There’s a Korean saying that goes: “Even monkeys fall off the tree,” meaning that even experts sometimes make mistakes. That was the exact reaction that singer Heize, one of the most successful and prolific R&B artists in Korea, got when she released her first dance pop track “Vingle Vingle” in 2023. But looking back, the singer says she has no regrets.

“Right before ‘Vingle Vingle,’ I was fixated on some people saying that all my songs sounded the same,” Heize told reporters in an interview held last month, prior to the release of her ninth EP “Fallin’” on Wednesday.


“I thought I needed to make a change, but I couldn’t do it solely on my own, so I received a song made by someone else,” Heize continued, thinking back to the birth of “Vingle Vingle.” “Seeing people’s reactions made me realize that what the people wanted from me was very specific and clear. The song gave me the chance to focus more on being myself. It was a meaningful challenge for me.”

She added, jokingly but apologetically, “I still feel a little sorry for the song’s composers because I really liked the song when I first heard the demo. So, maybe it was me and not the song, and the song could have done well if some other singer had done it.”

Learning a meaningful lesson, Heize made it her utmost priority to tell her own story with “Fallin’,” a seven-track album centering on the sense of melancholy and reality that accompanies the act of missing someone, or something, from the past. It comes just in time for the autumn season, filled with falling leaves and cooling air that can easily bring about a sense of longing.

“I gathered all the songs that I made about the idea of missing someone because I think it’s like the autumn season itself,” Heize said. “I think you come to miss a wide variety of things in your life. I didn’t quite express it directly in the songs, but I thought a lot about my parents, who used to be so much healthier when I was younger. I also miss the old me, who used to be able to love so purely, as well as everyone and everything that passed by me in my life.”

The album, however, is not about clinging on to the ashes of the past and living in perpetual grief. On the contrary, all the songs are about how natural it is for something to come and go — how it is just as meaningful to miss those things and feel sad but still not be overwhelmed by the sadness.

“One thing about missing something from the past is that you get so caught up in what used to be that you fail to see what is happening right now,” the singer said. “I wanted to tell myself and everyone that this right here will also become something from the past that we will miss in the future. So, we should try to take it all in. I’ve come to realize that it’s all these passing moments and the choices that I made back then that have led me here to who I am now.”

And so “Fallin’” was born. The title track is a calm yet touching ballad written by singer B.I. Heize wrote five of the other songs from the album, which were based on specific stories from her life.

“The album is like my journal,” Heize said. “The songs are about my emotions when missing someone, but they're also about the different stories that other people may have from their lives. The lead track is especially about my very personal story, but all the other songs are from specific moments from my life, rather than from my imagination.”

Heize made her debut in 2014 and rose to stardom after appearing on the second season of cable channel Mnet's all-female hip-hop competition program "Unpretty Rapstar" in 2015.

She was awarded the Best Hip-hop Urban Music Award at the 2017 Mnet Asian Music Awards, but garnered a much larger fan base when her music career took a turn from hip-hop to R&B in 2016 with "Don't Come Back,” after which she rolled out hit tracks such as “You, Clouds, Rain” (2017), “Don’t Know You” (2017) and “Happen” (2021).

“I’ve always been so grateful for how well the songs turned out, but at the same time, so worried about whether I would be able to make another song that would be as well remembered as my past songs,” Heize said.

“But I’m always so grateful, and I feel fortunate to have made those songs. But just as those songs were given so much unexpected love, whether it be because it met the right trend or the right weather, any song could end up with the same fate on any day. So, I’m always trying to write songs with the mindset that anything can happen and that I can’t do anything about it.”

For now, Heize will be sticking to what she’s good at. She took a risk and then also took a fall, which she is “grateful for” but not willing to repeat for the time being.

“I can’t be too certain about the future, but I don’t think I will be trying a dance song in the near future,” Heize said, jokingly

“I’ve come to see that there’s no demand for me in that area, so I’ll try to tweak my sound within the bounds and emotions that I know people like from me. I could try an up-tempo song or a hip-hop track, but I will always try to bring my own color to it.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]