'I cut all relationships': Jackson Wang opens up on his mental health before Magic Man album
Burnt out from exhaustion and stress, K-pop idol Jackson Wang once felt like everything was “a loop”.
“Being in the industry for eight, nine years, at (one) point I was lost,” Wang said while speaking to Korean-American singer Eric Nam on his Daebak Show recently.
“Everything felt like a loop. Every person I met, every word they’d say to me, everything was like deja vu — not deja vu, but a loop.”
Wang, 28, who was born in Hong Kong, made his music debut in 2014 with K-pop boy band Got7, formed by JYP Entertainment.
Since 2021, he has been largely focused on his solo career. And it was around this time that Wang said he had to isolate himself from everyone, including his management. At that point, he felt that the “business” his management was bringing to him wasn’t true to himself.
“I was home, I was drinking by myself every day… and I told my team to just stop talking to me... I was lost; I lost my mind.
“I cut all my relationships, I was just by myself – drinking, writing, thinking, and just creating.”
A year-and-a-half later, he released his Magic Man album.
Two things helped Wang come out of his rut, he told Nam.
“When I’m stressed out, I’m not a person who would want to talk to anybody,” he said. “But… talking to my producer and stylist, stuff they said meant something.
“I felt, ‘Why am I blocking my whole life? Why am I trying to seek for solutions myself, why am I afraid to say I’m not okay?’”
The second thing was the acceptance of that since he started with nothing, he wasn't afraid “to lose everything”.
“Every single day, I want to live like myself,” he said. “Be honest to myself, be honest to the audience, making sure that this is the real me, not what they think I am.”
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