[Exclusive Interview①] YG’s YANG HYUN SUK says, “I’ll make WINNER & iKON into long-lived idol groups, who will enjoy popularity for the next 10 years”
[일간스포츠=엄동진 기자] Singer-turned-producers are leading the trend in the music scene.
The head of YG Entertainment and SM Entertainment, who compete for top place in the music industry in Korea, are YANG HYUN SUK and Lee Soo-Man, who are both singer-turned-producers. The head of JYP Entertainment is Park Jin-Young, who is still performing as a singer. FNC Entertainment is also led by singer-turned-producer Han Seong-Ho.
The president of those labels can well-understand their singers, as they had been singers themselves. There are also many merits for those labels, as the presidents can minimize trials and errors by making use of their own experience of working as a singer. Those singer-turned-producers also have excellent sense of business, to lead the trend of the music scene in Korea.
Then, who is the one that showed the most remarkable “performance” this year, by tapping into such ability and experience? People will not disagree that the one will be YG’s president YANG HYUN SUK, who made BIGBANG top music charts for a few consecutive months and launched iKON perfectly. He is thought to have further enhanced the power of the YG kingdom, by carrying out more-than-ever aggressive album releases and marketing.
YANG is well-evaluated in that he made both YG’s No.1 artist BIGBANG and YG’s future leader iKON top the charts. While YG’s competitors have gone through ups and downs with some albums achieving success and some others experiencing failure, YG has seen no failure and prepared for its future in a solid manner. BIGBANG swept charts for four months from May, and the baton was passed to iKON. Music fans’ expectations for PSY and WINNER, other YG sinters who will come back in the second half, are rising very high, too. It seems that there is no barrier for YG’s success for some time.
▶ “It is wrong to expect good outcome without doing your best”
In a phone call with Daily Sports on the 20, YANG said, “I’ll make iKON and WINNER into long-lived idol groups who will enjoy popularity for at least 10 years.”
“BIGBANG has been popular for nine years, and before BIGBANG, it was hard for idol groups to maintain their popularity for even five years. BIGBANG has been consistently growing for the entire nine years and they are still the best idol group who can represent Asia, which makes me very produce”, added YANG.
Then, YANG went on to say, “WINENR and iKON were trainees for at least four to five years until their debut. It will be bad if that kind of teams just disappear four to five years after their debut”.
President YANG pointed out WINNER and iKON as the next-generation idol groups who will follow the suit of BIGBANG. YANG set his goal at growing WINNER and iKON into long-lived groups who can consistently evolve for the next 10 years and record a long run.
YANG promised, “It is not just a matter of the success of WINNER and iKON, nor the success of only YG. Eventually, we have to make efforts to make the entire music market grow bigger. For that purpose, YG will keep investing in the music and performances of WINNER and iKON.”
Then, YANG expressed his confidence by saying, “Actually, it was a big challenge even for YG to make BIGBANG release two songs and music videos every month. We achieved an unachievable thing. As a result, BIGBANG took the No.1 on Gaon chart for four consecutive months. It is still hard to directly compare WINNER and iKON to BIGBANG, but as BIGBANG laid such hard foundation successfully, I think WINNER and iKON can grow even faster than BIGBANG. I’ll make sure that the talent of the two teams will be added by YG’s infrastructure, to bear big fruit.”
YANG said lastly, “It is wrong to expect good outcome without doing your best. BIGBANG bore the largest number of fruits this year and WINNER and iKON also cast seeds and watered them this year. I’ll do my best to make them enjoy popularity for the next 10 years”.
2015. 9. 21.
