Hello and welcome back to HallyuTones — always focused on sound, stage, and substance.
The K-pop industry is interesting for many reasons. One of those being the fact that we, the audience, are aware of the manufactured aspect of the artist(s) as personas, as well as their creative direction. While to many this part is the elephant in the room never to be spoken of, for me, it’s what makes certain releases more valuable.
It’s no secret that many artists, especially those in the idol system in particular, debut(ed) before they turn(ed) 18. There are many pros and cons to this, which fans and artists have both discussed at various depths. Fans, and lately more idols, are rightfully focusing on the cost to the physical and mental well-being of the artists as a result.
Part of growing up in the K-pop fandom space is realising that just as you, the listener, have needed the comfort of this music, the artist has likely needed to find solace in the art too. As I write this piece, I recently turned twenty-seven and cannot stop thinking of G-Dragon trying to counsel IU on what it’s like to be in your mid-twenties on their collaboration, ‘Palette’.
From love, to friendship to work and family, there are so many things that none of us get taught about life but sometimes, someone else out there in the world has just the word for you when you need it. As a gift to myself, and to the other adults who have grown up feeling like they’re not entirely sure what life has next in store, or how to handle what comes next, today’s Writer’s Picks are all songs for adults, by adults:
Not Like A Movie – H1KEY
We’re starting our list off strong with a retro banger from H1KEY. These girls set out to be the storytellers for their generation at their debut and every release since has proven them more than just capable. ‘Not Like A Movie’ is a heartfelt letter to self about shouldering disappointment with a smile. With Hwiseo’s powerful vocals and Seoi’s comforting soft tone, this song came as a warm winter blanket for those up north, and the perfect track for sundowners for those who heard it first in the summer.
This track takes a look at the group’s own lyrics from their previous releases like ‘Seoul (Such a beautiful city)’ and turns them on their heads: “It’s okay even if reality isn’t like a movie” “I thought I would be the main character… A nameless extra, that could be me too. It’s okay if it’s not special”. These lyrics are in response to the bright dreams of taking on the world and making it big, riding the high wave for as long as it goes.
H1KEY admits that reality isn’t a movie and the strides we take, major or not, are still movements in a particular direction, and they comfort us through it all.
One Day At A Time – ATEEZ
ATEEZ released their first English track in the midst of the global pandemic in 2021. The song, while it was for everyone, came to me at a point as a young adult where the noise of my own mind and the world was becoming too much to bear. The Lockdown Years™ felt like being thrown into a snow storm after escaping a tornado. Often we plan our lives out with particular milestones, achievements and goals set out because that’s what we think adulthood requires of us: plan, chase, obtain.
But it’s not really all that easy, as the global lockdown showed. Things can, and often do, happen that are out of our control. We are not any weaker for it if the plans we have are derailed. That’s the message that ATEEZ pirates send with this song. As many times it takes to restart, as many breaks as you need to take, it’s okay. You can keep going one day at a time because eventually you’re years away from what felt like it would never end, and you’ve found yourself walking with your head held high.
Palette – IU ft Gdragon
These days it seems like people are yearning for genuine interactions between artists both on and off stage. Part of the allure of K-pop is having a curated experience, but that also happens to be one of the things that gives people pause. This song by two of the second generation of idols’s biggest stars touches on that very harsh reality. Often artists find themselves in a space where they have to appear perfect and unphased by the things that plague their non-celebrity peers which is the case with people in the idol system.This song feels like an acknowledgement from two people who both started training very young, experienced some of the harshest sides of working in entertainment, and found solace in music, and the friends who stayed.
I listened to this song when I turned twenty-five and again when I turned twenty-seven. It made me realise just how invaluable it can be to have even one person acknowledge that no matter how old you are, you deserve to be treated with care, and to allow yourself to honour your childish curiosity, happiness, sadness and more. The older we grow, the more it helps to stay young at heart.
To My Youth – BOL4
In a similar vein, ‘To My Youth’ holds the same kind of weight between SISTAR alum Hyolyn and BBGirls Minyoung. Originally released in 2017, when the duo performed this song together on the survival show Queendom 2 in 2022, they shared respectively about how it feels to be agemates but to be at such different stages in life. As an average 20-something year old, this feeling is nothing if not familiar. For many of us, we start off on a particular path and believe that everyone we’re at that point with will advance through life’s stages and reach milestones at similar points. But that simply doesn’t happen. Sometimes we’re running yards ahead of our peers and other times we’re still catching up with their laps. Or, we think we are.
The lyrics speak to young people who see their lives almost pass them by as they try to figure out how not only survive but thrive and make the ones we love feel proud. We feel so much pain and shoulder so much as young people that often we don’t realise we are in some of the most beautiful moments in our lives. The race we think we’re running is actually an open trail. This song, as raw and emotional as it is, ends on a note that feels like calling back power, like willing oneself to make it through because indeed, “maybe after all of that pain I can shortly shine a light.”
Shutdown – Moonbyul (ft. Seori)
From the beat to the adlibs that leave the meaning and moon undeniable to the listener. This pick was mentioned in comments as one that could have been in our October Sapphic Writer’s Picks and you know what? Valid but there’s something about this song that felt like it deserved to be shared in a space that speaks to its adult nature. As a sapphic person myself, I’ve grown up surrounded by people who always turned Sapphic experiences into a spectacle. Your first crush is not your own and neither is your first sexual experience because by the time they’ve happened, you’ve experienced people asking questions like “Can I watch?” or “So who’s the man in the relationship?”
Moonbyul and Seori have reclaimed this experience in ‘Shutdown’ and have turned the act of sex between two grown women as something that they get to choose, and enjoy. With a soft music video set to the words of a vivid, and sultry invitation, this song is an unmistakable ode to women who love women.
Knowing that the Korean language is mainly gender neutral in its portrayal of the subject in a sentence, it’s often easy for people to dismiss songs about Queer love because there’s “plausible deniability”, grammatically speaking. Moonbyul takes that away by explicitly using the pronoun ‘she’ in the pre-chorus. This song is affirmation, and coming from a space that often shies away from affirming LGBTQ+ people and experiences, it is a song for the history books.
Love U – MONSTA X
Known in certain corners as the Kings of English Releases, Monsta X has long managed to translate that same tongue in cheek humour that their Korean releases have to their English discography. Oftentimes, the sexuality of idols is put up for debate as if they’re only meant to be these asexual, aromantic beings even though their sex appeal is used to sell records. Monsta X takes these expectations and they basically tell everyone that if we’re going to grow up with them we’ll also learn to accept that these are the thoughts that come with adulthood. While sexual innuendos and allegory in music are common, this song says exactly why they’re used.
Another entry that focuses on… ahem.. bedroom activities… ‘Love U’, plays around with censorship on radio, and on the other hand tackles the questionable expectation of Korean artists (and idols in particular) that often come with double standards. For many female Korean artists, they’re only allowed to portray sexuality so long as its enjoyable for the audience, while for the men of the industry if they choose to be anything but sexy it often elicits comments about their prudish or restrained sexiness, for lack of better word.
This is one of the groups in the industry that reminds the audience that their agency as artists and human beings matters just as much, if not more, than the enjoyment of the fans. They have, at least in my opinion, joined in the conversation around consent and agency that artists like Jay Park, Gain, Kwon Eunbi and many more have stoked with their choices to create and relish in art for a more mature audience. Monsta X are all grown up men who’ve not only leaned into their sex appeal, but owned it.
Restart – ZOONIJINI (MJ & JinJin of ASTRO)
ASTRO is one of those boygroups that in my opinion is part of the lineup of acts that defined K-pop in the late 2020s. From their debut era with its bright colours and sounds laced with juvenile buoyancy, they kept audiences tuned in for their versatility and incredible member chemistry. Apart from the ups and downs of industry life and the waves that come with living a public facing life, the five members of ASTRO, and all of their fans, were faced with a period of grief when the smiley faced dancer of the group, Moonbin, passed away suddenly in April of 2023.
Groups do not have to be defined by the death of a member but it undeniably leaves the group, and the audience, changed for good. ‘Restart’ is a track from ASTRO’s first subunit EP following Moonbin’s passing and member MJ’s return from mandatory military service. This EP felt like the members were using the stage and the music as a vehicle for processing grief but more importantly as an anchor for the love and community that they, their friend Bin, and of course the other ASTRO members, had helped to make. Grief doesn’t stop our dreams, or our love from existing, nor does it stop our ability to keep building and finding ways to honour the ones we love. Nothing can erase all the moments we shared, but when we’re surrounded by people who love us and want to see us grow past our pains and slow moments in life.
Melody – cignature
When cignature released their final EP, the passion of the group as a sextet was palpable. Within the signfan (cignature fan) circles, ‘Sweetie but Saltie’ is amongst the contenders for Top 2 of their best releases. After years of seeing their star potential sidelined, fans were simply happy to have such a strong end to the group’s work together, and ‘Melody’ tells that story perfectly.
As I said in one of my first pieces for the site, “For their final bow, the members left a remarkably sweet song to remind whoever’s out there that even when the lights go out and there’s nobody left watching, still they will sing their Melody.” Whether people realise it or not, cignature has significantly shaped the undercurrent of the HallyuWave. As an agemate of the members, this song has made me fully believe in singing the song because it doesn’t have to live in the confines of your mind—sing it so the winds can carry it to whoever needs to hear it.
While finishing up this piece, a friend I met at university reposted the lyrics to one of Monsta X’s newer English songs titled ‘growing pains’ and it made me think. There really is no one way to understand life and make the best of it. Sometimes we can make it on our own knowledge and understanding, and sometimes it helps to let people who’ve had a longer go at living give us some words of wisdom.
K-Pop Demon Hunters and the hype that followed it did an interesting thing of showing the general public that fans of K-pop who were once young, eventually grow up, and so, too, do the singers. Some become parents, some experience health struggles behind the scenes, they travel more, and the music they release is bound to be a reflection of that. Or at the very least, it should be a reflection of that.
In particular when I think of the Korean music industry, I think of groups like OWIS, and EVNNE, XLOV, soloists like Melonii (formerly of Secret Number) and YEEUN (of CLC and EL7ZUP) and the many others who represent a new start at life for people that companies once considered too old to give a chance in the trainee system. These artists have led long, interesting lives all in the pursuit of their crafts and the possibility to share their stories on stage.
While working on this piece I realised just how many more songs there are out there in the industry that many of us adults may have missed in the flurry of the hundreds of debuts and comebacks that take place annually in the Korean music industry. The word ‘idol’ often makes fans forget that they’re talking about real humans, and the world may be tending towards a fast, superficial experience of art, but it’s okay for us to slow down. I, for one, want to slow down, and hear more of what it is that my peers and their community have to share.
To listen to our song picks, check out our playlists below, and suggest some more additions in the replies:
To listen to more from these artists:
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