The Young Crooner: Up and Close with Nathan Hartono

In 2004, Nathan Hartono stole the hearts of his hometown audience when he won the Singapore’s Teenage Icon competition. He then had his first solo concert at the Esplanade Recital Studio in 2007 and Mosaic Music Festival in 2008. It was at the Esplanade Recital Studio that the young Nathan earned wide recognition; he swept the audience off their feet with his soothing voice and charm. 

Just like other singers who started singing at a tender age, Nathan surprisingly never thought singing would be his future career path. “I have been singing since 2005. So I started it quite young. When I was younger, I always thought of it as a hobby, not really as a career. But things changed around 2010 and 2011. I made a conscious decision to start thinking about music more seriously and started to consider it a career. Despite the fact that I have been doing this for five or six years, there’s still so much I don’t know about music. And more importantly, there’s still so much I want to know. I want to keep on doing this because it makes me happy, and it excites me on a daily basis. I never want to stop,” Nathan said with a smile.

Esplanade Recital Studio holds a very special memory for Nathan. Not only did it serve as a venue of his first solo concert, but he also performed at the tender age of 15. “I remember it vividly, and it was very scary! I remember being completely unprepared for the fact that I was having a solo concert—only a year after my first performance. I remember thinking, ‘It’s only been a year, and now people are paying money to watch me?’ It was something big, overwhelming, and clearly, I couldn’t understand. It was definitely a weird experience, but of course it was also a very, very cool one,” said Nathan, who went to the prestigious Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) Barker Road in Singapore.

As American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, music is the universal language of mankind. We also asked Nathan Hartono what music means to him. “Music, to me, is a way to understand life. I’m quite a socially awkward person, and I much prefer observing rather than participating. And through these observations of life, I translate them into music and lyrics. I think it as a way to express myself and to further understand the things around me. Moreover, music also helps me understand and connect with other people in my life because through my music, I speak to others who share my views and feelings.” He also confesses that he loves all genres of music. “At any given time, you could catch me listening to rock, country, folk, rap, house, and jazz. I just love any kind of music that is well-thought-out. I don’t really focus on any particular genre, especially when it comes to my own music. I write quite freely and in several different styles.”

Despite being a Singaporean by birth, Nathan is actually a Chinese Indonesian. We asked him what his take is on the two countries’ music industries. “The two countries are very interesting, and both fascinate me. Singapore’s music industry is definitely younger than that of Indonesia, and by that virtue, it is less developed. Local music thrives in Indonesia through TV, radio, movies, and print media. Here, in Singapore, local music is mostly circulated via the Internet and radio. The population is also a lot smaller, so there isn’t as much of an audience.”

“However, the passion and appreciation for local music is growing more and more each day. There are many new names in the Singaporean music playground. The audience is also growing, and the support from them is very strong. So, there are a lot of big things in store for it in the coming years,” said Nathan, adding that he is planning to spread his wings to Indonesia.

Since his debut album, Let Me Sing! Life, Love & All That Jazz, in 2006, Nathan has released two more albums consecutively in 2011 and 2012. The humble singer also explains from which he found his music inspiration. “My inspiration mostly comes from my own life—the lives of my friends, or even stories from the people I read about or meet. In order to perfect the process, I try to practise writing as much as possible. I write about random thoughts or a random object at length, just to practise getting the words out on a page. I am also inspired by my personal music idols, such as Ben Folds, Nellie McKay, and Jason Mraz, to name a few,” said Nathan, adding that he is currently working on his fourth album, which will include more upbeat sounds, throwback soul, and R&B flavours. 

In 2015, the young crooner starred in his first television series, Halfworlds in 2015, and garnered more fame by being the first runner-up in the first season of the Chinese reality talent show, Sing! China, under the mentorship of Taiwanese superstar Jay Chou.

The article was first published in Indonesia Tatler April 2014.