



By Margaret Quamme







At age 17, Amber Liu left her native Los Angeles and headed to South Korea to join the K-pop group f(x).



Ten years later, she left the group to strike out on her own.



Liu, who will perform Thursday at the Newport Music Hall, marked the occasion with a six-song EP called "X."







"I chose 'X' as my album title because it commemorates the tenth anniversary of my career," she said, speaking by phone from her tour bus on the way to a performance in California. "I wanted to pay tribute to all the fans who have known me since day one or who have just gotten to know me."



But the title has more than one meaning.







"It also represents the fact that I'm crossing out a lot of the bad stuff in my life. Some of the songs are older ― like 'Ready for the Ride,' which I wrote in 2015 ― though we revamped and re-recorded them," she said. "But they all represent milestones in my life when I learned a lesson or grew as a human being. So (I'm) crossing out all the bad habits, and then, quote-unquote, 'crossing into' another chapter of my life.







"And it's also like X marks the spot on the target. This is where I want to be ― a lot of changes and a lot of craziness."







During the past six months, Liu has been slowly releasing the songs on "X" and the accompanying videos.







"I just wanted to visually represent every single song," she said. "Every video had its own particular challenges. It was so nerve-wracking, and I was really tired the whole time."







She was involved in all of them ― not just as songwriter, singer and dancer, but also as producer and assistant choreographer.







They represent a range of moods and attitudes, from the playful retro music video accompanying "Curiosity" and the ambiguous horror-movie imagery of "Hands Behind My Back," to the stark black-and-white simplicity of "Numb" and the clear determination of "Stay Calm," with its candid images of Liu running, working out and goofing around with her friends.







As much as she relishes her creative freedom, she still misses parts of her time with f(x), particularly her friendships with other members of the group.



"We still love each other, we're still family, we still hit each other up all the time," she said. "I saw the members when we were back in Korea."







The regimentation and all-encompassing intensity of working in K-pop were difficult, but she learned from those years.



"The K-pop schedule is a very, very physically demanding thing," Liu said. "I definitely learned teamwork. In f(x), there were the five of us, plus the whole corporation, coming together. That in itself is extremely hard. I had to learn patience and compromise.







"And it taught me a lot about myself, where I need to push a little bit harder. All those values are still there in my work now. So I'm grateful for all that."







But she has also had to unlearn some of those lessons.







"That feeling of wanting to do everything is a great thing to have, but it's also my poison," Liu said. "My biggest challenge is trying to recognize that I can't do everything. I'm 27. And I'm struggling with keeping up my health. I'm not like 15, starting out, full of energy and adrenaline."







(The Columbus Dispatch/ Tribune News)





