Seventeen’s Jeonghan and Joshua on JxJ Debut ‘Dreamscape’

For more than a decade, Seventeen’s Jeonghan and Joshua have shared the spotlight with 11 bandmates in one of K-pop’s best-selling groups. Now they get it to themselves with “Dreamscape,” their first album as the duo JxJ.

The record is also Jeonghan’s first new music since he completed South Korea’s mandatory military service this summer. While he served, Seventeen kept performing without him, and at times he watched his bandmates from the audience, among the group’s fans, known as Carats. Joshua spent the same stretch producing songs of his own and sending them to their company.

The pair met as trainees and recorded the duet “Falling for U” for the 2018 special album “Director’s Cut,” but JxJ is the first project built entirely around the two of them.

Joshua says their company first suggested they collaborate together. “After giving it some thought, we’ve been together for so long, and we really wanted to show a different side to ourselves,” he says. “Sides that we haven’t shown as a whole group, as Seventeen, so we thought it was going to be fun. And a lot of our fans actually like our chemistry, the chemistry that the two of us have.”

Jeonghan says that with several members away on military service, those who remained talked with the company about how to keep bringing Carats new music. “We thought that it would be a really exciting project, so that’s how it came to life.”

Seventeen debuted in 2015 under Pledis Entertainment, now part of Hybe, with 13 members split into hip-hop, vocal and performance teams. It holds the record for the highest-selling K-pop album, “FML,” and was the first K-pop act to sell more than 5 million copies of an album in its first week. All 13 members renewed their Pledis contracts this summer, the second time the full group has re-signed. Military service has thinned the lineup, though. Six members are currently serving, and Seungkwan and Dino enlist together on Oct. 26. That leaves five active members: Jeonghan, Joshua, S.Coups, Jun and The8. Jeonghan and Joshua both sing in the vocal team, and JxJ is the group’s seventh unit.

“The exhilaration and the Carats screaming, cheering, their love, the spotlight – everything is something that you can only enjoy on stage,” Jeonghan tells Variety. “So I missed those moments on stage. I just wanted to get ready after finishing my military service, prep myself, and get back on there as soon as possible.”

He says he came out of the service having grown more as a person than as an artist. “When I was in the military, in my workplace, I felt so much love, consideration, respect, and those heartfelt feelings for other people. I just wanted to weave that into the music, and I just hope that that will show when the listeners and our beloved Carats are listening to our music.”

Of everything he felt in that time, warmth struck him hardest, and he came to see it as “a form of love.” It is the one thing, he says, he doesn’t want to lose sight of.

The songs Joshua handed over made an impression. “They were really surprised with the work that I’ve done,” he says of the company. “I think my company knew more about my personal taste after I gave them what I produced.”

Jeonghan hadn’t known that Joshua was so interested in producing. “When we started working on this album, I was amazed by how clear an idea he had in his mind about the musical direction that we should have moving forward. It seemed like he gave it a lot of thought and has confidence in it.”

The credits bear that out. Joshua co-wrote and co-composed his solo track, the alternative rock song “Not Personal,” and has a lyric credit on the closer, “No Looking Back.” Jeonghan co-wrote the lyrics for his own solo, the electro-house track “Coloring.”

Joshua had his own surprise. With a tour to follow the album’s promotions, Jeonghan had been mapping out the stage show. “I didn’t know he was thinking that much about the concert performances and how we should showcase our abilities through the concerts,” Joshua says. “So that was really interesting.”

The two didn’t start out agreeing on what JxJ should sound like. “He wanted to showcase a more… what would you call it? A more aggressive… well, not aggressive, but a stronger side, and I wanted to show a subtle, mature version of ourselves,” Joshua says. “Eventually, we met at the middle and came out with the song ‘12 O’Clock,’ which is right in the middle between strong and subtle.”

Getting there took three or four candidates for the title track. One started out as a house song and was then reworked as a band track. The final pick sits between the two. “I think this album was more meaningful, not so much in that we were attempting new tries, but in that we were able to expand our spectrum and touch on different genres that we didn’t explore in the past,” Jeonghan says.

“12 O’Clock” is a dance-rock track built on ’70s and ’80s disco and funk. Its title plays on noon and midnight: one hour for chasing goals in waking life, the other for the fantasies of sleep. In the video, the pair wander through warped train carriages and rooms with no way out, following a mythical creature that is part peacock, part Ouroboros. The seven-track album opens with the house song “Like You,” passes through R&B and soul, and ends on the raw band sound of “No Looking Back.” Jeonghan says that range gives the record an immersive, dreamlike feel, and the choreography is being built to match. “We just really wanted the whole album to feel like a journey between traveling through dreams and reality,” Joshua says.

For Joshua, the bigger change from Seventeen is how much he gets to sing. Within a 13-member group, and a five-member vocal team, his parts are short. “Even if it lasts long, it’s like five seconds. But as a unit, we could show more of our vocals.”

Making his career far from home was its own adjustment. Joshua grew up in Los Angeles. When he first arrived in Korea, he struggled with customs such as bowing and speaking in honorifics to elders. Thirteen years on, Korea feels like home, and he has watched the world catch up with it. “Even if I was American in America, it was really hard for me to fit in at first because of the differences and nobody knew anything about Korea at that time,” he says. “But now, it’s the new cool thing.”

Jeonghan says Seventeen’s global scale brings freedom and pressure hand in hand. “Of course, there’s the faith and the trust that our fans place in us, and this helps us explore various genres and take on new challenges. But at the same time, there’s the pressure to live up to their expectations. The pressure is always there, and that’s why we’re always trying harder and having so many meetings and practicing really hard.”

Joshua is waiting to see how fans respond before saying whether JxJ goes beyond one album. “We won’t know where this will take us until we get there” he says. Jeonghan sounds more sure. He says the pair saw the unit’s potential while preparing “Dreamscape” and came away feeling “this unit will definitely have something else to offer, something new to bring to the table.”

The album may be named for dreams, but Jeonghan says he didn’t make it to chase one. He sees it as the pair’s first album since entering their 30s. “I just wanted to showcase myself as a grown, more mature artist,” he says.

Working on JxJ showed Joshua how much he likes having a hand in his own music, and he says he can’t wait to make more personal work of his own. He has other plans too. “I’m also taking acting classes, so hopefully in the future I could be in a future acting project,” Joshua says. “That’d be really cool.”

Jeonghan says he thinks less about a next goal than about the fans already there. “I am just so grateful for all the love and support that our fans, Carats, are sending. So I just want to show them great music, bring them good music, and share great moments with them, and just keep growing together.”