So KQ signed Hongjoong as a trainee, after which started casting his eventual bandmates. The boys who hailed from totally different elements of South Korea moved to Seoul, and collectively they started a battery of dancing and singing classes that took up all of their time exterior of faculty, together with on the weekends, once they labored from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.—or deeper into the evening in the event that they needed to put together for month-to-month evaluations by firm employees. Like lots of their friends, many of the members have been impressed by teams like BigBang, Spotlight (previously Beast), and Exo.
However one of many causes Ateez doesn’t fairly sound like different Okay-pop teams is its unusually deep pool of influences. Hongjoong cites Michael Jackson and David Bowie as private heroes, whereas Mingi—the deep-voiced rapper who writes his personal verses—surprises me by sharing his love for Kim Jong Kook’s cutesy 2005 Okay-pop hit “Loveable.” Jongho, one among his technology’s most technically spectacular Okay-pop singers, beloved Yoo Jae-Ha’s 1987 ballad “As a result of I Love You.” “Although I used to be younger, I used to be so moved by the lyrics and feelings,” he says. “I wished to grow to be a singer who might painting these sorts of emotions.”
KQ then despatched the trainees to Los Angeles for a month, a formative interval now preserved in KQ Fellaz American Coaching, a docuseries of the type typically produced by Okay-pop firms to juice fan curiosity earlier than a bunch formally debuts. In clips from the 2018 present, the members are bright-eyed of their adjustment to, amongst different issues, the fixed presence of digital camera crews. They endured dance boot camp, studying three to 4 routines a day. “We took so many classes that we might dance in our sleep!” exclaims Yunho.
San remembers his perspective shifting the second he noticed an indication at an LA dance studio that learn: “No racism, no sexism, simply dance.” “I used to be actually moved by that one line,” he explains. “Principally, being totally different isn’t unsuitable. There’s no unsuitable and no proper—it’s simply totally different. So I realized dance abilities too, however a very powerful factor was that mindset.”
The group discovered such a message of inclusivity inspirational as they educated to grow to be stars. “The Okay-pop scene has guidelines, like, ‘Solely this manner is cool.’ However in America, there’s no set reply,” Seonghwa provides. “So whereas we have been coaching within the US, we realized concerning the thought of not likely having a set reply. By that, our dance, our creativity, our style was capable of widen.”
The lifetime of a Okay-pop star is usually paradoxical. “We undoubtedly have that mindset of desirous to problem ourselves,” Mingi says. “However we’re additionally simply people who need to stay our lives.”
They don’t seem to be simply singers or performers. They’re idols, the sort of people that encourage fan fiction, always churning social media accounts, and devotees who would wait hours simply to be in the identical room with them.
Accordingly, as morning turns to afternoon on set, members wander by the home in more and more elaborate costumes, getting ready to take photographs which may find yourself on somebody’s bed room wall. Seonghwa clomps up the steps in heavy platform clogs. He’s dripping in studs and spikes, topped off with a rakishly tilted beanie. He scans himself within the mirror, as if attempting to get into character.
