[INTERVIEW] Singer Lee Seok-hoon - Part 1

Most singers do interviews immediately after they release an album. And it may be the right thing to do if they want to inform people of their music. But after they are done promoting their album, they also need to spend time reflecting on their music. Even more so for someone like Lee Seok-hoon who released his first solo album. Lee, who joined group SG Wannabe after teaching singing for two years, recently wrapped up promotion of his first solo album. What was his experience of standing on stage alone and singing alone like? 10Asia spoke with Lee who stood on stage alone for the first time since his ten years of singing experience.


10: How was it working solo for the first time?
Lee Seok-hoon (Lee): I wasn't that nervous after the first show and up until the second performance. But I began to get nervous after really realizing I was doing something alone. I was really upset because while I was promoting my album I caught a bad sinus cold. I got well after my activities. (laugh)

10: What was it like to command the stage for about four minutes? You have to grab the attention of the audience with just your song.
Lee: Because I am singer I was confident that I could attract the people's attention with my song. However, I was nervous that I might forget the lyrics. (laugh) I'm bad at memorizing lyrics so it's not easy for me to get immersed in the song. That's why I look at lyrics while I'm singing for radio shows. It was those kinds of things that kept making it inconvenient.

10: Is that why you put more thought into delivering the lyrics? (laughs) It seems like you are concentrating on delivering each lyric with this mini-album more than anything.
Lee: It's right to properly relay the lyrics but I put more emphasize into singing better. Music-wise, it's good for the sound to be loud and fancy but I think the song will go overboard if the scale of the music is big and I can't control it. It refers to me in particular because I'm singer and not a sing-a-song writer and the only thing that I can do is to do my best in delivering the lyrics and songs that were written.

10: So was the issue with delivery the reason for such vocal directing too? It seemed that you tried to exclude the technical aspects to your singing as much as possible in this album and focus on delivering just your voice.
Lee: I think I've experienced a lot during the two years I've been a singer and eight to nine years that I've been doing music. What I learned through those experiences is that a person's voice can't lie. People always get caught when they disguise their voice so I was thinking of how I can deliver my singing properly when I thought of the voice. That's why I practiced on my vocals again and through that I wanted to create a tone that delivers well. It's similar to how an announcer tries to deliver the news.

10: On that point, it seems like you showed your voice exactly as it is. It seemed like it was on audio and not touched up by the equalizer.
Lee: I wanted to give it a more analog-like feeling so we didn't add any impact or tunes especially for the track "Goodbye...Passionate Love." I'm not saying I'm that awesome or anything but I just wanted to show my own voice. I felt that was how I could deliver my music and lyrics. I told the engineer that it was okay if it [ music ] was dry because that was how I wanted my voice to be.

10: All singers want their voices to be heard but isn't that also burdening? Nowadays, one can't help but take popular genres or styles into consideration.
Lee: Honestly, it is a burden. It's because I'm the only one singing ballads on televised music programs. That's one reason I cut my activities short. (laugh)

10: Even your ballad songs are same as the ballads in the past and unlike the latest songs which have a mix of R&B. Did you have any concerns because it wasn't following the trend?
Lee: I worried a lot about that and I knew that there was something the public wanted from me. So what I did was make something out of what I really wanted plus what I thought the public wanted from me. Honestly, it wasn't a hit. (laugh) And I thought that maybe there was something wrong with they way I thought.

Senior Reporter : Kang Myoung-Seok two@
Photographer : Chae ki-won ten@
Editor : Lucia Hong luciahong@, Jang Kyung-Jin three@