Dami Im

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Like all great stories, Dami Im’s life sounds a lot like a fairy tale.
There’s a certain amount of struggle, a determination to succeed
and then the joys that success itself eventually brings. Selected as
Australia’s entrant in the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest, Dami
joins an elite list of Australian performers who have previously
represented their country including Guy Sebastian and Jessica Mauboy.
Dami’s story could begin with her father Dong Eal Im, who took a
train to work every day in South Korea. The skies were heavily polluted
and each day he would look out of the window and see a small patch of
blue. It was the only ‘blue’ he would see on the trip, and it belonged to a
solitary billboard advertising holidays in Australia. Dong couldn’t refuse
and soon his family had swapped South Korea for the suburbs of south-
east Queensland, arriving in 1997 with a nine-year-old Dami in tow.
Like so many great Australian singers, from John Farnham to Bon Scott,
Dami is a migrant who has made Australia her new home.With English
as a second language, Dami managed to excel at school and university
where she studied a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours and
completed a Masters in Contemporary Voice. In her downtime Dami
would do what many other Australian girls did; she went to the beach, she
drank coffee with her friends and eventually fell in love and got married.
In the back of her mind, the world stage always beckoned, but first Dami
had to build a career in her new home. In 2013 Dami found herself a
home in the heart of Australia via television. Dami won The X Factor
on the strength of her astonishing voice and palpable sense of artistry.
More success followed as Dami earned multiple ARIA accreditations,
including #1 chart positions and multi-platinum sales for the likes of her
self-titled debut album and hit singles ‘Alive’, ‘Super Love’ and ‘Gladiator’.
Dami Im is not only an artist of the new millennium, but she possesses a
devout understanding of the rich history of pop and how truly first-class
songs are crafted.Dami, like all great singers, knows how to inhabit a song
and make it her own. Her choice of stage wear may draw an audience in,
but the real exchange comes when an audience hears her remarkable voice.
Almost as soon as she was able, Dami, who partly learned English by
mastering pop songs first, got herself a gig.
“My first paid gig as a singer was at an up-market Chinese restaurant in
Brisbane,” she recalls, “they had an upright piano and I had to bring my
own microphone and a speaker to sing for a couple of hours each week”.
All my life I’ve been obsessed with playing music. Since learning the piano
from the age of 5 I would practice every day and in my spare hours I’d pick
up new instruments like the violin or the flute and try all sorts of genres.
My love of singing started when I was 14. I practiced tirelessly even while
going through my university degree in classical piano until finally deciding
to make singing my career by pursuing a Masters in Jazz vocals.
This training put her in good stead for the success that has followed.
“Auditioning for The X Factor was a challenge that I decided to take to
see if I could tackle my fears. It was the biggest step I made outside of my
comfort one,not my family and certainly not myself,ever thought
I would opened up so many doors that I could never have imagined.
I released singles and albums that were played on the radio and achieved
platinum and gold sales.I fly to countries such as China,Korea,Singapore,
America and Sweden to perform my songs and to write new ones. Still,
being a person who prefers coffee with a small group of friends rather than
drinks at a crowded bar,it was difficult becoming a ‘pop star’all of a sudden.”
Chatting to Dami, it is obvious that the singular ‘thing’ that drives this
artist is her unique devotion to her art.
“I hope to be remembered as the girl who is a real musician at heart who
speaks truthfully through her craft,” she says.
That sense of humility is always with her, but the music she brings is
meant for the world. Dami Im performed ‘Sound Of Silence’, written
by DNA Songs (Delta Goodrem/The Veronicas/Ricky Martin), at the
Eurovision Song Contest in May, 2016 and placed second.