There’s a phenomenon when it comes to our memories called déjà rêvé. Unlike its counterpart, déjà vu, this isn’t the feeling that you’ve experienced something before, but that you’ve already dreamed it. It’s a comforting jolt of familiarity that takes you back to that moment between waking and sleeping, when the world you’ve been exploring in your head fades into a watercoloured haze that lingers just enough to leave an impression but never quite enough to grasp.
That’s the experience of listening to Hearts2Hearts, the freshly debuted K-pop girl group from SM Entertainment, who, with their first mini album, ‘Focus’, invite us into their wistful, dreamlike universe.
“When I listen to songs I loved in school, that memory comes right back like time travel,” says Yuha over video call from Seoul, where she and the rest of her members, Jiwoo, Carmen, Stella, Juun, A-na, Ian and Ye-on, chat from their label’s office late into the evening. “That’s why I love music so much. It captures youth and turns it into a sort of nostalgia.”
Nostalgia is etched into the soundscape of Hearts2Hearts. Following pre-release singles like the airy ‘The Chase’ and the bubblegum pop ‘Style’ earlier in the year, this collection of five songs takes you on a chimerical walk down memory lane. The songs pull from the past in their influences, taking particular inspiration from genres tingling with soft and breezy top notes, like classic melodic R&B and sophisti-pop. Songs like the pre-release, ’90s-infused ‘Pretty Please’ and the city pop-inspired ‘Flutter’ especially feel like they’re flushed with a kind of hazy halo glow, almost like you’ve just lain down on the grass and closed your eyes while looking at the sun.
“When I first heard the demo, I felt like, ‘Oh my god, these are our songs?’,” says Carmen, 19, completely wide-eyed. “I still can’t believe it, because it’s so good.”
Part of the album’s comforting familiarity comes from the hands of the veteran hitmakers working behind the scenes to craft the Hearts2Hearts sound. They include Kenzie, who arguably invented the SM Entertainment girly pop sound with artists like BOA and Girls’ Generation, and Andrew Choi, who’s probably best known right now as the doomed demon Jinu in Kpop Demon Hunters, but has been a label mainstay writing for artists like Taemin and NCT since the 2010s.
“Ever since our debut, producer Kenzie has worked with us,” says Stella. “So we feel really, really honoured that so many SM hitmakers have been working really hard to give us great songs. For us, because we are a newer group, it just feels surreal to us that we get to work with these amazing people and that we get songs from them.”
It feels particularly full-circle for Stella, who, now 18, says she was first inspired to want to become a K-pop idol after watching the music video for Girls’ Generation’s seminal ‘Gee’ as a young girl. “My parents just randomly showed that to me one day while I was just playing around. And I watched, and I was like, ‘Who are these ladies?!’ I was like, ‘Wow, it must be so nice to be able to sing and dance and do what you love on stage’.”
In fact, that legacy of SM artists is at the core of many of the girls’ backstories. Juun, 16, saw BOA’s iconic ‘ID; Peace B’ performances as a child and immediately wanted to become an idol because “she was just so amazing on stage”, while Yuha, 18, was galvanised in the difficult days of being a trainee after watching Taeyeon perform: “I thought to myself that I really want to stand on that stage one day, and that feeling was so powerful, it became my motivation.”
Eight months on from their debut back in February with ‘The Chase’, Hearts2Hearts are still pinching themselves that they’ve achieved their dreams of becoming K-pop idols.“To be honest, there were a lot of moments where we felt like, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna make it,” says Jiwoo, 19. “But then I always imagined what it was going to be like as a K-pop idol in the future, and I tried to keep it together and push hard, and that’s what got me here today.”
Some of those days were harder to push through than others, though. “There were moments when we had to dance ‘The Chase’ five times in a row, and that was very hard,” says Ian, 16, as the room erupts in knowing laughter at the memory.
There’s a playful ease in the room between the members of Hearts2Hearts, like you’ve walked in on a slumber party already in full swing. It’s the kind of bond that can only come from navigating the particularly odd existence they’re currently having as teenagers (the group’s ages range from 15 to 19 years old). They live together, work together and train together. They’ve even blended their Spotify playlists, so they can learn each other’s favourite songs. Really, there’s not much time in the day they’re not together in some way, and they seem to prefer it that way.
“Music captures youth and turns it into a sort of nostalgia” – Yuha
“We’re so close, like a family,” says A-na, 16. “We talk about everything, even our worries, and often watch movies together in the living room.” A recent fave is Wicked, which handily combines Stella’s love of Ariana Grande with Ye-on’s love of musicals: “I want to try a musical at some point, because I got to learn [them] when I was younger and it was great to perform on stage.
Another strange aspect of their newfound position as a rookie girl group is becoming unofficial ambassadors to fans who, in any other timeline, they would likely be sitting opposite in class or shopping with on the weekends. “It’s still kind of surreal that we’re teenagers and we’re making music for other teenagers to listen to, right?” says Stella.
“We’re so grateful that we get to influence other people’s lives, especially the youth who are our age. I guess we’ve never really thought about the fact that if we weren’t doing this job, we would just be playing around in school. But for me, I think us doing our passion is really important.”
“When I think about the songs that I grew up on when I was younger, I want our group to be something like that to the people in their teens.”
In that way, Hearts2Hearts exist like a dream. As eight girls growing up, their world is the same as their peers’, but there’s something undeniably different about the way they’re navigating this territory as idols. Still, they’re not in a rush to wake up any time soon.
Hearts2Hearts’ ‘Focus’ is out now via SM Entertainment