Dami Im on cheesy Korean dramas, why she cries, motherhood and a disastrous gig
The Australian pop singer-songwriter reveals how she deals with painful emotions, and the performance she keeps off her CV.
Dami Im got her big break on The X Factor a decade ago. She tells Andrew McMillen about motherhood, her love of Korean drama and a disastrous gig.
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Preparing for my upcoming tour is making me … feel a little bit anxious. It’s the first tour that I’m doing in a long time, and since having a baby. It feels completely different: I just have to be a lot more smart about fitting in all the different preparations, whereas I had unlimited time in the past.
The first money I ever made was … in year 11, when I started to teach piano and flute to a kid. My friends were working as checkout chicks, or washing dishes for eight hours on the weekends – whereas I just sat there, listened to a kid play badly, and then made some comments. It was brilliant, and I made a lot more hourly than washing dishes. At the time, I thought, ‘This is the best job in the world!’
Here’s my best advice if you ever find yourself sad … Just cry. That’s the best healing: it grows and intensifies until you find the reason of what’s causing that, and then you come out the other side. I’ve always had those cycles of sadness in my life. It’s so natural for me, and now, the good thing is that I know that it is a cycle. I know it’ll get better.
The most under-appreciated song I’ve written is … from my last album [My Reality, 2021]. There was a track called Alone that I wrote with Garrett Kato. I still really love that track. Sonically, it’s something that I wanted to do more of on my next EP, which I think I have done. It’s my husband Noah’s favourite track; he wants to keep listening to it, which is a good sign!
The weirdest thing in my shopping trolley is … nappies. I still see nappies in my shopping trolley and think, ‘Wow, I have a baby. That is weird!’ Harrison turned one a few weeks ago, and I still can’t get my head around it. [laughs] The baby section [in stores] was so irrelevant to me – but now it’s the best. I know where all the baby clothes are, and which shops have the best onesies and winter clothes. I’m that person now.
The dumbest thing I do is … when I’m sound-checking at an outdoor gig and I’m wearing sunglasses, I can’t hear the sound; I need to take sunglasses off. [laughs] It’s like they hinder my view, and so I can’t hear.
My hardest decision was … auditioning for The X Factor 10 years ago. That was a long-term process in the decision-making, because I thought, ‘Well, I’m already a singer’, not that I had much of an audience or anything. But I was working as a singer, and being invited to different places to sing, so I thought going on a TV show was a dumb idea. [She went on to win the TV talent contest in 2013, which launched her career.]
Not on my CV: I was one of the performers at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games [in 2018, on the Gold Coast], and it was a huge disaster. It was televised, but none of the athletes stayed to see the ceremony, so the stadium was quite empty. It was poorly organised. We worked really hard for it, all the performers rehearsed a lot, and a lot went into it – but unfortunately, it just ended so poorly that everyone pretends it didn’t happen. [laughs]
On my telly: Even if I’m super tired, I really want to stay up and watch a cheesy Korean drama; it’s my favourite time of day. At the moment I’m watching Doctor Cha on Netflix. It’s about a middle-aged woman who goes back to finish a medical degree and finds out her husband’s been cheating. It’s very dramatic, but also really feel-good when she’s “discovering herself”.
My favourite kind of fan interaction is … when people come up and tell me what a particular song of mine means to them. Sometimes the song wasn’t intended for that particular situation, but people relate to it in their own ways: “Oh, my mum was really sick and she was in hospital for a long time, but she loved listening to [2014 single] Super Love, and I loved listening to it with her, and it helped us get through.” Stories like that validate what I’m doing in a way, because sometimes, being an artist, you feel pretty selfish.
Dami Im’s EP, titled In Between, will be released on July 7. Her tour includes concerts in Brisbane (July 7), Melbourne (July 8), Sydney (July 13), Canberra (July 14) and Avoca Beach (July 15).
