K-pop has become more popular than ever and the scene shows no signs of slowing down, from a notable presence at this year’s Coachella festival to a slew of major world tours. The pressure to stand out is more immense than ever, but as boyband 8TURN exclaim in their group greeting: “It’s whose turn? 8TURN!”
Those outside of the TURNING fandom may recognise a couple members from their pre-debut days. Hailing from New Zealand, leader JAE YUN was previously a contestant on the Mnet survival show Boys24, as well as JTBC’s reality series, MIXNINE. KYUNG MIN, on the other hand, caught the attention of viewers during his time on Mnet’s I-LAND. Even though they didn’t make their debut through the survival shows, for JAE YUN and KYUNG MIN, they are on the path they were always meant to take.
When the number eight is turned sideways, it becomes an infinity symbol, which illustrates 8TURN’s limitless potential. While their start has been more of a slow burn, the boyband have continued their momentum of steady growth over the course of three mini-albums and a number of overseas performances, including at KCON LA 2023. Just days before their one-year anniversary, 8TURN sat down with NME over Zoom from Seoul to tell us more about their new mini-album ‘STUNNING’ and its bombastic lead single, ‘RU-PUM PUM’.
With renewed confidence, along with shining blonde hair, 8TURN’s MIN HO excitedly tells NME that their first year as K-pop idol has been “brilliant”. And that positive spirit shows on ‘STUNNING’, an easy standout in the boyband’s growing discography, which YUN GYU says “shows our musical capabilities that have developed, especially our sounds”, while adding that the boyband have also “worked on experimenting and expressing the different colours that we have”.
Leader JAE YUN explains that “colours”’ are ways to describe the unique personalities that each member portrays, such as the way they pronounce or phrase their verses or their approach to different genres. This can be heard with the diverse set of sounds on the B-sides of ‘STUNNING’, from the slight southern twang of the guitars in ‘NOM’ and the cheerful vocals in ‘WE HERE’.
“The direction we wanted was to really enrich and dive deep down to what 8TURN’s music is,” says JAE YUN about their new mini-album. “[From] participating in the lyrics, performance [aspects and] the choreography, our ideas had been implemented [a lot on] this album.” He adds that with ‘RU-PUM PUM’, their aim was to pull back some of the unnecessary glitz and glamor typically associated with K-pop and just show who they are. “That’s where the confidence comes from because we’re not trying to be someone who we aren’t.”
When it came time to promote ‘STUNNING’, all of the members decided to dye their hair blonde, a literal way to represent the album’s name. At first YOON SUNG couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of all of them going blonde, thinking that other people might not be able to differentiate between them. But after watching their own performances, he really did feel like they were shining, as the album name implied.
Much like their current blonde locks, the future looks bright for 8TURN. The members have established themselves as artists who are always up for experimenting with new ideas. YOON SUNG is interested in trying out foreign languages on the next album, or perhaps R&B, saying that its “something that can be considered kind of fresh yet breezy, is something I think we’d like to try”.
As 8TURN celebrate one year together as a group, the members reflect on how much they’ve learned in just the past year. For YUN GYU, he was surprised how much he learned about himself while simply recording music. “When you go to a recording booth, you actually really hear your voice quite well. You hear all the difficult aspects of your voice.” he says. “You are actually in a way, finding your own voice, what tones you can better project and how to express yourself.”
Despite being so young, the group have had many opportunities to travel to different places across the world to perform and hone their skills. MIN HO says that these experiences have allowed the group to better understand the roles cameras have during live performances and learn how to pull off certain moves and gestures. However, the real treat was being able to meet all of their fans and building a deeper connection with their fans..
Although 2024 has only just begun, 8TURN are yearning to perform in brand-new territories, as well as revisit previous ones. In particular, HAE MIN is hoping to go to Latin America: “It’s a very new culture to us. Also, we hear that we have a lot of fans [there], and from that destination, hopefully that can expand to a tour?”
But across all those performances, KCON continues to hold a special place in 8TURN’s heart, with the group voicing their desire to return to the annual festival this year as well. SEUNG HEON adds: “In 2023, we’ve been to all the KCONs. So we hope to go to all the KCONs in 2024!”
8TURN’s new mini-album ‘STUNNING’ is out now