08 April 2023 - It's EXO Day!!! 🎉

Yep, today is almost all about my first and greatest K-Pop loves, the mighty EXO, who are celebrating their 11th anniversary today. To commemorate the occasion, 8 of the remaining 9 members (there were 12 when they debuted in 2012*) have completed the first of 2 days of fan meetings in Seoul. I, and millions of other EXO-Ls, will be watching the other tomorrow morning via the concert streaming platform Beyond Live.

During today's meeting they premiered a brand new song, gave several solid spoilers about the so far only rumoured comeback, including the news that they are recording 3 (yes, 3!) MVs in April (thanks, Kyoong 😂), and generally made everyone extremely happy with an interesting set list. It was lovely to see all the Korean members back together on stage for the first time since before Xiumin enlisted in May 2019 (at the 10th anniversary fan meeting only 5 members were able to perform). 

EXO performing their first brand new song since 2021

Sadly, there are still 2 members who need to enlist (Kai and Sehun), and there's still no sign of Chinese member, Lay, re-joining them - although he did recently visit Korea which caused a bit of a stir at the time (hopefully to record vocals for the new album 🙏🏻) - so they won't be back full-time as a band until 2025.

Fortunately, the members are all extremely talented and with the exception of 2 (who, coincidentally, formed a sub-unit in 2019 called EXO-SC), they have all released solo albums, and will presumably continue to do so over the next 2 years.

Hopefully, Sehun will release his first solo before enlisting. Chanyeol, who was discharged late last year, has mentioned in several videos that he has been recording. During a brief Instagram livestream earlier today, he appeared to be spoiling an album cover, that was visible behind him for the first 20 seconds of the stream. He then moved it (almost) out of sight, thus giving us all hope that his album is also imminent.

Loey possibly spoiling his new album?

I'm particularly excited, as with the recent return of Baekhyun, the other sub-unit EXO-CBX (Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin) are now fully manned again, so hopefully some more music from them will be coming too 🤞🏻.

*To celebrate the band's debut, I am going to give a little bit of background on the undisputed vocal kings of K-pop.

EXO was originally a 12-member group, who were split into 2 x 6 member units: one focussed on the Korean market (EXO-K) and the other on the Chinese market (EXO-M). The members of the band were introduced in solo MVs a good year or so before they debuted, with Kai (whose name means 'to open') being the first to be revealed. The two units also each released 2 pre-debut songs, What is Love, which showcased the main singers in each unit, and History, which introduced the units and set the stage for their concept (they were one of the first, or maybe the actual first in K-pop, to have one). 

The members represent as aliens from an exoplanet, who lost their memories after landing on Earth. Each member was endowed with a special superpower:

EXO-K:
Suho (unit and overall leader) - water
Baekhyun - light
Chanyeol - fire
D.O. - earth/power 
Kai - teleportation
Sehun - wind

EXO-M:
Kris (leader) - flying
Xiumin - frost
Luhan - telekenisis
Lay - healing
Chen - thunder/lightning
Tao - time control

This concept runs through the entirety of both EXO's discography and also the members solo works. It covers everything from promo videos and teasers, right through to the VCRs that are shown at concerts, although to make things harder for fans they aren't in chronological order; thus the last release Don't Fight the Feeling is related to Power, the lead track from the repackage of their 2017 album The War, called The Power of Music, using the same graphic references as the earlier album. In the past, they have brought in elements related to werewolves, and also Alice in Wonderland, and their entire Japanese catalogue takes place in a separate parallel universe (the romantic universe).

EXO's debut song was MAMA, and the MV begins with a narration that gives an explanation as to why the group was divided into the two units; with both living in parallel universes, and each member was paired with a counterpart in the corresponding group. Particularly for this track, in order to get the full picture you need to watch both the Korean and Chinese versions of the MV, as while all 12 members do appear in each version, the main focus is on the featured unit with only extremely brief cameos from the others.

MAMA - EXO-K version 

MAMA - EXO-M version

Even after Tao left the band in 2015 (Kris and Luhan had preceded him in 2014), and the two units joined and became EXO they continued to produce both K and M versions of their MVs, and until the Universe album in 2017 all their Korean studio albums contain both Korean and Mandarin versions of all the songs. Ever since, they have always included a Chinese version of the title track on all their Korean studio albums, with the exception of 2021's Don't Fight the Feeling.

Their concept was so off the wall, and their music so ground-breaking, especially in 2012, that many people didn't know what to make of them, particularly when they then disappeared for another year before coming back with the equally unusual Wolf (still one of my favourite tracks by them). 

Despite being the first Korean band to sell a million copies of an album for 12 years, they were considered a flop band, but then came Growl, which soon became known as the national anthem of Korea, and as record after record was broken (some of which still haven't been surpassed today), it became clear that EXO was anything but a flop. They were such a huge band that they closed the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Seoul and received medals of themselves from the then President of South Korea. 

Sadly, their record company, SM, as with the other earlier bands under the label, weren't interested in capitalising on their popularity and gaining global success (and they still aren't really 😔), so they generally only promoted the band in Asia with minimal appearances elsewhere (and not at all in Europe 😭). As a consequence, while their popularity is, even these days, massive across the world, they didn't have the chance to reach the global success of bands like BTS and BlackPink, despite being vocally superior to both. Neither have they produced songs fully in English to attempt to cater to the western market (apart from a live English version of their song For Life, sung by D.O.), yet they still manage to get on the Billboard charts and top iTunes across the world every time the band or one of the members releases a new song or album.  

These men are my absolute favs (after Gary Numan, obviously - who we're seeing 3 times next week) and I hope they continue for many more years . . . and finally do concerts in London 🙏🏻. However, I don't want them to sell out as quickly as they do everywhere else - they still hold the top 4 world records for the fastest selling concert tickets; 0.2 seconds in 2017 at the Gocheok Sky Dome (66,000 tickets), beating their own previous 2015 record of 0.4 seconds. Even this year's fan meetings sold out in just over a minute.

EXO (2023) - Suho, Xiumin, Lay,
Sehun, D.O., Chanyeol,
Baekhyun, Chen, Kai