INTERVIEW: Dami Im releases new EP 'In Between': "In between has always been the theme of my life. I always felt I was not fitting in anywhere and that's what the EP is about."

Interview: Jett Tattersall

Australian superstar Dami Im today releases new EP In Between, featuring the previously released singles ‘Collide’, ‘In Between’ and ‘Invincible’ alongside four brand new tracks.

Representing a brand new era for Im both musically and personally, it is her first collection of music released since she became a mother and reflects the many changes that experience forces.

“In Between is a collection of songs I made amidst the rocky shift into motherhood,” Im says. “The seven tracks chronologically document the seven stages of emotional states, exploring themes of identity, societal expectations, love, and friendship, before ultimately realising that life exists within the liminal space of In Between”

The EP opens with ‘Role Model’, a track that brings subtle jazz and soul elements into its pop soundscape. Lyrically, it is an honest exploration of the pressures Im faces in multiple areas of her life and refusal to give in to an unattainable expectation of perfection “I’m only a human…giving my best but I won’t compromise / I’m not one size…I’m not your role model.”

‘Optical Illusion’ is a swinging, funky number that again brings hints of soul into Im’s sound. It is a defiant song that sees Im calling out her critics - “Go on and judge / You don’t know who I am” - as well as having a strong self-empowerment message that she will not be told what to do by anyone: “I won’t answer to another man”.

First single ‘Collide’, a powerful, lush ballad with a stunning vocal performance from Im, was written when she was pregnant and looks back at the paths not taken and the unsettling sensation of your identity changing forever.

‘Superhero’ is a tender love ballad for Im’s husband which builds and builds throughout the song as Im urges her ‘superhero’ to acknowledge his strength “you’re infinitely brighter than just who you think you are / You’re a fighter full of scars / They don’t tell the story of what you’ve overcome so far.”

‘A Team’, probably the EP’s highlight, begins as a gentle piano track before transforming into an upbeat pop song with a shuffling beat as Im sings about how the support network she surrounds herself with - as well as her fans - help her get through everything life throws at her.

The EP ends with two singles. ‘Invincible’, co-written Amy and George Sheppard, is a high powered electronic pop sing which recounts Im’s meeting and relationship with her husband, while the duet with Jude York, title track ‘In Between’ closes the EP. The pared back track is an apt bookend as it explores the journeys of life, the beginnings and ends - “It ends just like it all starts / Hospital wings and graveyards” - and how life is all about the quieter “in between” moments, which can at times be difficult to come to grips with: “I struggle with the in between” Im sings.

Dami Im is an incredibly special artist, and has been ever since she first burst onto the national consciousness in 2013. She has a power to connect with you, one on one, through her music and her magical voice is only getting better with each year. In Between is another triumph for Im, and we sat down with her to chat all about its creation.

Hi Dami, so lovely to see you again. Let's talk about In Between, first of all, I just want to say beautiful, beautiful cover art, it’s just superb. Can you just break it down for me?
Sure. I feel like ‘in between’ has always been the theme of my life. I'm in between being the Korean and an Australian, and more recently being a mum. Coming from a small Korean Christian church background into the mainstream world of music, I always felt like I was not fitting in anywhere. That's what the EP is about, and I wanted the art to reflect the Korean traditional dressing, which is the hanbok, but not in the traditional way, with more modern elements, the regular hairstyle and the crown, which isn’t really part of the traditional outfit.

It looks gorgeous and what really stands out to me as well is, weirdly, the Australian side of it - so many of us are just Third Culture kids over here. You get to that point in your life, where you just go, ‘Oh, I'm going to stop trying to fit into what is expected of me from various camps.’
100%. And you know, a large percentage of Australians were born overseas and this is what it means to be an Australian in a way. There's no one right way to be an Australian. Australian culture celebrates those various different ones that are in between. More recently, with social media platforms people have been able to share more different cultures and subcultures that exist in Australia, and I've seen other Asian and Korean people embrace their culture and food and all of it, and be really proud of it. I wanted to be part of that as well, just embracing it.

I absolutely love that and I couldn't agree more. I also love the fact that your EP opens with ‘Role Model’, which I have the feeling is really what we're talking about. ‘Sometimes I tell the truth, sometimes I smile on cue, I did the best I could’. Can you talk to me about this track?
When people saw the title, they assumed that it's about how I want to be a role model, which is the complete opposite of the song actually, the chorus says ‘I'm not a role model’. It was the first song I wrote out of the whole seven tracks, and I actually ordered the tracks in the order of when I wrote them, chronologically, how things happened. I started this project after I found out I was pregnant. I was really angry, and I was very uncomfortable about the whole pregnancy, not just physically but mainly mentally and thinking about how society views mothers. I've always been so fearful about how things were going to change once I become a mum, how people will look at me differently. Which I don't think is completely true, part of it was just me being so terrified about it. But some of it is based on truth, people do get treated differently once they're a mum, like, ‘you're just a mum now’. I hear that still, from time to time, ‘are you still doing your music or are you just a mum?’ People mean well, but it's really, really annoying. This song is just me pouring out all those frustrations about how mothers are meant to be this different creature, and sacrifice and just give up everything from yourself.

What’s so great about hearing it was something we've spoken about in the past about those pigeon holes you have been put in and you were you were called mumsy, or referred to as mumsy when you were doing The X-Factor.
Yeah, and that was 10 years ago!

So that fear has been following you around.
100%. Yes, that's right. I was always fearful. That's why I didn't want to become a mum for so long, but I knew I wanted to at some point. It was the right time and everything, but then it was really crossing over to like, ‘Okay, now I'm going to become the thing that I've dreaded’, and how society will then look at me and how I will look at myself. I was crossing over to the dark side and there was no coming back from it. I had to really quickly, in the nine or 10 months of being pregnant, shift my mindset so I wouldn't hate myself after that.

Your, your determination, and sort of stubbornness really resonates as well - I'm not going to do it till I'm ready. Everyone can back off.
Yeah, and I had to figure out is this just me not wanting to do it because people want me to do it so much, or do I want to do it? It was so confusing. I became so defensive, it's just such a loaded topic for me. And then I just thought I need to stop caring about that and just go for it. But then I had this whole album’s worth of emotions to process after that!

Throughout your whole career, you've processed the past, you've sung about your mother, you've gone to all these places. And now I feel like this collection is really running headlong into possibly a very scary rabbit hole. You're sounding really powerful, there's little reflection here, it’s all just ‘here we go’. Which makes this EP sound so beautiful because you’ve got a lot of wind behind you.
Yeah, and I guess I didn't know what this album was going to become. I just went and did sessions and wrote songs while I was pregnant, I couldn't really do too much, I was just so sick. But I pushed through doing these seven songs, and it ended up becoming like a series of events where it starts off really angry, and ‘Collide’ is the song, was the moment I accepted this new season. I had to go, ‘Alright, there's no stopping with this, I'm gonna just collide with my fate and go for it.’ There was a bit of grief about the past, letting go of that, and then accepting it. I actually rewrote it after the baby came and there was this light on the other side, which I didn't know before the baby was out. I just thought it was all doom and gloom to be honest! But after seeing the baby, I was like, wow, I love this as well, as much as I am so tired, and all the negative things associated with being a mum, I didn't see the amazing new life that I would gain from having a child. That was the big turning point for me going ‘here we go’. And then, luckily, the album becomes a little bit more positive after that.

Even ‘Collide’s positive because it's a belter. Up next is ‘Superhero’ and I like that we're talking about babies, because I feel like it's a lullaby for a grown up.
I love that! I actually wrote ‘Superhero’ about my husband, and he's been through so much in the past. And as we were going through this change together, he was also going through a lot of different things, and he was struggling as well. He took on new study, a university course, and then became a father and all those things, and he was really doubting himself. That's what inspired me to write the song, when you see the person who's the closest to you, doubting themselves and you know that person is strong, so strong, they're the superhero. It's a bit tongue in cheek in a way, but it's like, you've got this in you, you just don't see it, but I've seen your history, I've seen what you've been through, you've got scars to prove all of that. It was a moment to appreciate someone else, and not just about me, everything else it's about me, me, me, me! It's the moment to be like, ‘no, you're amazing, you're the superhero’. I just want to take time to encourage someone. But yeah, it's always a double meaning, encouraging him, but also when I was recording, it encouraged me as well. It was kind of like, ‘Yeah, I've got this’. I mean, it always comes back to me!

Well, that's just humanity isn’t it? It's very hard to be objective all the time.
Yeah, I'm hoping that people listening to it think about themselves when they listen, and it encourages whoever and reminds them of all the things that they've overcome. Everyone's been through so much, through the pandemic, and then through different seasons, like life is hard. People are much tougher than they think, and I just want something to encourage and remind themselves of that.

That's what this album feels like. It feels like resilience, it sounds like resilience. There's a steeliness to it. Musically and lyrically, there's this weight to it and it is uplifting to hear. And then we get to hear your beautiful lyrics as well. To me, you can tell me if I’m wrong, ‘A Team’ feels like a letter to your fans.
100%. It's so easy to focus on the negative, the haters and the doubters. There's always going to be those negative voices that annoy me and everybody. It's so easy to focus on the two people that are hating what you're doing and saying the things that you don't want to hear just to hurt you. I was going to write another, really unhappy, whingey song, and then as I was writing with Jay Bovino, who produced four of the songs on the EP, he reminded me ‘maybe this is about the people that actually do support you and are on your side’. And I thought, ‘you know what? That's actually true’. There's more people that actually are cheering me on. The people closest to you, and the ones that you should care about actually support you in the right way. They'll tell you the negative things when you need to hear it, when you're going the wrong way, they'll let you know, not necessarily what you just want to hear, as well. So ‘A Team’ and a song to dedicate to those people that I actually care about, the fans that really just want to support me. They've stuck by me for so long, ten years some of them and sometimes they might not have agreed with my choices, or the type of music or what I was wearing, necessarily, but they've always been supportive in their own way, just wanting the best for me and being really respectful and patient.

It is beautiful. Of course you have your fans, but it's always the negatives that seep in, that's just how we are as humans, But even to be considering, not just ‘am I mumsy, when do I have a baby’ but also, are people disapproving what I'm wearing? That's a really anxious state to live in for ten plus years.
Yeah. It's funny because if I'm on the red carpet and people criticise the dress or whatever, it's so fine. It's part of the fun. But when I get criticised for what I wore at the airport that paparazzi happened to take a picture of, well, I didn't want to be seen by anybody, you know, I was just getting on the flight to go home. That's not a nice feeling. But it also feels like such a small thing to complain about. People that really matter to me, they wouldn't say anything mean they, you shouldn't really pay attention to the ones that are just being nasty.

No, but it is tricky for everyone to whittle it out, and most of us aren't getting our photo taken at the airport! Thank god.
I'm so petty, I'll write songs about it and thank god there’s cowriters who go ‘we don't need the music to be about the haters all the time.’ And I'm like, yeah, you're so right. Don't waste your breath!

Tell me, you've got a delicious tour, which people are going to be eating up, for In Between. Talk to me about this, can you hint on any surprises we're going to be seeing on this tour?
It's only a very small tour, it's more of an album launch. A handful of shows starting from my hometown, we are actually really nervous about it. Not in a bad way, but for me and the band, the very first show is the hometown show, and we've got friends coming and that always makes us really nervous. I don’t know what it is, we're happy they're coming but it freaks me out so much! We're going to be playing songs from the new EP, but also the best tracks of the last ten years. It's like a celebration of the Dami Army and the journey that we've been on together. I want it to be really different from my previous shows, I want more of a complete show than the other ones. I just want it to to be really great. I'm putting a lot a lot of thought into it!

That’s a beautiful goal, ‘I want it to be great’. And of course, I cannot wait to see the social media stories of the audience losing their shit when you pay ‘A Team’ to them! There's going to be a lot of tears.
I hope so, it'll be interesting, especially the first show in Brisbane, because no one's gonna know that song, it would only have come out on that day. Unless they went crazy and just studied it, which you can do that if you're coming, but I don't expect you to. So it'll be just me and the band. It's a showcase, that's the nature of it. I just want it to be sonically and visually just beautiful. With the band, we talked about it, it should be a sonic buffet of sound that satisfies everybody. And get the message across, because people haven't heard it yet.

Congratulations on a powerhouse of an EP, it's really beautiful. Enjoy the joy the pants out of the show!
I’m so looking forward to and so stressed at the same time! But once the show kicks off, I won't be stressed - but until then I'm gonna be so stressed!

In Between is out now via ABC Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Dami Im you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

In Between Tour Dates
7 July - Powerhouse Underground Theatre, Brisbane
8 July - Chapel Off Chapel, Melbourne
13 July - Sydney Opera House Studio, Sydney
14 July - Street Theatre, Canberra
15 July - Avoca Beach Theatre, Central Coast