From Houston, ONEW Emphasizes Happiness and Freedom

In his first U.S. tour as a soloist, ONEW chose to meet fans with a surprisingly intimate, stripped back concert.

There is likely no vocalist in K-Pop with a more distinct voice than ONEW. 

For the past seventeen years, he has been a central figure in the industry, both as the leader of SHINee and as a soloist. His debut album is titled VOICE because there are so few vocalists who can move us like ONEW can. It’s also impossible to imagine what SHINee would be without him. I can’t fathom what the later albums would sound like without his warm voice on tracks like “Who Waits for Love” or “Countless”. For nearly two decades he’s remained consistent as a vocalist who can make you feel, well, everything. 

SHINee is certainly a core reason that Houston fans turned out to see ONEW Sunday night at Bayou Music Center. The group has only toured the United States once, nearly ten years ago. Since then, the group, which is still managed by SM Entertainment, has focused solely on Asia. Up until this year, ONEW, too, has never toured outside of Asia on his own. When he asked the audience who was seeing him for the first time, nearly the entire venue’s audience raised their lightsticks. 

But last year, ONEW opted to sign with a new company, Griffin Entertainment – a change that grants him creative control and autonomy over his career. Since then, he’s worked at a rapid pace to release two new EPs, FLOW and CONNECTION, and organize this tour. 

What’s been most intriguing since has been to witness his ambitions. Who could have expected that ONEW would release an English language track or that he would be interested in a North American tour? But free of the constraints of a major label, ONEW’s has offered surprises. “I began working on this song,” he said about “MAD”, his first English language track, “as soon as this tour was confirmed.” 

Perhaps it speaks to ONEW’s eagerness to reach the U.S., that his tour is bare bones. There is no set, no backup dancers, and no band. (In Korea, ONEW explained, he did have a band. In America, he uses a backtrack for music.) There will likely be no other opportunity to see the singer in such an intimate experience. At Bayou Music Center, where nearly a thousand Shawols watched from the floor, the show felt almost casual or communal. Watching him onstage, you might even mistake ONEW, dressed in baggy jeans and loose button up, for a fresh faced ingénue. 

THE LIVE: CONNECTION, then, has more in common with the DIY tours of Asian artists that I regularly profile on Bias Wrecker than a K-Pop show. ONEW, free of carefully plotted choreography and rehearsed monologues, is having the time of his life. “Why am I sounding like an AI robot?” he joked at one point, after meandering in his opening ment, to loud laughter. This ONEW is unburdened and free to say or be whoever he wants. 

Throughout a 20 song setlist, ONEW only performs six songs from the SM years, selecting mostly b-sides like “Always” from Circle or “In the Whale” from DICE. Yet even when the songs remain largely unchanged there is something unique about these performances that sounds more vital than what is on record. 

Take “Always” for example, a track that sounds perfectly pleasant on Circle. But ONEW’s performance, lifted by his powerful interpretation of the lyrics, hits harder. When he sings that “the good days are never lasting/ Suffering is difficult to forget”, you can feel that he’s trying to meet the audience where they are. If you’re in pain, which he offers before beginning a section for the ballads, then perhaps his music can be healing. 

Healing is a regular theme of this music. “Even when we go through the slightest bit of pain or some days when we’re hurt,” ONEW said before introducing the ballads, “I really hope that you’ll remember this moment tonight, gain strength from it and persevere.” Happiness, too, is a concept ONEW is committed to singing about. Perhaps because so much of his earliest music is drenched in heaviness and awash in shades of blue (which the stage lighting certainly provided), the music made under Griffin leans hard on joy. 

During “Hola!”, he moved through the crowd, waving and smiling as he passed out roses. “I wanted to be able to greet all of you face to face,” he said later. I was struck as I looked around the venue by how many of us are millennials who had likely grown up with SHINee. Many of the fans I talked to that night told me about how they were teenagers when they got into the group’s music. Now, older and with a fair share of loss between all of us, we understand what it means to persevere. 

Understandably, what ONEW gave the most attention to was the new music released under Griffin. He performs CONNECTION and FLOW in full, opening with a banger titled “Focus”. That song lets his vocals soar and entails the most experimental production of his career. There is a lightness to ONEW when he performs tracks like “Boy”, a picnic basket in hand, as he throws out paper planes and sings, “Still the same boy/ Writing in my journal before bed.” I was charmed in these moments because of the sense of wonder ONEW brought to them. 

There has always been a gentleness to ONEW. Watch clips from the early days of SHINee and you’ll see a boy working to gain confidence and be a source of comfort for his members.  One of my favorite moments that depicts this is a scene from SMTown: Live at Madison Square Garden when SHINee bursts backstage to greet their parents, all dressed as if they are at church, after their debut performance. They all seem so young, I think when I watch now, and they are, because they’re teenagers. Backstage, as JONGHYUN sobs after delivering a message for his mother, ONEW walks up to him with a concerned look on his face. He puts his hand on his back, “Hey, what’s the matter” he asks in a soft voice.

I think of this moment because it speaks to ONEW’s instincts from a young age. It foreshadowed the empathy his music would have; the sense of curiosity he’d have for others emotions and in examining his own. How could he use his voice for healing? He’d think of that often, and speak of it even more in interviews. 

In the years that followed, as ONEW experienced several life changing events, he continued to persevere. He released several albums under SM, performed countless concerts with SHINee, recorded an album for his Japanese fans, and then, finally, set out on his own.

Now, ONEW seems most moved by the adventure of what’s to come. “I will continue to change things as I go,” he told the crowd about his live show. But he also seemed to be talking about himself. 

It is fitting, then, that the encore features the music with most direct lyrics about ONEW’s current stage of life. In “MAESTRO”, he compares himself to a maestro of the sea, bending it at his will, swimming as he goes with no destination in mind. “Every single place, aside from the ocean, is too small for me,” he sings in the opening verse. On stage, he performed it with a ferocity that felt as if he was shaking off years of control.

Then came “Yay”, a lead single from “CONNECTION”, that examines his neurosis and anxieties in exacting detail. “In the midst of this growing isolation,” he sings, “ I wanted to escape.” But it’s the final line that felt like the real declaration and performed live, ONEW delivered it with a shout and raised arms: “I’m happy!”

Then, as the lights flashed dramatically, he dove into a full body spin, his head bobbing up and down with a wicked smile flashed across his face. For a moment, I remembered the idol he used to be. I thought of the boy who struggled to lead his members and who was often too shy to speak up for himself. Many of us think we can’t change as we get older and it would be understandable if ONEW wanted to remain comfortable. But at thirty-five ONEW is learning that he can have new beginnings. 

“Are you happy?” he asked the crowd in between joyous laughs. When he asked it a second time, it felt less like a question.  

“YES,” we shouted back, and he laughed with his full chest because he was happy too.