'Playing the Young K growth game': DAY6's Young K returns with 15-track solo album

DAY6's Young K returns with his second solo album after nearly three years. [JYP Entertainment]

"Music and I have a love-hate relationship. I started doing it to survive, and then I fell completely in love with it."

DAY6's Young K has returned as a solo artist for the first time in nearly three years. He said he went into the project thinking "there's no going back" — not knowing when he might get another chance — and "put everything on the line." The album captures Kang Young-hyun the person, a side the artist Young K has kept hidden from the stage.

Meeting with reporters ahead of the album's release, Young K smiled and said he had "looked straight ahead and given everything he had."

His newly released second solo album, "YOUNGEST," is what he calls "a fat album stuffed with 15 tracks." He wrote the songs by carving up every available hour — the drone of airplane engines as his background music — while keeping up with DAY6's four-to-five-month tour schedule.

In an era when the music industry prizes efficiency and short-form content, his label strongly urged him to trim the project to a single or a handful of tracks. He cut more than 10 songs and still packed 15 into the final album.

"Still, isn't 15 a pretty number?"

Young K flashed a playful grin — an expression that carried both his easy humor and the stubborn conviction of a creator.

Polished Young K vs. petty Kang Young-hyun: the inner world of 'Shut The Door'

On the new album, Young K took on the role of overall commander — handling lyrics, composition and vocals as always, but also overseeing production and marketing from end to end. He set up countless group chats to hold meetings with the creative, marketing and performance-planning teams, and personally mapped out Reels and challenge formats, broadening the scope of his stage presence through hands-on legwork.

"Serving as a judge on survival shows made me think that someday I'd like to help develop younger artists. But right now I feel like I have my hands full with myself. I need to produce Young K first and raise Young K well before any of that is possible — so at the moment I'm playing the 'raise Young K' game."

Navigating the professional world exposed the limits of his knowledge and marketing instincts, but it was also a valuable stretch of time in which he felt himself grow as a communicator and visual director.

The reason he squeezed 15 tracks into an album despite a punishing schedule was simple: he wanted to make "the most Kang Young-hyun album possible."

Young K has lived as DAY6's Young K for 11 years. This time, he said he "wanted to capture the process of finding Kang Young-hyun rather than Young K," adding that "the album contains a lot of personal stories."

The title track "Shut The Door" is the most candid expression of the inner Kang Young-hyun he has kept hidden. The song finds liberation in a closed room — shutting the door on the world — and he describes it as "a paradoxical song." He wrote it in one sitting, the way someone writes in a diary. The lyrics also carry real wounds from his own relationships.

Lines such as "Here we go again, you just can't wait to tear me apart / What is wrong with you" and "The friends I trusted are talking behind my back again / They say sincerity gets through — then why" — along with references to "endless betrayal" and "gossip that never stops" — hint at a side of Young K few had seen before.

"Friends I trusted got caught talking behind my back. I was devastated. But because they were still my friends, I wrote the lyrics to comfort myself first, then played the song for them. They cried and said they were sorry. We're on good terms again now."

He said he never expected this diary-like song, born from hurt, to become the title track. "Being a celebrity means you're easy fodder for people's conversations, and I wanted to capture that worn-out feeling," he said. "Kang Young-hyun falls short of Young K and sometimes has darker thoughts. If Young K is a refined, near-complete version ready to receive people's love, Kang Young-hyun is someone who can be a little more petty, get hurt, and hold grudges. I thought it might be OK to show a slightly more human, unfinished side of myself."

'Music was a love-hate relationship — I started doing it to survive, and now I want to keep doing it as long as I can'

"On the outside I laugh things off like an easygoing guy, but in fact I get lonely easily, I'm fragile, and I've been hurt a lot."

Young K had no hesitation laying his inner world bare. His recent appearances on the variety show "Nollaun Toyo-il" (Amazing Saturday) and a series of bold costume transformations have marked a refreshing turning point for him.

"Amazing Saturday gave me positive energy — it helped me get rid of fear," he said. "I came to realize that My Day fans would cheer me on no matter what I did, no matter how much I goofed around. Before, if someone told me to go out and dance somewhere, embarrassment would hit me first. Now my first thought is, 'How can I make this funnier?'" He added that these days, "making people laugh with even one line brings me more joy than delivering a single polished vocal phrase."

That looseness carries over into the freedom he feels on the solo stage. Despite the pressure of filling a stage alone rather than with his bandmates, he said "the best thing about solo activities is that both hands are free — I went from being tied to a stand microphone to being able to run around freely."

The album's B-sides span a wider musical palette as well. Sitting with singer-songwriter Sunwoo Jung-a and playing guitar, he replaced a kick drum with the sound of a keyboard pedal and kept the guide vocal recorded that same day on the final track — a song he calls "a pure lump of romance." A DJ-band collaboration track made with hip-hop producer Groovy Room, reuniting after 10 years, was, he said, "a song I made thinking about how everyone could jump around at the very end of a show without a single moment of regret."

Young K is one of K-pop's most prolific lyricists and vocalists, responsible for numerous hit songs — yet his relationship with music is anything but simple. "Music and I have had a love-hate relationship," he said.

"When I was young I saw music as something I could simply enjoy — I never dreamed of becoming a singer. Going through life as a JYP trainee, I had a lot of doubts: 'Maybe this career and my personality aren't a perfect fit,' and 'Now that music is my job, the joy has gone down — do I not love music the way the musicians around me do?'"

What kept Young K going was the will to survive. "As I worked hard just to stay afloat, my skills built up to a certain level, and the more time passed, the more fun it became," he said. "Now I've reached the point where I just want to stand on stage for as long as possible, writing and singing songs."

DAY6 emerged slowly over many years. The band was rediscovered through a reverse-charting surge during the members' mandatory military service, and their albums found wide acclaim only three years after release. That momentum has continued since all members completed their service in 2023. Young K has now grown to the point where he will fill Incheon Inspire Arena on his own from Aug. 14 to 16. Even now, he says he is grateful simply to be able to keep making music, rather than fixating on chart positions or numbers.

"There are so many talented singers in South Korea. That's why I feel fortunate and grateful to be able to do this for a living, and I hope I can keep doing it. Wonpil, a fellow DAY6 member who listened to the whole album, called it a masterpiece. If fans and the public who hear it respond with an honest 'Wow, this is something else,' I think I'll feel like I've written a truly meaningful page in my life."

shee@heraldcorp.com