Why Alt-Rocker LØREN Says ‘Being Miserable’ Motivated Him To Work With BLACKPINK and Step Out On His Own

24 April, 2023

This story is part of Billboard‘s K-pop Issue.

As one of the few non-English-speaking students at an American international academy in Singapore, the artist born Lee Seung-joo rarely talked to his peers, and he would often skip lunch to avoid eating alone in the cafeteria. Even his stage name is an anagram for “loner,” and his Instagram handle is “lorenisalone” — but as he laughs over Zoom through coughs of smoke while puffing on an orange vape in his Seoul studio at 1 a.m. local time, he says that listeners shouldn’t take those gestures seriously. “Some people DM me like, ‘You’re not alone.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s just my Instagram ID.’ ”

Still, LØREN says being dragged to the academy “kicking and screaming” by his parents — and having to learn English — planted the seed for becoming a global star. “I think being miserable at school is not a necessity,” he explains, “but I feel like if I had been very happy, I wouldn’t have been so eager to make something of myself.”

Instead of playing basketball and beer pong with his more popular peers, LØREN spent his time learning to play instruments in the band room and listening to Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Too shy to form a band of his own, after graduation in 2013, he forged a more insular musical path: making beats as an EDM producer. He soon connected with other musicians by DJ’ing on the Seoul nightclub circuit and found mentors within The Black Label, an associate company of YG Entertainment, founded by producer Teddy Park. With his help, LØREN leveraged a career as an in-demand producer-songwriter, scoring major credits with K-pop sensation BLACKPINK on tracks like “Lovesick Girls” and “Pretty Savage.”

But his attention kept drifting back to rock music. “It kind of got tiring for me,” he says of his start in EDM. “Not that I don’t like [that music], but I grew up so heavily on rock, there was dissonance between what I created and what I really liked. I had an epiphany: Being a frontman of a band doing rock music has been my dream all my life.”

In 2021, he launched his solo career with a pair of singles: the bilingual, early-2000s-inspired rock tracks “NEED (ooo-eee)” and “Empty Trash,” followed by the more pop-facing “All My Friends Are Turning Blue.” LØREN self-released the three songs on his independent label, Fire Exit Records, in partnership with The Black Label.

Now, at 28 years old, the artist is committing to his vision. He signed a record deal with 88Rising earlier this year (still in partnership with The Black Label), saying he knew he needed to be on its roster, which is full of Asian artists with global reach like Joji, NIKI, Rich Brian and more. “I like how their artists, you can just tell they’re doing their own thing without being pressured to create something they don’t f–k with,” he says.

But none occupy the punk-rock lane like LØREN. As he points out, the genre isn’t as popular in South Korea as it is in the United States — and, in a previous interview, went as far as to call rock “dead” in his home country. He now admits that might have been a slight overstatement, though he’s eager to lean on 88Rising’s expertise in finding a larger audience to connect with.

After discovering LØREN’s string of singles, 88Rising executive vp John Yang knew the multi-instrumentalist would fill a sonic gap on the label’s lineup. He says he wasn’t even aware of LØREN’s work with BLACKPINK until after the deal was done. “When we sign artists, we always vibe out with them. What really matters is the person, their personality,” says Yang. “We’re not in this business just to become big or make money out of it. We’re here because we love music, and we want other people to enjoy music, too. LØREN’s character, his storytelling and his passion really got us into him.”

LØREN’s first 88Rising release, the raucous five-track EP Put Up a Fight, was finished by the time he signed his contract. After polishing touches and strategy talks, the project arrived March 24 — and he’s already looking ahead. He has “five or six” tracks completed for his upcoming full-length and is in the throes of practicing something entirely new: playing with other people, for other people.

One of 88Rising’s first orders of business for LØREN was to book a series of U.S. shows, including sets at Coachella and Head in the Clouds, a two-day label-curated festival in New York. He has been hard at work translating his songs for the stage with a band of close friends, which he reveals can be difficult at times, given he records every guitar and drum line on his songs without writing anything down. “Sometimes [my guitarist] asks me, ‘How did you come up with this sound? What pedal did you use?’ I’m just like, ‘I don’t know, dude,’ ” he says with a grin.

But even as everything around him — from his team to his band to his fan base — grows, the inward focus that shaped LØREN early on keeps him grounded. He holds out his hands, nails chipped with black polish, seemingly visualizing the vastness of his future: “I’m a musician at the end of the day,” he continues. “I just want to put out as much music as I can in my lifetime, literally until I die.”