SEOUL (AP) \u2014 Lim Kim has spent the past decade figuring out where she fits \u2014 in the music industry, in adulthood, in the rooms she found herself in. Her new album, \u201cExit to Nowhere,\u201d traces that search across seven tracks.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old South Korean singer’s second full-length album looks back on a decade of change as she moves from the uncertainty of her early 20s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has seven tracks, and they reflect the emotions and feelings I\u2019ve experienced from my early 20s until now \u2014 like a chronicle of my life,\u201d Kim told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
The album, released seven years after her last major project, the 2019 EP \u201cGENERASIAN,\u201d marks a return for an artist who has spent her career shifting between genres and exploring questions of identity, belonging and self-discovery. It arrives 13 years after her debut full-length album, \u201cA Voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Kim released \u201cGENERASIAN,\u201d she said global interest in South Korea and its music, including K-pop, was still developing. She said the album came from a desire to speak about her own identity and perspective as an Asian woman born in South Korea.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a period when no one had really told that story properly,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to show that perspective properly \u2014 not through the way it\u2019s usually seen from abroad, but from my own point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim said her new album represents a move away from the broader cultural questions of \u201cGENERASIAN\u201d and toward a more personal reflection.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter I finished \u2018GENERASIAN,\u2019 I thought about my next step for a long time,\u201d she said. \u201cEach album feels like a record of what I was feeling at that time, and then I move on. This time, I wanted to focus more on my own individual story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim broke through in 2011 as part of South Korean folk-pop duo Togeworl before launching her solo career in 2013. She won two Korean Music Awards in 2020.<\/p>\n
The singer said the album\u2019s title reflects the uncertainty she felt during the years it covers \u2014 a period she described as moving through a \u201cwasteland\u201d while searching for direction.<\/p>\n
The album\u2019s title track, \u201cNever Gonna Be Alone,\u201d begins at a wedding and explores the paradox of feeling most alone when surrounded by a bride and her guests. Kim said that feeling became more familiar as she entered her 30s and attended more weddings. The song\u2019s warm, string-laden sound belies its unsettling lyrical undertone.<\/p>\n
\u201cINSA\u201d \u2014 the Korean word for \u201cgreeting\u201d \u2014 features rapper Bree Runway and plays on the formality of everyday exchanges Kim encountered when she entered the music industry. She said she often felt a sense of distance from the people and glamour around her. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that I felt like one of them, but more this strange sense that I was somehow separate,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
Kim said she hopes listeners who are also navigating uncertain futures can find something familiar in her journey. The album draws inspiration from South Korean novelist Yang Gui-ja, American writer Joan Didion and Studio Ghibli film \u201cSpirited Away\u201d \u2014 works that similarly explore self-identity and transformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL (AP) \u2014 Lim Kim has spent the past decade figuring out where she fits \u2014 in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9039,49551,2190,195,913],"class_list":["post-95010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-celebrity","tag-e","tag-entertainment","tag-k-pop","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}