How GOT7’s Jinyoung Found His Voice on “Chapter 0: WITH”
Though they are best known for their work in GOT7, in 2017 Park Jinyoung and Jay B released a fan-favorite EP together titled “VERSE 2”. Intimately personal and beautifully produced, “VERSE 2” was written as the boys approached adulthood. As their idol images became less rigid, the boys were eager to explore the questions of what comes beyond youth. What will the second verse of life bring, they asked?
Seven years later, Jinyoung answers that question from adulthood with his debut album “Chapter 0: WITH”. Today, Jinyoung is two years shy of thirty and only two months away from his mandatory military enlistment.
"The goal I made at the beginning of this year was 'Let's work a lot.' Because I wanted to commemorate the end of my 20s and wanted to go [into the military]. That goal was achieved. Looking back at my 20s, I have no regrets,” Jinyoung said in December. “The times when I wandered in between were difficult, but I tried my best with everything. I can't believe I'm going to be in my 30s. I feel it every time someone calls me 'sunbaenim.'"
“Chapter 0: WITH” reflects Jinyoung’s negotiation with the idol he’s portrayed for years, and Park Jinyoung, the artist. “It’s actually difficult [having two identities]. There are many people who work under the name of Jinyoung, so I’ve been introducing myself by adding my group’s name GOT7, but now that I’m working as Park Jin Young, I think I’m going through a transition process between the two names” he told an interviewer in 2022. “So when I introduce myself, I purposely say both names.”
Jinyoung’s struggle with identity has followed him since debut. When we first met the singer, his name was not his own, but instead “Jr.” The stage name was in deference to the man who mentored him: Park Jinyoung, the legendary founder and CEO of JYP Entertainment. He was given the name because Park saw Jinyoung as the “successor” to his legacy.
“It’s a lot of pressure to work as Park Jinyoung’s junior, but it’s a driving force that makes me work harder,” he said in a 2012 interview. Yet being in one of the most poplar boy groups of the 2010s comes at a cost. For the next eight years as a member of GOT7, Jinyoung would only have minimal creative input over their music.
Instead the way we connected with Jinyoung’s artistry was through his acting. For the past several years, he’s built a resume of diverse roles that reflects a desire to challenge himself The first drama I saw him in was “He is Psychometric” in 2019 as a plucky teen who can see memories when he touches objects. The show was light-hearted, with typical K-drama tropes, but Jinyoung proved to be a charismatic lead.
But viewers were able to see two very different sides to Jinyoung in 2022. First, in a role we’re most accustomed to as the lead in the romantic drama Yumi’s Cells 2. Jinyoung’s latest role, however, displays the breadth of his talents. In “Christmas Carol '' he portrays identical twins: Joo Il-woo, who is murdered on Christmas Eve and Joo Wol-woo, who’s convinced his brother’s death is not accidental. He vows revenge and places himself in a mental institution where he believes the killer is. "The novel was repulsive and deeply disturbing. The script, on the other hand, was a more refined version of it. It's good that I read the book first, because otherwise, I would have thought the script was too intense and brutal," he told Korea Times.
So, he’s pushed himself to express more of himself, to find roles that he could sink his teeth into and chew apart. “I want to try every role,” he said recently with wide eyes. “I want to try every role I can do at this age. The roles that fit my current age and won’t fit later on.
This desire to challenge himself has translated to music, too. There is a thorniness to the lyrics of “Animal”, the haunting opener of “Chapter 0: WITH”. “I’m the one who didn’t let you approach the sharpness,” he sings. “In loneliness and desolation/ Who am I to live?” The lyrics, which Jinyoung wrote, hold an ambiguity. Is this about the end of a relationship or Jinyoung’s decision to not portray the ideal idol anymore? “No matter how much I hid it, I couldn’t hide it,” he admits. It’s better, he seems to think, to embrace the darker parts of himself.
“Animal” gives way to something romantic as Jinyoung spends the rest of the EP exploring a new relationship. Falling in love is like cotton candy, as heard in the title track. It’s a magical chance meeting, as he describes in “Our Miracle”. “Our meeting is a miracle,” he tells a lover in the third song. “Maybe call it fate.”
The title track “Cotton Candy” is exactly the sound I wanted in a Jinyoung solo track. It’s a lush composition with a chorus that melts you like the sweet candy Jinyoung sings about. It’s a light, unpretentious song that is guaranteed to be lodged in your head after one listen.
Jinyoung is most proud of “Letter” , a song he wrote for people in his life who he wants to see more of in the future. “I wrote this song,” he said for “a lot of people that I really care about.” The thought of what comes next, and how he will interact with these people in the future, “causes some strange anxiety for me,” he said. In the single’s video he packs up his bedroom and prepares to say goodbye. As he sits down to look through a stack of letters by his bed, the four walls collapse around him to reveal a movie set; a sly reference to Jinyoung’s career as an actor and his life as a public figure.
“Letter” strikes an emotional chord because it feels like a continuation of “Tomorrow, Today”, the lead single from “VERSE 2”. Jinyoung and Jay B were 21 when they recorded “Verse 2”, and the record was the most intimately revealing record either had produced. “Again there are questions that I don’t know/ I’m trying to answer, but I’m not confident,” they sing in the chorus. “With an anxious heart, I’m standing in front of the next choice.
It was a strikingly confessional album for two polished idols — and it reflected the direction both would take upon leaving JYP Entertainment in 2020.
“I don’t know what will happen,” an adult Jinyoung seems to answer himself in “Letter. “Will we ever look at each other like this again? One thing that I know even at this moment is that I miss you.”
In "the music video for “Letter”, Jinyoung flips through the letters found on his bedroom floor then looks straight into the camera. Sadness, grief, and fear ripple across his eyes before his face crumples into a frown. You can imagine a number of memories that flood his mind in this scene, but what is most visceral is that his eyes share a fragility he’s withheld.
Jinyoung doesn’t break eye contact with us until he begins to cry. Youth might shield us from pain, but adulthood reminds us that loss is the price we pay to love.
