Henry Lau


Henry Lau, known mononymously as Henry, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer based in South Korea and China. He debuted in 2008 as a member of Super Junior-M and launched his solo career in 2013 with Trap. His song "It's You", released in 2017, became the most streamed Korean original soundtrack song on Spotify for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, Henry left SM Entertainment following the expiration of his contract, and subsequently joined Monster Entertainment Group.
Henry made his Hollywood debut in 2019 with the film A Dog's Journey produced by Amblin Entertainment. In 2020, he starred in the action-fantasy movie Double World. The film was released on Netflix and the Chinese streaming service iQIYI, becoming the first movie produced in Mainland China to have a simultaneous global release.
Henry is also known for his television work in the programs Real Man and I Live Alone, for which he received the Best Newcomer Award and Excellence Male Award respectively at the MBC Entertainment Awards.

Early life

Henry Lau was born on October 11, 1989, in Willowdale, Toronto. His father is from Hong Kong with Teochew ancestry and his mother is from Pingtung, Taiwan. His father works in real estate while his mother was a stay-at-home mom. He has a younger sister, Whitney, and an older brother, Clinton, who also serves as the CEO of his current label, Monster Entertainment Group. He attended Zion Heights Junior High School, then North Toronto Collegiate Institute for grade 9 and A.Y. Jackson Secondary School for the rest of his high school years. In his last year of high school, Henry was chosen at the 2006 SM Entertainment Global Audition in Toronto; he was one of two out of three thousand applicants who were recruited. He was accepted by the University of Toronto for both music education and violin performance programs, but chose not to attend after accepting SM's offer.
Henry started learning how to play the piano from his mother at the age of four, and began taking violin lessons at the age of five. His teacher was Arkady Yanivker, a soloist and former violinist of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He later learned to play the electric violin in 2005. He received the Canadian Royal Conservatory of Music Regional Gold Medal for Level 10 in violin, and has also achieved Level 10 in piano. In high school, he learned a hip hop dance style called boogaloo popping. He was heads of both the after-school violin club and popping club, where he came up with the idea of simultaneously doing both after the two clubs had conflicting meeting times.
He never expected to become a singer and did not know anything about K-pop before his friends suggested him to audition for SM. For his audition, Henry performed a Vivaldi piece on the violin while incorporating popping during the piece's fast passages, as well as a cappella singing; he received an offer from the company the following week. At the time, he applied for colleges for classical music, but ultimately decided to go "down the K-pop road", as he explains, "I'll be dancing and singing, but that doesn't mean I won't be able to play the violin anymore or piano. I decided that I had to go down this road because that was the only way I could do pretty much everything." He initially declined the offer because his father wanted him to go to university. After his mother was impressed during a visit to the company in South Korea, she convinced his father for him to accept the offer.
Henry is able to speak four languages. Aside from speaking native English, he is fluent in Mandarin and Korean and can speak conversational Cantonese.

Career

2007–2012: Career beginnings and Super Junior-M

Henry appeared as a violinist in South Korean group Super Junior's music video for "Don't Don" in September 2007. The song features a violin part, which is performed by Henry. In October 2007, SM Entertainment announced that he would debut as a member of a Super Junior China sub-group, Super Junior-M, the following year. The announcement caused controversy among Super Junior fans due to rumours that SM wanted to add Henry as the fourteenth member of Super Junior, which led fans to form an "Only 13" campaign. Henry described the situation as "if Backstreet Boys wanted a new Boy," and the backlash led to him "being on the sidelines for years." Super Junior-M debuted by releasing a promotional single "U", a Mandarin remake of Super Junior's 2006 best-selling Korean single on April 8, 2008. They also debuted in China on the same day at the 8th Annual Music Chart Awards. Their debut album, Me was released on April 23, 2008. Together with the Super Junior-M members, Henry made a cameo appearance in the CCTV2 drama Stage of Youth in 2009.
A year and a half after debut, Super Junior-M made their sophomore release with the mini-album, Super Girl, on September 23, 2009. The mini-album won many awards and even earned the group a nomination for 'Best Vocal Group' at the 21st Golden Melody Awards, the Chinese equivalent of the Grammy Awards. He featured on the track "Love Me" from label-mate Zhang Liyin's first single album, Moving On, which was released on October 29, 2009. He performed on Super Junior's second Asian tour, Super Show 2, as part of Super Junior-M, and also performed a self-composed English solo song, "Sick of Love", which remains unreleased.
In 2010, he took a brief hiatus to study music composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he learned to sing and produce music. At Berklee, he became friends with fellow student Gen Neo, and convinced him to go to Korea to work with him.
He composed a song with Super Junior's leader Leeteuk called "All My Heart" for Super Junior's fourth repackaged album, Bonamana, released on June 28, 2010. He was featured on Jonghyun and Jinho's duet titled "Don't Lie" from SM the Ballad's first album Miss You, released on November 29, 2010. Henry joined Super Junior on the Super Show 3 Tour.
Henry's solo song "Off My Mind" was included in Super Junior-M's second EP Perfection which was released on February 25, 2011. The lyrics to the song were written with Geo Neo while studying at Berklee. He worked with Leeteuk again on a song called "Andante" for Super Junior's fifth repackaged album, A-CHa, released on September 19, 2011. He toured with Super Junior as a member of Super Junior-M for their fourth tour, Super Show 4. Together with fellow Super Junior-M member Zhou Mi, he performed "Santa U Are the One" on SM Town's eighth winter album, 2011 SMTown Winter – The Warmest Gift, released on December 13, 2011.
In March 2012, he featured on BoA's single "One Dream" alongside Key which served as the opening song for SBS's audition program K-pop Star. The single was included in BoA's seventh Korean studio album, Only One, released on July 22, 2012. He became a member of the project group Younique Unit with Eunhyuk, Taemin, Kai, Luhan, and Hyoyeon, for a collaboration between SM Entertainment and Hyundai. Their single "Maxstep" was released on October 31, 2012. The same year, Henry was cast as the lead in his film debut, Final Recipe, alongside Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh. The film tells the story of young aspiring chef Mark, played by Henry, who participates in an international cooking contest to save his grandfather's restaurant from going out of business. In preparation for the role, Henry studied under chef and practised cooking 3–4 hours a day for several months.

2013–2014: Debut as a soloist and variety shows

Super Junior-M's second studio album, Break Down, was released on January 7, 2013, along with the title track. The album includes two songs, "Go" and "It's You", that were produced by Henry's production team, NoizeBank. NoizeBank is a music production team comprising Henry and his Berklee classmates Gen Neo, Neil Nallas, and Isaac Han. On February 6, he was confirmed to be a contestant in MasterChef Korea Celebrity, the celebrity version of MasterChef Korea.
On May 30, 2013, it was announced that Henry would make his solo debut. He was SM Entertainment's first male solo artist in 13 years since Kangta. His first solo extended play, Trap was released on June 7, 2013. The title track featured Super Junior's Kyuhyun and Shinee's Taemin. The Chinese version of the Trap EP was released on August 14. Follow-up promotions for the second single, "1-4-3 ", which featured label-mate Amber of f, commenced on August 23.
In February 2014, Henry joined the cast of the Korean military-variety show Real Man with fellow celebrities Chun Jung-myung, Park Gun-hyung, K.Will. He quickly became the break-out star and variety favourite because of his natural optimism and eagerness to learn Korean culture, despite being Canadian-born and completely unfamiliar with the Korean military. In addition, his appearance in Star King along with his appearance in Real Man propelled his rising popularity. This led to more variety show and CF work, such as being chosen as the first guest in JTBC's Crime Scene, and solo endorsements with KFC Korea and Sprite Korea.
After almost seven months of production, his second EP, Fantastic was released on July 14, 2014. Henry made his Japanese debut with the single album Fantastic on October 8, which included Japanese versions of the songs "Fantastic" and "Trap". In December, he appeared in tvN's classical music variety show Always Cantare.

2015–2017: Television work and single releases

In January 2015, Henry made his Korean acting debut in Mnet's music drama '. He released two songs, "The Way#Lies" and "Love +" for the drama's original soundtrack, the latter being a duet with co-star Yoo Sung-eun. Henry teased his upcoming album in February 2015 but the project was delayed for an unknown reason. In March 2015, it was confirmed that Henry had joined We Got Married and was partnered with Yewon. In June, he appeared in the second season of Always Cantare. In November, he played a supporting role in the drama Oh My Venus acting alongside So Ji-sub and Sung Hoon.
Throughout 2016, Henry became more active in China appearing in a slew of reality shows including Sisters Over Flowers 2 and ', the latter of which he hosted with He Jiong. Henry co-composed the lead single of Se7en's I Am Seven, titled "Give It To Me", which was released on October 13, 2016. Next, he collaborated with Sistar's Soyou on the song "Runnin'" which was released on October 14 through SM Station. On October 26, 2016, Henry and Mark released "I Want To Enter Your Heart" for the OST of Sweet Stranger and Me; the track was written and composed by Henry.
Henry appeared on the Chinese reality show Back to Field, which aired in January 2017, as one of the three fixed cast members alongside He Jiong and Huang Lei. The same month, he guested on the popular South-Korean reality show I Live Alone which shows the single lifestyles of celebrities. His appearance led to an increase in the show's ratings and he attracted attention for using live loops to reinterpret "Uptown Funk". Subsequently, Henry became a fixed cast member. During his appearance on the show, he composed a brief passage of a song which was then informally titled as "What should I do?". The song continued to garner attention through his appearance on You Hee-yeol's Sketchbook for its beautiful melody and its eccentric "revolutionary" lyrics. The finished track, titled "Girlfriend" was officially released on March 18, 2017, and peaked at number one on multiple South Korean daily digital charts and number three on the Gaon Download Chart. The track is a soulful R&B piece that incorporates the sound of strings and piano. The lyrics expresses the heartfelt sadness and longing for a past lover, which correlates with the Korean title of the song "그리워요".
On April 29, 2017, he released the single "Real Love" and its acoustic version on May 10. On June 23, he released the single "I'm Good" featuring rapper Nafla. In July 2017, Henry joined the Naver TV variety show Snowball Project, a collaboration between artists from SM Entertainment and Mystic Entertainment. He co-produced the song "Lemonade Love" with Yoon Jong Shin, which was released by Mark and Parc Jae Jung. He also rearranged Yoon Jong Shin's 1996 song, "Rebirth", for Red Velvet and released the collaboration single "U&I" with Sunny on the show. On August 30, he released "That One". In October, he released "It's You", which he co-composed for the original soundtrack of the drama While You Were Sleeping. The song became the most streamed Korean OST on Spotify for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019. In December, he appeared on the fourth season of the Chinese reality show Perhaps Love.