For the last couple months, Jennifer Chung has been busy working on her debut album. On June 18th, we got a chance to interview Jennifer at the site of her album recording, Paramount Recording Studios in Hollywood, CA, which is the site of many famous artists‘ recordings from the past and present including Jimi Hendrix, Jackson 5, Led Zeppelin, Black Eyed Peas, Sara Bareilles, and Dr. Dre.
Prior to the interview, we were given the opportunity to listen to two tracks off the upcoming album, “Mystery” and “I Made It“. In “Mystery”, Jennifer’s vocals were accompanied by the piano, acoustic guitar and subtle vocal harmonies which gave the song a very comfortable airy feeling. On the other hand, “I Made It” was very upbeat with a strong bass line which made you want to get up and rock out with Jennifer who was singing along to the song as it was playing.
After listening to the songs, we sat down with Jennifer to talk about her upcoming album and her journey to where she is today.
< Could you tell us about your album in general? >
Jennifer: The songs are all originals. Some people may recognize a lot of them because they were written since I was 18 and now I’m 21. It’s cool because the songs that they may recognize have twists and turns now cause I’ve grown up more and I’m working with musicians who can help me arrange it. It’s very soul-pop, pop because of the catchy-ness, but soulful because that’s what I grew up with. Singing with the belting divas like Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, but still being influenced by the pop that I grew up with. Jason Mraz is one of my influences. India Arie has that R&B soulfulness in her. And Brooke Fraser is a singer that I really enjoy and not a lot of people know about her in my inner circle, but she’s huge in Australia. The album is basically a lot of pop-soul.
< How is this experience different from when you recorded your debut EP? >
Jennifer: It is so different. So different. [For my EP] I literally did all the vocal tracks in 3 days. This one, we are definitely taking our time. I have a full band and people I got to choose to work with. My EP was under a different management at the time and I was young, I was 18 back then. This time I’m really taking my time. I feel like I have more of a say in what I want to do and my vision is bigger too because I’ve also written more. Even though we are recording a bunch of songs, we don’t know if everything is going to go into the album. We’ll see how everything fits together. Even if you listen to “Mystery” and “I Made It”, they’re still really different. But I still feel that the core of it is the same, so we just need to find that aligning line.
< So, do you feel as though you have grown not only as a person but as an artist as well? >
Jennifer: I hope so. I hope that people who have been following me for a while can hear that. That there is a difference, a good difference. And [I hope that] people who have no idea who I am hear it and like it and want to continue listening to it.
< If you could collaborate with any artist, dead or alive, who would it be? >
Jennifer: Brooke Fraser because you can tell in her writing that she isn’t just about superficial things in life. She really touches base with working from the ground up. Her voice elevates from all the instruments. There’s a lot of things going on in the production of songs: drums, bass, guitar, electric guitar, strings, orchestra,… but when the voice can really lift up from all of that, I feel like that’s talent. The words are good and it’s just an all-around good song, but if anyone else sang it, it would’ve been different. That’s the feeling that I get from her. Cause I feel that in order for you to be an artist, it has to be who you are. I’ve sung songs where I didn’t write them, I still enjoy them, and I interpret them in my own way, but there really is nothing like singing your own song and doing because it’s from personal experience. If you don’t go through heartache and you sing a heartbroken love song, it’s different.
< Since we’re a K-pop website, if you could collaborate with any Korean artist, who would it be? >
Jennifer: I actually really love Kim Bum Soo, Hwayobi, Big Mama; People who can really sing… Yangpa, I grew up with when I was younger. I love Kim Bum Soo.
< Is there any song that you wish was yours? >
Jennifer: It’s funny cause I always cover songs anyways. It’s either between Brooke Fraser or India Aire. But from Brooke Fraser, there is a song called “Albertine“. She wrote about when she visited Rwanda. She was taken on a tour about the genocide that happened there and they requested to not let people forget about the genocide. She wrote a song about Albertine, which is one of the girls that she met that lost all of her family members. She ended up writing that song and titling her album “Albertine”. And every time she did a show, she would sing it because she promised that she would never let people forget. I think that’s so crazy because she’s taking, not just her celebrity status, but using it for good and still singing it so honestly. Yea, that’s a good song. Untouchable.
< What has kept you going with all your videos, even in the midst of album production? >
Jennifer: If you notice, my videos are very plain Jane right now because we all have lives and in order for me to support myself, I have to work on top of performing and doing my music thing. Since I’m from the Bay area, if I want to stay here, I have to pay the bills. I have student loans to pay off. I’m a real person. I’m not always in front of my computer, though my friends would disagree. I’ve posted videos since I was 17 and I’m 21 now, I’m going to turn 22 in September. Since then, I’ve posted videos and now it’s a habit, it’s part of my life. It’s cool because for me it’s a yearbook. I could look at a video and be like “I remember where I was”, “I remember what I was going through at that time”, “Why am I wearing that?”, “Just had dance practice”, things like that.
You know when you look in yearbooks and you see your friends and you wonder what they are doing now. Sometimes I’ve shot videos with people and I think “I wonder what they are doing right now?” It’s nice to see how you’ve changed throughout the years. There are times when I would not post videos for a long time. I don’t want to feel the pressure that I have to do it because since the beginning, I never had to, so I shouldn’t have to now, but it’s because I want to. I want to be able to share music with people, even if it’s songs that they don’t know about but because I love it and feel that those artists should be heard. Or even thanking fans. Fans is a new term for me, I’m used to saying subscribers. Taking fans’ requests. I think it’s something that I want to keep doing as long as it’s still fun. No pressure.
< You have a degree in Theater, do you have any plans to go into Theater or Musical Theater? >
Jennifer: Oh man, it’s a dream. One of my goals in life is to play Kim in Miss Saigon and be in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. But we’ll see. I always wanted to work for Disney. I’m a Disneyland passholder, but we’ll see where it goes. With theater I feel that you should be going out on auditions and working on your resume right now. But if I did, I wouldn’t be able to do this. Music was my first love. Music is the reason why I started acting anyway, because I wanted to do musical theater. I went to UCI (University of California, Irvine) and doing theater there is great. They have a great arts program. I was questioning whether or not I wanted to go for the B.F.A. (Bachelors of Fine Arts) in Musical Theater but I knew that if I graduated earlier, then I could try to pursue music. So I graduated in 3 years because I wanted to get a kick start on my album. I can’t imagine if I didn’t because then I wouldn’t be wrapping up my album now. Everything happens for a reason. We’re Asian so we age pretty gracefully. I’ll probably look 18 forever.
< When can we expect this album to be released? >
Jennifer: We’re thinking, beginning of October, maybe end of September. Time is going by so fast. 2011 man. I can’t believe it. So it’s probably going to come out really soon. Like a baby, it’s just going to pop out. Suddenly, it’ll just come out. So I hope people are excited, I hope people are anticipating it. I felt like I did a good job in staying low key for a while. When I was trying to finish school, I studied abroad in France. When I was back there, I couldn’t make videos as much because I stayed with a home stay family in France. I didn’t want then to think I was crazy, singing in front of my computer. Coming back now, I’ve been posting up more videos, moreso than before. Just to let people know, I’m still singing.
< What are your plans for the summer or long-term goals? >
Jennifer: We’ll see where this album takes us. The sky’s the limit. Just putting it out there and hopefully the right people hear it. If not, this is definitely an experience I’m very blessed to have. There are a lot of great artists out there, but you have to have the confidence that there are people who support you and I feel that people have been supporting me for the past 4 years. If there weren’t I couldn’t be where I am today. So just as a thank you to them too. Thank you for believing in me cause look at where I am now.
Following Jennifer’s interview, we met with Jennifer’s manager and executive producer of the album Jonathan Chang as he gave us a more behind-the-scenes perspective on Jennifer’s upcoming debut album
< What role do you play in this whole project? >
Jon: I am Jennifer’s manager and I am the executive producer on the album. That doesn’t really mean anything (laughs). I don’t contribute musically. I hear the tracks and I give my input. I kind of make sure the ships running smoothly and everyone is on schedule, that kind of stuff. We finance it as well.
< How did you start working with Jennifer? >
Jon: I get this question a lot. With Jennifer, at that time we had already managed Clara C and we were looking to expand at that point. So at that time we were researching a lot of artists online and seeing them live. We did reach out to a couple people to get feelers out there. I think what a lot of API (Asian and Pacific Islander) artists lack is structure. I think a lot are great at creating content but a lot of them don’t know how to use a strategy that content, like how to push it out. So when we saw Jennifer’s stuff, she’s amazing. When you see someone in front of a webcam and they sound good, you just know that when you put them in the studio, it’s going to be amazing. So when we contacted Jenn, I think she had just left for France, so we actually didn’t hook up until she got back from France. We signed her about 5 months ago, but we’ve been pretty quite about it because she wanted to song write and get her stuff ready. I mean, when we saw Jennifer, she’s amazing live and she’s a genuine nice person. So that’s definitely something that we are looking for in an artist.
< How has this whole process been so far? >
Jon: Jenn’s album is going okay, mainly because Clara was the guinea pig. With Clara’s stuff, we had no idea what we were doing. With Jenn’s album, we had a team in place for her and as far as a recording team, publishing team, and a media team and all that stuff. So we walked into Jenn’s project extremely confident. We already knew that the content would be good. We had all the teams in place so it’s been very smooth so far. Stress levels have been a lot better. We’re really excited about the tracks. I think it’s something that you’ve never heard from Jenn, ever. I think a lot of people will be blown away by it.
< Since you have heard the songs that are being recorded for the album, what do you think of it so far? >
Jon: It’s really good. The main thing we tried to do with this album is we tried to mix up the sound. You have a little be of pop-y tracks and a little bit of more soul, some acoustic. There is a lot of different genres that you are going to hear with this. I think that’s extremely important for any artist. I think if you just stick with what you are good at, that’s all you are going to get. There is nothing wrong with just sticking with one thing but we want to create a full package. Some of the tracks, we already know what we want to do with them. We have music video concepts ready to push it out with when it comes out and so we’re really excited.
< What are your expectations and hopes for this album? >
Jon: Platinum… I’m just joking. A lot of people ask us, “How many do you expect to sell?”. Honestly, even with Clara, I don’t even know how much we sold so far. Numbers have never been our objective. Our objective is always to put out a good product. Beyond that scope is to expand the API community. A lot of people get comfortable doing Youtube and doing their own project that they forget about expanding to the other races; to the African Americans, to the Caucasians, to everyone else. I think that’s what we’re trying to do on top of making good music. To further the cause, not only Jennifer’s cause but for the next generation of Asian American people. At least that’s my goal too. That’s why when we partner with Kollaboration, we scout who we think is up and coming talent and say, “We want you on board as well, we want you to open for Clara’s gig, we want you to get exposure to.” It’s not all about us, it’s about the whole community.
< Are there any random moments that you remember while recording so far? >
Jon: Yea, there’s a lot. This is one of the nicest studios in LA. We were here four weeks ago and we were tracking and I talked to the receptionist and she said, ‘Glee is in the studio.’ So Glee was recording right here. Then we were eating out in the hall and Nephew. He’s a two-time Grammy winning producer. He walked by and heard Jenn’s stuff and said, “That’s amazing. I want to work with her.” We didn’t know who Nephew was so we Googled him and he was Michael Jackson’s producer, Neyo’s producer, two-time Grammy winner. He said, “I’m tracking Glee right now but let me jump in your session later and see what you guys have”. So we’re hooking up with him to do stuff. Opportunities have come to us through this studio and we are very grateful for them. It’s been a lot of fun.
Jennifer’s debut album will have 10-12 tracks and is being produced by Bryan Keith Malolot. The album is being mixed by Stephen Lee, who has previously produced or mixed for Clara C, Feats In Inches, and Dumbfoundead, The Nehemiah Band amongst others, and Daniel Chae, who has worked as a producer and mixer on projects with Clara C, Joseph Vincent, Dumbfoundead and Jay Park (including “Clouds“). Other people involved include members of her session, electric guitarist Michael Jung and bassist Leonard Budirahardjo.
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