We want to gain recognition through ‘The Chaser’.
Sunggyu: Something I want us to get recognized for is our challenge mindsets? And I also want to hear that we did the new challenge coolly as well.
Woohyun: I want to get recognized as the front-runner in informing people about K-pop. My wish is to make the world learn about South Korea and the whole Korean maze that’s in K-Pop, with the sailor’s chant lyrics in our title song, ‘The Chaser’ or our melody that is similar to Korean culture.
Sungjong: I want to receive recognition from the company’s staff and the composers, Sweetune. When the lyrics first came out, there were other propositions but through discussions, it was decided like this ‘We’ll do it with eogiya diyeoracha’; These days the KPOP storm is huge and we planned to try out something new with a Korean feeling. To fix Infinite’s only color, all the members are working hard with the singing or the performance. Because we’re doing so, of course, we got even more attached.
Hoya: Honestly, for the first lyrics, writing a rap that was giving off an even more Korean feeling was a mental breakdown, in my situation. At first, I was worrying a lot but in the end, we wrote it our way.
Dongwoo: These days, KPOP’s influential power is amazing, to get Korea known a bit more, I believed in the words ‘The most Korean thing is the most international’. We wanted to mix a dance track leavened with a Korean sensitivity and beauty to give off the best synergy effect well once. For the things we wanted to win through this song, the ranking is important but over that ranking, it was the reaction about Infinite’s other face and new image.
Sungyeol: A new try. It would be unfamiliar to the public but I hope to gain recognition as they get used to it and acknowledge that ‘This is exactly Infinite’s peculiarity’.
L: The Chaser is the important album that appeared after a very long hiatus after ‘Be Mine’ and ‘Paradise’. I wanted to show that now, to some extent, we could have a transformation and have a different style while staying in Infinite’s music frame. We’re not scrubbing off one color totally, we wanted various colors to live and coexist in Infinite’s inherent color. To do so, it’s a good thing to experiment a few things.
‘The Chaser”s point check. The things we have to see and put emphasis on are?
Sungjong: My part ‘Girl go first, eogiya diyeoracha, eogiya diya I’ll get you back’ feels really Korean right? At that chorus, the performance where we walk in line diagonally or the part where we emphasize on our backs, I come out in the center during the second verse. I hope you’ll watch it closely!!
L: The part where the lyrics are like sailor’s chant, and Infinite’s trademark synchronized dance where the formations got more free thanks to various experimentations are the points.
Hoya: Because it looks like I can’t be seen well, I hope you can pay attention to me… Haha preparation was tight for us while having our Japanese promotions. We practiced by renting a dance practice room in Japan and this time, we thought a bit outside the box, with the ‘always center’, we freely changed the formation and Dongwoo hyung and I gave up the center place now. I hope a lot of fans can come on music programs to see all of our dance. The sexiness is the point!
Dongwoo: This time, there are more points on our lower body than on our upper body so I hope you can focus on the part under our pelvis.
Music Video Episode
Dongwoo: It was the first time I was riding properly a motorcycle but at the first trial ride, I already crushed more than 60 lamps.
Hoya: You even broke one with your head.
Dongwoo: Yes, I had that thrill where I wanted to know how it felt to break one with my head. But it’s a bit sad that a member also got injured while we were doing the choreography together.
Hoya: I was wearing very high heels so my ankle got totally twisted and I also got injured while dancing. My ankle was so swollen it was twice as big so in the end while filming, I stopped in the middle to go get Chinese acupuncture and get an ice pack on it and danced again, it was so hard at first I thought ‘Ah I want to give up, it hurts so much I want to stop dancing’.
Sungyeol: I remember the most about practicing 12 hours to drive the motorcycle without license. I arrived at around 11AM at the filming set and upon adding the time I started to ride the motorcycle, with the times I went to the toilets of course, without even noticing, it’d been 12 hours.
Sunggyu: We got hurt and broke and I got hit by the rain for around 2 hours. I actually had a cold then and fortunately (?) I was the one who had the scene under the rain. So I think I was really lucky (?). After the other people did the expression acting, but I had the hand acting.
Sungyeol: The car L-gun was riding was turning with some machine. When I saw that I thought ‘It seems really fun, I want to try that too, it must be like riding a ride from the amusement park’ but when L-gun came out of the car, he was staggering and said he wanted to throw up.
L: In that turning car, we filmed with a camera that is used in movies. With the camera’s technique. We joined two forklifts and made the thing between in, in a ball’s shape. We put the car in it and made it roll but it was hard, it was turning left and right and back and forth so people who saw it might have thought it looked fun but actually in there, I felt like dying. Even if it rolled only 3 times, I’d get motion sickness and throw up. It was really hard but seeing what we filmed, it also makes me satisfied.
Woohyun: First the members went through a lot of hardships… Because I didn’t have a lot of scenes, I didn’t have a lot of hardships but in my scene, the director gave me an order, it was that ‘The girl left. You’re being abandoned. But you’re telling her ‘Don’t go, I’ll treat you better…’ it was confusing.
Sungjong: Because the hyungs had a lot of personal schedules, they finished their filming first and I started mine the very last. In the last scene, it’s a sad scene where I find the jewel box’s key but I worry deeply about whether I open the box in the end.
That key, the person who runs away… what’s the meaning of all this?
Dongwoo: It could be a person chased or a goal or even a thing, but the members are showing that they aren’t hiding their ways and means to catch it. There’s the meaning that the people who are suffering in it, expressing the pain and the anguish to make efforts to find that thing, it must be hard for everyone to understand this.
Hoya: Honestly, it seems that there’s kind of a story. The ending changes following the way you think. I think it’s something like this.
Sunggyu: That’s right. There’s various dramas coming from The Chaser’s music video. There’s my story, L-gun’s story, and there’s also Sungjong and Sungyeol’s story. It doesn’t look like it but it’s all connected, it’s like another omnibus format too. That key has a lot of implicit meanings. Among all these meanings, it could even be love, it’s finding the important things in each of our lives.
The lines that you identified with the most, among the lyrics of the songs from this album
Sunggyu: ‘Only Tears”s ‘I don’t have anything to give you’
Sungyeol: ‘My love wins’ in ‘The Chaser’
Sungjong: ‘Only Tears”s ‘I love you, I’m sorry, right, this won’t work anymore’, ‘I’m holding it in, it hurts but even tears are luxury to me’ and ‘I’m a bad guy that only has a heart’, I think these lyrics are really memorable. Because I’m a bad guy, the only thing I have is my heart… This part really touched me.
Dongwoo: In ‘feel so bad’ L-gun’s part. ‘You’re walking past me, I’ll do as if I couldn’t see you, I’ll do as if I didn’t see you’ like these lyrics, I’m this kind of style. Before confessing, I’ll purposely do as if I didn’t see, couldn’t see and didn’t care.
Hoya: My part’s lyrics in ‘With…’. ‘Do you remember? The many awkward things when we first met, now without you it’s awkward’ I already felt this kind of feeling. It was my crush, we were together every day and when she wasn’t here, it was awkward. I didn’t confess. It looked like she would have accepted it if I confessed but if we dated, in the end we would have obviously broke up. Realistically, you can’t immediately marry when you start dating right? If I break up first, I’ll think of the other one as a stranger automatically. Now that I think of it, I don’t think I liked someone to death like in movies or dramas.
L: In ‘The Chaser’ the ‘I’ll go until the end’. You have to go until the end, if you start something in the middle, you have to do it until the end, you can’t give up in the middle. Like I said before, if you stick to one thing, you see only that thing. Because it’s hard to multi-task. When you only sing, you have to sing only, when you watch a movie, you watch only the movie.
Woohyun: In ‘Only Tears’ the ‘I’m a bad guy’ part. Its sad lyrics.
trans. cr; emilie @ infinite updates | source cr; mei1010 @ tumblr (thank you for the scans!!) ; take out with full credits