L’interview est disponible en français en première page !
Last October, The Rose came back in Europe for their first ever French show, which was planned alongside Marmello, and CKJ’s team had the opportunity to meet The Rose for an interview! The Rose got noticed when they made their debut in 2017 on the Korean music scene with their song “Sorry”. Since, the band also became popular overseas thanks to their soft and well-balanced rock, a style they perfected over the years as busking artists.
Stay with us for this fun interview with the 4 members of The Rose, who told us more about their career!
Hi, could you start by introducing yourselves?
The Rose: Hi, we are The Rose!
Woosung: Hey guys, this is Woosung, or Sammy, from The Rose. I play the electric guitar and sing in the band. Hi, nice to meet you!
Dojoon: Hi, this is Dojoon from The Rose. I play the acoustic guitar, the piano and I sing in the band. Thank you!
Woosung: Alright let’s clap! (laughs)
Dojoon: What’s with this clapping?
Woosung: I don’t know! (laughs)
Dojoon: Okay thank you!
Hajoon: Hey guys, I’m Hajoon from The Rose, and my English name is Dylan. I play the drums.
Woosung: Okay another clap! (laughs) Amazing!
Jaehyeong: Hi I’m Jaehyeong from The Rose and I play the bass. Please clap! (laughs)
Woosung: But you also got an English name!
Jaehyeong: Yeah, my English name is Jeff! Alright clap! (Laughs)
Let’s talk about your career now. What did lead you to become musicians, and when did you become professionals?
Woosung: Basically, we all started at a different age. So I think Jeff started when he was 20, officially. I started when I was 12. Hajoon also started at 12 and did it as his major for high school and college as well. But for me, when I started to play the guitar, it was just for fun! It was never going to be with lessons or something like that. And Jeff’s dad was playing the drums, so he has always been around music in his family. So I don’t know, I think we just started at a really young age, but we all officially started around 20 years old, except Hajoon who officially started when he was 12.
Can you explain to us the choice of your name “The Rose”? What’s the meaning?
Dojoon: It suited the best.
Woosung: Yeah, and it’s romantic!
Dojoon: The beautifulness of flower and the sharpness of thorns, combined together. (laughs)
Jaehyeong: We thought it was “whouah”.
Woosung: We wanted to do music that was soft, but at the same time kind of strong. And that’s what we’ve been doing. You could say our music, the recent ones or the music we debuted with, are pretty soft if you think about it, but it does have a big message all the time. It gets people’s attention. I think that’s one of the reasons why we chose this name.
Jaehyeong: Actually, the four of us are really soft and sharp at the same time. We are soft but we could get you! (laughs)
Dojoon: We are cool! (laughs)
Woosung: Yeah the name sounded cool, and it was easy! (laughs)
Dojoon: The main reason was the easiness.
Woosung: It was really easy for people to remember, and we liked that!
A lot of people get to know you through your covers, so how do you choose the original songs you want to cover? And how do you change it into your own style?
Woosung: We choose a music when we see that we can arrange it in our style. It’s not like we just get a song, we try to cover it and we put it into our style, it’s more like what could be our style in these musics. If we think that could be our style, then we cover it. Unless we really like the band.
Dojoon: We know what songs suit us the best. We feel it. If we listen to it, if this could be one of our songs, then we put it into our style.
Woosung: Or we say to ourselves that we should have written it first! (laughs)
Dojoon: I don’t know about this but… (laughs) Basically, someone brings it up and then if we see that it’s going to suit us well, we try it like this or that and it just happens.
You write your own songs, where do you find inspiration?
Jaehyeong: In movies, in books and in our own experience. We mix it all together!
As musicians, how do you handle the moments when you don’t find any inspiration?
Woosung: We never really had a moment when we couldn’t write though… yet.
Dojoon: We’re on a good flow these days…
Jaehyeong: …yet.
Dojoon: Yeah, cause it’s going to change. But if something doesn’t go well, we just don’t do it.
Woosung: There hasn’t been a moment like that but we never just sit down to write anyway. But if we had those moment we just wouldn’t do it until we could.
Dojoon: We would do it later and do something else instead to change the mood. Go play, drink, sleep, I don’t know… And then later on, if somebody gets an idea or maybe if we don’t have much time, we would just do something.
CKJ: Yeah sometimes we just have to say stop and to just make it work, without thinking much.
Dojoon: We want to do it like this, but since we have time limit, because we’re not playing music just for ourselves as we’re a professional band, we actually have to fit in the time, and that’s a little struggle.
Woosung: Because our company tell us things like “we have two months, so write a song”, but even if it’s hard we do it anyway.
What was your inspiration for the song you just released “She’s in the Rain” ?
Woosung: That was our story, when we’re on tour. We love touring, but being gone for months, riding bunch of planes, eating different foods and sleeping at place we’re not used to, we were feeling kind of lonely. Except for the time when we’re on stage because there are so many fans that are there for us. But when it was all over and we came home to the hotel, we did feel a little bit lonely. We felt emptiness, but what helped us the most, is that we were together. Because we each other knew what we were all going through. They knew exactly what I was going through, I didn’t have to say a word, I didn’t have to because we were going through the same thing. So, basically, “She’s in the Rain” is about loneliness, if you don’t have someone, let this song be that someone. That was our main message. We hope our song can heal people as much as it healed us.
Dojoon: The main message that we say in the song is that we can be with you in the rain. When the rain comes, you can’t actually stop it, so we can’t do anything for you but at least we can be with you.
Woosung: Two is better than one! Because being in the rain together is better than being alone in the rain.
By the way, the hook of “She’s in the Rain” is in English. Is that for your international fans?
Dojoon: Yeah, we wrote it for our overseas Black Roses.
Woosung: It was for them!
Dojoon: We had a lot of other things but we wanted to make it in English so they can get it spontaneously.
Woosung: This way they don’t have to go through the translation and all that. We just wanted them to feel it as soon as they heard it.
Dojoon: When we have time, we watch a lot of MV reaction videos! The most surprising fact about MV reactions is that they feel what we intended to do. Especially with the lyrics, the sounds… It’s amazing that people feel all the things that we bring into the songs.
You just released your second mini-album “Dawn” and you’re touring in Europe again. How do you handle pressure?
Woosung: We don’t have pressure!
Dojoon: We have pressure for the next songs that we’re going to write.
Woosung: I think we enjoy it more when we are on stage though. We’re excited! For example we have a show in Paris tomorrow, we’re actually really excited for that! We can’t wait to meet all of our fans. It’s not much a pressure, it’s more excitement and butterflies in our stomach kind of feel. But we do have pressure for our next album.
Dojoon: And also for the next songs that we’re going to write. It will have to be better than the songs we wrote in the past.
You’re back in Europe after the “Paint it Rose” tour last year. How do you feel about your popularity overseas?
Dojoon: We’re thankful of course!
Woosung: And we’re sorry because we can’t visit every place. We would love to if we had like five bodies to go all over the world and travel, but like we said we’re not gods.
Dojoon: How many countries is there in the world? Something like more than 150.
Woosung: Too many to count!
Dojoon: Anyway, we need more bodies! (laughs)
Woosung: Seriously, we’re so thankful, but at the same time we’re so sorry because we can’t go everywhere. I know there are a lot of fans all over the world but… We’re going to be here for at least 50 more years, right?
Dojoon: Of course!
Woosung: So maybe by then we’ll go in all these cities, hopefully.
Dojoon: We’d love to come back when we’ll be 40 or 50 years old!
Woosung: Yeah, if they want us! (laughs)
Did you have time to visit Paris a little bit?
Woosung: We actually did today!
Dojoon: We went to the Eiffel Tower, to The Louvre Museum.
Woosung: But we’re leaving the day after tomorrow.
Dojoon: What we felt about the places we visited is that it’s large, and big!
Woosung: And detailed! The architecture is so detailed, it’s amazing. The places we went were amazing because they were built many years ago, I think it’s incredible.
Do you happen to know some words in French?
Woosung: Je vous aime! [“I love you” in French] (laughs)
Dojoon: Bonjour! [“Hello” in French]
Woosung: Bon appétit! (laughs)
Jaehyeong: Merci beaucoup! [“Thank you very much” in French]
Dojoon: Je t’aime! [“I love you” in French]
Hajoon: Ratatouille
Woosung: Linguini… Is that even right?
Dojoon: I love watching Ratatouille. We can actually see the scenes and the streets from the movie here. Because when we walk in the street, we can see restaurants everywhere.
Woosung: What’s the most famous food in France by the way?
CKJ: Cheese and wine!
Woosung: But we can’t make it a dish. (laughs)
Jaehyeong: Cognac and whisky. (laughs)
Dojoon: When we go overseas we always buy cognac at the duty free.
Jaehyeong: One of my friend told me that Mont-Blanc was good.
CKJ: It’s actually not a real dish either! (laughs) The raclette is pretty famous in France though.
Woosung: Okay, we’ll try it! (laughs)
What do you think about the increasing number of Korean rock bands?
Woosung: We love it because you know that there are not a lot of bands in Korea, especially by the time we came. But nowadays there are a lot of bands, and a lot of them are getting ready to come out and make a debut. And we’re excited because the more bands the better! That means we’ll have more stages that we can go on together. In Korea, with all these dance idols, they don’t really like to bring bands for their performances, cause drums, bands, all these equipments are such a big hassle. But if we have a lot of bands coming out, everybody can come together and just do a show!
Dojoon: We want to make bonds with other bands!
Do you have other music genres you’d like to try?
Hajoon: We would like to try hip-hop
Woosung: Yeah, definitely!
And do you have other projets you can tease us with?
Woosung: We have so many… Most people know that we’re going to Japan after this. And then we come back and stay in Korea for a week. We have another European tour scheduled for about a month, and after that a show in Australia. I think we’re going to do more things next year so we can engage with our fans more. It’s our biggest goal.
Dojoon: Another project that we can tease is a secret. (laughs) Actually, we have nothing yet. (laughs) We want to plan something special and unusual.
And to conclude this interview, do you have a message for your fans?
Jaehyeong: Thank you! I just want to say “Je vous aime”. (laughs)
Woosung: How do you say “Black Rose” in French?
CKJ: “Rose Noire”.
Woosung: Roses Noires, je vous aime.
Hajoon: Roses Noires, bon appétit. (laughs)
We would like to particularly thank Seboom and K-FM for the opportunity, our translator Carole
and of course the members of The Rose for their kindness during this interview!
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