WONHO has always stood slightly apart from the K-pop system that raised him. Since a solo debut in 2020, he’s built himself from the ground up by writing, producing, and performing with an innate focus on emotional storytelling and intimacy. As one of K-pop’s most enduring solo stars, his catalogue – from the impeccable “Open Mind” to mini-albums like Blue Letter and Facade – reflects both his technical command and his instinct for sincerity.

Now, with his first full-length studio album SYNDROME arriving today, he’s ready to distill all of that into something definitive. The project brings together the many sides of his artistry: the producer, the performer, and the person. When we catch up to discuss the album via a video call, it’s our third time meeting. The previous session was at this very photoshoot in London. Like witnessing a master at work, his on-set fluency made it a challenge to choose final images – he’s just that good. Today, he greets me with a top-secret new hairdo and is ready to discuss SYNDROME in detail. He talks with ease about everything surrounding the record; it’s obvious he’s not treating this moment lightly.

WONHO begins by explaining why he titled it SYNDROME; he wanted to show the process of love in stages and symptoms. “SYNDROME is an album that captures the different symptoms of love through music,” he says. “I wanted to express that love isn’t just a simple emotion, but it can be like a fever for some people and slowly sink in for other people. So I wanted to express all these changing feelings about love as a different kind of syndrome.”

That clinical metaphor is also the album’s organising principle. Complementing the album’s release are three visual concepts – ONSET, FEVER and FALLOUT – which serve as a chapter in the record’s emotional anatomy. “ONSET is more of the first spark, and that excitement that first happens,” WONHO explains. “FEVER is when the love gets very intense and it completely takes over, and FALLOUT is what’s left after all of those emotions happen. So this album captures how the different temperatures of love change over time.” Read another way: he’s mapped a relationship’s life cycle from curiosity to obsession to aftercare not just sonically, but visually.

If the concept sounds ambitious, the execution deliberately reaches for clarity. SYNDROME is almost entirely in English – a practical decision, he says, to communicate directly with a global audience. The meaning doesn’t get lost in translation for international listeners; the feelings are made as direct and clear as possible. Although he’s dabbled with English lyrics in the past – like the slow-burning “Close,” sultry dance-pop of “Ain’t About You” or lonely anthem “Somebody” – or released English counterparts to Korean title tracks like “Open Mind” or “Lose,” this time it’s different. When asked about recording the album in English, he explains: “I wanted to share my emotions directly with fans all around the world, and in order to express that, the most direct way would be in English. I thought that’d be easier for everyone.” The language choice is not so much a cosmetic nod to crossover markets, but a functional tool to make the emotional content of his theme – the “symptoms” and “stages” of love – immediate and universal.

Musically, the record is a broadened palette. For his Korean releases, WONHO often prioritized writing, producing and arranging himself; he’s credited as such on almost any song he’s released. Here, he spread the work across multiple production teams. “I worked with a lot of different producers and teams this time. I was able to listen to a lot of different songs that they had, and chose ones that fit the album the best,” he says. “Compared to doing things on my own, this way showed me to have a wider range of sounds and ideas, and each team had their own style and way of working. So this process felt very new to me, and because of that, the album includes a broader range of genres and emotions.”

Still – and this is important – he did not abandon technical authorship. For his self-made songs like “DND,” he stayed in the booth and at the board. “When I work on my own songs, I naturally get involved in the recording and engineering part too. When I’m writing, I often have to check the texture and balance of the sounds myself, so I end up paying attention to a lot of these technical parts and I think the details are really important. Expressing emotions through my music is really important for me, and this technical aspect helps me to do that.” His personal touch and attention to detail ensure that even with new sounds and different drivers steering the wheel, the final product still feels authentically like his music. That combination – collaboration plus micro-level control – is the engine of SYNDROME: wider horizons, anchored by his own love of the craft.

WONHO wanted listeners to approach the album with a simple expectation: surprise. His goal is to shatter any preconceived notions of what a “WONHO song” sounds like. “I hope that people will see me as an artist who can do many different kinds of music. I want to show that I can express myself in different ways and try out different genres, but pull them off in my own way. I think I just want people to listen and think, ‘oh, he can pull off this style, too’ and be surprised by that.” The record’s sequencing is convincing of that before you’ll even parse the liner notes. The opening cut, “Fun”, throws a heavy electronic sound at you and immediately signals that SYNDROME will not be a cautious return to form. “Fun is basically like the first symptom of when SYNDROME starts and the vocal that I used is very different from what I’ve done before. It was something that I tried to be more experimental on and it kind of sets the tone for what’s coming next in the following tracks of the album.”

That “tone” includes vocal choices that act like character beats. On the vibrantly retro “if you wanna,” WONHO intentionally lowers his register on the first verse – a stark departure from typical vocal performances often delivered in his higher, sweeter register. To hear him like this will quite simply catch fans off-guard; for newer listeners, it’s already proof early-on of his potential. When we talk about those vocal stylings, he shares: “I wanted to bring out the original mood of the song, so instead of singing like I usually do, I dropped my tone a lot in the first verse – and that ended up making the song have a lot more impact. I was able to try out a lot of different styles in this album, and I had a lot of fun adjusting my singing for each track. It was generally a very new challenge for me, but I was able to learn a lot vocally through it.” Those experiments are not gimmicks; they are choices in service of mood – a vocal actor as much as a curator and craftsman.

Still, there are moments on the record that function as anchors – reminders that the artist who diehard fans fell for still exists within the experiments. “DND” came from his usual creative team and earned its place through repetition. “While preparing for this album, I had to make a lot of different songs and, out of all of them, I kept listening to ‘DND’. As soon as I finished it, I thought this one definitely has to be on the album this time. I think the sound of the song matched my emotions and the album very well.” That kind of gut selection – the track you can’t stop replaying in your own head – is what gives SYNDROME cohesion.

Language was never meant to be a barrier on this record but a texture. In moments like “Scissors”, with its complex English lyrics, WONHO skillfully works on making the phrasing natural. K-pop gets a bad rep for its English efforts; they’re often dismissed as clunky and awkward by fans. But one of the immediate things you’ll notice if (and you should) dive into WONHO’s back-catalog is the sheer top-tier quality of his English music, always delivered with the rhythm of a native speaker; you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody who doesn’t believe he’s fluent in the language, given the natural flow of his delivery. We talk about his process for achieving such a result, despite his limitations with English on a day-to-day basis: “I always get a lot of help from the people around me when I record. There are a lot of people who guide me on the pronunciation and expressions, so I end up learning a lot from them. I’ve been listening to pop music from a very young age, so I naturally was able to pick it up from singing along and practising. For this album, I think I focused less on the actual literal lyrics, but more on expressing the feeling of these lyrics.” Although the usage of English is a tool to make the feeling “universal”, the feeling itself is the priority for all of WONHO’s music. That emphasis – feeling over literalism – is the album’s linguistic philosophy.

He also allows a single Korean moment to land with extra weight. Sonically arriving like a welcoming breeze on a Spring day, the nostalgic “At The Time” is the album’s intentional bilingual pivot. He talks openly about that lyrical moment: “For ‘At The Time,’ I thought it’d be really fun to have a moment with Korean lyrics. The melody of the song has a lot of nostalgia in it, so I think that Korean really hits better in this part of it. Since most of the entire album is in English, I think having this one part in Korean just gives that emotional impact, and I thought it was something that gave this song a special moment.” But this isn’t a random throwback. It’s a special, intimate gift to his core fans and a moment of deep, cultural authenticity in a globally focused record. A single native-language line becomes the emotional center-point in a mostly global record.

WONHO has long understood that the measure of a pop artist isn’t just what they record, but how that music lives when amplified through speakers and bodies. His STAY AWAKE world tour earlier this year made that clear – a display of precision, stamina, and presence that reframed his songs as shared experiences rather than private expressions. SYNDROME builds on that same philosophy. The whimsical “Beautiful” was recorded with that in mind. “I definitely made Beautiful while imagining what it would be like in concert, and I imagined how the fans would be enjoying it. I thought that during a concert, you have a lot of different genres and you have to shift the energy throughout the song; I thought this song would be perfect for that. I can imagine my fans really enjoying it during the performance.” That stage-first mindset turns the record into a living document: songs exist to be heard in motion as much as in headphones.

But not every track is so weighty. A good album can’t be all high-stakes, intense emotion. It needs light and shade to keep the listener engaged without exhausting them. Enter “On Top of the World”, an easy-listening funk-pop moment which comes in like a deep exhale. “I thought this song was very comfortable to listen to. I thought that it’s perfect for when you’re driving or you’re just listening to it on repeat. So I thought I had to put it on this album. The album incorporates a lot of different moods, so I thought this track would be good to balance everything out. I think it’s just personally my style, so I wanted to include it.” That balance – peaks and plateaus – is part of what keeps the listener engaged through the record’s arc. More than anything, this deliberate balance of moods shows his maturity as an artist who understands pacing and listener experience.

Then there’s “Good Liar”, the record’s sass-filled second single chosen in conversation with those around him. It’s clear when talking to him that this wasn’t one to chase Western audiences, but was settled upon with his entire fanbase in mind – a telling answer of the layered thought process that goes into making such choices when you’re juggling a global fanbase. “A lot of people around me recommended Good Liar as the second single. I think the melody is very familiar, but also addictive – and I think especially Korean listeners in particular will also kind of feel that familiarity in the melody, and I wanted to share that. I also think I tried a lot of different vocal styles from what I usually do, so I thought that listeners would think, ‘oh, this time he has a very different kind of vibe’ and be surprised by that.” It’s a strategic single: accessible but revealing. And this thoughtful, 360-degree approach to creating an album is what separates a thoughtful artist from a mere hitmaker.

As SYNDROME moves toward its end, the electronic slickness of “Maniac” reconfirms the album’s attempt to hold new textures next to the artist’s signature colour – the ultimate evidence of evolution without erasure. “I wanted to show a variety of styles to this album, and I think when I heard Maniac, I thought that this was my song – and everyone around me also thought that this fits WONHO perfectly as well. I think throughout the album, I was constantly trying out new styles, but this song specifically still incorporated my colour.” And the closer, “Better Than Me”, is unabashed in its declaration: confidence as culmination. He answers quickly and easily when asked what he feels no one does better than him: “When it comes to my fans, for me, I think no one does it better than me. As for solo performances, I think it’s what I do best. So with this album, I want to show that confidence that I have so that I can fill the stage on my own and express a lot of different things through my performances.”