When dreams are built around your bedroom’s four walls, the journey to success may seem endless — but passion is always greater. Singer, songwriter and record producer Jonathon Ng, a.k.a. EDEN, knows this well. Hailing from Ireland, the 22-year-old took the joy of creating his own music and turned it into songs people from all walks of life can identify with. Approved by Lorde and signed by Scooter Braun Projects, EDEN is ready to kick off and create more. With his world tour coming to an end, he is excited to get back home and see what will happen next.
Currently on a world tour, it’s hard to image EDEN‘s first steps into the industry as they came straight from the room that saw him grow, but he was determined to not let the familiar walls bring him down. “There was never a point at which I thought about giving up. I started making music by myself for the love of it, and if all of this success have disappeared I’m sure I would have been heartbroken, but I wouldn’t have stopped,” he admits. “I never found myself in a position where I had to force music to work for me financially or as a lifestyle, I just kept putting things out and eventually, it became not so much a leap of faith but just the next step to do this full time. It just took time. It took years of my life. But if no growth [had] happened and it [had] never taken off, I would have still been in my bedroom making music”.
Wise beyond his years, the Irish artist seamless embeds feelings into music — creating mesmerising melodies that bring memories back to life and into a limpid state of mind with each verse. EDEN‘s music is painful, thoughtful, and, ultimately, brought to life by raw feelings and an innate passion for creating music. With the European part of his first world tour, ‘Vertigo’, coming to an end, the Dublin-born singer is “falling in reverse” to when and how it all started. When looking back at the shows, he feels amazed with what he has achieved so far and what people have taken from. Already boasting an impressive 26 sold-out shows, he feels that “the energy in some of these rooms has been unforgettable”.
But this isn’t the end of the road for him — with part two and three of the ‘Vertigo’ tour still to go throughout Australia, New Zealand and America in the upcoming months (plus a fourth part still to be announced). It isn’t hard to tell that music has always been a part of EDEN‘s life. During childhood, songs on the radio would haunt the rooms around his house: different genres, and different rhythms. “For as long as I can remember, I was singing along to the radio,” he confesses. “Even when I didn’t know that people were singing words and it wasn’t just random syllables and noises — but my real first steps into music were due to my parents”.
Born to an Irish mother and Chinese father, EDEN‘s parents instilled in him the value of steadfastness and wholehearted pursuing your passion from a young age. “While both my parents had very different cultural backgrounds they both had a similar upbringing in a way,” he says. “I think their experiences of not having very much growing up and creating the life that my siblings and I had helped show us that hard work and dedication could really get you anywhere. Looking back at it we were all very independent kids. If it was music or coding or gaming or whatever, we never thought twice about doing things we liked by ourselves”.
When it comes to backing up his career, even if music had always been a great passion of his, it wasn’t EDEN‘s definite career choice until recently. His curiosity for science and physics brought him to undertake a degree in the scientific field, which he will ultimately forfeit to pursue music. As expected, his parents have been there every step of the way, believing in him and his decisions, which gave the singer the freedom to achieve greatness in his musical endeavours. “I love figuring things out and solving things,” he says. “Science was one way to do that, [but] music was a way to do that with myself and my thoughts”. And his parents understood and encouraged this decision. EDEN started approaching this passion when he was just 7 years old, learning violin. Later, he taught himself how to play the piano, guitar and drums. “[I] also started writing really terrible raps around then,” he confesses. “Fast forward ten years or so and I decided to take the music production that I was doing for fun more seriously, and that’s where things really started to snowball”.
It all began with a band of friends until he emerged as a solo artist a few years back. Although his music genres changed along the years, kicking it off with dance music and an interest in techno rhythms, EDEN slowly defined his voice, finding his current style. A product of his self-sufficiency is his latest album, ‘Vertigo’, which feels just like a well-thought novel. Through each song, a story is narrated: going beyond words, beyond sounds or notes, and reaching to the soul. “’Vertigo’ essentially catalogues a really difficult few years in my life,” EDEN confesses. “Looking back I was really disoriented and confused about a lot of things. But the structure of it came from the first version of ‘Falling in Reverse’ [one of the leading songs on the album] I made. That song was a palindrome, and I just fell for the idea of having an album that played forward and backwards”.
EDEN is currently on his Vertigo tour, find tickets here. Listen to ‘Vertigo’ here.
This Schön! online exclusive has been produced by
feature image. Rosie Ashley
rest of photography. Nikos Mav
talent. EDEN
words. Irene Chirita
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