Why K-pop musician So!YoON! explored different types of love on new album Episode1 : Love

Love is ubiquitous, so broad and borderless that no single definition could encompass it all. And maybe for that reason, love is the perfect start. The primal experience. The ocean from where anyone can drink, dive, and emerge anew. It is Episode1 : Love, as Korean singer and songwriter So!YoON! named her sophomore LP, which was released March 14.

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However, to Hwang Soyoon, the 25-year-old behind the moniker, “love is bad.” She blurts out those three words, laughing but only half-joking, before explaining why, then, she wrote a whole album about it. “I wanted to study and think about different perspectives of love, not usually what we think of or classify it as,” she says. 

On  a Zoom call with AP, a week before the release, Hwang’s virtual background is the interior of a spaceship (“I chose it myself,” she says, proudly). The contrast between the highly futuristic setting and her casual attire — glasses, hair tied under a cap — is as intriguing as the music she became known for.

Before becoming a solo artist, Hwang founded the band SE SO NEON when she was 18, which went on to become one of South Korea’s most acclaimed indie groups. Currently composed of Hwang and bassist Park Hyun-jin, they blend rock riffs, R&B flairs, and airy synths with daring devotion. In 2018, they won Rookie of the Year and Best Rock Song at the Korean Music Awards. More recently, they were chosen by Fender as one of their 2020 Global Artists, and were the only Korean team selected for YouTube Music’s 2021 Class of Foundry.

Their most inimitable quality, though, is Hwang’s voice. Often described as androgynous and satisfyingly raspy, it is rather multidimensional. Hwang is able to conjure any kind of human and their experiences when singing — men, women, children, it doesn’t matter. With such range and an eagerness to create, she embarked on a solo career in 2019 with her debut album, So!YoON!. In an interview for The Korea Times, Hwang explained that adopting a stylized version of her given name, Soyoon, allowed her to “build a new character and deliver the energy that’s embedded within the way it’s written.”

In that way, if So!YoON! was an introduction to Hwang’s personal universe, Episode1 : Love is where we meet its fantastical creatures. There are six of them, by the way — each anchored to one of the “major tracks” in the album, as she calls it. “Some characters are ghosts, or fantasies; some are extremely feminine. None of them are based on a particular somebody, so it’s more up to imagination,” she says.

[Courtesy of PR]

They appear in the album’s collaterals and music videos, interpreted by So!YoON! in various costumes and hairstyles. There is a long-haired blonde wearing a golden corset for title track “Smoke Sprite (feat. RM of BTS)”; a curly-haired vixen in eyeliner and leather for the groovy “Till the sun goes up”; a tomboy in a puffer jacket for the cold of “CANADA”; a ragged ghost in green satin for “Gave you all my love (feat. jibin of Y2K92)”; a sleek woman wearing white shirt and pants, imprinted with a naked body for “Bad”; and a mysterious spirit covered head-to-toe in black fur for “LOVE (a secret visitor) (feat. parkjiyoon).”

“There isn’t one specific underlying story that links all of them,”So!YoON! says. “However, I wanted to visualize them as much as I could, in accordance with the actual tracks. I put a big focus on how my body would be portrayed.” She thought about each character’s environment, the people they were speaking to, and the people speaking back to them. “Although the genres and characteristics of each track are different, I wanted to tie [them] altogether with my voice.”

And just like her voice,So!YoON! landed on a multidimensional album. She explains that Episode1 : Love is “not a classic portrayal, but more about the concept of love, whether it’s dreams or different scenarios.” In a press release, she says we can “feel it halfway between psychedelic and soul.” It’s an accurate definition, as So!YoON! swims through electronic beats, vintage R&B, and even some pop moments that expand her musical spectrum and give depth to countless shapes of love.

Sung both in English and Korean, the decision also came from her desire to not set any creative boundaries. (Halfway through the conversation, she changes her virtual background to a paradisiac sunset over a luxurious pool. “I’m changing my mood,” she says.) “Making tracks in English wasn’t easy, and there might be some grammatical errors,” she laughs. “But I was able to express direct emotions easily. For example, if I decided [beforehand] that a track was going to be in Korean, I realized that I would gravitate towards a very Korean type of mood, and I didn’t want to limit myself like that. I wanted to make sure it sounded natural, without language being a barrier.”

“There are a lot of genres in this album that I’ve never done before. I’ve always had a big interest in them, but it’s my first time putting out tracks that aren’t rock-based,” she adds. “One of the main concerns that I had was that I wanted to maintain a high recording quality, while [thinking] about how the audience would feel, and how pop the track might have to get, in order for them to have an easier approach to it.”

On Feb. 17, she released a preview of Episode1 : Love through Prologue : Love, a digital single album consisting of tracks “Bad” and “CANADA” and their respective music videos. Inspired by So!YoON!’s personal experiences, they showcase an unforeseen, vulnerable side of the singer. “I’ve been doing bad / But tell me where you at,” she sings on the lingering twangs of “Bad”, while yearning for a long-distance lover in the dreamy ballad “CANADA.”

In the music video for “Bad,” So!YoON! exercised that vulnerability, tangling along with other actors and even doing a kiss scene that set Twitter on fire. “The emotions during the shoot were very intimate, serious, yet in the moment,” she says. “Not only was the kiss scene new, but because the music video required a lot of body movement, I wanted the mood to be very comfortable. I brought a bottle of tequila on set and we were all drinking, going with the flow. The character in “Bad” is more personal to me because I was able to get deep into her emotions.”

For the rest of the album, the challenge was to play characters that differ more from her own personality. In the music video for “Smoke Sprite (feat. RM of BTS),” which So!YoON! defines as “a dream within a dream,” she acts as three different people: “a blonde, long-haired woman, a fantasy-like character, and a lady who was a burn victim,” she says. “I would go into different outfit changes, look in the mirror, and act out as if I was actually that person. Since it was my first time, it was a challenge to do that.”

She goes further and says that “everything was a challenge” in this album, but at least the stories behind her fellow artist collaborations tell otherwise. For example, working with RM, the leader of K-pop phenomenon BTS, was “very natural.” She met him while he was also preparing for his solo debut album, Indigo, and they hit it off from there. “We were both spending time just listening to each other’s albums and giving each other feedback, thinking of concepts and ideas. We listened to [my] title track and there were no lyrics to it yet, so I felt very thankful [that he helped] on this.”

[Courtesy of PR]

“LOVE (a secret visitor) (feat. parkjiyoon)” happened thanks to YouTube. “I had been thinking deeply about a collaborator [for this song] when, thankfully, my YouTube algorithm recommended parkjiyoon’s current tracks. I was already a huge fan, but I hadn’t caught up with her newer [work].” As for Y2K92’s jibin feature on the club jam session-inspired “Gave you all my love,”So!YoON! says that she and jibin have been friends for a long time, so it was easy to set it up.

Besides the previously mentioned six main tracks, there are also five transitional moments in Episode1 : Love — an intro, an outro, two skits, and “EXIT,” a song that is also poised to appear on the upcoming (yet still obscure) Episode2. “It will be stronger than Episode1 : Love,” So!YoON! says. “I’m working on it right now, and it’s very electronic-based and even more experimental.”

But that’s a conversation for the future. Right now, So!YoON! is busy promoting Episode1 : Love, crafting SE SO NEON’s new album, and becoming an artist that people will look forward to. “I think it is important to make people curious, and right now that is what I am striving towards,” she says. “I am aware that what I put out is going to be there forever, so I want my works to be timeless.”

And what has this journey through love taught her, after all? “The main thing I learned is that I want to experience more love, whether it’s giving or receiving,” she says, way more optimistic than in the beginning.