K-pop star Chung Ha details her precise choreography, reflects on vulnerability in the Korean music industry and breathes life into her new EP, “Alivio”.

Chung Ha is a revelation. As she fluidly flits through her roles as a singer and dancer in one of the most successful solo careers in the K-pop industry, it’s clear when you examine her expansive career that it was nothing short of pure perseverance. No big management company backing her, no family funding her dreams — she made a name for herself competing against 100 other girls in a cutthroat reality show, before landing a spot in the K-pop girl group I.O.I. 

This defiance was innate, molded by her sheer tenacity. As she exclusively reveals to Wonderland, her early years were marked with beating the odds. Her mother’s divorce from her estranged father led her to Texas, where, despite her family struggling to start over from scratch, she fully embraced her cowgirl era and expanded her musical palate with R&B, hip-hop and gospel. There was also the version of her that would travel back and forth to Korea, one who found a home in dance crews in the midst of the turbulence. These revolving doors of identities, albeit grim in the moment, weren’t ever a hindrance to her personal development. If anything, as she explains, it made her precisely who she is now — an artist unafraid of pushing the boundaries of self-expression. 

For the star who nearly left the music industry altogether just last year, finding comfort in creative freedom nowadays exists in allowing Chung Ha, the otherworldly pop star, to give way to Chung Ha, the authentic human. Alivio, released Feb. 12, is Chung Ha at her most vulnerable, meditating on her rollercoaster of a journey in the last few years with opulent honesty. In order to fill the emotional chasm between the dichotomy of her identities, there’s many versions of her that exist at once on this EP—from unabashedly taking to task those who wronged her on exacting track “Even Steven” to gloriously protecting her peace on sparkling anthem “Stress” (made especially for the girls and gays.) 

The EP not only marked a momentous expansion into Chung Ha’s career, but also a substantive opus in self-confidence. This is the first time she’s made an album that was 100% her vision from start to finish. “Before, I mostly followed the label’s direction because they know what works and what sells. But now, it’s not just about numbers or charts. It’s about putting out music that feels true to me and helps me grow as an artist,” she says. “If something doesn’t feel right, I’ll say so. I think that’s one of the most important things I’ve learned — you have to protect your own voice.” 

Wonderland connected with the multi-hyphenated star (with her adorable dogs in the background) to discuss drawing inspiration from her therapy sessions, proudly representing the LGBTQ+ community and mastering the art of self-reflection.

Listen to “Alivio”…

Read the interview…

At the core of your creation process for “Alivio”, what are some of the emotions that music uniquely gives you the space to express that other creative avenues like dance might not emotionally? 

When it comes to contemporary dance, or jazz and different dance moves and different dance categories, when you jump into that part, I don’t think there’s any boundary to express how you feel. When I took lessons when I was in college, we used music to express your own emotions — I never thought there would be a boundary for that. But of course, when it comes to K-pop there are boundaries. You can’t go onstage and cry. You have to have those visuals where people want to see you. You can’t close your eyes when you dance — but when it comes to contemporary you can actually close your eyes the whole time. When it comes to K-pop, I think there’s some of those boundaries and you can’t really express yourself as an artist. So I wanted to pour that out into some of the tracks, like “Loyal” and “Salty.” I’ve never convinced myself to be so vulnerable on a track. I was usually the strong girl that could break through everything. Like the vibe of: ‘I don’t care. I’m just going to find my way in. All the haters, you can hate — I don’t really care.’ 

I really wanted to be honest on this album, because I’m not that kind of girl. I get scared and intimidated easily. I do cry. I do get lonely, so many times. We all do. So I wanted to share that part of me through my vocals. Of course, I had Sunmi unnie helping me out on her “Salty” part. She had that airy vocal tone, and it made listening to this track even more vulnerable. 

Dancing, most of the time, is really clean for me. I like the details, angles and structure to be neatly laid out. When it comes to vocals, it’s not always clean — but I like it. I want to go with certain versions because it sounds vulnerable. Even if my voice kind of cracked there, but I think it really shows my feelings, so I’m just going to leave it. I’m not going to fix it. 

Do you feel like you have that creative space in the studio to let those imperfect vocals come out? 

I usually have that creative space at home. When I first get the demo and when I first try to figure out how to record this, I imagine myself through the track. When it comes to the studio, I don’t want to waste too much time with the engineer, with the vocal director and the producer. Before I go into the studio and we strategize it together, I want to have my own identity where I could organize this. So I tell my producer, I tell my vocal director how I want this to be. I don’t really get vocal directed. I feel like I collaborate with my vocal director, and I tell my vocal director how I want this to sound. He pulls out the best sound that I want after I do so many takes and I would say “Let’s punch up that part, let’s take that part out.”

When you were talking about pushing boundaries of K-pop, it made me think of how you have definitely pushed the boundaries of talking about therapy and mental health in your music. Have you ever been afraid of pushback from the public? 

I don’t think I’ve ever felt scared or wanted to hide it. I thought it was a healthy way to be honest with people. I wanted to share my way of getting through the hard times and how I bounce back easily — and therapy really does help. I mean, I go to therapy and I don’t cry all day. I really talk about my current journey, current emotional stuff, current questions that I get from my therapy that I should think about — it all really helps me out. What I want to talk about throughout music is how to find closure through music. That’s how “Alivio” came along. 

Therapy and mental health has been a major inspiration for your last album Querencia. What are some ways you feel like you’ve changed as an artist or as a person since you know, kind of openly talking about that and going to therapy? 

For Querencia, it started out as a question. My therapist asked, “Hey, what is your querencia?” I’m like, “What’s Querencia?” She told me that it was a shelter and asked me where do you think your shelter could be? That’s a hard question. No one ever asked me that. I came to an answer: I think I feel safe when I’m doing music. Querencia became my first, full-length album name, because it took me a while to actually finish that album. I really did go through a hard time. I didn’t really say this part out loud, but my mom was really, really, really, really ill. She was sick. I had that period of time where I had to break through a lot of things and the only place I felt safe was when I was working on my album. I wanted to remember that period of time where I felt safe. I really had inner struggles there because I didn’t want to worry my fans. It’s over now, my mom’s perfectly healthy. 

This time I wanted to grow up and tell my fans: “Okay, I experienced this hard time. I’ve been gaslighted, I’ve been so lonely. You might think that I don’t cry, but I do. I’m a totally normal person.” I went through these emotional journeys, but I did bounce back by doing this and this and this, and I wanted to share the whole thing with the album. 

Your album includes playing cards that ask emotional questions. Can you walk me through how you came about creating that? 

I named my album as “Alivio”, because I wanted to, at the end of this promotion, I really wanted to feel relieved. And ‘relief’ is alivio in Spanish. I did want my fans to feel very close to me with this album and also very close to themselves by talking to themselves with the cards and finding ways to destress. Sometimes, I play these cards with my therapist. She would say, “Today’s your funeral. You’re dead. What would you like to hear from the people that would remember you?” I had this turmoil inside me. I was like, “Okay, what?” I would pick out cards to talk about, then she would explain this is the first desire you want to be remembered as this person. That’s how I get to know myself more. 

I wanted to share more of those emotional experiences throughout the cards, because the album itself is relief. Those cards really did help me out on finding myself and being more honest to myself. With these cards, you don’t really need to say it out loud. You can just think. You don’t really ask your best friend, “So today’s your last day of life. What do you think? What do you want to do? What do you think you’re going to be doing? How do you imagine yourself on the last day of your life?” You don’t really ask friends those things. You ask your friends, “Hey, what do you want to eat? Where do you want to go?” Common things. But I didn’t. 

I want to be the one who asks my fans those rare questions that are quite common, but not quite common. Through those questions, I wanted my fans to find themselves — the real self. Not just experiencing the music and the emotional journey with just the cute photo cards. I wanted the album to be more meaningful to my fans. 

Can you tell me more about working with Coming Out, South Korea’s first and only openly queer dance crew, and how your work has been an homage to the LGBTQ+ community?  

First of all, the LGBTQ+ community is not just a community for me — it’s a part of my life! [Laughs] It’s so natural for me to be around friends that are in LGBTQ+ community. My fans would come along and say, “Thank you for supporting our community.” I’m like, “Oh, but I thought that was just part of my life!” I didn’t really consider that as like a certain community. I do feel grateful for the LGBTQ+ community for telling me that they loved me collaborating with Coming Out, the dance team. I didn’t brainstorm to want the LGBTQ+ community to join me — it was just really natural. People were just there around me. I just love how [Coming Out] expresses their dance moves. They’re more precise, they’re more more detailed. I feel like they’re more emotional, in my perspective. When “Stress” came along, they loved the music.

Whenever I watch your behind the scenes videos, one thing that always stands out to me is during rehearsals, you’re editing choreography and collaborating with your dance team to really bring the choreo to its final form. Could you walk me through the creation process for the “Stress” choreography? What is the unique Chung Ha detail about the choreography that you added that people might not be aware that you created?

Love Ran and La Chica gave me the choreography. Most of the time when Love Ran and La Chica combine, they’re in the studio at once and that’s how “Stay Tonight” and “I’m Ready” came along like that. This time, I wanted different choreographies from them. Then, after I saw those different choreographies, I wanted to combine them together. That’s when me and Rian were in the studio we were editing. 

The “Take it easy, no stress” [chorus] part — all that was from me. Part-by-part, especially the first part, I re-choreographed it. At the end, I re-choreographed it again. I had so many ideas that I wanted to do because in “Stress,” the chorus part comes out four times. My songs usually have three or two. [The line] “Take it easy, no stress,” comes out like four times. So I didn’t want my fans to get bored of it. I wanted to do the opening part differently. Then part two and three are pretty much the same, but the structure is different. And then the last part, I wanted to go totally different. From the bridge part to the end, the choreo is a whole new journey from there. I had a hard time editing and pulling all this together, because my idea was there, Love Ran’s idea was there, La Chica’s idea was there. The verses to the intro, to the second verse, to the third verse, to the last verse, it was all different. I had a hard time memorising them!

One song that stood out to me on the EP was “Even Steven,” especially since you were a writer on it. This one line: “I was made in hell, listen carefully, my payback song/ What you say to me, you bitch, you psychopath?” was so raw, open and honest. Can you walk me through how you wrote that line? Were you in the studio and inspired by anything in particular that was happening in your life? 

I actually wrote that line on a plane to Singapore last April, when I first got the track. I was just playing around with lyrics on my phone, and the words kind of spilled out naturally. With “Even Steven,” the message is about how the sweetest revenge is not letting someone’s negativity get to you, and just brushing it off. But to show that, I felt like I needed to express those raw, angry emotions first. And honestly, imagine how much more annoyed someone would get when they’ve put so much effort into being hateful, but you act like you’re not affected at all! That’s the energy behind that line. Staying cool and unbothered, even when there’s so much going on underneath.

I’ve read that your journey in the entertainment industry has definitely not been easy. In addition to training, I know you mentioned in a past interview that you nearly gave up dancing due to financial issues and worked odd jobs while training, but you were inspired by your mom, who was making it on her own. How did that shape your drive and passion throughout your career?

My fans mean everything to me, but the one person who’s been my biggest support and inspiration is my mom. She’s the strongest person I know. A true fighter. She raised me on her own in a foreign country, starting over from scratch without knowing the language or culture. Whenever I feel discouraged or stuck, I think of how she kept going no matter what. Her strength and endurance push me to keep going, both in my personal life and my career. She never stops, and no one can stop her, and that’s what inspires me every day.

Words – Kelly Nguyen