Jamie Park Is Ready To Show The World Who She Is Anew At Warner Music Korea

At 22-years-old, Jamie Park has spent the majority of the past decade in the spotlight after taking the top spot in a South Korean singing competition show in 2011, fittingly dubbed K-pop Star. Since then, she’s been part of pop duo 15&, a soloist, a talk show host, and, most recently, a podcaster. For the majority of her career, she was signed under JYP Entertainment, a K-pop heavyweight, until her contract with the company ended last August, shortly after the release of her July 2019 single “Stay Beautiful.” Now she’s back, signing with Warner Music Korea earlier this month, and she’s ready to start anew.

Formerly known as “Park Jimin” professionally, the new step of Park’s career has the young singer not only moving labels but also embracing the name she grew up with, Jamie, as a nod to how she wants to share more of herself with the world. Though she had already emphasized the different elements of her identity through special Jamie-oriented tracks in the past, including an alternate version of her 2019 single “Stay Beautiful,” Park is now ready for everyone to see past the idea of who they think Jimin is to see her for who she really is as Jamie.

Despite the global coronavirus pandemic, which has caused many music industries across the world to come to a halt but only minimally slowed down South Korea’s, Jamie announced the news of her stage name change on April 21 as she signed with Warner, and took some time a few days later to chat about what this all means for her.

Tamar Herman: Congratulations on signing with Warner. How do you feel? It took you awhile to sign somewhere new since leaving JYP, right? 

Jamie Park: Yea, it took some time. Every sunbae [senior] was talking to me, saying like, “You should make a good decision because it’s like your second life.” Usually, when you end a contract [in Korea] a person makes their decisions in two, three months. But it took like seven, eight months for me. Finally, I just went for Warner and Warner took me. I think it’s a good time, it’s good that I waited.

Herman: What led you to take longer than is typical?

Park: Mostly, I wanted to take my own time because I didn’t really have that. I just started singing, all these schedules due to entertainment. Now, I just wanted to do something independent, something for me, to make my own decision. It wasn’t that long, but I still had a lot of experiences being me, just myself, without the company. I was like, “Wow, freedom.” But now I want to be kind of settled down in a company.

I think it was the right time to make a decision. I did everything that I could, besides music. Because for seven years I just went to work, made music, go to work, sleep, make music. It was all about music. But now I did my [English-language What Would Jamie Do?] podcast, I did my YouTube [channel], I was collaborating with other artists, launching my clothesline… It’s not really big, but still something other than music. I went to other cities, I went to other countries, but… Corona… Before corona, I had all these big opportunities that I could do with my friends and everything. But now, the fans are waiting, I want to put out music. I know I can’t do it on my own because, I don’t know. I need help still. I need to learn. I think I’m in the stage of still learning. It felt like I graduated my university and now I’m fighting for a company to really show my abilities, and Warner was the place. I’ve been studying, taking all these classes, of sorts, during my seven years at JYP, and now I’m ready to show what I’ve learned. It’s pretty cool. Now I’m outside my home, just trying to find a new place to start. 

Herman: And you’re pretty young to already have such a long career under your belt. After having so much experience already, how does it make you feel to get a chance to start fresh? 

Park: For those seven years, I had big ups and downs during which I learned a lot at JYP and in all these situations. And now I’m ready to handle it all, big downs and ups. For me, I only have good vibes [for the present] because I have a lot of good people around me that keep on helping me and cheering me up. 

Herman: You’ve been really sharing a new side to yourself with fans recently through the podcast and other activities, and now you’re starting anew with a new label and formally changing your stage name to “Jamie” rather than “Jimin.” How does it feel to be rebranding?

Park: I think I just really needed this, because my mom and dad will call me “Jamie.” My friends call me “Jamie.” I was called “Jamie” since I was young, since I was a baby. My cousins gave the name to me. It’s not a really big change for me to be called “Jamie,” but I think the Korean fans and other people who don’t know me as Jamie may be like, “Oh, she changed her name to ‘Jamie.’ Is there going to be a big change? Is she going to start a rebrand, start everything anew?” Which isn’t what I would say. Of course, there are going to be some changes. Of course, there’s going to be things I can show differently. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to throw everything away and be like, “Jimin Park is done and I’m Jamie, and it’s new.” It’s not like that. I just wanted to show everyone that it’s upgraded, my music. And what my real personality is in music. It’s very exciting too, actually being called “Jamie” outside my group of friends. 

Herman: It sounds like, to you, there’s a big difference between Jimin and Jamie. 

Park: I would say that there is. I wouldn’t say that Jimin was a fake version of me, though. Of course, that is another me. But it was something that didn’t show off who I am, it was something that maybe people wanted to see. I never really felt 100 percent me while singing in those Jimin years. But I don’t regret it, because I think that it was the only time that I can sing those songs, when I was in my early ‘10s and teens. Now I’m in my twenties, I just want to show who I really am and what I want to talk about. My life, my songs. It’s just really fun. I’ve been telling everyone that it’s like the duality of me. 

Herman: Are you already working on new music? 

Park: It’s not going to take so long. I’m going to be seeing… Another comeback when it’s kind of hot in Korea. Summer vibes. Because the corona is crazy here too, so we’re just trying to see how it goes. I’m still working. When the weather is getting a little warm, I think, we’ll be ready to start something.

Herman: How do you hope to represent who you are now in your music? Are there any themes you hope to get to address in your upcoming releases? I know on your podcast you’re really frank about your life and feelings. 

Park: The only thing is that I want to keep it real. I am going to sing into my 60s and 70s and 80s, if I can. The only thing I want to focus on is real talk. This is not fake, this is not a made-up story. It’s what I’ve been through, or what I’ve felt in this situation. Nearly all my songs are written by me. Most of this was not easy to do when I was in JYP because we needed to get that attention from all the people, right? It took a long time to complete a song. It’s not only for me. It’s not only my song that I’m going to hear alone. Everybody needs to know what I’m talking about. Now, since I’ve moved [companies], my goal is to talk about my story. I just want to be a role model to young girls. I want them to look at me and be like, “Oh, you don’t have to be perfect, you can just be happy.” I just want to have a good vibe that gives them happiness and positive thoughts when they see me singing and hearing my songs. I think that’s going to be my goal, my number one thing while I make music.

Herman: And you’re the first local Korean artist to sign with Warner Korea, so it must be a total change of pace of things versus how it was at JYP, where it sounds like it was quite a process to put out something. Does it feel like you’re getting the chance to really focus on what you want now versus how it was was within a major K-pop company? 

Park: I know that it’s not only going to be positive all of the time. There are always negatives, and there’s always the other side that thinks the choices that I make, or the songs that I make, would not be 100 percent their style. But, if no one is going to try, who is going to try? I don’t think it’s like, “Oh, maybe we should wait until someone tries it first.” I don’t  want to do that anymore. I want to do something that no one tried, while also giving positive vibes to everyone. While I was in this industry, the biggest thing that I was feeling is that everyone needs to be in perfect shape. I’m talking about looks, I’m talking about diet, I’m talking about vocals, raps, just everything needs to be a perfect idol, idealistic, figure. I just want to show that you don’t have to be changing yourself 100 percent to be someone that you’re not. You don’t have to change yourself to be someone like your idol. You can be someone’s idol just by being you. But also, it takes a lot of work and time to be that sort of person.

Herman: Do you feel like you have an obligation to step up to be that first person because you don’t see others doing it? 

Park: I don’t want to put it like, “I want to be the first person who does it.” [Laughs] I just want to do it. I want to show them. It’s not aggressive. I just want to show them what I’ve been preparing. I am that person. And I am really confident to tell, even to my friends and my dongsaengs [younger friends] and hoobaes [juniors], if they’ve been stressing out, “There’s always things you have to let go of to achieve somethings. But there’s always something you cannot give up: you cannot forget yourself. And still you can achieve that.” For me, I’ve learned that really hard. I’ve been through a lot of throwing myself away, and finding my way back. Making myself who I wasn’t, then finding me back. I’m not saying I’m in the perfect stage of, “I know who I am.” But still. I want to show that it’s not the only thing you have to focus on. There are a lot of things that can make you happy and still achieve what you want. I think that’s important for me to sing on stage and show them as a singer. 

Herman: You mentioned going through a lot of ups and downs. What has helped you when you’ve faced those sort of moments? 

Park: For me, I’m the kind of character, even if someone tells me before, “Jimin, if you do this…” or “Jamie, if you do this, you’re going to regret it or you’re going to get hurt,” I need to be in a situation. I need to feel it, even if they warned me before. I think that’s for everyone. They need to be in a situation to learn that maybe a decision was not the best decision they can make. I still want to tell them, “You still made that decision, and it’s you on your own. You made it.” So all my downs… I’ve been in a lot of situations that I thought was the right decision then it turned out now. Or everyone would say, “You’ve failed” or “Everyone’s better than you,” “Look at you, she’s up there but what are you doing?” I’ve been through a lot of situations like that, but just the one thing that didn’t make me go down and let go of all the things I’ve done, I just believed in myself. And there are a lot of supportive friends next to me. Just by thinking at that time, “I can’t stop. I can’t do nothing. I need to keep moving.” I need to tell everyone who wanted to stop, “Don’t stop. You gotta go out and start moving.” And that’s one of the goals I want to show in my music.

Herman: You said people were telling you, “Look at you, she’s up there.” Was that about someone specific? I know I can’t help but think of your former 15& partner, Baek Yerin.

Park: There were a lot. There was Lee Hi. There was Baek A-yeon. There was Baek Yerin. All the soloist singers.

Herman: Oh, right, you’re all around the same age, a whole generation of young, talented soloists. 

Park: Yea, we are! [Laughs] I give a lot of respect to them. But that’s just what people see, right? I cannot lie, it kind of hurts. I kind of got hurt by those words because it’s partially true. Even though I do respect their songs and achievements, I, of course, wanted to do better. There were so many people working with me, and that’s the biggest thing I felt bad about. There were so many people pushing me, like, “Omigosh, Jimin, I hope this works, I hope this gets the best results for you.” But [chart] scores matter a lot in Korea, and when the score is not as much as they worked towards, I really feel sad and bad for them. But they never gave up on me because the score was low. They didn’t give up on me. So when I tried to give up on my career… I can’t. I can’t just let it go because I felt sad or bad, you know? 

Herman: It sounds like you have a lot of really good people around you.  

Park: I do. I do… And if it weren’t for them, I don’t think I could have come this far, to be honest. Because they believed in me, and they always tell me, “You know what? There are a lot of people that support you and believe in you, but the biggest thing that matters is that you believe in yourself. You need to keep going.” That just pushed me until right now, and I found Warner, you know?   

Herman: You mentioned that you want to do music until you’re in your 80s. And it reminded me of a viral clip of you asking JYP to release a new album after a lengthy break. It must have been stressful for you as an artist who wants to spend your whole life doing this, not being able to release the music you want, when you want. 

Park: Partially, that show was 100 percent jokes. For me, deep down, I feel I really needed that time. I really need that big break to find what music I want to do, what songs I want to sing in the future. I don’t want to keep, you know, just focusing on music in the short term, aiming to be No. 1 and then disappear. I want to take this career as long as I can, and that’s why I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do anything that could harm my neck. JYP himself [JYP founder J.Y. Park] he told me, “Jimin, the long run is the winner. You can’t look at the next two, three years to be your goal forever. You need to look 10, 20.” That made me think, “Wow, I need to rethink it all again. I’m not going to just be a blinking star and then vanish.” For me, I want to thank JYP for actually giving me the time to find myself and let me have time to find what music I want to do, because entertainment doesn’t really let you have time, it’s all money, money, money. But he just gave me some time. He gave me all the time he could. I wrote songs I gave to him. He would always say something about it, he’d give me direction or corrections. Of course, I made it as a joke like, “Give me an album.” But in my real deep heart, I thank JYP for giving me that time. 

Herman: Do you think that starting your career so young made it necessary for you to take that time mid-career? 

Park: I think it was both good and bad, fifty-fifty. Because, for me, as a character, I always need to be perfect. I need perfection in every stage and the songs that I do. Which is not an easy thing to do. Which is why if I had more time to work on my music, then I think I would not regret all the songs I did on stage. I would be like, “Ah, I could do better” after some stages. But showing every side of me, even if it was not perfect, I feel really thankful because my fans still love me for that. I mean, the past is the past. I don’t want to regret it, so I just want to fix it and do better in the future. That’s what I think these days. 

[At the start] I was so nice to everyone. I didn’t have my own opinion at the time, to be honest. If they wanted to do that, I’d be like, “Okay, let’s do it.” I just ran along with it because I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what songs I wanted to do. If they gave me a song, I just did it. But now I know what I want to do, and I know what I want to sing. If I kind of found that earlier, I don’t think I would have struggled as much. But I don’t regret it anymore. Regretting is one of the things I don’t do. 

Herman: A few times as you were talking, you mentioned this idea of you as a character. Would you mind expanding on that? 

Park: When I was named as “Jimin Park” I put aside “Jamie” for the music that I wanted to do, and showed different kinds of music I could do for fans and everyone. For the last album, there’s actually a “Jamie” version and a “Jimin” version. There would always be some B-side tracks that I would say, “If I were Jamie, I would do these kinds of songs.” I would always call “Jamie” a character, another me inside. But now I am Jamie and I changed my name to Jamie. So Jimin will be another character for me, and Jamie is going to be me. It’s changed, it’s swapped.

Herman: Is there anything you look back on and think, “I wish I hadn’t done that” or “I wish I had done that differently”? 

Park: I mean, all of my audition days [on K-pop Star]. I was 13, 14. Not really talking about performances, but how I talked… I feel like I showed all my baby days to everyone. [Laughs] I don’t know them, but they know me from when I was 13. So it’s just like… They know me too well, even though I don’t know them. In those ways, it kind of makes me like… Maybe I want to keep things anonymous a little bit. I’m trying to change it to a positive vibe. “Yea, yea, I’m the 13-year-old girl who sang ‘Rolling in the Deep’ and ‘Over the Rainbow.” People will still come up to me and be like, “Oh, I know you, and I know you did this, and I know you don’t eat this.” Like… Wow, I don’t remember that, but you know a lot about me that kind of slipped aside and I forgot, since it was 10 years ago. But they still remember me as that girl. I’ve been on a blind date where this person knew me so well. In a way, I’m really thankful and happy, but also like… Wow… I don’t know how I’d feel now if I hadn’t been on that audition program.

Herman: Is there anything you would say to your past self?

Park: I think I would just tell myself, “Don’t get scared. Just go for all the situations that you can. Eventually you’re going to do music, you’re going to find so many good friends. I hope you don’t get scared.” Because I was so scared, I felt like I was alone on an island. I wasn’t living with my parents. I was apart from my family, left alone at a dorm, and I was so scared to do that. But if I go back and I can tell Jimin, myself, I’d be like, “Girl, don’t be scared. Everyone loves you. Just go for it.” I think that made me who I am right now, because I was so scared. Now I know I don’t have to be scared at all. I’m like, “Eh, Jimin. Grow up.” 

Herman: You have a lot of plans for your music, but you also recently started podcasting while you were in between labels, where you’ve been talking a lot about pretty much everything. What’s that experience been like for you? 

Park: To be honest, I was kind of blasting out. Now, everyone is like, “Are you allowed to say that?” But I’m just like, “So what? It’s my thoughts. It’s my podcast. I can do whatever I want.” Nearly all the JYP people who were working there [with me] have been like, “You look so happy, I’m so happy for you even though you’re not in JYP still. Do you. Go girl, get your podcast and do whatever you want.” Yeah, I’m having fun. But now that I’m at Warner I need to cut that down a little bit but, yeah… I was having the best moment of my life as I was talking, doing whatever I want, saying whatever I want. It’s kind of sad that everyone can only know this [side of me] right now, because I’ve been like this for a long time. But now, eventually, they know how I think and I can actually talk about my opinions. This girl has opinions. But I kind of needed to keep that low-key while I was in those boundaries. But now it’s like, “Girl, these are my thoughts and I want you to know about it.” 

My fans were kind of shocked too because they didn’t know that I would actually talk like that. Some fans didn’t know, “Oh yeah, that’s the original Jamie. It’s been hard for her not to show all these sides of her.” It was like 50 positive [feedback], but 40 [percent] were like, “Wow, it doesn’t match her songs, it doesn’t match her image.” Of course, a lot of fans did like the side of me, saying that it feels like I’m a really close friend. And I want to give those vibes because I don’t just think of my fans as my fans but they’re really my friends.

Herman: Why do you think it was so important for you not to share those sort of opinions while pursuing the early days of your career?

Park: I mean, it’s for everyone if they’re under a company. You don’t want your thoughts to effect other people. I do understand that. It’s not individual. It’s not a self-company. You’re working with everyone. At the time [that I started podcasting] I didn’t have a company, I was all by myself, I was managing myself. So it was those times that I wanted to show myself. But, at the same time, I was like, “This is not going to go on for long.” [Laughs] Not like that. Of course I’m going to talk about my opinions but maybe not like that with the shouting and clapping, getting aggressive.  

What’s your definition of success for yourself?

I think it’s very simple. You need to be happy for yourself and for the things that you have right now. Because for me, back like two or three years ago, I thought numbers or views or scores made who I was and that’s called success. Partially it’s right, because everyone calls it a success if you make money, if you make scores, if you make views. But, for me, for my whole life, my career, and also my future as myself as Jamie, just being happy and thankful for every little thing is a successful life for me. I found out that’s the easiest and the hardest thing to do at the same time. So while I make music, of course scores and money come to you and it does matter. But I need to be happy for everything that I make and every choice I make. I want to be happy, I want to enjoy it.