“It’s such an honor that I can make music”: Woozi talks about SEVENTEEN’s new album, lyric inspiration, debut era, and more

On April 29, 2024, the popular boy group from Pledis Entertainment, SEVENTEEN, released their new album 17 IS RIGHT HERE with an album sale of more than two million units on Hanteo.

Meanwhile, the group's member and music producer Lee Ji-hoon aka Woozi came live on Weverse on the day of the group's new album release and shared several behind-the-stories and anecdotes with the group's fans —CARATS. The livestream gave his fans a glimpse of the artist's journey and experiences while working and producing the new album 17 IS RIGHT HERE with his members.

He stressed how important his group members are to him and mentioned how honored he feels to be able to create music:

"It’s such an honor that I can make music for my members. I’m someone who gets back up because of my members and the music for our members. I don’t have any personal greed so. It’s just an honor I can make music for carats and my members. To me, they are everything, my members," he said (translated by @woozimedia)

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"I cried a lot": Woozi shares stories of SEVENTEEN's first win, working on songs with his members, and more

During his livestream on Weverse, the South Korean singer-songwriter and the leader of the vocal unit of the group, Woozin mentioned how he cried profusely when SEVENTEEN had their first win. With their song Pretty U on the show—Show Champion—they received their first weekly music show award on May 4, 2016.

Woozi explained how they had no expectation to win that day and how their ultimate victory had surprised him and his group members equally.

"Pretty U is what got us our first win. I don’t know why I was so sad but I cried a lot. It wasn’t because I was happy but because I was sad. I’m not sure why."

He added:

"We obviously did not even imagine winning on a music show, I’m not sure what was different about before but it was a situation where we couldn’t calculate whether we would win. So it was a given to us that we would lose. So I was really surprised and as much as I was surprised I was also sad." (translated by @woozimedia)

Throughout the livestream, the singer and songwriter from SEVENTEEN answered several questions asked by CARATS. He mentioned how working with the hip-hop subunit of SEVENTEEN has always been fun and playful.

For the unversed, the 13-piece boyband SEVENTEEN has three subunits: Hip-hop, performance unit, and vocal unit. These subunits are built with selective members from the main group based on their individual strengths and other qualities.

Woozi further mentioned how he wrote the song Campfire from their 2017 album Teen, Age. During the group's tour, this song was composed in meetings with members who had come up with ideas in their spare time. They were all there in Woozi's hotel room when they spontaneously started creating the verses and lyrics for the song randomly, which turned into the song Campfire.

Woozi then mentioned how the group discussed whether to use "without you" or "clap" as the title the day before SEVENTEEN recorded their Clap music video. Their company had already arranged everything to aim for applause.

However, one team said, "Let's do something more emotional one more time," because the title before Clap was "dwc," which was an original idea of theirs. As SEVENTEEN discussed two ideas for the title of the song, Clap won more votes and was chosen.

"It was the day before we shot the clap mv and the members were still debating whether we should go with clap or without you for the title. Just among the members, the company had already planned everything to shoot for clap...Clap got more votes so we went with clap, but we thought it was nice bc we had two really great songs that we had to debate about this."

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"The members were actually not doing great": Woozi reveals he wrote Super and FML when SEVENTEEN was going through a difficult time

Woozi shared how he and the group had been struggling during Face the Sun and SECTOR 17 as a lot of bad things kept happening to the members in their private lives. He mentioned writing the lyrics for the song Circles in an attempt to become a hero who would be able to overcome such a difficult time in his life and would also give comfort to his members, who were equally distraught.

"During the time around face the sun and sector 17 [sic], the members were actually not doing great....I wanted us to win over our hard times through Super and with this F*ck My Life had to be our double title since we could only curse at the world. So we wanted to be a hero like Sonogong...And just like a miracle, while making super, the members really became stronger."

Furthermore, Woozi shared on his livestream about his argument with their staff over releasing age-specific music rather than mixed-age songs, and how the members supported him in doing so.

He got into a fight with the crew for Semicolon—which is a special extended play (EP) released in 2020—since Pledis Entertainment intended to randomly combine the lads into mixed units. However, Woozi came up with the idea of an age unit and presented it to SEVENTEEN. The group approved of it and fought against the company, and the plan was implemented eventually.

During the livestream, SEVENTEEN members DK, Mingyu, and Dino dropped their messages in the comments for Woozi, which further delighted their fandoms. They all thanked him for working hard every time to create songs for their albums and inspiring them.

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Later, he shared how he wrote and composed the song Call Call Call! in his hotel room in Japan. With the release of the mini-album We Make You in 2018, SEVENTEEN made their debut in Japan with the title track Call Call Call!. The EP included the Japanese versions of many songs, including Lean On Me and Highlight, which are currently included on Always Yours.

Woozi also revealed that, whenever they have a break, his entire group watches their previous dance choreographies and attempts to re-learn them. The singer-songwriter continued, saying that as his group keeps viewing their own videos and rehearsing their old dance, it has turned into an inside joke where they term themselves a dance cover group who also happen to be fans of SEVENTEEN.