Tattoo Talks: Amber Liu

Lifestyle Asia’s Tattoo Talks explores the connection and stories behind people and their tattoos. For our next episode, we speak to Amber Liu, an international superstar in the middle of her No More Sad Songs tour. From music to gaming, it’s all represented on the ink on her sleeves.

Just by looking at her, you can tell Amber is really passionate about her tattoos. Wearing a sleeve and a half, Amber’s tattoos serve as a reminder and pays homage to the people around her, gaming, and outer space.

Growing up on rock music, Amber was enamored by the heavily tattooed rockstars. “I’m a huge blink-182 fan. Tom DeLonge, Travis Barker just tatted up, and I was like, ‘that’s so sick.’”

“Organised Chaos” is how Amber describes her sleeve. She draws comparisons of it being similar to putting a puzzle together; her tattoos serving as a visual diary for her life. The pieces each represent different parts of her life. Giving a brand new updated count for Tattoo Talks, Amber tallies her “pieces” to 44 tattoos.

A big portion of her 44 tattoos is attributed to her friends and family. One of Amber’s favourite tattoos comes from a painting that her late grandma drew. A beautiful 山水 (translates to mountain and lake) landscape is tatted across Liu’s left forearm where she will always have a piece of her 奶奶 on her.

Hidden away on her knee is a stegosaurus named “Charlie.” Liu got this tattoo on a bit of a whim. Inspired by her friend who got a dinosaur tattoo, Amber asked if her friend was cool with them twinning and got one for herself as well. So whenever Amber looks at this tattoo, she is reminded of her friend and a time in her life when she was into running and had Charlie as her running buddy.

Using her family name, 雲 (which translates to cloud), Amber has another prominent tattoo on her right shoulder. With the nebulas on her shoulder, Amber proudly calls herself a “space cloud.” This isn’t Amber’s only space-themed tattoo — across her arms are bits and pieces of space-inspired themes. Whether it’s rocket ships, Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch), Liu represents her out-of-worldness through some of her tattoos.

For most of her fans, she is known as the international pop star, but to many, she is known as a gamer. “My life kinda revolves around gaming,” laughs Liu. With several tattoos dedicated to gaming, it’s easy to see why she would say so. Kirby and Pokémon are some of the gaming tattoos Amber has gotten — Kirby being the most painful one (since it was tatted on her elbow).

Although we didn’t have time to go through all of Amber’s 44 tattoos, she shared some of the more significant pieces with us. Check out the full video above to watch Amber describe more of her meaningful tattoos.