INTERVIEW BIGBANG speaks about last album 'MADE'
'MADE' by BIGBANG / Courtesy of YG Entertainment
By Kim Jae-heun
YG Entertainment’s popular hip hop band BIGBANG released their third full-length album, “MADE THE FULL ALBUM,” Monday midnight, the last release before all five members depart to complete their mandatory military service. The youngest group member Seungri said he will try to join the army together with G-dragon and Tae Yang, who are set to serve their military tours following T.O.P’s enlistment next February.
All Korean men have to complete two years of compulsory military service and BIGBANG’s fans are estimating at least a four- to six-year hiatus until all members return as a five-member act.
However, group leader G-dragon implied that it could take much longer for the group to release new album as they cannot start producing one immediately after their reunion.
Meanwhile, the three new tracks from the band that complete the album, “FXXK IT,” “LAST DANCE” and “GIRLFRIEND” swept eight local online charts and topped the iTunes chart in 16 countries. The three songs completed the whole MADE series project that began in May last year with BIGBANG releasing nine songs over four consecutive months. The full-length album includes recent hit-songs “LOSER,” “BAE BAE” and “BANG BANG BANG.”
The track FXXK IT is a hip hop genre with a groovy medium tempo co-produced by Teddy, G-Dragon and R.TEE. Rapper T.O.P participated in writing the lyrics for all three new songs including the slow R&B track LAST DANCE and GIRLFRIEND written by YG Entertainment’s big name producers Teddy, G-Dragon and CHOICE37.
Q. It took so long for BIGBANG to complete the MADE series as an album.
A. G-Dragon: If we do not have songs that we like, we would not release a full album. T.O.P’s enlistment in the army contributed to the limited time in completing the album and T.O.P agreed that we would not release it before he goes, if we did not have enough satisfying songs. It may have been more meaningful if we had completed the MADE series when we returned and timing was not important for us. We only release a song if we are confident with it and we like it.
Q. Whose idea was it to name the title track FXXK IT?
A. Tae Yang: I remember perfectly. I was at the studio at that time with Teddy and Kush and we were having hard time coming up with a concept and style for the new tracks. Then, Kush said “Fxxxk it, let’s just make it,” and Teddy took the idea from there.
A. G-Dragon: It is actually big burden for our producers to come up with a song for such a big name band like BIGBANG. We discussed it for so long and we were getting tired when Kush joked about giving up such a hard task. All of sudden, we thought it would be fun to make the song’s concept more comfortable.
Q. It must have been hard work to finish the album under such pressure?
A. G-Dragon: Songs came out so easily before and they were all very good, at least for me. But as time went by, it got difficult. May be I got old or something, but I have to concentrate very hard when I write songs now. Before I’d produce hit-songs coincidently while fooling around, but now my pride in our group has grown and as myself a fan of BIGBANG, I cannot write even one word easily for our songs. It takes a very long time.
Q. Why did you choose a retro style for the FXXK IT music video? Also, you released slow R&B tracks, which are different from your previous wild and fun music like “WE LIKE 2 PARTY.”
A. G-Dragon: Our concept for the FXXK IT music video was simple. It is retro. If you have been watching our previous music videos, you will hardly find all five members in one scene. It was our agreement to appear in the music video all together throughout the scenes. We did not want to look cool but rather funny and to some extent a little weird. Retro style scenes taking old hardware stores as a background may look mundane, but for foreign audiences it can look fresh and new like when we watch Harlem Street in American music videos.
I also hate being typical. It is BIGBANG’s motto to do and show unexpected things. Honestly, the full-length MADE album was a difficult work for us as we were celebrating our 10th anniversary and it is our third full-length album plus we are not sure when we will return when everyone gets enlisted. I wanted to write a song that lingers in our fans heart like LAST DANCE. It has mixture of our complicated feelings as we go through the unstable process of becoming adults. We wrote our stories and we will look back to this song later. The genre of music is not ballad style but it is definitely a slow song, something that BIGBANG have never tried before.
I am sorry for those who expected energetic songs like FANTASTIC BABY or BANG BANG BANG.
Q. Fans are not happy with YG delaying the returns of many contracted musicians. Why do you say it takes particularly long for YG artists to come back?
A. G-Dragon: I want to point out, as our fans hate Yang Hyun-suk, thinking that he is delaying the release of our new album. But he cares about BIGBANG more than anybody and he always asks us when our work will be done too. But like I said before, we have to be satisfied with the songs before we put them onto an album and we always ask him to delay the release date. We are in control of our album while other entertainment companies have control over their musicians’ schedules and album preparations.
A. T.O.P: We do not star in TV shows often and people think we are resting but we are actually traveling around the world on world tours. We spend more than half the year abroad and we barely have time to work on our albums.