Ginger Root’s Life Is a Movie

Going Up is a profile series featuring artists we love who are on the verge of breaking through.

Cameron Lew was in a Tokyo gyoza bar late one night when he noticed that the stranger sitting next to him had recently listened to his music on Spotify. “I tried to eat my dumplings so fast to get out of there, but he turned to me and he looked me in the eye,” says Lew, who makes post-chillwave indie-soul under the moniker Ginger Root. “And I was like, I know what’s about to happen. He held up his phone and was like, ‘You’re the guy! I was just listening to “City Slicker” on the way over here.’” The bartender and a salaryman in the mostly empty bar started asking Lew if he’s famous, and soon the video for Ginger Root’s viral hit, “Loretta,” was streaming on the TV. Then came the big ask: Would Lew consider joining the fan and his friend at their favorite karaoke spot? 

“A few years ago, being more introverted than I am now, I’d have said absolutely not, I do not want to do that,” Lew recalls now, sitting in a park floating just off Manhattan’s West Side. “But then I thought, when does this happen? I’ll go. And it was so fun: we’re at this Edo-period Kabuki-themed karaoke bar in the Asakusa district, where it’s just this one guy who's old as dirt, dressed like a monk, serving us tea while we’re singing.” There was a dusty drum kit in the corner, and the fans asked Lew to play while singing “the two Japanese songs I know.” At the end of the night, the old man gave Lew a business card for the joint—which ended up coming in handy during the making of the third Ginger Root LP, 2024’s Shinbangumi. 

In need of somewhere to record drums while living abroad for a few months, the Orange County-based Lew—who records solo but performs live with a band—found the business card and called up the owner. “He goes, ‘Oh, the musician kid.’ I was like, ‘So that drum set… if I rent out your karaoke bar like I was having a party, could I record there?” The resulting session ended up on Shinbangumi’s “Kaze,” a Japanese-language ditty that hits somewhere between lounge-music exotica and a vintage game-show interstitial. 

Most strides in the story of Ginger Root involve some sort of confrontation of Lew’s imposter syndrome. His 2022 EP, Nisemono, even explored the topic head on, via a storyline in which Ginger Root writes music for an ’80s J-pop idol and then suddenly has to take her place at showtime. “I think my imposter syndrome will never go away, or it’ll be a very long time,” he tells me. “It’s something that will come with any creative project. Sometimes you just feel like you’re a fraud and you don’t deserve success.” 

Lew seems almost embarrassed about being recognized abroad, though he clearly cherishes these interactions with his fans. He wouldn’t have shared his karaoke side quest had I not bluntly asked what it’s like being big in Japan. “It was never really a dream of mine, but the short answer is: surreal, and I still don't believe it,” he says. “I feel so fulfilled.” During Covid, Lew’s work as a musician and video editor were on hold, and he was living with his parents. “What got me through was learning Japanese via immersion. I was watching [Japanese-language] Netflix and YouTube and listening to music all day, 24/7.”

When Ginger Root was finally able to tour again and made it to Japan, Lew was shocked and overwhelmed that he could understand the locals’ conversations. “I almost started bawling on the train, thinking: this whole time I’ve been isolated with Covid, just listening to this language, and all of a sudden I get to be surrounded by this thing I was trying to crack the code to.” That he was also welcomed so warmly, as a Chinese American paying homage to VHS-era Japanese aesthetics and the glossy style of vintage Tokyo R&B now called city pop, made him realize that his fears of being perceived as a phony were unfounded. “The amount of people over there who were like, ‘How do you know all this? I’ve never seen such an accurate representation of what that era was like in Japan, let alone from some dude in California.’ I was really worried, but I had nothing to worry about.”  

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Lew has created some of the most elaborate recreations of retro Japan currently seen in pop culture (no easy feat, considering how big an influence anime has in America). Shinbangumi, which translates to “a new season of a show,” is best enjoyed through its delightful music videos, all set in and around a fictional Tokyo broadcast conglomerate called Juban TV in the early ’80s. “I’ve always wanted to make a project like this, where the videos and the songs were conceived at the same time,” Lew says. 

To describe the plotline of these clips—including a 20-minute season finale—would be to spoil them, but what I will say is that it’s a not-so-classic battle of rag-tag underdogs outsmarting the evil fat-cats who are trying to steal their art. At one point, Ginger Root is shown serving as both the cast and crew in one of his productions: working the cameras and lights via ropes tied to the head of his guitar, portraying both the male and female parts in a romantic scene from a J-drama. His passion for making stuff—even ridiculous little shows within shows—is wildly, abundantly clear.

Lew's music videos, made with a crew of friends dating back to his film-school years at Chapman University, are where he spent the bulk of his recording budget for Shinbangumi, his first record for Ghostly International. “I guess doing a bunch of the video stuff is my way of trying to make my degree worth it,” he says, joking but also not. In addition to being funny, well-thought-out, and spot-on with period-specific details, Ginger Root clips are laden with easter eggs—or serial continuity, depending on how you look at it. “Just like a TV show, I don’t have to redo and reinvent from scratch with every video I make—we can bring back certain characters because it works for the story,” he says. “There’s this whole world that I’ve accidentally created, so why not lean in 125 percent?” 

The first episode of Shinbangumi, which doubles as the video for “No Problems,” starts with Lew being sacked by his mentor at Juban TV. “I’m fired? Just ‘cause I don’t want to make a sequel to something I already made?” he asks, referencing a “Loretta” followup. (In a callback to his callback, we later see Juban running shows like Loretta Fully Loaded and Loretta After Dark.) The breakthrough track from 2021 looms large in the Ginger Root cinematic universe, whether it’s Loretta-brand shampoo bottles in the background or as a vehicle to acknowledge the cynical, cyclical nature of the entertainment industry. The latter speaks to Lew’s pessimism about the song—which has 41 million Spotify streams, plus another 8.6 million for the Japanese version—being a fluke that he may never top, though these days he’s taken up a kinder view: “I really am grateful that ‘Loretta’ has provided an opportunity for some people who want to stick around to see this weird journey that I’m on.” 

Lew, who is 30, has a kind of shrewdness about his audience and the YouTube algorithm that I’ve rarely seen in an artist. He knows what plays well online, he reads the comments and uses the feedback cheekily, and he looks up to bands who’ve had success connecting directly with fans even without critical acceptance, like the viral Michigan funk band Vulfpeck. Whether Lew should make a “Loretta” sequel is a constant source of fan debate, but the steady influx of new, more-casual listeners also helps in a weird way.

“I’m learning, even as I’m just still making it, that this project provides enough room for the people who really want to sprawl out and take a deep dive, look at all the references,” explains Lew. “But then there’s also room for people to be like, ‘I heard Mariya Takeuchi’s ‘Plastic Love’ and I love that song. You made a song that sounds like that, yeah?’ I think that’s really difficult to do as an artist nowadays—to create that space for listeners new and old, as much or as little as they want. Truly, in the Ginger Root universe, you can do whatever you want.” 

One of the downsides of being very online, though, is being all-too-aware that Japanese pop culture is like catnip to the almighty algorithm. “I feel bad for leaning into that, even though it’s genuine,” he says. “I wanted to make sure I was paying respect in the most detailed way possible. Instead of just like, throwing characters on a shirt and being like, dude, my merch is so sick because I have Japanese writing on it—which a lot of bands do.”

Lew has what he describes as a love-hate relationship with city pop—the hate part comes from solely being labeled as such, as if he has no other influences. On Shinbangumi alone, “Giddy Up” sounds like Devo doing early solo McCartney, and “All Night” strongly reminds me of 2010s psych-rockers Unknown Mortal Orchestra or Toro y Moi, Lew’s chillwave fighter of choice. It’s also curious because city pop is a retroactively applied genre term used by Westerners on YouTube to describe a broad style of impeccably-made soft-rock, disco, and funk common in 1980s Japan, which was inspired by popular American music. “It’s been an interesting journey figuring out how to come to terms with the fact that most people will compare me to [city pop king] Tatsuro Yamashita,” he says. “Like I’m just another Asian guy with long hair, right?”  

But it’s also clear that Lew’s presence strikes a chord with fellow Asian fans of indie rock, whose visibility has grown in the last decade but are still woefully underrepresented within the American music industry. Lew will get a chance to connect on this level and beyond when he plays Coachella and opens for Japanese Breakfast this spring, using a live set filled with homemade visuals, charming antics, and his ever-present mix of old and new. “This is my take on Japanese culture from a modern-day Asian American lens, which is funny because in the ‘80s, they were taking American culture and filtering it through a Japanese lens. I’m remixing their remix.”

Below you’ll find a playlist of Ginger Root’s greatest hits so far, expertly curated by Jill, for paying subscribers only. If you have yet to sign up, please consider it—your support allows us to go in-depth on fascinating new artists and much more.