I’m sorry, but IU gazing at me with those eyes in black and white? Put me down as intrigued, emotional, and excited.
IU: exists. Me: *screams*.
Now that everyone has had an accurate account of my emotional state, we can move on to the actual news. K-pop star IU has finally kicked off a new musical era through teasers for her upcoming fifth album, BYLAC.
Don’t get us wrong: it’s literally only crumbs. But the prospect of new music from IU is enough to get the K-pop community to sit up and listen.
Aside from the album name, what we have is a black-and-white photo of IU, gazing into the camera from behind a black rose. Very Hotel De Luna, if we might say so.
The teaser is surprising in more ways than one, however, considering how visually different it is from that of IU’s pre-release single, ‘Celebrity’. In the house-inspired track, she flips the formula of what the word means. As a star follows a commoner through the annals of daily life, IU extols how everyone is unique and beautiful: a celebrity in their own right.
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As it happens with her, ‘Celebrity’ swept Korean charts at the time of release, achieving a ‘perfect all-kill’. The term is used when a track ranks No. 1 simultaneously on all real-time and daily Korean charts.
BYLAC will be IU’s first full-length album in four years, coming after 2017’s mega-hit Palette. In the year of its release, Palette became the Best K-pop Album of the Year for Billboard. The album’s single ‘Through The Night’ has also been charting among the top 100 songs on South Korean charts since 2019.
Check out ‘Celebrity’ by IU:
