Lee Seung-yoon comes full circle with 'Album 0'

From a struggling bedroom musician to a festival headliner — this is the story of singer-songwriter Lee Seung-yoon.

After a decade-long struggle as an indie musician singing in underground clubs, busking on Seoul streets and recording music at home, Lee had a breakthrough when he won the top prize on JTBC’s audition program “Sing Again” season 1 in 2021.

The show, which started airing during the COVID-19 lockdown, became a huge hit as viewers wondered how such talented musicians could have been in the shadows for so long.

Since then, “Singer No. 30,” as Lee was known during the show, has been flying on a magic carpet. He has released a full-length studio album almost every year, starting with “Even If Things Fall Apart” in 2021; performed numerous solo concerts — the latest running a staggering 400 minutes; and headlined music festivals.

“Yeok Seong,” Lee’s 2024 third full-length album, is a career-defining work, earning him multiple awards — musician of the year, best rock song for “Anthem of Defiance” and best modern rock song for “Waterfall” — at the Korean Music Awards last year.

Those who have been following Lee since “Sing Again” see him as a rock star fully in command of his craft. Songwriter Kim Eana, one of the judges on “Sing Again,” had predicted as much when she remarked that she could see him performing on large festival stages, including the Incheon Pentaport Festival, where he performed earlier this month.

Those who have been fans of Lee since before his breakthrough know another side of him, a side that is on full display on his fourth album, “Album 0,” released in June.

On July 23, Lee sat on the stage in front of 100 fans at Seongsu Yul Music, an auditorium in the hipster neighborhood of Seongsu-dong, listening to 14 songs from the 29-track album with the audience and explaining each. The event was the second in "The Sound," a series of music listening talk shows organized by the music platform Melon.

Lee said the album “was an effort to complete songs that I considered unfinished, completing them and giving them a proper ‘home’ to stay.”

Written in the approximately 10-year span between his debut at the MBC College Song Festival in 2011 and his “Sing Again” win in 2021, the songs in “Album 0” reflect the doubts and anxieties of a young, self-described bedroom musician.

Many are ballads with lyrics that are at once poetic, moving, witty and profound. There is heavy use of double entendre to a very successful effect. At the same time, the songs foreshadow the musician that Lee, who turns 37 this week, would become.

Without ready access to a studio, Lee recorded his songs in his room, sending them out online, not knowing if they would ever be heard.

Lee took down those songs, including his first digital album released in 2013, right before “Sing Again” began airing, hoping that he would one day be able to “complete” them by recording them properly.

“It was an album that I had been really wanting to complete for a long time. I cried after the last mix because I now had no regrets,” he told the audience.

The title of the first track, “A Story of a Life in a Shadow,” in a typical Lee fashion, is double entendre in Korean meaning “consolation of a shadow” and “above a shadow”

“The consolation that I wanted at the time was, I think, an album called ’Album 0.’ I wanted to do this kind of music but didn’t know how. First, I was not someone who could execute what I wanted. The shadow that I wanted to step out of was the circumstances and the person (that I was) that didn’t allow me to make the ‘Album 0' that I wanted,” he said.

The first CD of “Album 0” contains songs that were in the now-non-extant album “What Do I Steal,” while the second CD consists of reworkings of songs written after that.

Many of the songs have become festival circuit favorites, but have been otherwise unavailable — until the arrival of “Album 0.”

Working with songs that his “old self” had made, Lee veered away from replicating his previous recordings. “My thought was to make it a story of the present,” he said.

Yet, for “The Rebels,” a song about wanting to understand and be understood, Lee wanted to capture the vibe of the original recording and ended up re-recording the original version, including the tapping on a desk with pen, an impromptu instrumentation of the original recording that was done on the fly.

Other songs, such as “Cry on a Shoulder” and “Warped Tide,” have been drastically transformed, according to Lee, resulting in much larger sounds.

A superb lyricist, Lee excels at eliciting empathy. Listening to "What Do I Steal,” a gentle song that depicts a young man's rumination on his life, it feels as though it is you that is singing the song.

“From the moment we are born, we ‘steal’ different elements to become the person that we understand to be ‘me.’ At some point, some will agonize deeply over who they are. Faced with this existential question, I wrote this song wondering what I needed to ‘steal’ to finally realize myself,” Lee said.

“How Pretty the Moon Is,” the last track on the album and a fan favorite, is part of a death trilogy, according to Lee. “The others are ‘Death Sentence’ and a song I won’t ever release. ‘How Pretty the Moon Is” contains the conclusion to the trilogy,” he said.

“The lyrics are about how I should live,” he said. “I should talk about the present and be mindful of the present — that is the gist of the lyrics,” Lee said.

“I go around saying that this song is my life’s motto, but I know that these are very, very difficult lyrics ... In reality, these lyrics have me regretting every day, reproaching myself every day that I didn’t live up to the lyrics,” Lee said.

“Even if I couldn’t live like that, I would at least like to be that kind of musician,” he added.

Indeed, his songs are all autobiographical, Lee said in an interview with The Korea Herald that followed the two-hour fan meeting.

As for an overarching theme or message in his songs, Lee refuses to define it.

“I think there is definitely an overarching theme, but I try not to define it or have it set in stone,” Lee said. “Nor do I think that it needs to be followed like a directive,” he said.

Listeners are free to interpret the theme in any way they wish, he said.

Some songs start with the words, others with the melody, he said in explaining his musicmaking process. “For ‘What Do I Steal,’ it was the lyrics that came first, while it was the melody that came first for ‘Warped Tide,’” he said.

However, Lee finds starting with the melody easier and more fun. “Writing lyrics belongs in the realm of creation so I can’t start it very freely,” Lee said.

Ironically, it was the thought of quitting that kept him going through the difficult years. “I thought of quitting almost daily. In fact, I wanted to quit each time I dropped an album, an EP or a single,” he said.

“The reason I released numerous songs was to erase any expectations for the just released song with the next song. I felt a great void after releasing a song, so I quickly made another. I continued to make music this way,” Lee said.

Are things different now?

“It would be a lie to say that the void that comes with releasing a song is no longer there. However, ‘Album 0’ is an album that I had wanted to complete for many years, so, rather than emptiness, the feeling is closer to that of gratefulness that I was able to do it,” he said.

Taking one year to record, “Album 0” completes a circle, Lee said. “If I had drawn a line with the first album through the third album, I thought it was time to draw a circle. Also, I thought completing the circle with a zero would give greater meaning to albums one, two and three,” Lee said.

For the rest of the year, Lee plans to enjoy performing “Album 0” at festivals.

“It is the festivalgoers, not I, who make my music come alive, playing with my music. I think festivals are a way of making my songs come alive,” he said.

Lee is due to perform at LaLaLa Festival in Jakarta on Sunday, his first time performing in Indonesia.

“I don’t perform frequently overseas so I am grateful each time I do. I am very grateful that I, a Korean singer, a Korean musician, can go to another country and sing in front of people in another country,” Lee said.

This is one of a series of interviews in which Kim Hoo-ran, editor-at-large at The Korea Herald, speaks with leaders, trailblazers, unsung heroes, and figures both famous and lesser known, who share the stories of their lives and their visions for a better world. — Ed.