Greetings, Hallyu+ readers! We introduce you to the W24. A Korean boy band, whose name stands for “World 24 Hours”. The group, who originally debuted as five, made their debut on March 8, 2018, with the mini album, Singing Dancing. In 2022, the band participated in Mnet’s band music reality survival show, “Great Seoul Invasion”, and last year they ventured out on the world tour 2023 Born Again Tour. A couple of months ago, in February, they came back with a new song ‘그때의 나이, 너와 나 (Our, Season)‘. In April, they released a song “Белая ночь” in Russian, which is a cover of the 1980s hit song “White Night”. The band will be having their comeback on the 3rd of June with a new mini-album, Memory Making Moment. In this interview, we talk about their promotions outside of Korea, the difference between performing in Russia and Korea, and as well as we talk about their new release as they reveal to us their new songs from the album.
Q: Hello, W24! You’ll be having a comeback in early June with a new mini album Memory Making Moment, could you give us a hint of what’s coming and what to expect from you?
W24: Yes we are! Our newest album is called Memory Making Moment with a total of 3 songs plus our Russian and Spanish versions of our title song “Celestial Night”. We have a total of 3 music videos as well so please look forward to them!
Q: What is different about the Memory Making Moment album and what makes it stand out from your previous works? How do you think you grew as artists?
W24: Our album Memory Making Moment feels very different to our previous albums because of the amount of love and energy we’ve put into it. We’ve put a lot of hours into the making and recording of all three songs and we think it’s the first time to feel more assured about the music style we’re doing. We think this was a big part of our growth as artists.
Q: You released “앨범명 그때의 나이, 너와 나 (Our Season)” in February, and the song is described as a lyrical and wistful song about love that had matured over the years. Are there any moments from your life that you would like to re-experience again like it was the first time?
W24: I guess each member has a different moment to tell but one of our members, Yunsoo, wants to go back to the Astronomy Camp he went to when he was a kid. This actually relates to our song “Celestial Night” where he experienced lots of fun and love when he was a kid.
Q: You went on the show, “Great Seoul Invasion” and audition shows like the 999 series are very popular lately. What advice would you give someone looking to start (or re-start) their career through an audition show? (question asked by our member Polaris_Tae)
W24: Audition shows are definitely really popular these days. Some people from our group participated in a survival program but didn’t get that much attention. Our suggestion would be to obviously go on a show if you want to, but we all actually don’t like survival programs because of the tension and competition. We have this opinion because we are a band. If we were K-pop idols, survival programs could be the best choice.
Q: How would you describe your music to a first-time listener?
W24: Our music has life in it. You can feel everything throughout them. Especially our newest album has a lot of energy into it so we hope you all get that good energy from them.
Q: Do you prefer performing in front of a small intimate venue, or in front of a large crowd? Also, what do you most enjoy about this audience type? (question asked by our member Polaris_Tae)
W24: We all like small intimate venues because it’s intimate. We are able to relate more to the listeners because they carefully listen to our music. But, we obviously love large crowds too because it’s lots of fun!
Q: You’ve released songs and covers in various languages such as Spanish & Russian. Do you find this difficult? And which non-Korean song did you enjoy the most? (question asked by our member Polaris_Tae)
W24: Singing in another language is very difficult, especially languages we haven’t learned. We think the most fun song to cover was Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way”.
Q: You’ve been touring quite a lot in Russia and Kazakhstan. What do you like about these countries culturally? And have you noticed any differences between performing there and in Korea?
W24: We’ve thankfully had the chance to visit these CIS countries (Commonwealth of Independent States: formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991). Russia and Kazakhstan are beautiful countries and they have beautiful buildings. Russia, in particular, has beautiful subway stations. We were really impressed! The fans in Kazakhstan are very energetic and express a lot of feelings when they listen to our music. Russian audiences are more polite and respectful when they listen, kind of similar to Korea.
Q: Have you met any Russian celebrities? If you had a chance, who would you like to collaborate with on a song? (question asked by our member UMJIMOODS)
W24: We’ve met many Russian celebrities. We were able to go on a famous television show where we met the most famous three hosts, and also we’ve previously collaborated with Vanya, one of the trendiest artists of the MZ generation! We would love to collaborate with Alla Pugacheva, the artist who sang “Million Roses”
Editors Note: “Generation MZ” is a term that was created by combining the words “Millennials” in their 20s to 40s, as well as “Gen Z”, who are in their teens to early 20s. In other words, “Gen MZ” refers to individuals that range from teens to early 40s.
Q: Since you released a cover of the 1980 song “Белая ночь”, would you be interested in releasing a full-length album covering more Russian songs?
W24: We actually did release an album with a total of 6 songs in Russia! The album was filled with cover songs of different eras including this 1980’s song. We also had a Korean version of the “Samaya Samaya”
Q: I see that each of the members worked towards self-producing many of W24’s releases in the past. Do you each have a favourite song that you’ve contributed towards in the past? And if you could produce a song for another artist? Who would you choose? (question asked by our member Polaris_Tae)
W24: We actually still self-produce all of our songs! We feel that all of our songs are quite good. Each and every one of them are like our own “babies”. We would love to produce a song for any artist, but at the moment, we would like to produce a song for IU the most.
Q: What makes you feel like happiest when you are performing? (question asked by our member UMJIMOODS)
W24: The happiest moment definitely has to be when we feel like we are connecting with the audience and our fans.
Q: Korea has a lot of outdoor festivals. Has anything interesting ever happened while you performed at one? (question asked by our member UMJIMOODS)
W24: The most traumatic incident was when we were performing outdoors and they had a drone fly very close to the stage. The drone crashed into one of the lights and fell to the ground. We were really shocked!
Q: Do you receive a lot of feedback from your fans? What kind of a message would you like to send to your fans? (question asked by our member UMJIMOODS)
W24: We do receive a lot of feedback from our fans. We even recently had a “hearing” [listening party] for our newest three songs for only 13 EVERYs [W24’s fandom name]. They gave us good feedback about our songs, it was very helpful. We would like to tell our fans that we love them very much and that we are always thankful for waiting patiently for us.
You can find out more on W24 via her SNS links below:
YouTube:youtube.com/@w24hours_band
Twitter/x.com:@Band_w24hours
Instagram:@w24_official_
GFX BY @yerm
PROOFREAD BY @Polaris_Tae
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY @Chococo
