The “Glory Days” of Child Stardom: How Will Jay Found Peace in the Music Industry
Photo by Carlos Guevara
Will Jay is like every other musician in their 20s — except that he has 12 years of experience in the industry.
“I was in a band when I was 13,” he says. “I did that until I was 18. I went to ‘The Voice’ over in China, and I was on the show there, and since then I've been putting out my own music for the last five years or so.”
Due to his versatile entertainment background, it is difficult to pinpoint the origins of his 118,000 Instagram followers and 206,000 YouTube subscribers. Will Jay’s song “Never Been in Love” became an immediate hit in 2018, and it now sits prettily at 3.4 million views. Recently, his 2015 performance for “The Voice of China” went semi-viral on TikTok.
He says, “I would say now it's pretty all over the place, in terms of how people discover me. Which I love, because I think that's the whole point… just to kind of hope that your music finds as many people as possible.”
At the beginning of his solo career, Will Jay’s fans largely knew him from his experience in IM5, a boy band put together by Perez Hilton. His early original songs, including the 2015 single “Version of Love,” retain the youthful, romantic style that these fans were used to.
While Will Jay’s music has always stayed firmly in the realm of simple and acoustic pop sounds, its tone has noticeably changed over the years. The 2019 song “I Can Only Write My Name” veers away from his usual upbeat tempos into a somewhat slower, more wistful reflection of his feelings. By lamenting the fact that he does not know how to write any Chinese except for his name, Will Jay explores the feeling of cultural loss.
“That was probably the first time I was like, ‘I don't care if people like this’. This is truly a genuine reflection of where I’m at in my life and what I feel about my cultural identity,” he says. “And the response that it got? I was like, ‘Okay. I can make a career out of doing things that are genuine and authentic to me, and I'm going to run with that.’”
A New Era of Nostalgia
Immediately following the success of “I Can Only Write My Name,” Will Jay released “By Now” in June 2019. The single became the first of many songs that explored nostalgia and gave some insight into early stardom’s effects on him.
“Memories of half my life are missing,” he sings. “I still haven’t written anything you know.”
The chorus of the song culminates in a simple pang of emotional hunger. “I should’ve been somebody by now.”
When asked about these lyrics, Will Jay considers the music industry’s focus on young stars.
“It's cyclical, almost. Like every couple of years, a new artist pops onto the scene. Today, it happens to be Olivia Rodrigo, who’s 17 or 18 and is massively successful. And you look at her, and she's only 18,” he says. “And for the rest of us, it's like, ‘Wow, she's accomplished so much at that age, and what have I done?’”
Will Jay’s music releases in 2021 similarly contemplate the past. His most recent single “Glory Days” is an ode to his friends from the seventh grade. “House That I Used to Call Home” takes listeners on a tour of his childhood residence. When asked about the reason for his fascination with nostalgia, Will Jay first thought of his recent 25th birthday.
“Just the passing of time? I don’t know.”
He then reconsiders. “I just love complicated emotions…. Even in my, like, earlier stuff that I don't really like to play for people anymore? I feel like I was always gravitating towards layered emotions. Like, it was never just love; it was never just heartbreak. There was always another added layer to it, and I think that's why I gravitate towards nostalgia just so much and just… the feeling of bittersweetness...”
“I think that's the beauty of music in general,” he says. “When you can kind of capture a feeling that somebody hasn't been able to explain, and you take the words out of their mouth when they listen to it.”
Photo from Instagram/@willjaymusic
Prodigy Children
In April 2021, former Disney Channel star Alyson Stoner released a video essay titled “The Toddler-to-Trainwreck Industrial Complex.” She describes the way the entertainment industry systematically harms young talent through expectations of overtime labor and sacrifices of health.
In the latter half of the video, she explains how child stars feel once they reach the end of their adolescence. “After over 200 movies, shows, videos, and tours, I’ll need to start over, and re-train, and re-introduce myself. Culturally, I will be reduced to my past characters and expected to fade into a nostalgic memory or a ‘has-been,’ even though I haven’t had a chance to learn who I am in the first place.”
Will Jay has never mentioned facing the same extent of abuse in the way Alyson Stoner has, but his journey into adulthood seems to parallel her feelings of being a “has-been.” When asked if he sometimes feels burdened by his early music with IM5, he says, “Honestly, for a long time, yes, I definitely felt that.”
“I would say now… it definitely isn’t something that I feel consciously affected by. But it took a long, long time for me to kind of get over that hurdle.”
Will Jay then explains that “Glory Days” acts somewhat like a time capsule of his last normal part of childhood. “I was specifically writing about the time right before IM5. You know, before I dropped out of school. Before I made music my full-time thing. So there definitely is a preservation of who I was before all this, and kind of simpler times, I guess.”
“In life, we're all kind of trying to get back to who we were as kids. You know, when possibilities were endless,” he says. “It's been fun for me to reconnect with that side of myself, because in the industry… you mature and grow up in some ways very quickly, and it also — at the same time — stunts your growth in a lot of ways too.”
He pauses and seems to come to a realization. “Yeah, maybe subconsciously I wrote those two songs just to feel... closer to that version of myself that feels just like a stranger.”
Asian Americans in the Music Industry
In addition to his transition from child stardom to adulthood, Will Jay faces another obstacle in the music industry: his cultural heritage.
“I was walking into rooms and people were like, ‘Oh, have you thought about maybe going to Asia?’” he says about his first auditions as a solo artist. “No, literally. The whole motivation behind going on ‘The Voice’ in China was because I felt like I had to, because every time I walked into a room… any producer, any record executive, really anybody was just like, ‘I don’t think that it’s going to work for you here right now. You might as well start in Asia and come back.’”
It was easier for Will Jay to develop a fanbase as a member of IM5 since more musicians draw more fans. “So things were just easier and happened faster. And then going on my own and immediately being met with, ‘Oh, you know, maybe you should go to Asia…’ It kind of threw me a bit.”
Will Jay clarifies that he had an amazing experience on “The Voice of China” and does not regret it. He then considers Asian artists in Western music in 2021. “It's so interesting to even say all this, because fast forward to today, and BTS has the number one song, and Olivia Rodrigo is number two, so it's like, yeah, there's been a lot of amazing strides that have been made, and I can actually pinpoint… unapologetically Asian artists that are killing it in the Western music space.”
“Which I… literally did not have growing up,” he says. “K-pop still wasn't really as big as it is now.”
The discrimination Will Jay has faced in the music industry is not a new conversation. He released his music video for “Leading Man” in 2017, which depicts a racist casting director favoring white singers over Will Jay. The video starts with the words, “But people don’t want to see Asians in the films, alright?”
Despite his past experience with racism, Will Jay was still taken aback by the anti-Chinese hate throughout the pandemic. He says, “I think I was as shocked as everybody else. Because I had never experienced anything so violent in my life. I had not — honestly none of my Asian friends, my mother… like, none of us really experienced anything like that.”
“And that’s not saying I didn’t experience [racism.] You know, even in IM5, I was getting weird comments. Anti-Asian comments. And growing up, I think any Asian person in this country is subject to a lot of casually very offensive statements… You have kids telling you that you eat dogs and shit. Like, it’s just dumb shit.”
“But nothing like that,” he says in reference to the violence. “It was kind of wild to see how… just the immense level of Anti-Asian, I guess, spirit there is in this country. It was pretty eye-opening and crazy to me.”
When asked if he sees art as resistance, Will Jay responds, “I definitely think so. I just think art is such a powerful tool to inspire something.”
“It excites me to make bold statements, you know, and take big swings and inspire people to kind of change the way they look at the world and change the way that they maybe even perceive themselves. I don't think all art has to be inherently in resistance, but I do think that… art born out of resistance — if done in a way that's authentic to whoever's telling it or writing it? I think it's probably the most powerful tool of resistance.”
Photo from Instagram/@willjaymusic
Finding Peace
Throughout his stories of transitioning from child stardom to his solo career, Will Jay emphasizes the same reassuring message.
“I don’t regret anything about my life and I’m so grateful to be where I’m at,” he says sincerely. “I’ve seen so many people that I kind of came up with around the same time… fall off just because they got jaded and burned by the industry. And trust me, I could very easily feel the same, but you know, the joy of creating keeps me going.”
He states this in the face of a system built to disappoint young “prodigies” and against people of color. As a former child star and an Asian American artist, Will Jay’s ability to find joy in music and retain his wellness is a breath of relief — and resistance. While it is saddening and somewhat terrifying to imagine other victims falling to the opposite outcome, it is gratifying to see his triumph in contentment.
The nostalgia in “Glory Days” reflects a similar complicated feeling. The bitterness of a childhood lost is overshadowed by Will Jay’s genuine enjoyment of his music. He is constructing a more satisfying future with his past.
“The human condition, unfortunately, is to always be comparing yourself to other people,” Will Jay says. “In the dark moments, you feel like you don't measure up or feel like you… you know, wasted potential.”
“I'm glad I got out of that place mentally because it was rough… I guess I had to unravel this thought that people were looking at me and, and disappointed by me.”
“I can honestly say I don't feel that way anymore,” he says.