[From "Zero" to "one"]
To describe singer-songwriter Bok-jin An seems at first surprisingly simple. A member of Joa Band, a lyricist for "Filter" from the BTS album Map of the Soul:7, and music director for a kids' TV program. However, you cannot sufficiently describe a person simply by listing their known career accomplishments. She worked over ten years as a member of Joa Band, is currently experiencing a new life as a mother of a young boy, and for the first time in her life has just released a new album under her own name.
The title of the album is "ZERO ZERO" and begins with the title track as an intro to the songs "Snoopy", "100%", narrative tracks "About Love" and "Loop", and finally the musical version of "About Love".
The album's keywords are "unknown world" and "love". Love of an unknown world. The intro starts with a spaceship's countdown, the gate to somewhere far away, somewhere different than here, and thus an unknown world. This intro transitions into "Snoopy". If you consider that Snoopy was NASA's mascot and the call sign of its lunar lander, the intro and the song "Snoopy" can be seen as one continuous song.
After landing in the unknown world, Bok-jin An meets "love" again. She meets love again because she reconsiders the meaning of love. The desire to depend on someone you love, the desire for 100% fulfillment, the failure to achieve it, and the resultant discovery of a new way to love.
Here the title of "ZERO ZERO" takes on a new meaning. From one zero to another may seem like the same place. But everything from 1 to 9 exists between them. After wandering here and there to return to where you started, it wouldn't be the same place after all. That's because it's impossible to return to the point that you originally departed from. What matters is not the result, but the process. The itinerary that takes you from here to there, the experience of counting down to a departure to an unknown world, the journey of a lap from zero to zero.
Therefore to find something, we must leave the place that we are. It is necessary to escape gravity in order to fly away. What makes this possible? I think it is the act of taking a single step. The first step from 0 to 1. That is where "Snoopy", with its lyrics of "this is a whole new world, just cross your fingers" is an anthem for those who set their minds to try something new for the first time.
We are people who are here yet wonder what is there. People who believe there is something to find there. People who are not afraid of wandering far only to return. In that sense we are of the same spirit as Bok-jin An who releases her first solo album. Cheers to those who readily depart on a new adventure.
Woojin Cha, (music critic)
[Song Introduction]
1. ZERO ZERO
The debut album"ZERO ZERO" is with two animations. These are music videos of two songs (Snoopy and 100%) and the animations show the journey of "BokBok" (who is the persona of the singer-a-song writer Bok-jin An).This first song with same title with that of alblum. This is the sound track of a imaginary prequel of animations. BokBok is leaving for the moon to collect new love stories. Boarding on the spaceship alone, the journey of BokBok begins after count-down.
2. Snoopy
This song is inspired by Snoopy, the lunar lander of the Apollo 10 mission. Apollo 10 launched in May 1969 and astronauts nicknamed the lunar lander "Snoopy" after the popular "Peanuts" comic strip character.
Apollo 10 was the first space mission to send color TV transmissions, was the first to have a manned solo orbit of the moon, orbited the moon 31 times, and achieved many other notable firsts. Apollo 10 astronauts patted Snoopy's nose for good luck, while mission control staff kept Snoopy figures as charms to ensure a safe mission.
This song was inspired by the story and was written in the spirit of encouragement for others who, like me, are starting over. I hope this song brings good luck that leads to many happy dances!
3. 100%
This song's first sentence was inspired by "240 Roses and 228 Chickens", an installation art piece by Boree Hur.
At the end of 2019, I felt that I was like a weed in the street, carelessly bloomed and withering away. Strong yet shabby. I felt I had no time for rest from my endless roles: a band member, a musical director, and a novice mom. I was certainly a rose, but I had become a weed. As much as a I tried to reassure myself, that's how I felt inside. I wanted to become a rose again. However, I found it is much harder to love myself than it is to love somebody else.
I realized that nobody is perfect. I even hated myself. I searched myself for flaws and felt smaller upon finding them. Emptying ourselves when full and filling ourselves when empty… we need to just accept who we are and start by loving ourselves.
Nothing is 100% in this world. We are all half a person. We can fill the other half with love, happiness, joy, and warmth, but we must start by loving ourselves.
4. About Love (narr. ver.)
"If I could give you half my heart, I would"
A circle, half a circle, half full and half empty, a lacking, a loneliness born from the lacking. Their inability to mix caused them to drift. All the stories that repeat throughout the album in the end were a single story. Love, stories about love. I am a person who sings about love. That story is the basis of this song, and will also be included in my first lyric book "Things Which Could Not Be Songs" that I plan to publish in December 2021.
5. Loop
There is nothing so long and monotonous as waiting for something that has already gone to return.
This song first came to me at the start of last year's rainy season. It also happens to be the first song I started to scribble at the piano when I decided to make a solo album. It's the first song where producer Kee-ho On and I worked on the arrangement together. Throughout this song, we found that we complemented each other perfectly and the result was this beautiful song. I was reminded that there is no song that you can truly write by yourself.
The rainy season is long and monotonous, returns without fail, and is wet, damp, and deep. So is the heart. At the end is longing and the longing heart has love inside it. Things that cannot be easily promised. Things that give us repeated pain. These are all about love.
6. About Love
If I were a musical instrument, I would be an accordion. Like the bellows of an accordion, I have been repeatedly shrunken and stretched, compressed and expanded. For my first solo album, it was essential to include the accordion, an instrument that has accompanied me for over ten years. It is the accordion that allowed me to dream of being a singer-songwriter, and that gave me a life as a performing artist. I wanted to say thank you to the accordion, which freed me from my fears and kept me in music.
This song is me, myself. It's also about love, which I always want to put in my songs.
[Artist Message]
I bloom again.
My work on this solo album started at the beginning of last year and is an effort to reassert myself with a fresh start. I started it so that I could keep going. If I am a weed, a rose, or anything else I will attempt to love myself fully.
I, started to carry on, to keep going.
I would love myself. I would love all me-any of me, weed or rose.
I hide and flew being afraid of changes.
There were complaints even with the bests and I got lost my way.
Life was difficult as a woman, as a musician and as a mom.
But Why should songs to be made? Why do I make songs?
The creation would be going on to find out answers.
For now, the answer is "to carry on".
It is "to love myself more than others"
I hope this small warmth can touch the people, who is half (not 100%) like me.
Just, I hope them to run, dance, cry, smile and restart their today again, with songs.
Still, I want to try to grow as an artist. I want to find reasons to keep writing songs.
I want to be free without trying to be perfect. I want to try to love myself fully.
October 2021. Bok-jin An
[Album Credit]
Produced by Onkeeho
Coproduced by AnBokjin
Lyrics by An Bokjin (Track 1,2,3,4,5)
Composed by An Bokjin, Onkeeho (Track 1,2,3,4,5,6)
Arranged by An Bokjin, Onkeeho (Track 1,2,3,4,5,6)
Vocal by An Bokjin (Track 1,2,3,4,5)
Programing by Onkeeho (Track 1,2,3,4,5,6)
Bass by Kim Seoungsu (Track 2,3)
Guitar by Park Joonha (Track 2,3,5)
Keyboard by Kim Jinah (Track 2,3,5)
Piano by Onkeeho (Track 1,2,3,4,5,6)
Chorus by An Bokjin (Track 2,3,5) Onkeeho (Track 5)
Recorded by MoZ (@vtgstudio), Onkeeho
Mixed & Mastered by Heo Jungwook (@studio_girok)
Vocal direct by Onkeeho
Artwork & Design by An Minjin
Photo by Jang Jisun
Hair Styling by Starkim
Music Video by BISCUIT TOWN, Anihall (www.anihall.com)
[Direction by Kim Doyeon, Produced by Park Jaeok]
Production | An Bokjin
A&R | BISCUIT TOWN
PUBLISHED BY BISCUIT SOUND
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