Here are my credentials (again): Like a lot of people who became kpop fans around the 2019 / 2020 era, I first learned about Eric Nam through DIVE Studios’ interview program The Daebak Show, where he’s interviewed a lot of my favorite artists, both in English and Korean. Though I’ve known he was a singer too, I didn’t become a fan until recently, and I figured that since his new album is coming out soon, now would be a good time to write this review. So, let’s get into it!

(Part One)

EP #4: The Other Side

Though Paradise begins with a simple piano-based beat, fear not; before half a minute’s gone by, we’re spiraling into another worthy entry in the synthpop category. I’m always impressed when songs go back and forth between languages, and this one is no exception, dancing along the tightrope with what at least feels like practiced ease. Like with Honestly from the first half, I’m wishing the song opted for a more expansive chorus, rather than an instrumental breakdown in the second half, but I can’t deny that it’s still quite strong. The music video takes a different route than his past ones, melding the ideas of “paradise” and “nightmare” and asking, in your own mind, where does one end and another begin? The quick-change style of cuts and the colorful shots reminded me of Everything Everywhere All At Once, in a good way. Overall, the song’s a package deal, and it’s quite a good one.

In this mini album we return to Korean, with the light, breezy The Trouble With You, and my hidden gem, How You Been. I love the way its chorus takes off, especially in comparison to how solemn the rest of the song is.

Album #2: There And Back Again

I Don’t Know You Anymore was the first song I ever heard of Eric Nam, so I confess that I might be a bit unfair in my praise for it. It’s a testament, I think, to how good he is at stripping a song down to bare bones and building it back up again, at simple lyrics that still pack a punch, and of course, a great beat. There’s a lot of great lines in there, (“now you gaslight me with thunder and lightning”, “you wanted the moon and the stars and the whole galaxy // I gave you my heart and you gave it back missing a piece”) but best of all is that the song never loses its momentum. Also, I love the music video. It’s so over the top in a way I’m really here for; trust that I mean it as a high compliment when I say it looks like a girl singing her heart out in front of her mirror. Anyway, I really like this song, and I think it’s one of his best.

Where I Don’t Know You Anymore places most of the blame with the other party, Lost On Me takes the opposite route, both acknowledging fault and the fact that most of the time, no one is evil. I especially like the way he looks at love: not necessarily as something clean. Relationships aren’t straight lines that either end in marriage and five kids or go up in flames. Love can be so many things, and in this case, it can make you better, even though it ends: “When we met I was stuck in a troubled head space // tried to carry me through but I was dead weight”, “Though the show might be over // You should know: your love wasn’t lost on me.” I also quite like the vocals. They aren’t anything crazy, but the song is harder to sing than it sounds, and they’re really solid all the way through.

With these songs comes Eric’s second album, There And Back Again, which I do like but don’t find as strong as some of his others. Both What If with its catchy beat and Admit with its strumming guitar rank around my favorite songs on the album, but it’s tough to choose.

Album #3: House On A Hill

House On A Hill may technically be a pre-release and not an official single, but it’s one of my favorites from the album, and I wanted to talk about it anyway. With how picky I am about featured artists (in kpop especially where they often appear for two seconds to rap and then dip), you might be surprised to hear that I actually think this is a great collab. Em Beihold, who I actually first heard about through this, not only sings a verse on her own but joins Eric for the last minute of the song. Not only that, but their voices sound great together, and I think it helps that this song, with its self-reflective lyrics and acoustic-meets-synth beat wouldn’t sound out of place in her catalog at all.

Onto the song itself. Beyond the vocals, House On A Hill is one of Eric’s most honest songs to date, delving into his insecurities and his fears that he’ll never truly be happy, even with everything he wanted, even with the “house on a hill.” (“Yeah, the grass is green, but I wish it was greener” // “Yeah, the sky is blue, but I wish it was bluer.”) And then, it questions: “What if I get everything I want // What if being happy isn’t what I thought?” Though I highly doubt everyone reading this blog is in the same place as Eric in terms of fame, I think we can all relate to that feeling of constantly chasing the next best thing and never letting ourselves be happy and satisfied. It’s comforting in a way, to know that someone I admire feels that way too.

Only For A Moment occupies an odd space in Eric Nam’s love song catalog, describing not an entire story but just the couple of seconds of locking eyes with a stranger that could be a beginning. I think we’ve all met a stranger who we make an instant connection with, whether it’s someone who we give directions to, someone who takes a photo of us and our friend while traveling, or just someone we have an interesting conversation with. It’s a personal favorite topic for my own writing but I so rarely hear it covered, and I think Only For A Moment covers it well. The music video combines this with a spoof of the Matrix, all happening in Eric’s head in the split second he meets someone on a busy subway. It’s a little goofy, sure, but good all the same.

On to the album, which is one of my absolute favorites, not only of Eric’s but of kpop in general. There isn’t a song I don’t like, so I’ll just go in order. In My Mind has great vocals, both Eric’s and the featured artist Zak Abel’s. As for Strawberries all I have to say about it is: Eric, please tell me what lipstick you know that tastes like strawberries because all the ones I know taste like chemicals that are probably giving me cancer. I love a girl, get on your feet, it’s gonna be okay, crying-on-the-Dancefloor song, and Don’t Leave Yet is that to a T. I Wish I Wasn’t Me is in a similar vein, like House on A Hill, also a meditation on fame and self worth. The chorus’ main hook, “Let’s give em a show, bring out the marching band”, reminds me of I Can Do It With A Broken Heart by Taylor Swift.

My hidden gem from the album was 100% Hypochondriac, which I’ve loved since before this deep dive. I love a good extended metaphor, and this song pairs the idea of a fear of illness with a fear of intimacy that feels very relatable. It’s synthy and punchy, simple but strong, one of the pinnacles of his discography in my opinion. There’s so many good rhymes in there too: medicine and adrenaline, hypochondriac and heart attack, etc. I dream of making a rhyme that good.

Single #3: How The Fire Started

How The Fire Started comes after Eric’s stint on the reality TV show The Traitors, and features several of his co-stars in its music video, a fun spoof on a silent western with its ranch setting and its black-and-white text card shots. Like a lot of his best songs, it’s undeniably goofy, and yet it works. Something like this only works when you commit 100%, and everyone in How The Fire Started commits. As for the song itself, while I wouldn’t rank it at the top, it’s still pretty good. It has all of the elements that make his music work, but it’s up against stiff competition. I might not search it out but I won’t complain if it comes up on shuffle either.

Album #4: Confessions of A Lonely Heart

For someone who’s never been through the kind of breakup you write a song about, I love a breakup song, and Miss Me More is a great one, with a soaring chorus, a pounding beat, and just enough self-aware humor to make you smile. I admit I started chuckling at the scenes of him singing into a shaving razor in front of his mirror, shaking ass at karaoke, and literally levitating while listening to sad music (on what I think is a mixtape?). But there’s still an emotional through line; when the song starts, you’re expecting it just to stay in the realm of “screw you, I bet you miss me”, and then the final chorus’ admission of “I miss you more” hits like a gut punch, because you realize that the whole song is a confession.

Psycho further leans into the ridiculousness hinted at in Miss Me More, with a girlfriend that asks him to become a movie star and him, as the title insinuates, him taking this to the absolute extreme. He spends the music video imitating various “psychos” in famous movies, from The Shining to Die Hard to Silence of The Lambs to, of course, Psycho and American Psycho, with 110% commitment. As for the song itself, it’s honestly one of my absolute favorites of his. The combination of those now-trademark synths with both acoustic and electric guitars and a really crisp rock edge is genuinely fantastic. By the time you get to the final chorus, you find yourself swept away in this mess of a romance almost as much as he is.

Some songs feel like the singer’s laid their heart on a table for you to cut open, and my first hidden gem, Make Me Cry, is one of them. It pulls no punches when it comes to confessing its fears about intimacy: “I’m scared of what you’ll think if you see me naked // But my greatest fear is that I’m gonna die alone.”, “What if it’s real? // I’m terrified.” And yet there’s hope; the fear doesn’t go away, but the song ends bravely anyway: “The old me would have run, but I’m not backing down. // “Rip my heart out, baby, here’s the knife; make me cry.”

My second hidden gem, Lighthouse, is a power ballad if ever there was one, about finally accepting that you need help and forcing yourself to ask for it (“Are you hearing me scream through the storm? // I can’t fight the waves, pull me out.”) . I love an extended metaphor, and this one, while maybe not the most unique, is incredibly effective. Eric’s vocals are at some of their absolute best here, and feel like they’re tugging at your heart. I can’t say exactly what it was about the song, the vocals or the lyrics or maybe just me, but Lighthouse has the distinction of being the first song I’ve reviewed in months that genuinely made me tear up.

As for the rest of the songs of the album, they all add another dimension to the themes of loneliness. Reverie talks about the moment right before the end, before the car crash, when you know it’s coming but you close your eyes anyway. Someday ends the album with joy, and the assertion that though it’s not here yet, it will be. “Someday,” he says, “I’m going to catch everything that’s passing me by.” Confessions Of A Lonely Heart, to me, feels a lot like a sequel to House On A Hill, pushing further forward into the uncomfortable, messy spaces between love, loneliness, and insecurity, propelled by a succession of synths, drums, and guitars. Though I don’t think it quite eclipses how much I like House on A Hill, I can’t deny that it’s a really strong album.

Verdict: TL;DR

I’m glad I did this! Despite considering myself at least a casual fan before this deep dive, I can absolutely call myself a genuine fan after this. I don’t always feel like I get the chance to know who an artist is when I review them, what with so many groups especially being very careful with what they’re allowed to do and say. But I’m very impressed, on the whole, with how Eric has used his fame in both of his countries. In Korea, he’s really changed the conversation on mental health, and given idols a platform to speak on their own struggles when maybe they wouldn’t have felt able to before, both with Mindset and with his interview show. Something that I think doesn’t get talked about enough is his presence in American media, introducing Korean food and culture to an audience that might not engage with it otherwise. He’s appeared on several food and travel shows, and in 2025, went around American schools with a food truck to teach kids about Korean food, which is so many levels of delightful. I guess I know what I’m watching this weekend.

My Top 5 songs were Lighthouse, Hypochondriac, Make Me Cry, I Wish I Wasn’t Me, and Psycho, with Lost On Me and I Don’t Know You Anymore as honorable mentions. Eric Nam gets a 9 out of 10 from me, which is honestly higher than I was expecting. Something I come across a lot on this blog is artists being good at either EPs or albums and not both, because they’re different skills. Quantity isn’t necessarily quality after all; sometimes an EP is too short and feels like it needed to be an album, sometimes an album feels like it’s just rehashing the same things and could’ve been cut in half.

But he is good at both. He’s emotionally affecting in both EPs and albums, in both two minutes and four, and in both English and Korean, and that’s no mean feat. Not all of his music is for me, that’s true, but sometimes a song, or in this case, an album, comes into your life at the right time, and Confessions of A Lonely Heart really did. So, thank you, Eric. I needed to hear these songs and I didn’t realize it until I was already doing it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to call my sister and eat some chocolate.

Next time, we’re onto another soloist, and I’m a little nervous to be honest, because she’s such an institution. But I’m also really excited. So, thank you for reading, everyone! Tschüss, 안녕!, and Goodbye!