The Meaning of Jonghyun’s Stories
A new look at Jonghyun’s poignant stories in celebration of what would have been the singer’s thirty-fourth birthday.
Promotional image for “Story Op. 2”
Though he is best known as an idol, when I think of Jonghyun, I think of the soft spoken man who hosted a radio show that ran nightly from midnight to two in the morning. On “Blue Night”, Jonghyun often took the focus off himself and placed it on his listeners. Each night they would write in with stories, often brief paragraphs about their day or about a problem they were experiencing. Jonghyun read several on-air throughout each night, often offering his own sly, funny commentary.
In between each song, Jonghyun would play music that he enjoyed: Korean folk songs, contemporary K-Pop, R&B that he listened to in middle school. And then on the nights that he was feeling particularly chatty, he’d tell us more about himself. These nights on “Blue Night” functioned as an early-days version of what Weverse Live has become for some artists like TOMORROW X TOGETHER where the group’s leader Soobin might talk for hours about the manga he’s reading. The atmosphere on “Blue Night” was casual, welcoming. Jonghyun wanted an atmosphere that allowed artists and his listeners to unwind.
Often Jonghyun would welcome his friends for interviews to promote their music. Girls Generation’s leader Taeyeon often stopped by when she was on the comeback tour. SHINee members were frequent visitors, and Jonghyun could coax out some of their most honest stories. Taemin once confided to Jonghyun that the comments about his androgynous appearance hurt his feelings and Jonghuyn, in his characteristic nonchalant way, reminded him to pay it no mind. When EXO’s leader Suho visited, the two reminisced about their times as trainees at SM. “We were really close back then, now we’re only ‘just’ close,” Suho said with a laugh. He was joking. “We’re still really close, but it’s harder to see each other these days. In the past, we used to practically live together.”
Jonghyun was most interested in the stories listeners and his guests told because people fascinated him. “The breadth of my life itself became larger,” he said in an interview with Esquire that commemorated the final broadcast of “Blue Night”. “By doing radio, I became able to understand common, everyday stories too.” He was curious about people who chose to live ordinary lives. Those were experiences he missed out on. “Stories about the minutiae of daily life”, he explained, interested him the most.
Jonghyun would freely admit that he preferred to stay at home. But radio became a second home for him, a comfortable space to be himself and to share his life with us. “I feel like for the last three years,” his friend Shin Kijoo remarked in the Esquire interview. “I’ve watched Kim Jonghyun grow and learn to communicate with the world and become a grown up.”
Today Jonghyun is remembered as the antithesis of an idol. He wrote and produced his own music. He was candid about his mental health and depression. He was also one of the few who dared to engage in politics, once voicing his support for Palestine and trans individuals. In many ways Jonghyun seemed unafraid of being himself. Being an idol could be constricting, but Jonghyun never wanted to limit himself.
So, he chose to work with the system rather than against it. For SHINee stans, the story of how Jonghyun won out the right to create his debut album “BASE” on his terms is well-known. “I didn’t want to create another view of SHINee,” he said in 2015. “So, while planning for “Base”, I suggested the company should create a unit or a collaboration album if they wanted to lead the album into the direction that they wanted. I had confidence that my solo album will see light someday even if it didn’t get released last year.” Two days later, Jonghyun won out. The company told him, “Do what you want.”
But Jonghyun’s sound was really just beginning to develop when he passed. He is at his most interesting on his “Story” albums, which were inspired by the letters he received from radio listeners. The stories on these albums were frank and elegiac. The lyrics, which touched on insular topics like isolation and depression rather than just romance, were an anomaly in K-Pop. The albums’ sound, too, was sparse. Jonghyun preferred to use acoustic guitars or a piano to accompany his rich voice. While he played the K-Pop game well with the pop album “SHE IS”, the “Stories” albums felt meatier and personal.
I spent a lot of time listening to the “Story” albums during the summer of 2020. I remember how we were all trapped inside our homes, but I was immersed in the music Jonghyun had created. “Blinking Game”, my favorite song, often reminded me of being in a dimly lit jazz bar. When I listened to Jonghyun’s music his stories transported me to a calmer, quieter place.
On “End of a Day”, the opening to “Story Op. 1”, Jonghyun reminded his listeners, “You did a good job/ You worked so hard”. He could be heartwarming, too, on tracks like “Our Season” where he thanked his friends or a lover for sticking by him through his sadness. “It’s not cold at all on this warm winter,” he tenderly sings, “because you’re by my side.” On “Skeleton Flower” he compares himself to the flower that becomes transparent as it is drenched in rain. “The sadness scatters it/ The tears drench it,” he sings.
He looked back, too, at memories of his adolescence on tracks like “02:34”, the time he might meet up with friends for a drink at the bar after a night on the radio. Looking back, the song feels the most poignant seven years after Jonghyun’s death. “This will all become memories after a few years,” he observes on that track. “What happens if we forget this just because of alcohol?”
Each year, SHINee members share personal photos of them with Jonghyun to commemorate his birthday. But last year Key, who shared a close friendship with Jonghyun, admitted that the photos are running out. What happens when we have nothing new left to remember Jonghyun by? What happens when the stories have all been told?
But I think Jonghyun’s biggest gift is the stories he left us. They evolve and change as we grow older. He was only twenty-seven years old when he passed away, but time and growth means we look at who he was differently. He broke barriers in K-Pop because of his vulnerability. I often wonder when music critics will discover his music and give it the focus it deserves. In 2015, Jonghyun and G-Dragon were, by estimate, the only two K-Pop idols given the freedom to express themselves as writers.
There was experimenting on each album, to be sure, because Jonghyun was just beginning to thrive as a musician. But there are so many pieces of Jonghyun that his music and writings should help us remember him by. When I think of Jonghyun today, I remember someone uncompromising in his artistic vision and who was just beginning to blossom thanks to his listeners who shared so many stories with him.
On the final broadcast of “Blue Night”, hundreds of letters in blue envelopes covered his desk. Jonghyun wept as he told his listeners goodbye that day. When he read a letter from a listener who said that “Blue Night” provided a space of comfort, he considered the community he had built. “When I first started doing radio I wanted to create that kind of space: A psychological space where we can be together wherever you are. In that place, I wished that it would be one where someone, including myself, can comfortably rest anytime. Whenever I or anyone would be having a hard time and feeling like they had fallen down or when they do fall down,” he continued, “I wanted to make a space where we can warmly soothe each other's backs.”
If he had one wish, he said, it would be this: “That mine and your space, our space, ‘Blue Night’, remains as a space where anyone can warmly relax,” he said. “The memories we made together come to life by reminiscing.”
