A few years ago, South Korea singer Yeji – a member of K-pop girl group ITZY – became the star of a meme where fans compared her to a Light Fury dragon from the animated film franchise, How to Train Your Dragon. More specifically, these memes had fans photoshopping Yeji’s hairstyles to the dragon, with her hair becoming a stand-in of sorts for her singular identity.
It makes sense, then, that the first trailer for Yeji’s debut solo project, ‘Air’, featured her going from flowing long locks to cutting her hair short – the change being both a symbolic and literal fresh start for the 24-year-old. “It portrays a new side of me, of accepting myself,” she tells NME over a video call from Seoul a couple weeks before the album’s release. She’s donning short hair for the call, but not as short as the bob she’s been seen in; fans spent the lead-up to the album revelling in the variety of styles she’d showcased ahead of the release.
In the How to Train Your Dragon movies, the Light Fury is the only known one of its kind – unique, incomparable and distinctive. It’s a mythical being full of energy and dynamism that rules the skies. Although people were initially comparing Yeji to the dragon for aesthetic reasons, those terms fit her too as she’s a dynamic, energetic performer ready to strike out on her own.
Hairstyles have helped define the singer’s history, each ‘do corresponding to a particular moment that has been memorialised. Hair, in a way, has become a major part of Yeji’s brand, a show of growth and change. It’s also representative in the music video for ‘Air’, which equally splits up the visuals in three parts, each accompanied by a different hairstyle and aesthetic feel. She goes from the more romantic long, flowing red locks to sassy black pigtails, and then morphs with a sense of drama and maturation into a shaggy shoulder length look.
For Yeji, ‘Air’ draws its name from her relationship to her craft: singing and dancing has given her life, breathing air into her career and personhood. “This album is a huge challenge,” she reflects. “I’m excited and nervous, wondering about what sides of me people really want to see. What do I actually want to show the world? I hope people see that I’m trying to find myself, that the audience sees this new side to myself.”
This new side, Yeji says, is a sense of fleshing out her musical and performance styles because the spotlight is solely on her. “I’m filling out whole new songs by myself, doing the whole performance, showing a new voice I haven’t been able to share before,” she says. “I’m going to be able to show new voices that haven’t been seen before. From the very first verse of ‘Air’, I think people will wonder, ‘Is this really Yeji?’ They’ll be surprised.”
At the same time, the K-pop star admits that it “hasn’t really been easy” to step up and fill up the space she usually shares with her ITZY bandmates. At the same time, she is also embracing the space for growth that going solo provides. “I miss my members,” she says with fondness. “But all the experiences of working with ITZY have led me to this.”
“I did struggle to fill the time while recording myself, to fill all their positions and to fill all their duties while performing,” the singer adds, saying that going solo “hasn’t been that easy”. Yeji, however, took her time in the recording studio to try out new musical styles and play around with her voice to find what worked best: “It took me a long time to get comfortable.”
Aside from the titular single, Yeji’s debut solo project is rounded out by three other songs. Each, she says, was chosen to fit into the themes she’s aiming to express through ‘Air’ as she tries out something new and expresses herself in ways that feel original. Though, she singles out ‘Invasion’ as one with a “powerful message” that tells the story of her “leaving my past-self behind and moving toward a new version of me”.
The stand-out track is a journey upon itself, exploring the various facets of Yeji’s voice. ‘Invasion’ builds up her singing atop of itself to create layered depth within the atmospheric soundscape, before distorting it a la Y2K-esque electronic wails. She describes the song as an exploration of what she can do on her own, saying that it gave her a sense of accomplishment in a way that felt like she had levelled up as an artist.
“When I listened to the song for the first time, I really didn’t know what to do,” she reveals. “But after I finished recording, I felt very happy because it had turned out well. I realised that it was a new genre that I could do.”
As an album, ‘Air’ isn’t just a fresh era for Yeji, it also represents new possibilities for ITZY and her group members. Since their debut in February 2019 with the hit single ‘Dalla Dalla’, the quintet have become known and loved for their catchy girl power anthems, like ‘Icy’, ‘Wannabe’ and ‘Untouchable’. Yet, at the same time, it’s also felt as if ITZY have become boxed into that specific sound at times.
But now, we see how Yeji and the group are evolving, figuring out what their sound looks like as they get older and more confident as performers. ‘Air’ breathes a renewed sense of self-assuredness into one of K-pop’s most engaging performers, and it feels like a new beginning for a much-beloved, well-known talent. “I’m loving developing myself right now. I’m loving doing all of this,” she declares.
Yeji’s new mini-album ‘Air’ is out now via JYP Entertainment.