To. All my little freaks. Hello, this is SHINee’s Key. Everyone’s doing well, right? I debuted in 2008 and busily made it this far. The
precious memories I’ve shared with everyone have become the driving
force for me to run towards the same place without getting distracted. I’m always thankful, and I feel sorry that I couldn’t entirely express my feelings of gratitude. I
haven’t had long breaks before, but I’ve been called to enlist on March
4, so I won’t be able to greet you all for the time being. Although
many of you might feel hurt and disappointed, I know you’ve waited for
this long before while waiting for album releases, so without many
worries, I’ll bravely return in good health. Please stay healthy and happy. I hope you’ll spend your time filled with love. I’m always grateful, and I love you. P.S. I’m leaving!!!!!♡ FROM. KEY
below is an except from a recent interview with bryan-michael cox and j.que in which they discussed working with jonghyun. thank you to @mredwardsanders for translating! the song that is referenced is (likely) “cocktail”, which was featured on jonghyun’s first full length studio album, she is. this is their one songwriting credit together that is known. bryan-michael cox is a grammy award winning songwriter and producer know for producing tracks such as mary j. blige’s “be without you”, and usher’s “burn”, “confessions part ii” and “u got it bad”.
bryan: a few years ago, i entered into a music publishing contract with avex, and i gave a few songs to a few groups. i also gave [a song] to jonghyun.
[…]
speaking of “connection with people”, it’s the same in korea. jonghyun, that i mentioned earlier, we weren’t actually supposed to meet, and the song might not even have come into existence.
this was when we were writing songs in korea. apparently the artists aren’t allowed to come into the studio. meaning: that we weren’t supposed to interact with the artists, but jonghyun, [knowing] they would tell him not to go if he talked to / asked the label, he just popped up in the studio [by himself]. because he wanted to write a song with us. so, we wrote a song together.
with jonghyun, it was a very similar case [as] with the gospellers, but also a completely different experience. [with gospellers] even if we couldn’t understand everything in the conversation, we both had a way to communicate with each other. but, with jonghyun, [partly because he came in unexpectedly], we weren’t able to understand each other at all. it was the first time that i went into session with an artist that i could not communicate with at all. it was just that he came into the studio without telling us so, of course, we didn’t have a translator / interpreter. but we just really wanted to make something together so we produced a track somehow, and whenever he felt something he wrote it down then and there. we recorded it right away, and the song we completed that way, [the label] decided to use the moment we submitted it. i mean, after all, it was already recorded entirely with his voice.
when onew was asked about what he specifically liked about the songs that made it in the best ballads ranking, he answered “my voice in all of the songs”
