Jamie Miller in Manila, Unloads Self-love and More in The Things I Left Unsaid

For his first time in Asia, barely a week here in Manila, Welsh singer Jamie Miller seems to be having his own “homecoming.”

Last Monday night, Jamie sent fans and bystanders alike at Bonifacio High Street in BGC to a frenzy with a surprise busking appearance enough to stage a free mini concert and meet-and-greet combined. Last Wednesday, he replicated the same experience when he boarded the famed Wish 107.5 Bus and personally performed his mega hit “Here’s Your Perfect” for the first time with Moira, one of the country’s most popular singer-songwriters these days with whom he recorded a duet version remotely. Online, he’s entertaining more Filipinos with his own dance interpretation of, yes, SB19’s “Gento.”

“I feel like I'm in a movie,” Jamie tells Metro.Style in a one-on-one interview. He’s on a pause from a hectic week-long schedule that will culminate with a concert at UP Town Center, Quezon City on October 1.

“It's so beautiful. Honestly, I think I’d done a lot of research about Manila before I came here ‘cause I’ve wanted to come here for so long especially when ‘Here’s Your Perfect’ started taking off in 2021. So, to be here now, it just feels like I’m in a movie. Just going down the streets and seeing everything, I’m just like, ‘Woah.’”

Before setting foot in the Philippines, Jamie has only flown outside of his home city Cardiff once – just recently as a full-fledged recording artist realizing his childhood dream now in Los Angeles.

Sheepish and sensitive, he’s always been more interested in performing – something boys his age scoffed at back home as “a very, very negative thing” while they suited up instead for football and rugby. At 17, with a supportive family cheering him on, he finally mustered enough courage to pursue his dream. He would audition on The Voice UK in 2017, where he eventually won hearts and ultimately finished third under the tutelage of his idol Jennifer Hudson. (Interestingly, around five or six years after he left school or a few years after his The Voice stint, a more confident Jamie went back to school, gathered a crowd of teenage boys, and spoke some words of encouragement about chasing a dream in the arts.)

Yet, Jamie, now 26, didn’t see a smooth sail from then on. While he smashed with his aforementioned single, one he had done during the rather tumultuous pandemic, he would spiral down in the year that followed. Jamie struggled on both professional and personal levels while all alone navigating life as a musician on a foreign land. After shuffling a lot of things in both aspects on a mission to seek inspiration, he would finally write and produce his first EP The Things I Left Unsaid.

The Things I Left Unsaid means exactly what it reads, a repertoire of bottled up emotions, frustrations, and anxieties now Jamie willingly lets go. Here, the pop soul artist reveals the rest of his inspiring journey out of that darkness as he now tries to use his new music to inspire others back.

So, we know you shared some humble roots in busking. But tell us more about how you actually started in music.

Before I took singing seriously, I was a dancer. I took it really seriously, traveled the world with my mum, auditioned for anything and everything, and I think I just liked being around a dance community and seeing how it brought us all together like theater arts and stuff. I guess when I dipped into singing just to see if I could do it, I just fell so in love with it. Dancing took a back burner.

And then I just started posting Facebook videos and YouTube videos (of me singing). Some of them were going viral. So, I think having that kind of experience and seeing the reaction I got from people when I did sing, I was like, “Well, I kinda wanna do this for the rest of my life,” you know. It was really cool.

You seem to have always been “connected” to people online.

Oh yeah I think I’ve always been that way! I've always wanted to connect with people. I always wanted to see what I could do to reach people in different countries. I’ve always been lucky with how the reaction (to my music) has been.

You look like you’re a really sweet guy who’s very close to your family – similar to how Filipinos are. Have you always seemed this close?

I’ve always been a family guy. My mum, my dad, and my best friends – I’d message them and Facetime them everyday. Even to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever gone a day without face timing them. I think it's just really important – I grew up and all I was taught was love, love, love anybody! I think that the reason I am is because of my mum and dad. I don’t really take anything for granted because as much as you can have something and you can have success. Success can be easily taken away from you as well, and I feel like whoever you’re gonna meet on the way up, you're gonna meet on the way down and I feel like you just need to be a good person. It doesn't cost anything to be kind. My mum and dad are the best people in the world and I feel really grateful to be a part of their family.

They’re really not into music! (Laughs) I’m actually the only person in my entire family who sings so I’m either adopted or they’re just terrible singers but very nice people! (Laughs) Ever since I was a kid, they were at every show and every audition. Again, like it had a negative connotation when I was younger but they always celebrated me. My Nana passed away around 10 years ago, but she left money for my mum and dad who then put it all toward my music.

It’s now your time to give back. 

Yeah, and I think I wouldn’t be here without them. I’m really grateful for the way that they raised me and the way they believed in me – it’s just really special.

If your non-singing parents didn’t inspire you in terms of the craft, who did?

Honestly, my dad is tone deaf! (Laughs) But his music tastes absolutely incredible! It's great that I grew up around Stevie Wonder, Lionel Ritchie, and Motown. Nowadays, inspiration wise, I would say Bruno Mars and Michael Jackson. I just love real musicians, real singers, people who tell a story when they sing songs.

My dad and mum’s musical taste is impeccable, so at least they have that. They are from Scotland, so we would travel from there to my hometown in Wales and we would just drive and play that music for seven hours. It was always the best time.

From listening to music fast forward to the present, what made you enjoy songwriting this much? 

I started writing music in 2020, and that's when I began to write music properly. The first song I wrote myself was "Here's Your Perfect." It was so funny to me because I didn't ever really think that it was that great. I was just so connected to it and I kept on writing. Something just kept bringing me back to it. It was the song where I could hit a really high note and it was my song to show off. Having that moment was special. Being able to put that out and receive the response – it has been life-changing in so many ways.

Isn’t it amazing that when you wrote it, you never really expected it would be a hit and then it eventually would?

I think when artists write their music, it's often a personal outlet. I wrote "Here’s Your Perfect" just as an outlet, after being cheated on in a relationship. I put pen on paper expressing my hatred for this person. It was one of those songs that I personally loved. But everyone around me at the time didn't really love it, so I started thinking that it wasn’t that good. And then I just followed my gut and released it, which turned out to be the best decision I've ever made.

Moving on to your new EP, how did you come up with the title The Things I Left Unsaid?

Last year was very hard for me. If you look at my tweets, I had a lot going on. I think I hit rock bottom for the first time in my life. It's really hard for everyone around you to understand that success, money, and everything that comes with it won't necessarily make you happy. Last year was the moment I realized I would have traded it all just to have a smile on my face again.

So, I took some time off, changed teams, and rearranged a few things in my life. I think the reason I said ‘the things I had left unsaid’ was because I felt like I had been told what to say for so long. I was putting other people's feelings before my own. The things I left unsaid were a chance for me to reclaim everything I never had the opportunity to say. From the start to the finish of the project, I think you can see the growth and healing. It took some time and for me, I initially saw therapy as a weakness. The moment I started therapy was when I realized it was okay. I needed to be told I was going to be okay because it was a rough time. Everyone around me saw songs doing well and thought, "Oh look , the kid's fine.” But no one really checked in on me. I think I was just putting on an act for a while. It was well needed and that's why I'm so proud of this music. It came from a place I've never really written from before. It's all true.

So, beyond just a letter to oneself, you created this album to inspire people, too.

Yes and I think it's more about us all rather than viewing sadness and depression as weaknesses, considering what we can do to change the world and to help it become a positive thing as well. 

We can feel your sense of fulfillment over The Things I Left Unsaid. Congratulations!

I loved the entire process (of writing and producing it)! I feel like the whole creation of The Things I Left Unsaid was like an extra therapy session every day. For me, it was like meeting new producers and being introduced to new people to work with. It was liberating. It was an amazing feeling to have people there to listen to you and want to hone in. I had fun executive producing the album with them and telling them to put this in and do it like this. I felt that it was really cool for me to have that process. I wrote most of it with Colin and Alex – they're an upcoming duo in Los Angeles and they're just amazing!I started this project only in January. There wasn’t too much time but this is, I think, the proudest I've been of my music.

Article by Barry Viloria