And also, I don’t know, it just takes away the ego. And it takes away the pressure—which is funny, because you would think there would be so much more pressure because it’s for such a big name as NewJeans. When writing for NewJeans, I just felt like, “Well, if they don’t like it, they can always just say no to it.” [Laughs]
How did you end up writing for NewJeans?
So I just got this email from one of their team members that just said like, “Hey, we’re having a session in Copenhagen, we would love to see you there.” And then I was randomly talking to my friends, Catharina [Stoltenberg] and Henriette [Motzfeldt] from [Norwegian electronic pop act] Smerz, and my friend Fine [Glindvad Jensen, a singer-songwriter] and they were like, “Oh, we got that email as well… What? That’s so random.” And then we just decided, okay, let’s all just go there. We met there and wrote one of the songs “ASAP” together, the four of us.
There was these also other producers that we wrote a bunch of songs with like Frankie [Scoca] from New York, Kristine Bogan who lives in Berlin but is from the States, and there was another guy called Monro from the UK. So it was just all these different people and then my best friends.
It’s kind of mind-blowing.
Yeah, because I don’t know how they heard of me. Because on that [massive pop] scale, we’re just so small. And in Copenhagen… Why did they have a session in Copenhagen? It’s so weird! [Laughs] But yeah, I’m so happy about it.
What I find so interesting about this whole thing is it really shows how global music is now, and that music is really the language of the world. Someone from Korea can hear your music from Copenhagen and see all of these possibilities.
One of the first questions they asked me was, “Do you listen a lot to K-Pop?” And I got so nervous and I had to be honest and said, “No, I haven’t yet explored that genre.” And they’re like, “Good, because we want something new. We want something fresh.” And I’m like, “Okay, okay, okay.”
It’s so interesting that you’re really good friends with some of the other songwriters, because you do hear that camaraderie in the songwriting. It didn’t feel like it was made in a factory, I felt the friendship.
And also they kept the songs exactly how they were, from when we left the studio. They didn’t change anything. I thought they would put it through a machine and make it super extra [smooth] or something. But they didn’t change anything, they didn’t change any melodies. I think that’s why [the camaraderie] comes across. I feel it almost sounds like it’s spontaneous and like playing—you can hear the playfulness. Because it was. It was playtime.
Okay, so I want to ask you about the songs themselves. Let’s talk about “Cool With You” first. I feel like that song sounds like your own work so much. I hear you on that song, even the way they sing that hook. I’m almost curious, is there a demo with you singing it?
Oh, yeah, there is a demo of all the songs of me singing it. [Laughs] So the demos exist, but not for [the public]. [Laughs]
Yes, of course! I’m sure it’s under lock and key somewhere in a basement in Korea. But yes, that hook that goes “Cooh…” [attempts to sing the hook] I’m not going to try to sing it. [Laughs] But that line, that’s a run you do in your own music. How did you guys come up with that hook? Because it’s such an unconventional melody for a pop song. For one, it’s hard to sing.
It was one of the last songs we wrote. And me and Fine, we just had a good playfulness in just shooting ideas. So we were just singing with our phones [recording voice memos] and we were just throwing around ideas. And then we just, I don’t know… how do you make stuff up? You hear the beat and then you just go with it and whatever comes naturally to you, you just sing it.
Raymond Ang
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