It’s not immediately obvious, but there is a postal code in the first track of BOYNEXTDOOR's debut studio album, HOME. 06070 is the address of the building where six boys trained and doubted themselves, but kept going anyway. The fact that an album called HOME begins there, before anything else, tells you something important about how this group understands the word.

HOME, released June 8, is BOYNEXTDOOR's most personal record to date. Since their debut in 2023, the group – SUNGHO, RIWOO, JAEHYUN, TAESAN, LEEHAN and WOONHAK – have built a reputation on emotional honesty, turning the texture of ordinary experience into songs that feel lived-in. Three consecutive million-sellers and five Billboard 200 entries later, the question now was whether they could go deeper.

HOME answers that. For the first time, all six members are credited across the songwriting – something that gives the album a different kind of weight. JAEHYUN, when reflecting on the album's opening track over a video call with us from Seoul, describes surviving the loneliness of his trainee days long enough to meet the other five. "After I met them," he says, "they became the music for survival." That is the emotional logic HOME runs on – the idea that home is not a destination you arrive at, but a point of origin you keep returning to.

The album spans eight tracks, moving through heartbreak, reckless love, the slow process of letting go, and the particular ache of watching parents grow older. The title track "VIRAL" frames longing as an act of creation – turning what you can't shake into music and sending it out like a message in a bottle. The pre-release single "ddok ddok ddok" intelligently traces the group's entire discography in a single outro: six boys who showed up and never left. That was JAEHYUN’s idea, according to WOONHAK. The record intentionally ends with “I Wonder,” a song for their fans. HOME is a wide emotional range, but the through line is consistent: every song traces back to something real, something specific, something the members recognise in themselves.

In "Forever You" – a hauntingly raw standout moment – it's the mundaneness of homely sounds, like a vacuum cleaner or a chopping board, that we take for granted. There is real craft in that choice. But the detail that lands hardest is more than the absence of those sounds; it’s the specific memory of not appreciating it while it was happening. That kind of specific self-awareness in a lyric is rare to address, and rarer still to get right. The song keeps opening up new rooms from there – a grandfather addressed directly, asked how things are going “from up there,” and an outro that reframes everything that came before it: the baby who babbled grew up to write songs, the toddler who stumbled learned to perform on stage. The "Forever You" recording session brought JAEHYUN to tears, which says everything about what that kind of honesty costs to make – and what it gives back to the people who listen. With HOME, and with a song like "Forever You", BOYNEXTDOOR make a convincing case that they are among the most emotionally precise storytellers in their field right now.

This is BOYNEXTDOOR walking listeners through HOME, track by track – in their own words.

BOYNEXTDOOR – The 1st Studio Album: HOME

JAEHYUN HOME has a lot of associations with BOYNEXTDOOR. We chose the word ‘home’ and not 'house' because we wanted it to feel like a safe haven. There are certain feelings and moments we've been through – from our trainee days to after debut – where we felt that, and we wanted to incorporate all of that into the album.

LEEHAN In the lyrics, you can find how we felt insecure as trainees, the effort we had to put into everything – and it also delves into the emotions we felt post-debut. I think this is a song that really shows our determination to go back to our point of origin, the very beginning, and look back on how we started.

WOONHAK I think this was the perfect track to open the album. We wanted something very frank and genuine to lead with.

JAEHYUN When I started writing the lyrics, I wanted to begin at the time before I'd met the members – when I was feeling lonely by myself. Then it moves to when I did meet them, and what I learned from that: a sense of responsibility, how to care for others. I wanted to chronicle that in chronological order. I survived to meet them, and after I met them, they became the music for survival.

SUNGHO The second track, our title track "VIRAL," is about our determination to make sure this song goes viral – that we're on everyone's feeds and everyone listens to our music. We compare that to holding on to an ex-lover, someone you're separated from. The reason we say sorry and I love you at the beginning is because we wanted to make it okay to be wherever you are at the start.

RIWOO What I really like about this song is that there are lyrics only an artist could write. For example, there's a phrase that says "I'm gonna put my copyright on it" – that's something only someone who creates music can say. I think it's a very genuine expression of what we can do and who we are. That's a part I really like about the song.

JAEHYUN It looks like a love song for someone you've separated from, but it can extend to other circumstances – like an artist and their fans. After "Sorry, love you, hate this word," the next lyric is "maybe I still" – which means that even though I don't want to say these things, they're still lingering in my mind. Those emotions are still there. It shows the duality inside a person.

LEEHAN This is our very first studio album, so we wanted to use this song as a pre-release because it marks a new chapter of our career with this album, HOME. It shows how we're opening the door, venturing forward, showing a new facet of ourselves to the world. That's why I like this song.

WOONHAK When we were working on the outro, we thought – what can we flex on a hip-hop track? All we have is our albums. So we wanted to brag about them, flex our sound, name them one by one and show what kind of legacy we have. The fans really liked it, so I'm very proud we made that outro. It was JAEHYUN's idea.

JAEHYUN In tracks like "VIRAL" and "ddok ddok ddok," you can see a new facet of BOYNEXTDOOR that we haven't shown our fans yet. But with "ADIOS!," we go back to the side of us that fans are used to and that people love about us. It's a rock song – a banger. Very uplifting. It's about a day where nothing goes as planned, but because we're naturally uplifting people, we just want to say adios to all of that and let go. So while it could seem gloomy at first, it's actually a very hopeful and uplifting song.

SUNGHO Looking at the flow – from "06070" to "VIRAL" and “ddok ddok ddok” – I thought this was the right moment for "ADIOS!" to come in and change the vibe a little. We really thought long and hard about where to place each song. So I hope fans listen to the whole album from start to finish. It's going to be more fun than just listening to individual tracks.

WOONHAK When we were looking at the album, we thought we needed that one banger where everybody can just go crazy and have fun without thinking about anything. So we wanted a track about just that – having fun, rock and roll. That's why we came up with "Upside Down." Make everything upside down, don't care about anything. That's the motto of this song. We thought about which lyrics would best fit who we are and be true to our DNA – and that's how we landed on lines like wanting to rock and roll, wearing jeans inside out. This song is very true to who we are, and the lyrics especially show what kind of people we are.

RIWOO When creating this song, we wanted to use a lot of imagery to help us. We actually laid out pictures to think about what lyrics to write. That's why I think the lyrics for "Upside Down" are very intuitive, very direct – and I think that makes it all the more fun.

TAESAN Track six, "DIVE," is about falling for someone – and when you fall for someone, you can feel seasick. It likens that feeling to water and waves, being swept away by waves that someone else created. But you choose to dive in anyway, because you like that person. That's what it's about.

WOONHAK I think this is one of the key tracks on the album. We wanted that one song where our vocals really stand out, and this is it. It's got real strength in that area.

SUNGHO When we were making "Forever You," we got together and talked about how we feel about our parents and what message we wanted to get across to them. It was me who had that nightmare [in the first verse] – I remember waking up crying. When we were talking amongst ourselves, I said, I had this nightmare and I want to make it into a song, I want to write lyrics about it. That's how I started writing, and thankfully it made it into the final album. But it's not just the nightmare – all the other lyrics come from our own experiences and emotions, messages we want to convey to our parents. I think this song is a perfect mix of all those different experiences and feelings. When listeners and fans hear it, they'll find that BOYNEXTDOOR can be very introspective. We can go very deep, and they can learn more about who we are as people.

JAEHYUN This was the first time I cried in the recording booth – out of all the albums we've made. Listening to the other members recording their vocals, I could really feel their genuine emotion. It really touched me.

WOONHAK The last track is a fan-facing song – a song for our fans. The reason we chose it to close the album is because we think that at the end of the journey of finding home, our fans are always there. That's what we're moving towards. All the emotions we've felt, all the experiences we've had – they're thanks to our fans. And it was only right to end this album with a fan song. I'm very happy it became the closing track of HOME, and I'm very happy our fans will get to hear it.

TAESAN When we were creating this song, I imagined us being on stage at concerts. Whenever we go to a concert or release a new album, we have our worries, our insecurities – but when we see our fans, their placards, their smiles, the light sticks they're holding up for us, all those worries just wash away, and those worries feel like nothing. I wanted to infuse that feeling, that experience, into the second verse. That's how it came about.