NCT’s JAEHYUN is forging his own path

Jeong Jaehyun, the K-pop idol known mononymously as JAEHYUN, likens writing lyrics on his debut solo album, J, to a game of ping-pong. He would sit with his team (“his crew”, as he affectionately calls them) as songs bubbled into being. They’d bat ideas around, letting them gain momentum, spin through meanings and back stories, and grow conceptual emotional layers – jealousy, declaration, indecision – before being adopted or discarded. 

“That’s why I like participating, I enjoy making music from nothing,” JAEHYUN says over a video call from Seoul. But, he adds, at least one – the breezy, carefree “Dandelion” – had a clear, unwavering beginning: a stream of thoughts catalogued in his memo app and “photos in my phone of dandelions where they’re growing between cement in a random place. I looked to those [often].”

“Dandelion” became a pre-release track alongside the darkly serpentine “Roses”, which was penned over a year ago, a song he’s thrilled has finally seen the light of day. “After I finished the album I was like, ‘Am I that into flowers?’” he jokes. “But that was the start. ‘Dandelion’ could be the moment where you’re really pure in soul, that happy vibe when you’re young, and ‘Roses’ is the moment where you miss something so hard. It’s interesting that both songs have such a different story but the feeling where they could be related.” The songs were then partnered in a single music video divided by colour (light versus dark), mood (joy versus pain) and environment (from surrounded by people and nature to an empty house).

This back-and-forth process, the shifting from one style to another, is very JAEHYUN-coded. He himself is a man in constant motion, switching between how he’s seen most often by the wider public: from the cool, calm minimalist, sharp in Prada (for whom he’s a global ambassador), to a member of the chiselled and ultra-famous friendship group known as the ‘97 line’, which includes BTS’s Jungkook and Seventeen’s Mingyu, to the dry-humoured and unpretentious everyman which his longtime fans hold dear.

In his songwriting process he’s entirely pliable, able to immerse all sides of himself at all times. “I don’t think it really matters what feeling it is in that moment, I listen to the beat and I go into the vibe, whether it’s bright or dark.” He is, of course, aware of the perceptions, and the hundreds of fan edits that capture the dichotomy of his personality.

“I really love how the fans make those memes, I really enjoy watching them,” he says. “I don’t try to be calm or try to fool around. I guess I just have those two people inside me where they’re always messing about,” he reasons. He’s amused by trying to dissect himself and snappily encapsulate the unique combination that’s breathed life into the artist he’s wanted to be since childhood.

JAEHYUN grew up with a music-loving father, a grandmother who was a dancer, and a mother who taught him piano. He debuted aged 19, in April 2016 as a part of NCT U (the first team within the mega-group NCT, who are broken out into six teams), then in NCT 127 where he’s spent the bulk of his eight years as an idol.

Over the years, he’s dabbled with solo projects: Covers include LAUV’s “I Like Me Better”, which went viral and sits at 102 million YouTube views, and original singles “Try Again” (2017), “Forever Only” (2022), and “Horizon” (2023). The latter’s fusion of funk, pop and R&B fits him well, a sound he’s doubled down on for J, his distinctive voice in all its forms, from airy falsetto to an ever so slight husk in its lower range, cleanly laid over 90s and 00s-leaning beats.

His personal listening taste, he says, is wide-ranging. “I do really like the oldies, the 90s, sometimes the 70s, and that naturally comes out in my songs,” he says, “but recently, I’ve really listened to songs by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, and Billie Eilish and Charli XCX.” Is Jeong Jaehyun having a brat summer then? “Probably.” A tiny smile. “A brat summer,” he repeats to himself, trying out the phrase like he’s had a minor epiphany.

His NCT bandmate JOHNNY dubbed his earlier work “sexy lonely”, but it’s a description that still holds water. The music is sleeker, more buoyant and sophisticated, particularly the Babyface co-penned “Can’t Get You” (“I’ve been into his music for years so having a song with him was great. I had to put it as the last track where it could wrap the album up,” he says), but it continues to mine the rich landscape of humans being in and out of love, and everything in between.

Its centrepiece is “Completely”, a lush tearjerker, a heart on sleeve confession. “If you listen to it before you sleep, after taking a shower, like, when you’re lying down, it hits deep in the heart. You get emotional. Would there be a better way to say ‘I love you’ than that song? It’s completely true love,” he says. Is he that person then – a big romantic? JAEHYUN smirks and leans back. “I’m figuring it out.” 

Contrary to the album’s tapestry of sounds is the simplicity of the title. JAEHYUN is slightly sheepish on its origins “because I really didn’t have a lot on my mind [for it], but J is the letter I always write on my water bottles or my headphones, and for the first album, I really wanted the people listening to know who I am, and what I want to talk about.”

The lead single, “Smoke”, is the one song on J without a defined theme or story. You could see it instead as visceral, a moodmaker, a song played during a long drive with the top down in a muggy summer twilight haze. The song’s video, however, is a feast for the eyes: a mix of bloody film noir and gooey sci-fi that offered him a new on-screen challenge.

“I actually didn’t want to talk about the specific story because the audiences all have their own thoughts about it. I loved how really open the story is and also because it has a weird feeling after watching it.” He pauses, pondering the video. “You know where it starts with the CCTV? The main character I’m playing is someone with OCD and narcissistic, and I’m concerned with the people watching, how they think about me. And at the end, it’s a new person who comes through the doorway, that’s a different person compared to the one at the start.” JAEHYUN smiles cryptically. “I get the chance to express more. It’s interesting.”

I ask: is it interesting because you too have lived a life under the scrutiny of cameras and people’s opinions? “Honestly, maybe. There would be times where I would get nervous on photo walls, where there are a bunch of cameras and flashes but not like the character in that film. I couldn’t live like that if I was too concerned about everything.”

JAEHYUN is somewhat of an enigma. He likes to consider each question carefully, almost chew it over in his brain. He’s canny and careful, the hallmarks of someone long accustomed to the spotlight, and has a sharp gaze but a quick smile. Remind him that once upon a time his aspiration was to be “good at everything”, and he laughs. “Wow, what a passionate person,” he says drily. “Right now though, I feel more like I have to be into what I’m doing, rather than perfect in everything.”

Neither his ongoing popularity nor that he’s settled into an easier state with himself and his work has changed his outlook on life. “When I’m on stage and all the fans are cheering for that moment, I would never get to feel that kind of love if I wasn’t doing this job, so I always feel really thankful,“ he says. “But today I was filming content and met an elementary school friend who was there as a production director, and he showed me videos of us having a birthday party with our friends during school. Just talking with him I felt the same way I did at that time. I do feel the same I did when I was young but all the emotions [from the last eight years] are just added on.”

Eight years into a celebrated career, and from writing songs in his bedroom in his spare time to an album stacked with his name on the credits, JAEHYUN sees new beginnings for himself. “I really want to have fans feel what kind of journey I could go on in the future. I definitely did my best after debut but I always had a small place, and time, where I could dig more deeply into what I really want to do. Am I at the right moment [in life]? I don’t know. When I look back it might be different but right now I think I’m in the right place.”