One of the 13 band members of Seventeen, an iconic K-pop group, releases “Love is Gone” with sights set on American music market
A member of the popular South Korean boy band Seventeen has collaborated with an American DJ duo on a reimagining of a pandemic-era hit.
K-pop band Seventeen’s only American member, Joshua Hong, has teamed up with a U.S. DJ duo to release a new version of a recent hit.
This week, Hong and Californian twosome Slander dropped a fresh iteration of the latter’s track “Love is Gone”, which became a viral sensation during the covid-19 pandemic.
Slander’s streaming sensation
Initially brought out in May 2019, “Love is Gone” was then re-released as an acoustic version six months later, featuring the singer-songwriter Dylan Matthew.
The acoustic track’s popularity soared amid the spread of the coronavirus, reaching around 600,000 streams per day in April 2021, according to Billboard magazine. At the time of writing, the song had amassed nearly 600 million listens on Spotify and 300 million views on YouTube.
“Fresh vocal melodies and overtones”
In a statement shared with media outlets on Friday, Slander’s members - Derek Andersen and Scott Land - hailed their link-up with Hong as a “special collaboration and opportunity”.
“We are super excited to share the Seventeen version of Love Is Gone,” Andersen and Land said, declaring that Hong has helped to “create a brand-new world for this record.”
Slander added that the new track “stays true to the emotional core [of the song’s previous iterations] but breathes new life with fresh vocal melodies and overtones.”
Watch - “Love is Gone” by Slander, ft. Joshua Hong:
One of Seventeen’s “biggest assets”
Hong, a Korean-American who was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, is one of 13 members of Seventeen, a South Korean boy band that was formed in 2015.
As is noted by Business Insider’s Cheryl Teh, Hong’s English-language collab with Slander offers the potential to strengthen his status as one of Seventeen’s “biggest assets stateside”, by bolstering both his and the band’s already significant U.S. profile.
Seventeen has so far released seven top-10 records on the U.S.’s domestic Billboard 200 chart - most recently Happy Burstday. The band’s fifth studio album, Happy Burstday came out in May this year, peaking at No. 2 in the States.
Having brought out a new album, Seventeen is due to promote the record on an international concert tour that kicks off later this year.
Confirmed by record label Pledis Entertainment earlier in July, the “NEW_” tour begins with two shows in Incheon, South Korea, on September 13 and 14. Further dates are to be announced in due course.
Which Seventeen members will miss tour?
Some members of Seventeen will be absent from the global tour, as they undertake South Korea’s mandatory military service. Per the Korea Herald, Wonwoo and Jeonghan are currently completing their service, while Woozi and Hoshi are due to enlist in September.
Given that he is a U.S. citizen, Hong is not required to do military service in South Korea.
Seventeen is not the only K-pop group whose activities have recently been disrupted by South Korea’s requirement that able-bodied men between 18 and 35 go through 18 to 21 months of military training.
Earlier this summer, the boy band BTS announced that it is to reunite after a three-year hiatus caused by the seven-piece’s national-service commitments.
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