[INTERVIEW] Boy band SHINee - Part 4

From left, SHINee members Onew, Taemin, Jonghyun, Taemin and Key. [Chae Ki-won/10Asia]

10: Taemin, how is it being with the other members of the group who are all older than you?
Taemin: I'm becoming like them. It's not good.
Minho: Taemin wasn't able to adjust to us in the beginning but he's turned out to be the funniest after he adjusted. And it's not because he makes jokes but he makes us laugh in everyday life.
Jonghyun: His life is like a sitcom. The five of us all living together in itself is like a sitcom.
Minho: It's the most like that when he loses something. Once we came home and Taemin was looking for his bag, saying he left it in front of the door because it had been heavy. So I asked him where the first place was that he went to when he came home and he said it was his room. So we went to his room and it turns out his bag and mobile phone are there. He then said, "Oh, why is this here?"
Taemin: Oh, I even saw a ghost recently. A ghost of Onew.

[INTERVIEW] Boy band SHINee - Part 3

From left, SHINee members Onew, Taemin, Jonghyun, Taemin and Key. [Chae Ki-won/10Asia]

10: Weren't "Up & Down" or "Your Name" the songs that in particular show where SHINee stands right now? They weren't neither ballads nor dance numbers and there were many parts in "Your Name" which you guys filled with harmonies.
Jonghyun: That's right. They were fun [to work on]. "Your Name" is a song we had recorded since preparing "Juliet." And there's a lot of harmonies in it. About 60 tracks on average are recorded for the vocals for a song but there were about 140 for "Your Name." That's how much harmonies and vocals there were in it and we put in that much more effort into it. I'm not saying the sound was weak -- it was our a cappella, ad-libs and sounds of breathing that could bring out the song.
Key: I think "Up & Down" and "Your Name" were songs that were very necessary for this album. I was thinking that our image would become too fixed without the two songs. Fans could see us in just one light if we had a title song like "Lucifer" and they could also think why buy an album which has so many similar songs? It was important that we include a lot of our own color into the two songs.

[INTERVIEW] Boy band SHINee - Part 2

From left, SHINee members Onew, Taemin, Jonghyun, Taemin and Key. [Chae Ki-won/10Asia]

10: I think your lifestyle shows the most on your performance for "Lucifer." You have to do harmonies, belt out at parts, and all dance in time with each other. (laugh) How were you able to practice? You were all individually busy.
Taemin: This is what I felt. That people can just do when they go for it. (laugh) When they're faced with whatever, you just have to go for it even when you don't know [what you're supposed to do]. But we had actually thought also that we wouldn't be able to pull off the song.
Onew: But you can if you just go for it.
Minho: I was shocked the first time we rehearsed live after practicing the choreography. [I thought] This is impossible. We can't do it. Or let's put in a lot of MR. (laugh)
Key: We wondered whether we could just say we were sick. (laugh)
Minho: The funny thing is, we had gotten better the second day. We became okay to listen to and on the third day we were practicing, we thought, "Oh, we've gotten better?" So that's when we realized ah, we can do it if we practice.
Taemin: I was in Hong Kong a week before our comeback because I had to appear on "Let's Go Dream Team" in place of Minho since he got injured. Everybody was against it, including myself, up till the point I left. But everyone did just fine when I got back. I wondered what was going on, really. (laugh)
Jonghyun: When we're prepping for an album, we go into the agency around one or two in the afternoon and get back home after midnight. We practice together the whole time during that time. Shooting the music video means we're done with practicing the choreography so we sort of start practicing singing live after that.
Minho: I think a month before we shoot the music video, we practically live at the agency.

[INTERVIEW] Boy band SHINee - Part 1

From left, SHINee members Onew, Taemin, Jonghyun, Taemin and Key. [Chae Ki-won/10Asia]

"Buy version A of our album as well. (laugh) We took a lot of the photographs in version B so version A is better executed." Key explained the difference between the two versions while looking at the album 10Asia brought to the interview.

The five boys, who had prepped for their new album "Lucifer" starting when their second mini-album "Juliet" was made, were able to experience every process this time around including singing, dancing, styling and even the photos to go into the album's jacket, and it seemed to have had an important influence on SHINee's current state. While making a single album, they came to understand the process through which an album is created and started to find their unique color which was rich enough to fill all the tracks on the new record with their harmonies.

[INTERVIEW] Female singer BoA - Part 3

BoA [SM Entertainment]

Q: How did your Hollywood movie project come about?
BoA: Personally, I am a huge fan of the film "Step Up." That film made me re-think about street dancing and I gained passion for dancing. When I heard that the writer of that film offered me a role, I was very surprised. There has been a lot of talk over the years that I would start acting, but I wasn't up for it because my original job is being a singer and I was worried that once I started to act, it would look like acting was my full-time job. But I like that this movie is a dance film. As a singer, there is no opportunity to leave behind my dancing as a work of its own. But being able to express a two-hour movie with dancing, I think that, in itself, will be of great help to my career.

[INTERVIEW] Female singer BoA - Part 2

Korean pop singer BoA [SM Entertainment]

Q: It seems like you participated more on this album than you did on your previous ones. It even carries two tracks that were written by you.

BoA: I hadn't originally planned on writing a song. But once, I had finished touring in Japan and had nothing to do and no one play with so I bought a computer and a songwriting program. I had no agenda at the time and I just started making beats which it was fun. So I just kept on writing and out came a song. I actually thought the company wouldn't put it on the album but they told me the song is "better than expected." So I was like, what do they mean by better than expected? (laugh) For the track "Let Me," everyone knows that I love dancing so I wrote about the desire for dancing in the format of a battle. "Day By Day" is a pop ballad that has very dark lyrics. When I was working on it, I felt similar to how I had felt when writing the lyrics in Japan for a song called 'moon & sunrise' and I wanted to express things like joy, sorrow, hope and solitude.

[INTERVIEW] Female singer BoA - Part 1

Korean pop singer BoA [SM Entertainment]

She has topped music charts in both Korea and Japan. She made her debut in the U.S. and took on the challenge of making it onto the Billboard charts and was recently cast in a Hollywood dance pic which will be produced by the makers of the film "Step Up." It took her ten years to achieve all these accomplishments. And BoA is now twenty-four years old. In that respect, "Hurricane Venus," BoA's first record release in Korea in five years, carries more meaning than it being just a new album. What kind of music does this singer, who has achieved almost everything she can achieve commercially and is now reaching her peak as a singer and dancer, want to make? Below are excerpts from a press conference with BoA, held on August 4.