“There’s this saying, it’s an underlying industry saying, that you need to make it in the first three years,” P1Harmony’s leader Keeho explains to The Hollywood Reporter. “Whatever point you’re at in your third year sets the tone and lays out what the rest of your years are going to look like.”
Keeho and his fellow group members, Theo, Jiung, Intak, Soul and Jongseob, have gathered in a Los Angeles hotel room. In the U.S. for K-Pop festival and convention KCON L.A., the six member group have spent the weekend performing at the festival and meeting fans from around the world who traveled to the city for the convention.
Less than 24 hours after bringing KCON‘s M Countdown crowd at L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena to their feet, decked out in princely outfits, the members of P1Harmony are dressed casually but seemingly still buzzing off the excitement of their packed weekend.
The group, from Korean entertainment company FNC Entertainment, made their debut in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020 and have spent the last nearly four years steadily putting out music. They’ve gained a loyal fanbase, known collectively as P1ece, with a large international presence (The group is represented by CAA in the U.S. as of last year).
Ahead of their four-year anniversary as a group, P1Harmony has released their seventh EP Sad Song. The seven-track album, arguably their strongest to-date, features several standout tracks. The titular single, “Sad Song,” an upbeat track with Latin-inspired beats, is addictive and catchy. It’s featured twice on the album, with both Korean and English versions of the song.
Jongseob, the group’s youngest member at just 18 years old, says the group really likes “Sad Song,” noting its “easy to listen” to and different from their previous stronger sounding singles.
Jongseob and Intak have a “unit song” together, “WASP,” which showcases their skills as rappers in the group.
“I talked about many things with my producer,” Jongseob says of making the hip-hop track. “I’m a little bit scared of what our fans [will] think, but it’s a very fun process to me.”
All members of P1Harmony contributed to the production of Sad Song in some form. Keeho, a Toronto native who acts as a translator for his fellow group members throughout the conversation, says that he helped produce and top line “It’s Alright,” the album’s groovy second track. He adds that Jiung helped produce and top line “Last Call,” a catchy song that essentially begs to be performed to an arena of fans with confetti flowing through the air.
“This is the most involved we’ve been sonically on an album, so like Jongseob said, it’s very scary,” Keeho shares. “The more involved you are, it becomes more personal and then you’re like, ‘Oh my god. What if they don’t like it? What happens?’”
Keeho explains that there’s a touch of imposter syndrome that comes along with being creatively involved in an album. “You can also never be satisfied with your work,” the 22-year-old says. “When you write your own stuff, everyone can be like, ‘It’s so great.’ But then you’ll be like, ‘Is it though?’ Every time we work on something, you can never be super satisfied, so we just hope that fans like it.”
Their fans, P1ece, will no doubt support the release as they have in the past, helping the group earn their first Korean music show win while promoting their first full-length album Killin’ It earlier this year. Weekly music shows are integral to the K-Pop ecosystem (think MTV’s TRL, featuring performances pre-recorded in front of live audiences and the top-charting song awarded live on-air). Each music show crowns a winner for the week, marking a major accomplishment for many Korean acts.
“Obviously, having that first win isn’t everything,” Jiung says, adding that the win has a lot of meanings. “I feel like, in Korea, it’s also the way people perceive you becomes a lot different too.”
The 22-year-old adds that the fans’ dedication to getting the group that first award makes the moment even more special. “Fans work so hard to get that first win, and that first win award is the literal physicalization of that work,” he says. “[It’s] the hard work that the artist put in, and also the fans put in together, to create that one result. Having that physically there is just kind of the proof of how much we’ve really put into this album and this song, and how we all came together to create this moment.”
Killin’ It was a turning point of sorts for P1Harmony. Keeho likens it to everything before the album and everything after it are “two different people.” He adds: “When we released our first full length album, I think sonically and also visually, we just became very distinct.”
“With Killin’ It, we really kind of sat in confidence of who we are as a team and what we want to portray and what we’re good at,” Keeho says. “I feel like everything that’s going to come after Killin’ It is going to kind of reflect off of that, and maybe after two or three years it might switch to something else again. For now, I feel like whatever Killin’ It is, it’s going to reflect the albums that are going to come after it.”
P1Harmony has, and hopes to continue, to explore different genres. Theo, the group’s eldest member, expresses that he hasn’t been able to explore his personal taste in genre through the group’s music yet. He shares that he’d like to do band music and that he loves playing the guitar. Soul shares that he likes and would like to try incorporating reggae in the future.
With Theo being just 23 years old, the group has grown from teenagers to young adults in the public eye. “[I] feel like in the first few years, it was kind of awkward when we performed together. We looked like little kids,” Jongseob says. He adds that years of going on tour and creating albums has given the group a sense of confidence collectively and as individuals.
“When we come together, it creates this new synergy and that’s so evident in the performances and in the songs, and I don’t know if that is aligned with age or with just experience,” the 18-year-old says. “We did mature and grow a lot, and we’ve kind of found ourselves and found confidence within ourselves within those four years.”
Keeho notes that the group was among the youngest when they first debuted, but that there are “a lot of young people now.” He adds: “I mean, it’s a crazy way to grow up.”
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