Lee hopes to inspire young K-pop singers

Singer Lee Seung-chul talks about his new album during a press conference at Design & AUDIO in Seoul, Thursday. / Courtesy of Jin & Won Music Works

By Kim Jae-heun

Veteran singer Lee Seung-chul released his 12th album last Thursday at Design & AUDIO in Seoul, with the hope of becoming a role model for young K-pop singers.

“This is an album that I could proudly play for young singers,” Lee said. “Young people look up to me to find answers for their music career as I did with singer Jo Yong-pil’s albums. People are also curious to hear what I will say when they ask me for advice about music. For this reason, I had to produce the best album myself first.”

Lee stopped all his touring to fully concentrate on producing the new album coming close to the 30th anniversary of his debut in 1986. He arranged all the songs for the first time by himself.

The singer worked with three Grammy Award Winning engineers ― Steve Hodge, Dan Parry, and Tony Majeratti ― to pursue the finest sound quality. The sound engineers from Britain and America are well-known for their contribution to albums by Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Adele and Beyonce among many others. Lee even bought a 120 million won ($110,031) Steinway piano to assure the sound quality was just right for this album.

He also received 200 songs from both veteran and novice writers. The singer cut that number down to a final 12 after listening to samples. The album includes diverse genres from soul, standard-pop to ballad, rock and Latin beats.

Lee’s dedication saw him work 14 hours a day every day for nine weeks.

“It’s hard to find singers nowadays releasing an album with a full 12 songs. This is because no matter how much effort artists put into each song, people will only listen to title tracks,” Lee said.

“However, there are students who are curious about and study my work, which is meaningful to them. Thinking about this makes me feel more responsible for my music,” Lee added.

He said that the chart system is one of the problems in the K-pop music scene. Lee thinks it is unfair for him to compete with young K-pop stars under the same chart system as they pursue different genres.

In the second half of the year, Lee plans to hold a concert tour around the world, starting with a show in Los Angeles on June 5. He will also perform in Atlanta, New York, Vancouver, Sydney and cities in China as well. However, the singer has not been allowed to perform in Japan since he was refused entry to the country last August for singing a song for unification with a Korean defector choir on Dokdo before National Liberation Day. Dokdo is a Korean islet at the center of a territorial dispute with Japan.