[TRANS/ARTICLE] 130627 Cuvism Magazine: Interview with Girl’s Day

Check out these pictures from Girl’s Day’s interview with Cuvism magazine.

[Girl’s Day, the group that has shot to the top of the music scene as a “sexy icon”

“We thought about things that women sometimes don’t do, things that people sometimes think that women aren’t supposed to do just because they’re female, and our view is that, above anything else, women are the most beautiful when they have self-confidence.”

Here’s our interview with Girl’s Day, who have returned as confident women with the song “Female President”.]

Girl's Day
Girl’s Day have made a comeback with “Female President”, a repackage of their first full album

Girl’s Day is a group that is always enjoyable and they have made a comeback with the song “Female President”. With “Expectation” off of the group’s first full album, they switched things up by exchanging their usual cute image for a sexy concept, and it was a hit. This time, they are showing even more maturity as they tell women to “Be confident!”. Girl’s Day was the hottest girl group in the first half of 2013 and it is no exaggeration to say that they have been working hard enough to earn such a status. What kind of vibe will they show with their new song “Female President” to delight our eyes and ears in the second half of the year? Cuvism met with Girl’s Day shortly before it was released.

EVERY DAY!
GIRL’S DAY!

Hello! Please introduce yourselves.
Sojin: Hello! I’m Sojin, the leader of Girl’s Day. Nice to meet you!
Minah: Hello! I’m Minah of Girl’s Day. Nice to meet you!
Yura: Hello! I’m Yura, the second oldest member of Girl’s Day. Nice to meet you!
Hyeri: Hello! I’m Hyeri, the cute youngest member of Girl’s Day. Nice to meet you!

Lately, Girl’s Day has shot to the top of the music scene as a “sexy icon”. Do you feel the effects of this?
Hyeri: I actually didn’t feel it when we were doing our activities, but after they wrapped up, there were more opportunities to see our fans, so I think I felt it a lot then.
Minah: When we do events or broadcasts, there definitely seems to be more cheering than there was before. A lot of people also sing along to our songs and I feel it then too.
Yura: I’ve seen variety shows where people were talking about Girl’s Day even though we didn’t appear on the episode. That was so amazing.

When were these mentions the most surprising?
Yura: When they were on shows like MBC’s “Infinite Challenge” or “Real Men”, for instance. Before, Girl’s Day was almost never mentioned on broadcasts, but recently, different celebrities have said that they’re keeping an eye out for us. That was definitely surprising.

Later on, when you actually appeared on “Real Men”, it was confirmed that you’re generally loved. What was the atmosphere like at the scene?
Minah: The soldiers’ enthusiasm was red-hot! (laughs)
Hyeri: We actually went and did our performance there before we were mentioned on the show, so rather than having any sort of special feeling, it was like going to do an ordinary military performance.
Sojin: We didn’t know whether the cast of “Real Men” liked us or not and we just went there.
Yura: “Real Men” had only just started then, and at some point, it suddenly got popular. I think it began to receive more attention around the time we were on it.
Hyeri: I saw the broadcast and it seems like it was edited to make the atmosphere at the scene look better than it was… we thank them very much for that. (laughs)

Mir of MBLAQ was also on the show as part of the troop that you performed for. Seeing as you’re all idols, I’d think that the feeling at the location would be an unusual one.
Minah: You’re right. The fact that we’re all idols but were there in different capacities was very interesting. He gave us a lot of support.
Hyeri: He’s much more of a senior in the industry than we are, so we were a bit flustered, but it was fun nevertheless.
Sojin: Plus, even though he’s our senior in the industry, he was enthusiastic when watching our performance, which was quite unfamiliar to us. (laughs) So I thought “Ah, this program is for real!”.

Many girl groups debuted around the same time that Girl’s Day did. What kind of appeal did Girl’s Day have back then?
Sojin: Miss A debuted one week before us and Sistar debuted one month before us. Those two groups obviously did very well. But to be honest, even though we look back on our first album, we consider it to be part of our history. I think it’s something that helped us get to where we are now. Those days were so strange and I think we wondered more about the kind of concept we would come out with next.

There was also a controversy surrounding Girl’s Day’s debut stage regarding the group’s singing ability. However, you showed an improvement after that and were even called ‘reversal-dols’. What was your impression at that time?
Sojin: It seemed like the people who only saw our debut stage were very disappointed, but we were really pleased that there was a generally positive reaction to the stages that followed.

Then, Yura and Hyeri joined the group, it appears that the two of them have extraordinary ambition.
Hyeri: I felt a lot of pressure during the member change. I was nervous and anxious too, but there were many people who viewed me favorably, so that was a relief.
Yura: Now, in retrospect, I honestly didn’t know anything. Since I was coming in as a new member, my time as a trainee was short and all of a sudden, I was at broadcast stations, so I was kind of in a daze.

Did the other members tell you anything?
Yura: They just supported us and said “Let’s all work hard together!”.
Sojin: I think that Yura and Hyeri felt a lot of weight on their shoulders because it was time for us to rise to the challenge.

Girl’s Day has had cute concepts with songs like “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Hug Me Once”, but for your first full album “Expectation”, you switched things up and went with a sexy concept. You’re also the busiest that you’ve ever been since debuting. How do you feel about all of this?
Hyeri: To be honest, I was really worried. Before this, we’ve had a very cute image, so I wondered if we could separate ourselves from that. But thankfully, many people are enjoying this side of us. Above anything else, it was more meaningful for us to release a full album.
Sojin: Through this album, I feel like we were able to show a variety of possibilities for the future of our music. I think we definitely broke free from the image of Girl’s Day that people have previously remembered us for.

Is the sexy concept ever a burden to you?
Hyeri: Not when we’re actually performing, but in hindsight, I might be a bit strained by it. (laughs) I think that much is clear.
Sojin: I’ve never felt burdened by it. It’s my style to just approach situations head-on. But there’s a weight on my shoulders that we have to do better with “Female President”. The sexy image this time has to be more progressive than last time, so we paid a lot of attention to that.
Yura: All of the staff put a great deal of care into this particular album.
Hyeri: Since the repackage only contains one new song, we wondered how we could get people interested in it, and we ended up doing that in the form of a pictorial. A lot of photos were taken and there are many pages of them. It’s quite something!
Yura: It’s even limited edition! (laughs)

The suspenders dance from “Expectation” became a hot topic. Whose idea was it to use suspenders?
Yura: It was our dance team and stylist team’s idea.
Sojin: They thought that it was important to have something that matches the triple time of the song and it fit together so well. We’re very thankful to them.

What did you think when you first heard that you were going to use suspenders?
Sojin: I simply thought, “So this is the focal point!”.
Hyeri: A stylist-unnie said to me “We decided to use suspenders this time. It’s going to be awesome! I’m not joking; we seriously came up with a dance using them!” I just thought “Really? Will that be okay?”. In any event, I never expected that it would receive so much love.
Yura: Suspenders aren’t really anything special, but I secretly thought that they might be a hit. (laughs)

How do you feel when you’re on stage and you see the audience’s reaction?
Yura: People really like the part where we lower our suspenders. (laughs) The cheering is always the best when we do that.
Hyeri: I think I feel it more when we go abroad. They don’t know what the song is about, but when they see the suspenders dance, they start to go crazy. (laughs)

With the popularity of the suspenders dance, many cover videos have been posted online. Are there any that stand out to you?
Yura: I saw celebrities doing it; that was amazing.
Sojin: 2AM’s Jinwoon-sunbaenim imitated it a lot.
Hyeri: I saw one video where a group of foreigners had outfits, hairstyles, and makeup that were identical to ours. As I was watching it, I thought that it was really impressive. They were even better than us!
Minah: In my case, it isn’t a video, but something that I saw first-hand at one of our fansigns. They wore outfits like ours and did the suspenders dance right in front of me… but they were men. (laughs)
Yura: Ah! Besides that, a lot of cheerleaders did it too. I was very impressed by that as well.
Sojin: Since I’m from Daegu, watching baseball is familiar to me. Ever since I was little, I’ve had the preconceived notion that the music that’s played at the ballpark when the cheerleaders come out is always the most popular song at the time. The other day though, when they did their cheerleading, it was to our song. I felt unusually emotional then.

You recently made a comeback with the repackage album “Female President”. Please briefly introduce it.
Yura: With this album, we wanted to embody confident women. We’ve made very shy confessions in our previous songs, but this time we’re conveying the message of “Ladies, make the first move and confidently confess your feelings!” The song is saying that it’s okay for women to be more assertive.

What is the key dance move this time?
Sojin: There are three main points in the choreography. The first one is the salute dance that we do all together when Yura raps, the second one is the nine-tailed fox dance where we shake our hips, and the third one is the clapping dance.
Yura: Our outfits have trains attached to them that are there specifically for when we do the nine-tailed fox dance and I feel like it matches well with that part of the choreography.

You said that there is a salute dance; it seems like it was made with soldiers in mind. (laughs)
Sojin: Exactly! (laughs) When you see the full shot of that part, with us and the dancers, there are 12 people saluting all together. That’s when you can really feel the force of it.

What are the focal points of your stage outfits?
Yura: It’s definitely the trains that are attached to them.
Hyeri: We added embellishments to our shoulders this time to give the feeling that women should stand tall. We’re trying to be like Beyoncé. (laughs)

Your first full album “Expectation” really received a lot of love, so it seems like there would be pressure on all of you while preparing this repackage too.
Yura: I think we all got the right feel for things after “Expectation”. (laughs)
Sojin: Truthfully, there was also the thought of “It’s now or never!”. Our company had this sort of mindset too and our end goal is always to grow as people and do something new.
Yura: Rather than feeling burdened, there was a greater sense that we all had to work hard together.

You were the first girl group ever to have a swimming pool at your showcase. Whose idea was this?
Yura: Naturally, our staff came up with the idea. They were looking for something special and unique and ended up choosing the swimming pool. We also prepared a variety of different stages for the mini-concert in order to match the originality of the venue.

What were your thoughts after you finished the showcase?
Hyeri: We were the most concerned about the response from the general public, whether they liked our new song and whether they would follow along with us. We wondered if we met their expectations.
Sojin: Before, the most important thing was if we did our best on stage, but now, I think it’s when we find out the reaction to what we do and how we have to use that feedback in order to improve. So we’ve become more curious about that too.

Do you usually monitor yourselves and how you’re perceived?
Sojin: I don’t really keep track of that, because I feel like if I saw someone reacting badly to us, it would affect me negatively.
Hyeri: I often search for what people think about us, but I just look at the good things. (laughs)
Yura: I’ve seen some hurtful comments before, so now I only read the nice ones too. (laughs)
Hyeri: Truly, all I keep seeing is that we’re pretty. (laughs)

How do you think you’ll feel if you win #1 with “Female President”?
Yura: I’ve said before that I really don’t think I’ll cry and get overwhelmed, but when “Expectation” was just nominated for #1 on a music show, I found myself tearing up. I was so touched by the fact that we were even in the running for #1. In the past, we would try to pop up behind everybody else when #1 was announced so we could get on camera, at least for a little bit. But when we were candidates to win, we were the main focus, which felt very strange.

Going forward, what sort of group do you want Girl’s Day to be thought of as?
Hyeri: I want us to stay a hard-working group just like we are now. I also want us to be a group whose songs are remembered even with the passing of time.
Sojin: For me, I hope that Girl’s Day is a group that is always loved. I want us to be a group that makes people happy.

Girl’s Day: their lifestyle

How do you normally spend your time?
Minah: I usually listen to music or meet up with friends. We have plenty of personal time prior to doing activities.
Yura: I spend my free time watching movies and dramas.
Hyeri: When we’re busy promoting, we want to go out and do something fun, but then when we have time off, all we do is stay at home. (laughs) And since we couldn’t do it before, we want to go out and eat for no reason.
Yura: I think it’s human nature. If someone says “Don’t eat!”, you just want to eat even more. (laughs)

Outside of your activities as Girl’s Day, how much time do you spend together and what sort of things do you do?
Hyeri: We’re stuck to each other 24/7. We’re always together.
Sojin: The four of us watch movies, go shopping, eat… we spend our days with each other doing things like that. (laughs)

You even go out to see movies too?
Sojin: If we want to go, then we just go.
Yura: I recently went out to see a movie in the wee hours of the morning. (laughs)

If you were given one day of free time, how would you want to spend it?
Yura: I think I would probably stay at the dorm. You can’t do as much in one day as you would think.
Minah: I would just want to relax at home and watch TV.
Hyeri: (after agonizing over it for a while) I actually don’t know what I would do. Because normally, people work regular hours, right? But if we’re never quite sure when our schedules will end, we can’t really do anything afterwards. So it seems like I’m always just thinking to myself “What is there to do?”.
Sojin: In order to get ready for the day, we go to the salon at around 3 AM, and then we’re done with our schedules at around 5 PM. There isn’t a lot of time left in the day after that though, so it seems kind of futile to do anything.
Hyeri: I don’t really have any hobbies either, so figuring out what to do often proves elusive.
Sojin: I like exercising, so I go work out and then come back, but doing that over and over again is sort of pointless. I eat a lot too. (laughs)
Yura: Sojin-unnie eats and eats and eats. She can go so far as to have 5 meals in 1 day. (laughs) We’ll get a pizza, and then 2 hours later, she’ll say that she’s hungry.
Sojin: Just yesterday, I ate at 5 in the morning, and then fell asleep. (laughs)

How do you maintain your figures?
Hyeri: I feel like rather than maintaining our figures, we work on being physically fit.
Sojin: Our choreography is usually strenuous, so I think it’s plenty of exercise in and of itself. We also do stretching when we have the time to.

Minah, you recently appeared in the film “Holly”, and you participated not as a singer, but as an actress. What was it like?
Minah: I wanted to take up the challenge of acting for the first time (T/N: The filming for “Holly” took place from October 9th 2011 to November 21st 2011 and therefore was Minah’s first time acting). Even though there were many difficult aspects, I feel like I learned a lot from the experience. I’d like to try out different genres in the future.

How was it working with the other actors?
Minah: Shin Yi-unnie and Ae Yeon-unnie treated me really well, so I was able to fully enjoy the filming.

What areas would the other members like to try working in?
Hyeri: In the past, I wanted to take a crack at many different genres, but now, I think the timing is important. If something was presented to me, the biggest thing that I would have to consider is how well I could do at it.
Sojin: I feel like if we work fervently as Girl’s Day first and foremost, then opportunities to do a variety of things will come along naturally.

Seeing as Sojin is the leader of the group, is there anything that she usually does to unite you as a team?
Sojin: I make food for the members, of course. (laughs) When I have the energy, I wake up an hour or two earlier in order to cook for them.
Yura: Our unnie is very dependable.
Hyeri: To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure what I’m good at and what I’m not so good at. The three of us (T/N: Hyeri, Yura, and Minah) are all around the same age and since we’re still young, none of us can really pinpoint that about ourselves. So Sojin-unnie does that for us.
Sojin: I strive to be as honest as possible because my words affect them more than what’s said by other people.
Yura: “Why are you so bad at cooking?!” (laughs) Things like that.
Sojin: Even though I try not to be too hard on the members, I think I am at times, so I often feel sorry toward them.

Sojin, do you think that you’re doing well in the role of a leader?
Sojin: I’m certainly trying to do well.
Hyeri: If she was younger or the same age as the rest of us, it would probably be hard to hold the group together. It isn’t easy to lead a team.
Yura: I’m sure that it’s hard for Sojin-unnie too, but we’re very thankful that she always takes care of us.
Sojin: (blushes) I’m getting really embarrassed now.

What are your true personalities like?
Sojin: I think we’re all pretty easy-going. We don’t pretend to be ladylike or anything like that.
Yura: We frequently hear that we act like little boys. (laughs)
Sojin: I feel like we might look wild to other people. Men badmouth one another when they hang out and we do that too. (laughs)

If you weren’t in the music industry, what would each of you aspire to be?
Minah: I’d want to either run a bakery or be a photographer. I’ve been very interested in both of those things since I was young, so if there was ever the opportunity to do so, I would definitely love to realize those dreams.
Sojin: In my case, I’ve dreamed of doing well at music for so long, and now that it’s actually happening, I’m not quite sure what else I would want to pursue. With anything that I do, my aim is to become a bigger and better person.
Yura: I think it’s that simple for me too. The best thing is being successful and happy no matter what you do. Feeling good about what you’re doing right now is what’s most important.
Hyeri: I’d wish for all of us to be healthy! (everyone laughs) For us to earn a lot of money, eat a lot of delicious food… I think I’d hope for that sort of thing. Frankly, a lot of people tend to live without actually enjoying much, but sometimes you can experience things that you haven’t before.
Sojin: To others, it might seem like we dream of a glamorous life, but in a sense, we’ve just been very fortunate. Now that I’m in this kind of career though, the things that I hope for have become smaller and simpler.

What are ‘suspenders’ to Girl’s Day?
Hyeri: Suspenders? They’re a Christmas gift!
Sojin: A second skin? A shell? You shed them and then you can evolve further.
Yura: They’re a fond memory of mine.
Sojin: I feel like suspenders are something that we happened to receive a lot of love for. With our activities for “Female President”, and of course with our activities that have yet to come, we’ll try to show you something bigger and better.

Please say a final word to the readers of Cuvism Magazine.
Hyeri: To all of Cuvism’s readers! We put a lot of preparation into this comeback, so please enjoy it. We’ll work even harder!
Yura: We’ll keep developing and progressing in order to show different sides of us in the future. Please give us your support. Fighting!
Sojin: We’re always working really hard, so if we ever make a mistake, please don’t hate us too much for it.
Minah: Girl’s Day has returned with “Female President”. To everyone who has anticipated it: we’ll do our best, so please give us and the song a lot of love. Thank you so much!

Captions:

Girl's Day
Girl’s Day have returned as confident women

 

Source: cuvismmag.com
Translated By: Shirina

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