Confessions of a Lonely Heart

Before Korean American singer Eric Nam was wheeling and dealing as a fan-favourite contestant on Series 4 of The Traitors, he was a popular soloist and TV personality in South Korea, charming the domestic audience with easy-going pop tracks and love duets. The Atlanta-born, Boston College graduate’s rise to prominence in Korea followed a top-5 finish on 2011’s Star Audition: Birth of a Great Star 2, but it wouldn’t be until 2019 that Nam would turn the focus of his pop-star persona back on his home country. Confessions of a Lonely Heart is Nam’s fourth fully English album and an exploration of how loneliness can inform, hinder and perhaps encourage modern love. The nine songs track a hopeful progression towards love. On synth-pop lead single “Psycho”, Nam proclaims love as something worth dying for, before hitting a bitter-betrayal road bump on midtempo acoustic track “How the Fire Started” on his way to the cautiously optimistic twang of album-ending “Someday”. On “Make Me Cry”, the 37-year-old strips away most of the pop pomp to confess the only thing he is more afraid of than vulnerability is dying alone. It’s an emblematic track for an album that lets listeners into Nam’s loneliness, the singer’s warm, airy vocals guiding us towards a mindset where love can be more easily trusted.