Is there anyone in the K-Pop eco-system has perfected the art of reinvention quite like Chung Ha?
The 29-year-old solo artist is nothing short of a show stopper, a fact that became instantly clear just over nine years ago when Chung Ha, then a contestant on Korea’s wildly popular Produce 101 music competition series, had judges and fellow contestants in shock when she danced during her audition. She would then go on to debut in the show’s temporary group, I.O.I.
In the years since, Chung Ha — who was born in Seoul and raised in Texas before heading back to Korea to pursue music — has made a name for herself as a dynamic solo artist, finding domestic success through singles like “Rollercoaster,” “Snapping” and “Gotta Go.”
The “Sparkling” singer, in an unsurprising move, parted ways with her former management in 2023 before signing with Jay Park’s More Vision later that year. She came back with her first single since joining the agency — “Eenie Meenie,” featuring Hongjoong of ATEEZ — last year.
Chung Ha’s latest EP, Alivio, her first in nearly three years, is all about letting go of the past and moving forward. It’s a sentiment captured in the album’s lead single, “Stress,” which encourages listeners to love themselves and take it easy. The singer spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about putting out new music, the decision to release an EP instead of a full-length album and working with her good friend and fellow K-Pop legend Sunmi.
This is your first EP in almost three years. You’ve had a lot of changes in that time. How are you feeling about the new album? Are you excited? Are you nervous?
Two and a half years. Man. Time flies. A little bit of everything you just mentioned. I am nervous. I’m excited. I feel a little pressured, of course, a little stressed out, but at the same time I’m ready to let things go. Let this go. Finally, after, I don’t know, two, three years. I didn’t even know that it was that long. My fans were like, “So this should be a full-length album.” I’m like, “Why? I just had so many albums out.” I’m like, no, I’m not ready for a full-length album. Of course, I do love doing full-length albums, but I don’t know if I would have the time. I was hosting a daily radio show last year, so I didn’t really get my own musical creative time. I was like, I don’t know if that could be possible, but I’ll try. We here in Korea, call it a mini album. I’m really happy to release a full mini album. It’s been like five to six years since my fourth mini album came out. Flourishing, the title track was “Snapping.” That’s been a while.
It sounds like you’ve been sitting with this project for a while. Have there been any moments that stood out as your favorite during the recording process?
I didn’t hold this album for that long, I can say, because we started strategizing the album after “Eenie Meenie” came along — so around summer. Then we were busy doing [Aug 2024 single] “Algorithm,” and then again, we were busy doing collaborations. I was doing events, I was doing a radio show. We were kind of slow with the album because I didn’t want to rush it out. I told my team that I wanted to be more adventurous, and I wanted to try out new things after “Eenie Meenie.” [That song] was quite new for me, but I had so much fun with it. I was like, “OK, I should be more adventurous. What do I want to do?” Then my A&R gave me piles of songs to discover. I didn’t know what I wanted to sketch, so it was just a plain, blank paper for me to have no creative boundaries on the table. I was just recording song by song. At the end of the 10th song that I’ve recorded, we were like, “What do we want to say here? What should we eliminate? What should we include on the album? What do you want to say?” And I was like, I think this is a fluctuation of my feelings for the past four or five years, and I think I really want to let these feelings go. So I think my album’s name is going to be Alivio [Spanish for “relief”] because I want to feel relieved. That’s when it naturally just came about.
What are the parallels between the this album of letting go and your life at the moment? Why did you feel that this was the time for an album that is saying that? Why right now?
I wanted to give good closure to the past four or five years since I’ve been struggling [and] facing new