Monday, February 2, 2009

Zainichi Vocalist - Youjeen


Youjeen is an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan. She attended a Korean school and met the people who would later become the band Cherry Filter. Youjeen eventually left Japan for Korea to pursue a career in music as the vocalist of Cherry Filter. She is fluent in Japanese, Korean and English and uses all three languages in her solo work however, most of her solo lyrics are in Japanese. In 2001, Youjeen temporarily left Cherry Filter to pursue a solo career in Japan, there she released music with the help of ex-LUNA SEA member J and The Foo Fighter’s Franz Stahl. Youjeen’s Japanese career was fairly successful; releasing 5 singles and 2 albums over the course of two years. However, after the release of her second Japanese album BEWITCH, her activities in the Japanese music scene ceased, nevertheless Youjeen is still active in Korea as part of Cherry Filter.
Check out videos, etc at: http://www.last.fm/music/Youjeen

2 comments:

Brett Fujioka said...

Her wikipedia entry says that she was born and raised in Korea. This may be incorrect on whoever wrote the entry on wikipedia, so you may want to cite and correct it.

Eclipse Rising said...

Hmm... weird. I checked the website that originally stated she was raised in Japan, and now it has changed to Youjeen being born and raised in Korea. I also checked out sites like http://www.kome-world.com/uk/database-artist.php?id=5
That resource gives a pretty detailed account of Youjeen's career and it looks like we got false information and now it's been corrected. She is from Korea - not zainichi Korean. Still pretty cool singer, though! :)
Thanks Desarraigado!