Colin Vu (11) is a junior who has been for the last five years making music using the name “VuHanbin”. During the pandemic, his family would have game nights. On these nights his brother would turn on the TV to play music. His music career took off from there with him spending his time making music and showing his classmates.
“At school, I would roam the halls during lunch to show people my new song,” Vu said. “I had very high expectations and got disappointed when my song would get like 50 views. Now I look back at those moments and realize how little effort I put into making the songs and getting them out there.”
Vu has had many “restarts” in his career, but he doesn’t believe it took off really until DNM. DNM was his first and where he posted a song on streaming. With DNM Vu wrote songs that he actually had finished unlike his time before where he would release music that he hadn’t felt was complete all the way.
“Although as the leader, I had to disband DNM as a lot of stress was put on me after I felt like I couldn’t provide the members’ needs, and now we have my revival debut ‘Goodnightmare’,” Vu said.
After Vu had decided to disband DNM he took a year to himself to see what he was doing wrong. In that year he felt like he could be focusing more on his music and putting more effort into it. Through this year of realization, he made his newest song “Goodnightmare”.
“I started my career with nobody, until “Goodnightmare.” My childhood friend Joedi has really improved the way I envision my career, and how my music sounds. I don’t think I would be doing music anymore if it wasn’t for his help,” Vu said.
Another realization he had was that he wasn’t performing his music enough. A difference in this rebrands from a year ago is seeing Vu performing new songs like “Goodnightmare” more frequently. Vu recently performed at the “Wylie’s Got Talent” talent show, put on by Student Council, and at Murphy’s Spring Fever, where he had a reunion with DNM.
“Prior to the Talent Show, I had a Choir performance,” Vu said. “We were about 30 minutes away from the Talent Show, so I had to rush back to change out of my uniform. I was out of breath while rushing onto the stage. I made a few mistakes while performing, but it was a cool performance.”
What’s next for VuHanbin’s career is already decided. He wants to focus on performing “Goodnightmare” and getting better with every performance. A way Vu could reach this quicker would be if more people streamed his year-long piece of work “Goodnightmare”, on all streaming services.