I really love about writing is that I’m able to connect with so many different fans and also the people that I work with.

What’s that process like, when you’re writing a song in those sessions?
When we write music, it’s never just like, “OK, we’ll lay down four chords. Let’s do a bridge here … and here you write your lyrics.” It’s more of a conversation: “How are you feeling? What were you thinking when you did this? Oh, can you find a ‘hoooo’ sound?” And then the producer just tries his best. It’s a very collaborative thing. Being around so many creative people gives me so much energy. I’m always on high adrenaline.

You speak a lot about not having confidence, but going into music is a hell of a ballsy move! So many people are scared to try anything.
Yeah, I think in the past couple years, I’ve really gotten over the “being afraid to fail” thing. You can’t be afraid to fail. The whole reason for being human is to learn and to try things and to mess up and then come out the other side as a different person. My grandma always told me that one thing that she always wished was that she had tried more things, and not been afraid to get out there. And that’s what she wanted for me: to experience all these things and to do different things, and just really soak in what life has to offer. And I think the one thing that holds us back is always fear. On stage, if I decide to, you know, attempt to shake my butt, I’m going to do it. But even if I fail at it, it’s now become a part of the show. So I call them “happy mistakes”, I guess.

There are times when you’re really given a challenge in your life, and something that has always really helped me get over those really challenging times is [thinking], “What is this moment trying to tell me? And what how do I feel about this moment?” Just really being in tune with what’s going on in that moment. It’s OK to say, “I’m scared right now.”

Reading through your comments, I think your fans really get that. What you give them is incredible. On that theme, let’s talk about your exceptional latest single ‘Dusk Till Dawn’. It’s sonically beautiful, and the video is just gorgeous. Talk to me a little bit about the creation of this track – it’s really slick and seems really effortless, but probably not effortless at all …
‘Dusk Till Dawn’ was fun. About three or four years ago, I was at our management’s office building, and there were some studios in the back where random producers and writers would be. And I heard a beat that I thought was great. I ran to my manager, like, “Hey, who’s in the room? Can I work with them? Can I? Can I get on that song?” And he was like, “Yeah, let me figure it out.”

So I met the producer Dirk Pate, and the writer Sean Carson, and they had kind of laid out the song already. When I hopped on it, I really wanted to utilise the very masculine parts of my voice – the low tones – and also my really feminine falsetto and see if there was a way to really marry all that together. That’s the groove that you hear in ‘Dusk Till Dawn’. We wrote a couple new parts, and we tried to figure out like, “OK, when we want someone to sneak out with us, what do we do?” So we had a lot of these writing sessions, a lot of conversation, rather than just making the song. And we had a lot of fun. Then my executive producer, Thom Russo, took the track and made it into something even more epic.

With some songs, you can just write it and then it’s done. Some songs take a lot of time. This one was four years in the making. I think I did the mix six times. And I even had the idea of taking two of my mixing engineers and putting their two mixes together, instead of just having one person’s mix. It’s not very sexy, but it was, again, super collaborative – everybody just putting their ideas out.

Well, it’s so good. So, you’re playing in Australia, and there’s going to be joyous, raucous energy and a lot of love in the audience. Is there anything in particular you’re looking forward to in the shows?
Number one is just to see the fans. I see on Instagram or Twitter that people ask, “Oh, please come to Australia”, and I’ve never really seen the people in Australia before who know my stuff. So something that’s really endearing is that at every single show, I have my meet and greets – one-on-one personal time – and the fans are always like, “I’ve followed you since I was in elementary school, and it’s my first time meeting you!” I can’t imagine how surreal it is for them. For me to actually feel the energy from somebody who has been following me for so long and has never met me until that moment – it’s like, I’m speechless. It’s like meeting an old friend, a pen pal, I guess.

That’s beautiful. Thank you so much for your time, Amber, and all the best for the shows. Now I feel like one of your pen pals …
Thank you! This was really fun.

‘Dusk Till Dawn’ is out now. You can download and stream here.
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