Erika Tham, a Malaysian-Canadian ex-Disney star, wants to create a “strong, feminine, sensual sonic world”
Credit: Yoshi Uemura.
Written by Dalia Al-Dujaili and Nour Khairi, Interviewed by Dalia Al-Dujaili.
Despite being at the youthful age of 21, Malaysian-Canadian Erika Tham, a multi faceted actress and singer, is no stranger to the limelight. She’s made what seems now like the natural progression of a Disney Channel star, to a pop-star. After appearances on Nickelodeon's Make It Pop and Disney Channel’s Original Movie Kim Possible, Erika re-emerged into the public eye as an up and coming R&B and pop singer-songwriter.
Erika wants to challenge teen-actress stereotypes with a creative approach to music. Her unique sound is a meeting of a sensual R&B style and a strong vocal performance. Throughout her sound, she incorporates subtle Asian instrumentation inspired by her heritage in her latest smooth single, ‘Admit It’. In the track, she explores a tricky position amidst a romantic relationship: the sudden realisation that your heart’s not really in it, and the vulnerability of being honest, so to admit the truth to yourself and partner. The insightful lyricism of the song is captured perfectly in her latest acoustic collaboration with Brian Kennedy. ‘Admit It’ is the first song from her upcoming debut EP which will be released independently at the end of the year.
Credit: Yoshi Uemura.
“‘Admit it’ is what I wish I could’ve said to someone I was watching fall in love with me when I knew I didn’t feel the same,” Erika opens up. She’d spent a while feeling this way in the relationship and, in a catch-22 many of us have experienced, she watched it get “more and more serious and him getting more and more invested, all while having this gut feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to meet him there emotionally,” she continues. Because she hadn’t found the right way to approach the topic, she felt unable to express her feelings creatively and hadn’t explored it in her writing, “but when I wrote the line, “I’ll admit it, I wouldn’t know love if I was in it”, it all kinda clicked and the rest of the song came very quickly,” Erika relays.
Erika has loved music and performing for as long as she can remember. She was able to take this passion and make it into something she could consider as a career option when she taught herself to play the piano and discovered she was a natural song-writer. “From that point on,” she tells us, “it became all I wanted to do and I knew I had no choice but to pursue it or I’d go crazy.” From the days of writing at home alone on her piano to now being able to work in a studio with acclaimed and “amazing talents,” Erika has started to understand what her sound and voice are, and what they have the potential to evolve into. “I want to create this strong, feminine, sensual sonic world for people,” she explains, “something that’s part journal-entry vulnerability, part whispered seduction, part no-holds-barred gravitas, but always framed in a way that makes you feel like a bad b*tch.”
Erika’s new EP emphasises a very deliberate inclusion of Southeast Asian instrumentation in the tracks, discernible immediately from the opening of ‘Admit It’: “I am so proud of my heritage and I always want to pay homage to it,” she tells us. The singer has an entire playlist of traditional Chinese and Asian songs on her Spotify which, for her, have “the most incredible soundscapes.” Although the sounds of Asian American musicians are slowly making their way into popular culture, their work is still widely underrepresented and under-recognised. It’s a genre of music that she thinks isn’t utilised nearly enough in commercial American music, so she wanted to take advantage of that.
Having come from a teen-acting background, people are quick to assume that Erika is “not a real musician” or that she doesn’t write her own music. “I remember someone saying to my manager once, ‘Oh, good thing she looks like that, because she probably can’t actually sing’”. Having endured the usual slew of prejudices, these kinds of comments don’t really phase Erika anymore: she’s built a skin that’s as thick as one needs to survive ‘showbiz’ at a young age. “I’ve learned that the best way to combat it,” she reveals, “is to just keep on your grind and let your work speak for itself.” And for what it’s worth, Erika played some music for the man that made that comment, and she tells us that he promptly apologised for what he said (Erika giggles and winks). He’ll probably hold his tongue next time.
Credit: Kombucci.
The future holds exciting things for Erika, with the rest of her debut EP rolling out in the next few months, as well as a live acoustic performance video of “Admit It” with Brian Kennedy. We’ll be sure to keep watching the talents and sounds of Erika Tham to keep developing and evolving alongside the driven young powerhouse.