Jackson Wang Grows Solo Music Career in China

Reminiscing about his past, Korean boyband GOT7 member Jackson Wang (王嘉爾) shared stories from his childhood and revealed the experiences that ultimately led him to where he is today. Only 23 years old, Jackson has taken K-pop fans by storm and is currently building a growing presence in China.

No Regrets in the Future

While in high school, Jackson was once a member of Hong Kong’s national fencing team and competed in the Summer Youth Olympics in 2010. Although he made remarkable achievements in fencing,  Jackson eventually moved to South Korea to pursue a career in singing and dancing.

Coming from a family of athletes, Jackson was initially hesitant in leaving fencing in order to pursue his music career and rejected an offer in 2008 from a talent agency. Not wanting his life to be full of regrets, Jackson ultimately accepted another offer to become a K-popstar trainee.

Jackson took a leap of faith and gave up everything in Hong Kong, as well as a scholarship to Stanford University for fencing, to move to South Korea. While his parents were worried about him, Jackson was glad he made this decision. “No matter if I’ll hit a dead end in the future, or if I end up succeeding, I would have tried my best. I’ll be happy because even if I lost, I would’ve lost on my own. I’m scared of having regrets, scared that when I’m 80 I wouldn’t have accomplished anything I said I would do. I don’t want to live a life with regrets. It doesn’t matter if people don’t like my music, or if I can’t make good music. At least I would have done it and I would have lived a full life.”

With his athletic build from years of practicing fencing and vocal abilities, Jackson eventually completed his two-year training and was asked to join GOT7 under JYP Entertainment.

Building His Career in China

Four years into his music career after debuting in GOT7, Jackson decided that it was time to establish a stronger identity for himself as a singer. As he is one of seven members in GOT7, he felt that the group’s music may not necessarily reflect who he is as an individual.

After successful solo appearances on various Mainland Chinese variety shows, Jackson’s popularity grew in China. Jackson saw a great opportunity to grow his solo career in China. Last year, JYP Entertainment established a dedicated management team called Team Wang to help manage Jackson’s solo activities and development in China.

Enjoying the process of writing his own music Jackson is someone who likes to be involved in the entire process of making a song or music video – from writing his own lyrics, to auto-tuning, to sound mixing,  and editing the final music video for his song.

Although Jackson released his singles “Papillion” and “Okay” last year with much fanfare, the critical reception has been mixed. Unable to control others’ feelings and comments, Jackson believes that the arts is very subjective. Having once paid attention to negative comments before, Jackson learned that he should no longer focus dwell on them too much.

Jackson added, “I’m not working for these people. There’s bound to be others who will either like or dislike me. If I change myself every time someone doesn’t like me, then this will be a never-ending process. I don’t care too much anymore. In fact, I think by attacking me, you’re actually paying attention to me. I should be more afraid if you’re not willing to attack me.”

Has Interest in Filming Action Movies

On upcoming plans and goals in the new year, Jackson expressed, “Music is the main focus right now  and I don’t have any hosting work, nor have I tried acting – so I may guest star in a series. I do have interests in acting, but I want to better prepare myself before trying. I want to see if the screenplay is suitable for me – I particularly like action and crime films. I’ve performed [stunts] on stage before – besides rapping, I’ve also done some marital arts tricks. But those were only on a simple street performance level; I want to be able to do more challenging martial arts moves so that they’re worthy of being a show stopper.”

Source: Men’s Uno

This article is written by Su for JayneStars.com.