“Everything’s transient – it’s not going to be there forever,” muses Beomgyu, one-fifth of Tomorrow X Together, the K-pop boyband with an acute knack for capturing their generation’s worries. It’s mid-morning the day before the group hold their first-ever UK headline show at London’s The O2, but right now, the 24-year-old singer’s mind is on something else.
READ MORE: Perfume Genius: “You can’t trust in any position of power to keep you safe”
“In life, you face a lot of different barriers,” he explains, perched at one end of a small burgundy couch in an east London hotel room. “They could be big or small, and some [things] really let you down. But I always have this mindset that everything too shall pass.” Beomgyu isn’t sharing his level-headed attitude to overcoming life’s struggles because he’s currently going through it. In fact, right now is an exciting time for the artist – as well as TXT’s long-awaited maiden European voyage, when we speak, he’s just days away from the release of his debut solo mixtape.
‘Panic’, a grungy piece of arena indie-rock, is imbued with the resilient perspective he’s sharing with NME. “Close my eyes / I want to escape to somewhere far away,” he admits in the song’s opening lines, flinching at the first impact of hardship. But by the time the chorus hits, he’s arrived at a resolution not to be defeated. “This is my answer,” he declares firmly. “This cold winter too / Shall pass.”
“I remember last winter was a very cold winter for me, figuratively speaking,” Beomgyu says. Despite life being a little frosty during that period, though, he made a decision that speaks volumes about his character. Rather than block out his difficulties, he realised he “didn’t really want to forget the times that I’ve been through” and, instead, began to crystallise them forever in ‘Panic’. It was a move not just for his own benefit: “People can have hard times and I wanted to create a song to give solace to them, telling them that everything will be OK. I wanted to give comfort to people who aren’t feeling the best.”
Beomgyu is someone who knows how comforting music can be. When he first moved to Seoul from his hometown of Daegu to become a trainee at Big Hit Music, he turned to other artists’ songs to help him through the intensities of his new life and being away from his family. “That was the first time I really felt the power of music,” he says now.
“Even when I was on a break, I just went to the office every day to work on music”
In more recent years, he’s particularly found relief in the albums of Heo Hoy Kyung, a Korean indie singer-songwriter whose 2022 album ‘Memoirs’ is a hushed, soothing beauty. Heo collaborated with Beomgyu in the writing of ‘Panic’, bringing him up close to a musician whose work has had a great impact on him. During TXT’s 2023 US tour, listening to her music proved to be something of an anxiety-buster for him.
“She’s an artist that means a lot to me,” he nods with a satisfied smile. “When we were talking about the themes that I wanted to explore in this project, I was grateful that this was actually happening – that I got to talk to her about these things – and I was very happy that I could have my thoughts and her thoughts, and bind them together. It was a very meaningful experience for me.”
Tomorrow X Together’s Beomgyu. Credit: Big Hit Music
While ‘Panic’ is Beomgyu’s debut solo release, it’s far from his first foray into songwriting. Over the years, he’s made great contributions to TXT’s catalogue, earning writing and production credits on a burgeoning list of tracks. Many of the songs he’s worked on for the group feel linked by a common thread to his solo mixtape, if not in sound then in spirit. In the snapshots of life that they capture, the likes of ‘Maze In The Mirror’, ‘Sweat’ and ‘No Rules’, among others, stand firm in the face of adversity and struggle.
For this TXT member, being able to figure out his feelings through song has been a big help for him. “When I’m working on music, I get to reflect on myself and my past behaviour and thoughts, which I really love to do,” he shares in a typically calm tone. “The message that I’m trying to convey through my song is for other people to hear, but it’s also a message that I’m telling myself as well.” He points to ‘Panic’ again – a song he says he has been listening to when he needs cheering up – as an example of the effect songwriting has had on him: “At the time I was beginning to work on it, I was having a hard time, but when I was done, I felt so, so much better and very refreshed.”
“I don’t know how, but if I weren’t an idol, I would still use music to convey my message to people”
Focusing on his own release has also brought new experiences. “[Writing for the group], we maybe have an overarching message, but this time around, I could really zoom into myself,” he says. The way he writes, he found too, is different: “When I’m writing for the team, I focus on making the lyrics a little bit fun to understand, so it doesn’t have to be very intuitive or self-explanatory – it could be something that’s more metaphorical. But with ‘Panic’, I really focused on [writing] the lyrics so that people could really understand my message just by reading them.”
Beomgyu is not the first member of Tomorrow X Together to release a solo project, with Yeonjun having led the charge with the electro-tinged hip-hop cut ‘GGUM’ last year. In the process of working on his own release, Beomgyu tapped his bandmate’s experience and used him as a crucial sounding board. “The lyrics of ‘Panic’ were supposed to be in English at first,” he shares. But when he asked Yeonjun whether he thought English or Korean lyrics would be better, the rapper told him: “If you want to be really down to earth and grounded, I think you should go with Korean.”
Tomorrow X Together’s Beomgyu. Credit: Big Hit Music
Talking with Beomgyu, you get the impression that music is far more than just a job for him, but an all-encompassing passion that he takes very seriously and holds close to his heart. “Even when I was on a break, I just went to the office every day to work on music,” he nonchalantly tells NME at one point, his dedication to his craft never in doubt. On stage at The O2 a day later, that love thrums through every performance, whether he’s serving up a solo dance before a traditional Korean take on ‘Sugar Rush Ride’ or delivering a thunderous version of ‘Growing Pain’ with his bandmates.
Beomgyu describes himself as “just a really big fan of music” and cites the likes of ABBA and Air Supply as artists who had a big impact on him as a kid. “I loved music ever since I was growing up because my dad loved music and that had a huge influence on me,” he says fondly. The singer was also in a band in high school and last year hosted an online radio show Beomedio, in which he shared some of his favourite songs with his fans.
When NME asks if he’d still be trying to pursue music if he hadn’t followed the idol path, he responds immediately and enthusiastically. “Definitely,” he nods. “I don’t know how I would do it, but in some way, I would use music to convey my message to people across the world.” The things we face in life might pass by like the seasons, but it seems, Beomgyu’s passion for music is eternal and enduring.
Beomgyu’s ‘Panic’ is out now via Big Hit Music
The post TXT’s Beomgyu: “I always have this mindset that everything shall pass” appeared first on NME.
