From music fan to industry veteran
Karen Kwak, former executive vice president for Universal Music Group, speaks about her music industry career and her life in an interview conducted Wednesday in Seoul. / Yonhap
Karen Kwak speaks on journey to high-powered career, future
By Kim Ji-soo
As a fan of music whose first concert was a performance by the group Journey and who snuck into music clubs in Los Angeles in her teens, it was natural for Karen Kwak to want a career in music. In 2016, she is a veteran music industry consultant and former executive vice president at Universal Music Group, in demand by artists around the world including Britney Spears.
“I love music ... You love what you love,” Karen Kwak said during an interview Wednesday in Seoul, adding that it was the soundtrack of her life.
The former music executive, widely recognized for having matched Rihanna with “Umbrella,” which became a mega hit in 2007, and most recently, for serving as executive producer for Britney Spears’ ninth album “Glory” was in Seoul to attend the two-day Startup: CON 2016 hosted by Korea Creative Content Agency.
Working in A&R basically puts one’s fingers on the pulse of a potential hit to match it with an artist to help the artist achieve a creative goal or vision, or in commercial terms, to create a hit song that is known around the world.
Asked about Spear’s album released in August, Kwak said she felt good about it.
“Critically, it did well for her. It got very fine reviews overall. I feel good about it. I feel good that she feels good about it. It’s a reflection of her and of her work, and I was happy to help her deliver the body of work on that album,” she said.
At the conference in Seoul, Kwak talked about her life as an artist and what a startup meant. The eldest daughter of four, she referred to her immigrant parents, who moved from Seoul to Los Angeles, as a model of a startup.
“A real startup are my parents, leaving their country, my mother loaning $100 to my father, going to America without knowing anybody,” and then starting a family and a business, she said.
Kwak said her parents were living examples of what work ethic, passion, drive and commitment are all about. They represented leadership, she said, in leading by example.
After studying at the University of Southern California as a business major with a focus on marketing, she began her career as an intern at Motown Records. She said that experience was effectively the base or the foundation of her career. “I went in as an intern for the company president, and then moved into A&R department doing production,” she said. She dealt with credits and album packaging, and it was during this time that she took a recording engineering class at the University of California, Los Angeles. Then she started to take over more responsibilities in A&R.
She rose within Motown Records, then went on to work for Island Def Jam Music Group, and then for Universal Music Group. The list of artists she has worked with include some of the industry’s biggest names — Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, NAS and others.
In A&R, she relies on her hard work and humility, which were instilled in her by her parents, to succeed.
“When you’re in a room with an artist, there is only room for one star,” she said, adding that A&R was like being a “creative concierge” who does one’s best to understand or learn what the artist looks for or how he or she likes to work and then to facilitate the creative process. It also involves coming up with ideas, using one’s imagination, thinking outside of the box and trying different matches between composers and song writers, producers and artists.
With regard to the song “Umbrella,” she said it did not really hit her that it was for Rihanna when she was listening to it in the office, but it finally did when she heard it at home, in her space.
“I guess I was just lucky,” she said about the success of the song, adding that it was a game changer for the many people involved in it. At the same time, Kwak said the success of “Umbrella” prompted her to continue to find great songs, as “you’re only good as your last hit.”
After 25 years of working at major record labels, Kwak founded her own independent music consulting company, KK Consulting/Kollab Music. She now works independently as a consultant for Sony Music, RCA Records and Epic Records and for an artist with Universal. She said by working on her own, she makes her own schedule and she feels positive, meaning that she is able to work better as well.
She spoke candidly about the toils of holding high-powered positions that sometime entail their share of politics and backstabbing. She said growing up watching her parents work hard — at their gas station — she found that the challenges she faced as an Asian-American woman in the recording industry pale in comparison to what they went through.
She has always been a self-starter, a hard worker and an outgoing person. “You cannot be shy in this industry, or any industry, right?” she said.
Kwak said while working at the recording companies, she rarely refused tasks, was a demanding person who appreciated honesty, and always went toe-to-toe with anyone if a situation required that. However, she grew weary of these downsides and left to work on her own.
She said she hasn’t really committed to what her firm will be about but said she is open minded about working with K-pop. Asked to name some K-pop artists who caught her attention, she said she could but would rather not mention names: “I have to be careful here, because there are JYP (Entertainment), YG and SM here.”
On K-pop and K-pop artists, she said it is important for each artist to find a signature sound, a great song and a great melody.
“Because Korean culture is getting more defined and becoming part of the more mainstream American culture, these things will help the emergence of K-pop in America,” Kwak said.
Asked whether she would identify any experiences in her life as failures, Kwak spoke frankly about the compromises she has made in an attempt to find balance.
“I wouldn’t really say failure, but I compromised, without really knowing, because of the drive for my career .... I did not get married, although I had my daughter .... You want it all but it’s hard to have it all. The balance is the hardest thing,” she said.
But her daughter, Kayla, 7, and her family are what keep her going in her independent career, she said. During the interview, she often teared up when she talked about her parents. Her father passed away six years ago. She returned to Korea for the first time in August, almost 35 years since her family left, and said she feels so proud of her parents and her Korean heritage.
“If a child of five or six can hum along, there is a great simplicity to that melody,” referring to how she may soon rely on her daughter and her daughter’s friends to keep up to date on music trends.