Wendy, In the Eye of Her Storm
Like Water promotional image, courtesy of SM Entertainment
The Han River shimmers like blue calcite on a summer day like today. The aqua tints of its waves sparkle in the sunlight. In Hangang Park, where my friends spend evenings drinking beer and sometimes eating Korean fried chicken, the river churns softly. There’s an underlying darkness too: Sometimes candy wrappers and plastic bottles wash in from the North. The body of water’s healing powers have drawn people towards it for generations. It supplies over 12 million Koreans with water supply and stretches across land that includes bike trails, restaurants and luxury condos that overlook the beautiful scenery. A few miles away from the twelve parks contained in Hangog, ahjummas sell fresh fish and meats in the markets, some of which come from the river and its surrounding mountains.
"[The color] blue is complex," Wendy mused in an interview last year. "There are so many shades of blue. It can mean my bright vocal, or my strong vocal, and it can also be a really warm color.”
Shades of blue color Wendy’s four octave vocal range. They usually wallop me, sometimes into tears, other times in awe. In her title track “Like Water”, for the album of the same name, Wendy’s voice shatters me. “My love is like water,” she proclaims in the chorus. “Filling your sore spots/ It covers the deep wounds and embraces you tightly.”
For five years Wendy was the main vocalist of Red Velvet, a five piece girl group from SM Entertainment. She was the temptress whose operatic notes decorated “Psycho” and she effortlessly portrayed avant-garde opulence with “Zimzalabim”. Red Velvet often embraces high art concepts, a rarity in the genre that sets them apart and which firmly cements their status as legends.
But in 2019, the singer suffered a life-changing accident when she fell two-and-a-half meters off a platform at a rehearsal for SBS’ Gayo Daejun special. Wendy suffered several injuries including a fractured wrist and pelvis and several facial injuries. It was Christmas Day and Red Velvet was due to perform their most successful single to date, “Psycho”. Instead, Wendy was taken to the hospital where she stayed for three months.
“I had a lot of time to rest,” she simply told Teen Vogue while promoting the mini-album. The details of those three months, and the interior world Wendy inhabited, rarely seep out in her interviews. She has yet to discuss or reveal her emotions at the time, instead focusing on the positives when she added, "It was great for me because it made me think about what I do.”
Soon, she reasoned, the tears would stop and she would smile again.
Wendy is at her most compelling in “Like Water”, her debut EP as a soloist, her first since the accident. She displays a knack for singing about pleasure, hurt, and pain with the utmost sincerity. The likely fictional character she was given by SM at debut is just a flicker now. “Like Water” and “When This Rain Stops” are her greatest songs on the album. Both are ballads that allow her voice to build like a monsoon until it drowns you. “I want you to hold me,” she sings with such force you could touch it. She brings sweetness too with “Best Friend”, a duet she recorded with own best friend Seulgi, of Red Velvet.
Wendy is a pro who commands your sympathy with the gut-wrenching pull of her voice. She packs a punch with every note, and she lets you feel her wounds. “Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweet tooth for it,” Toni Morrison writes in “Jazz.” “Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.” On “Like Water”, Wendy is in the eye of her own storm.
Jazz was perhaps the perfect teacher for Wendy. The wildness and freedom of the music underlies a scholarly appreciation for rhythm and history that each musician possesses. “My dad loves jazz," she recalled during album promotions. "He loves all kinds of genres. He was the one who led me into the music world and let me listen to all different types of music.” Her father gave Wendy the best education possible in music: She learned how to play piano, flute, guitar and saxophone. "Everything," she stated. "It was all my dad's influence."
Promotional photo for Like Water, courtesy of SM Entertainment
In 2012, Wendy auditioned for SM in Canada. Though her father strongly opposed her becoming a professional musician, she was determined. She passed and two years later debuted in Red Velvet.
Time went exceptionally fast in the group. The girls became overnight superstars: their weird concepts set them apart from the typical girl crush aesthetics of the mid 2010s. But in 2020 when Wendy fell off the platform, only six years after their debut, Red Velvet was likely reaching their peak: “Psycho” proved to be their most critically acclaimed single and their most popular. “You got me feeling like a psycho,” they sing in the chorus. “People keep telling us as we fight like it’s our last.” The visuals for the album recalled American noir film posters from the heyday of seductive temptresses who would kill for love. “Noir is Surrealism unleashed in the city, amidst its noise and grime and electric-lamp shadows. Like that art movement, it privileges psychic interiority over other aspects of experience,” music critic Ann Powers wrote. “Psycho” unleashed five female leads who were unafraid to look crazy and play the role of a woman pushed too far. It was wild and weird. It set a new standard in K-Pop.
But Wendy’s injury halted all of this. Red Velvet was suddenly placed on hiatus and Wendy healed in private. Her parents flew in from Canada to stay with her in Seoul as she recovered. "It was my first time [living with them] in over 10 years," she told Teen Vogue. "And I'm still spending time with my parents nowadays. That brought me a lot of comfort, too. Getting lots of love every day. Being with your family brings this feeling of comfort you've never felt." The things that brought her the most comfort? "My mom's food. Their words. Their hugs. Their everything. Just them. Just their love."
When she finally returned to the studio, the song she spent the most time with was “When This Rain Stops”. It’s a track she calls her most personal and one that she took fifteen hours to record. “There are so many days when I feel like I’m alone,” she whispers to herself in the song. “The things I thought I knew become so unfamiliar.” The song builds quietly as she reminds herself, “Oh I want you to know, everyone has a tomorrow so we can stop like this and take a rest.“ These moments are cathartic and satisfying from an artist who is tracing a new journey as a singer-songwriter. At her best, Wendy evokes the intimacy of IU, Yerin Baek or Park Ji Yoon, a lesser known Korean singer whose album “parkjiyoon9” cultivates a land where sadness and hope coexist. It’s on Park’s song “Everything goes away” with its poetic and observant lyrics that I find the greatest connection to Wendy. “You don’t have to be okay,” she sings. “Somehow give me strength/ Everything goes away sometime/ It goes away”.
Just like the rain that washes away the grime lining your city street, this pain will be swept away, too.
While promoting “Like Water”, Wendy visited ODG Studios, the production company that produces a series titled “You Were a Kid Once”. There she met two teenage girls named Nahyeon and Seowan who are part of the cast of youth who appear on ODG’s shows. Intelligent, bright and adept at being vulnerable with their guests, these girls were picked to talk about the issues they face as teens.
On ODG, Wendy listened to stories of loneliness from Nahyeon and Seowan. Both girls felt that they had no one to turn to and that they alone had to carry their burdens. As she listened to these reflections, Wendy’s face twisted and contorted in sadness.
Wendy knew this sort of isolation well. She, too, had perfected keeping her problems and anxieties to herself. But she has seen recently the value in opening up. “My feelings easily got hurt,” she remembered. “I wouldn’t let people know about it though. I often got hurt but I hid it to myself. I used to be like that. However… I think you have to think of yourself first.”
That same week Wendy returned to Inkigayo for the first time since her accident to perform “Like Water”. It was a triumphant, full circle moment for the singer after more than a year away from the stage. It was also highly emotional. But this interaction on ODG was the most heartfelt of Wendy’s promotional period. It captured what makes her such a compelling artist. It is her warmth that radiates from every interaction she has – and that can’t help but attach itself to every part of her voice. Open yourself up, her lyrics seem to implore. Let yourself feel what is building inside of you and release it. The storms surrounding us will one day go away. We are more than our pain.
One day, Wendy reminds us, we will laugh again.
SOURCES:
Red Velvet’s Wendy on Healing and Creating Her Solo Album “Like Water”
