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You’ve kept being busy with doing fashion photo shoots or ads since Wonder Girls disbanded, but you’ve been on a music hiatus for a while. What have you been up to?
I moved to another agency. Haha. And I spent this time wondering what I should change as I was working on new music.
You must have thought hard about this change as you were preparing this album. Did you find the answer you were looking for?
I asked around a lot and I definitely gave it a lot of thoughts. The conclusion I came to was different from the answer others gave me. My personal answer was that I should create more occasions to communicate with the audience. In order to do this, I must be somehow a bit more approachable one way or another. To be honest, my personality isn’t cold or arrogant like the image I have on stage when I perform “24 Hours” or “Full Moon. I realized that a lot of people see me that way because of my persona on stage.
It seems that way when I see how you are today. You laugh a lot and you enjoy making others laugh. You make a lot of funny faces too.
Haha. My thought like today was “I should show a little bit more of who I truly am to be closer to the audience, right?”. That’s what people say. Don’t get attached to just one image. If you make a comparison to pastel crayons, there are 36 colors, so don’t try to draw with only just one color.
Using the expression 36-color pastel crayons is cute.
To me, 36 colors is the most you can get. Why settle for just two? Haha. I hope I’ll become someone with such various colors.
You actually did prove this at some extent through your Wonder Girls activities and your solo activities. The image you had with Wonder Girls and the one you had during your solo stages were completely different. How does it feel to go back on stage with a new song? It’s your first album since you left JYP and the end of Wonder Girls.
To be honest, I don’t know where my time goes. I’m currently working on the album and there’s not one single aspect I didn’t check in the process. People ask me if I ‘m nervous. It’s something I’ve been preparing myself to for such a long time, so standing on stage as just “Sunmi” doesn’t make me nervous like the thought itself. I’ve planned to show a song in a different style from my solo with JYP, so this is what makes me a bit impatient and scared at the same time. As they say, we’ll just see how it goes.
Haha. Indeed. We’ll just see how it goes.
It’s true. When I give a present and say “this is the gift I prepared” and the person on the receiving end goes “wow, nice!”, it makes me happy. This is the kind of gift I want to give to the audience.
How is this “gift” different from what you did before?
If you can say the Sunmi from “24 Hours” and “Full Moon” was a pale-looking girl who never smiled, this time around you’ll get the feeling I’m a woman who knows what she’s saying. With a bright and witty side as well as a cynical side. Some people will probably say “has Sunmi always have this side?”.
What worked with your precedent albums was this “pale-looking girl who doesn’t have one single drop of blood” concept that defined a new kind of sexy. Not the typical one. So there are probably fans who are expecting to see this Sunmi one more time. Still, is there a reason why you’ll show a different image?
Yes. I thought to myself that I should absolutely be different. Because there are so many things I can show you, besides what I’ve already shown. People back then thought my vibe was too complicated. However, as you can see today, I’m definitely not like that, right? Haha.
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Thanks to your bare-foot performances for “24 Hours” then “Full Moon”, you got the nickname “bare-foot goddess”. What do you hope to hear this time around?
Things like “oh? She knew how to be like that?”, “is she this kind of girl?”.
You debuted 10 years ago, and you’re taking a new start. Coming back as a solo artist after leaving Wonder Girls, then being a part of Wonder Girls again is quite something. What comes to your mind when you look back at those ten years?
Should I use the word “professional life”? I debuted as a Wonder Girls member when I was sixteen, so it seems that I’ve been in this professional life for 10 years. This is what adults say. Your professional life goes like this: you spend the first 10 years studying, you spend the next 10 years securing your spot, and then you finally earn money. It’s a weird answer, right? However, it’s exactly how I feel. I spent 10 years studying. I figured out the weapons no one but me can have, so now it’s time for me to show it. I was a Wonder Girl for the past ten years, so so now I’ll be Sunmi for the next 10 years. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it for the next years, though!
It clearly seems that you will? You have a sense for things!
Do I? Really?
Of course! You’re good at things one usually aren’t good at even after studying them. Let’s say you were a sexy outfit, you put on an elegant expression that makes you even more beautiful.
To be honest, Park Jin Young also told me I have a good sense. Am I bragging too much? To be honest, my body can be described more as soft than sexy. My face is far from being sexy. That’s why generic sexyness doesn’t suit me. I know this kind of sexy isn’t for me, so I just separate.
I can’t wait to see you on stage again. Have you set the day for your first stage yet
Yes. The album will be released on August 22nd. My first stage will be on August 24th.
Whom you’d like to get an encouragement message text from right before this first stage?
Hm… To be honest, it would be nice if I had a boyfriend, but sadly I don’t have one. So… Ah! Teddy-oppa who wrote my title track. I think if Teddy sends me a text message like “Sunmi Fighting!”, I’ll really go hard on stage.
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Cosmopolitan
Translation: @thesunnytown – thesunnytown.wordpress.com
The Sunny Town 