Almost 20 years into among K-pop’s most unique professions, Sunmi is doing what she as soon as considered as too dangerous, too heavy and, possibly most consequentially, too exposing: launching her complete launching album.
” I have actually constantly imagined launching a full-length album,” she states, assessing a turning point lots of would have presumed she had actually currently reached. “However for female solo artists, it can seem like rather a danger– it’s various from becoming part of a huge group with a substantial fanbase behind you. So, I was reluctant in the beginning. It takes a lot time, energy, therefore lots of people– not to point out, it’s a huge monetary dedication.”
If anything, HEART HOUSEMAID shows up not as her launching declaration however as a conclusion of her creative life already– an individual audit that the 33-year-old calls the “ideal minute” to recall. “It’s been nearly 19 years because I debuted with Wonder Women, and around 12 years because I began my profession as a solo artist. I wished to take a minute to recall at my journey– to review my music … to comprehend myself much better as an artist, and rearrange.”
HEART HOUSEMAID is an album she constructed from the within out. Sunmi completely composes the 13-track record and is credited as a co-producer on every track, with its origin story a traditional Sunmi tale: cinematic, conceptual, with a touch of surreal and ridiculous.
The ending credits of her 2023 “COMPLETE STRANGER” video at first planted the conceptual seeds in her creativity, revealing her in a house maid attire, getting a nail and positioning it in her ear “as if it were a Bluetooth earpiece.” Quickly, the concept of HEART HOUSEMAID— a house maid not of domestic tasks however of psychological caretaking– started to take shape. “Since then, I could not stop considering the idea,” she states throughout a sit-down video chat in Seoul. She started reviewing old tunes, crafting brand-new work, and songs like “Balloon in Love” and “BLUE!” were “a crucial bridge” to start the album, with their sonic material visibly unique from the boldness of her previous songs.
That shift wasn’t incidental, however a recalibration and reexamination of all the important things Sunmi had actually concerned represent.
” In time, I understood that not only my audience had actually grown utilized to a specific picture of my music– strong, performance-driven tunes,” Sunmi describes. “Not just that, I got utilized to it. And I felt the requirement, and considered on how, to break devoid of that quirk.” Her B-sides, she states, constantly informed a various reality– “more intimate, individual … filled with individual feelings, in some cases originating from someplace low or darker.” She indicates a positive track like “Siren” coupled with darker tracks like “ADDICT,” “Black Pearl” and “Secret Tape” for 2018’s seriously well-known CAUTION EP. Sunmi looked for methods to fuse that interiority with a task that would boast public-facing appeal and be hers to call her own.
That psychological stress sits at the center of “NEGATIVE,” the album’s primary single and a track that grew from Sunmi’s own mild pushback versus the solidifying she sees around her in the market and typically in life.
” I would not state I’m a negative individual,” she describes. “However you understand, in life and in work, I frequently come across individuals who are negative– and it can be painful sometimes.” Her impulse isn’t more fight or dismissing their sensations, however an invite to relax: “Let’s not be so major, unwind a bit … let’s smile together.”
That empathy leads her to a wider viewpoint. She continues, “It actually seems like the world has actually ended up being negative … perhaps cynicism ends up being a sort of defense reaction– a method to safeguard ourselves. Life is severe and stuffy. However I wished to state, ‘Even in this severe world, let’s simply smile, and make it through every day– one day at a time.'”
The accompanying video extends that message through the lens of Korean folklore. Sunmi represents a “female virgin ghost,” a figure generally connected with wrongful death and sticking around sadness, however she chooses to overturn the archetype. “The virgin ghost character is implied to be ‘negative,’ [but] asks, ‘Hey, why are you so negative?’ Which’s the paradox,” she states with a peaceful fulfillment. “If somebody watches this on their phone, sees my motions and facial expressions, believes ‘Yo, Sunmi is doing something unusual once again’ and chuckles, then that’ll suffice. I hope this can provide a minute to laugh.”
Among her earliest visual concepts included the ghost snapping a flashlight on and off in rhythm with the tune– an image she presumed her group would decline, just to discover they accepted it enthusiastically. “Ever since, it’s been a real cooperation with the whole group.” Undoubtedly, the last message on Sunmi’s ghoulish visual leaves the audience with her ghost’s last message, “‘ Life lasts longer in laughter than in cynicism.’ Individuals still remember her words and continue smiling.”
That sense of wacky world-building links back to HEART HOUSEMAID as a whole– the album’s idea pictures see Sunmi in a house maid attire, boxing gloves, barbed wire, even wielding a cart of grenades. “[It’s] as if I’m stating, ‘You injure the ones I like? …'” she describes. “This is how I revealed it.”
Both avatars of security, guardianship, and a psychological armor of sorts, Sunmi sees the ghost and housemaid characters as part of the very same universe. “As I utilized the concept of the virgin ghost to reveal ‘NEGATIVE.’ HEART HOUSEMAID was influenced by the concept of a house maid that does not look after home and domestic tasks, however looks after the heart.”
The 13-song tracklist digs even much deeper with Sunmi putting over with factor to consider for which tracks she’s most curious to understand listener feedback after keeping some tunes for several years in her journals: “Sweet headache,” “Bath” and “Pleased af” (with Sunmi not troubling to censor herself, calling the tune “Pleased as Fuck”).
” Sweet headache” go back to her precious synth-pop combination, which she dominated with industrial and crucial favorites “Pporappippam” and “TAIL,” however through a brand-new prism, one born with time and thought about self-assurance. “This time, I wished to catch and reveal that noise in a somewhat more disorderly method– showing the paradox within the title itself. There’s no such thing as a sweet headache.”
” Bath” is stealthily sensuous till you check out the description she connected to the track: “Do not call beyond work hours.” The track is in fact a psychological reset routine and ode to self-care where Sunmi is ” removing the psychological gunk that develops from social and expert life … and with a newly soft and renewed heart, you go back into the world once again. The last line is ‘Please let me breathe some time, so I can smile at you once again/ Filthy tears, press you away.'”
On The Other Hand, “Pleased af” wishes to discover the masks we use day after day. “It can recommend that you’re not in fact delighted,” she states of the curse title. She indicates her penned words: “‘ I do not wish to open it, it may destroy the world/ Like the soda I simply dropped/ Bang, it ruptures (Pung, pung, pung)/ I simply wished to enjoy.’ The lyrics sound lively, however when you listen, it distresses you too.” Sunmi takes numerous minutes of the interview to guarantee this lyric is sufficiently discussed and comprehended by both this press reporter and her media group’s translator. It becomes part of Sunmi’s specializeds: hammering a point till it’s clear, while likewise wishing to guarantee her art can be of help to listeners. She includes that the tune “can make you review your own feelings. I’m actually curious to see how individuals will react to that.”
To this point, the album’s psychological centerpiece extends far beyond its tracklist. HEART HOUSEMAID is the noise of an individual who has actually really made it through– and flourished– enough time to now take care of others.
” I didn’t believe I would be doing music for this long,” she confesses while assessing the 15 years because she and her woman group Marvel Girls broke brand-new ground when they ended up being the very first K-pop act to go into the Signboard Hot 100 songs chart in late 2009. “There are minutes I succeeded, however I need to have had minutes that perhaps weren’t my finest. However these are all the minutes that came and made me. That made Sunmi.”
Yet Sunmi’s development wasn’t a mild molding. She speaks nicely, however with an indisputable psychological and truthful gravity, opening how that debuting so young implied she “didn’t go through the age of puberty” till her early twenties– a duration she now refers to as “a dark time.”
” I didn’t understand what I liked,” she shares. “When individuals asked me, ‘Who is Sunmi as an individual?,’ I could not respond to. In approach, that’s what you call the ego– and my own remained in turmoil. At that time, I chose I required to dissect and comprehend who I actually was.”
On her course of self-discovery beyond work, she paradoxically leaned into among the real markers of K-pop. She followed the methods of her dedicated fans– passionately referred to as Miya-ne, which equates to Sunmi’s home– and Sunmi became her own greatest fan.
” In K-pop, we call it deokjil, so I began doing deokjil on myself,” describing the word for being and engaging as an enthusiastic fan of something, whether that’s remembering every trivia reality about your preferred idol or cheering them on in show or online. “When fans do deokjil, they discover things like ‘What my predisposition dislikes most,’ ‘what they like the most,’ their little routines when they fidget; I started discovering those aspects of myself, one by one. As I went through that procedure, that type of music naturally started to come out.” That self-questioning caused her 2021 tune “Borderline,” where her individual dissection of her borderline character condition caused a discovery.
” I have actually constantly discovered it tough to interact my feelings truthfully to others,” she shares. “However in ‘Borderline,’ I shared my individual story freely– raw and without restraint. And after launching that tune, I had an amazing experience. I didn’t compose the piece to comfort anybody else; I composed it to comfort myself. However when I sang it throughout my world trip, many fans resonated with it; they ‘felt’ it and discovered recovery and convenience through it. That surprised me; that something I made simply for myself, the feelings I as soon as had a hard time to manage, might end up being solace and convenience for others. The feelings that had actually as soon as been so hard for me to manage were now lastly able to be managed.”
That’s the individual behind HEART HOUSEMAID: An artist who needed to fix herself before handling anybody else’s hurt. “Now, I have an area in my heart that permits me to take care of the feelings of others,” she states. “Which’s how I had the ability to produce this album.”
In among the interview’s last minutes, Sunmi ends up being humbly thoughtful– however never ever really ashamed or shy– about her own development. “Being an artist who can provide compassion and convenience through music … ah, calling myself an ‘artist’ feels a bit tacky,” she states with a laugh. “However that’s the type of vocalist I had the ability to end up being.”
She then uses something silently gut-wrenching: “These 19 years of time are Sunmi as an individual due to the fact that I just pursued music, and my method of revealing my feeling was constantly through music. I dug deep into this … All these feelings of 19 years remain in my discography. So, that’s why I want to specify it as my life itself and Sunmi as an individual.”
Once the hour-plus-long chat flies by, she includes one last note– the kind you stash in your own heart as a pointer that artists do see and acknowledge what’s stated about them, no matter where it’s shared. “I seriously value you for constantly supporting and cheering me on,” she states. “And in some way, Jeff, you constantly advise me that I’m not simply speaking into deep space; that there’s somebody really listening.”
HEART HOUSEMAID is Sunmi listening back to herself, to her past, and to the world she hopes may soften, recover, and laugh with her. It’s an album of care, made from care, and– as the title’s double entendre indicates– really heart made.
Source: Forbes.
