Gaston Pong is more than just a multilingual talent—he’s a music powerhouse. From viral covers that caught the attention of global stars like Stray Kids to becoming one of Southeast Asia’s most sought-after producers, his rise has been anything but ordinary.
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MusicTranscript
00:00I mean you are definitely someone who is known for like your style and your fashion and you're
00:04also known as someone who likes to reinvent himself a lot. Right. What was the inspo
00:08like behind the whole transition? I was dating someone in fashion.
00:15How every story starts.
00:20How do you even begin to learn something like producing music? How do you begin to teach
00:25yourself how to produce? In Chinese there's this idiom you learn how to fish and not get a fish
00:31from someone. Yeah and I agree to that. I was like I need to be equipped with skills that has the
00:37sustainability and longevity of my career. The motivation was to put out music when I was a
00:41student with my sister actually. We were we were a duo and we were like do we hire like do we hire
00:46producers or like do we make our own? Then I was like sister listen give me like a month and let's
00:53try put out some music from there. So you've actually written songs for like um k-pop groups um you
00:59recently dropped one with like a thai singer as well right? Do you actually speak all of these languages?
01:07I'm still learning. Honestly I don't really speak all these languages. I feel like as a musician you
01:13I was able to pick up the sounds and mimic them and especially as Malaysians we are multilingual and
01:19we are able to pick up languages really fast. Not to mention we have so much dialects right? Yeah.
01:24So yeah. But now that you say you don't speak the language you use like chatgbt and translators and
01:29stuff. Do you get someone to proofread before like because sometimes the grammar is not right right?
01:35Of course it started like that. I want to get a friend to help and all but now we have ai which
01:39is like almost 90 person native like thank you. I'm able to read the lyrics nowadays and understand.
01:46So like I'm able to write them and in fact I actually wrote Korean lyrics recently and sold it
01:51and which is like wow actually I'm actually doing this. I'm so proud of seeing like the growth that
01:58you've had since 2022 is insane and you also look completely different. Oh
02:06some touch-ups in there and there. I mean you are definitely someone who is known for like your style
02:11and your fashion and you're also known as someone who likes to reinvent himself a lot. Right. What
02:16was the inspo like behind the whole transition? I was dating someone in fashion.
02:23How every story starts. Yeah. I feel like there's such a beautiful thing about relationships that you
02:28live. Nowadays I kind of like learn it myself because I it has become part of me. I feel like fashion is
02:34about like exploring. Right. I'm still on exploring but I feel like I kind of like a certain style
02:41nowadays. Yeah. If you didn't know uh Gasson like a few years ago he was very I was very
02:49what now everyone I mentioned your name to right oh that guy is so cool oh really whereas last time it
02:55would be more like oh yeah he's so cute yeah how was the response on social media at the time because
03:01like I said it was a very drastic change. I think I kind of lost a hundred thousand followers
03:07but another hundred thousand followers came in. I guess because so it's like what they were following
03:12you for is not there anymore. Yes which is so cool. I feel like sometimes it reminds me a lot about
03:19friendship and like generally relationships and life. Some people will come and go and sometimes
03:23some people just not relevant with you anymore in their life and you outgrow your past. True. And which
03:28is like my social media and that's fine. No that's that's definitely something about this industry.
03:33I feel like the entire entertainment industry in general like because you're having so much fun
03:38and because I feel like people on the outside always feel like your job is easy. Oh yeah.
03:43I mean and it's kind of hard to tell yourself that you deserve the rest because what are you resting
03:48from going like traveling the world oh my god that's so hard but it is it is a lot of your energy and time
03:54and yeah I feel if you are going into this industry you really need to be able to set that boundary and
04:01not let people guilt trip you into feeling like what you're doing is not as bad as everybody else.
04:07Definitely definitely I always believe that there is a difference of being kind and nice and having
04:13boundaries like you can be nice and have a boundary yeah yeah so sometimes I'm just politely reject
04:19opportunities and like sorry my time is limited and maybe it's not for me but I'll get someone else
04:24for you yeah how do you decide what opportunities to say no to though really depends on my my workload
04:32and what's going on this chaotic mind sometimes I don't know him well too you know now when when
04:38it's like the seventh year of my career I do kind of have like a plan for the year maybe I want to explore
04:43a certain region of music more like for example this year would be thailand so I feel like it's to
04:49have like a year plan for myself even this is uh you know my own career to to actually have a year
04:54plan for myself and to try to stick to the plan but sometimes plan just it's just plan but the
05:02surprise is dope you know when I hop onto opportunities out of my plan yeah