Welcome back to another K-Pop Deep Dive. This week I will be talking about one of my favourite Korean bands. Made up of 5 members (formerly 6, but more on that later), it is Korean pop-rock band: DAY6.
The Artist
DAY6’s debut was on September 7th, 2015 as a six-member K-Pop band with their debut album The Day. Later, in February of 2016, their keyboardist left due to personal reasons and terminated his contract with the company. K-Pop groups usually have songwriters that create music for them, but recently that started to change. K-pop artists are now getting involved in the music-making process themselves. This is the case with this group. All the DAY6 members are majorly involved in writing, composing and producing the band’s music.
The Music
Compared to most of the K-Pop world, DAY6 is a unique group. When they first debuted, they were one of very few groups who was a full-on band rather than a group of singers. Now more and more bands are being formed in the K-Pop genre. All the members of DAY6 play an instrument as well as sing, except for the drummer. This, however, is starting to change as he has mentioned to be taking vocal lessons, as well as showing off his vocals on some recent tracks. In K-Pop, groups usually go on music shows to promote their songs. DAY6 is one of the few that do not do this. The main reason is that they play all their instruments live and music shows usually want it to be a pre-recorded audio. Staying true to themselves, they skip out on music shows. DAY6 has been known to not pertain to any genre boundary. Such reputation was proven largely by their year-long project: Every DAY6 in 2017.
Every DAY6
December 29th, 2016, DAY6 announced a new project titled Every DAY6. With this project, they would release two new songs every month on the 6th. Along with the new songs they would hold concerts prior to the song’s release, music videos, and 4 fixed live streams. Each month had a new music video for the main title and a B-side. June of 2017, they released their first full-length studio album, Sunrise. This album is a compilation of all the songs released in the Every DAY6 project from months January to May. It also included two new tracks, a final version from their debut single “Congratulations” and a rebooted version of their second single “Letting Go”. Following that, DAY6 continued to release two songs from July to November. The music videos of their August, September, and October releases were a three-part story about high school friendship and love. DAY6 officially concluded their monthly project on December 6th of the same year, with the release of their second full-length studio album: Moonrise. The album is a compilation of all the songs released between July and November as well as two new songs and the final versions of the B-sides from their debut mini-album The Day.
Global Reach
Since 2017, DAY6 has released 3 Korean mini albums and one Japanese studio album. They have also embarked on tours outside of Korea, more notably a 24 cities tour including cities in Asia, Australia, North America and Europe. In 2019 they had their second world tour. Recently, they have released their third Korean studio album, The Book of Us: Gravity. On May 10th, JYP Entertainment* released an announcement to all fans stating that DAY6 will be going on a temporary hiatus. The hiatus is due to several members being diagnosed with symptoms of psychological anxiety. The company promised to put the health of the members first and decided to suspend all upcoming activities for the members to be properly treated and recover.
Listening to DAY6 is a truly refreshing experience. They have such a wide range, that no matter what mood I am in, I can easily find a couple of songs to listen to. DAY6 is quite good at translating their emotions into a melody. Even while not understanding what they are saying, I can feel what they wanted to say. So, my advice: go give it a listen. I am 99.9% certain you’ll like them.
*JYP Entertainment is the company that manages DAY6.
