Q: How does it feel to be promoting together over Christmas? (laughs)
T.O.P: We feel sorry for each other. (laughs)

Q: Then I’m sorry for making you do an interview in the middle of all that. (laughs) It’s been about a week since promotions started. What has the response been like?
G-Dragon: I can really feel how long we were away. (laughs)

Before, we could immediately feel an explosive response, but it’s been two years since we promoted as BIGBANG, so it doesn’t feel exactly the same as it did then.

I think how much attention we receive from here will depend on what we do next. If necessary, I’m willing to appear on variety shows too, so that people become interested in us and want to watch our stages.

T.O.P: I still don’t really know yet.

The album was released yesterday, and for now, I’m happy because it seems to be selling a lot.But I think it’ll take a little more time before I can actually feel the response for myself.

Q: How does it feel to be back onstage after such a long time? I think this is the first time the two of you have performed together like this.
G-Dragon: I was nervous during the first broadcast, but after that, some of the pressure disappeared and I started being able to enjoy it a little.

When we pre-record performances, we’ll sometimes record three or four times in a row. As we keep going, we gradually lose our strength, and somehow the best footage always comes at the very end. At first, because we know it’s being broadcast, we’re conscious of everything. We follow the choreography we planned, we get too worked up, and we don’t sing as well.

But by the final take, we’re almost at the point of giving up. When the two of us just sing however we feel like singing, that’s when the best footage comes out.

So before going onstage, we deliberately raise our energy so we can stay in that kind of condition.

Q: So you’re literally in a “HIGH HIGH” state. (laughs)
T.O.P: Yes.

We talked a lot with the choreography team because, rather than synchronized group choreography, we wanted to emphasize a structure that would make the people watching feel relaxed and give off a freer atmosphere.

Q: Idol performances are usually associated with fixed choreography and styling built around it. Was that something you wanted to move away from?
G-Dragon: Usually, when people think of idols, they think of set choreography, with the clothes coordinated around that. But BIGBANG has always tried to show more natural performances.

We wanted people to watch us and think, “They’re idols, but they look that natural onstage and can still show their own individual style.” Watching exactly the same choreography every day gets less interesting. If we can show something different every day, it becomes more fun.

Q: BIGBANG has also performed more structured choreography before. But the two of you seem able to create the entire mood simply by looking like you’re having fun onstage.
G-Dragon: I think BIGBANG’s greatest strength is that although we’re one team, every member has a very distinct color.

We’re one group, but depending on which members are combined, different kinds of synergy can come out. We wanted to show a new combination like this. And when we’re performing on television, rather than worrying about where the cameras are, we want to share that moment with the audience. So we have to raise the atmosphere of the stage as much as possible. I think a singer’s job is to make everyone who came to see them enjoy themselves until the very end and go home exhausted.

And I want even the people watching through television to feel excited and caught up in it.

Q: Your first stage at MAMA especially felt like that. There weren’t many special stage effects, but the two of you seemed to move the stage yourselves through your performance.
G-Dragon: There genuinely wasn’t a single stage effect that time. (laughs)

There was no preparation, and we couldn’t even use fireworks.

T.O.P: We were already in our fifth year as BIGBANG, so we’d built up a certain amount of experience. Half-jokingly, I said, “Hey, should we just go out there this time with everything we’ve accumulated up until now?” (laughs)

Q: So you really pulled it off through experience alone? (laughs)
G-Dragon: It was a stage in Macau, and we wanted to leave a strong first impression on people who didn’t know us.

I also wanted to change the idea that you have to move around a huge amount onstage in order to make the stage feel full. Even if there were nothing on the stage and I were standing there alone, I wanted people to feel the weight and presence I could create just by being there. Neither of us had prepared anything special, so we kept saying, “Let’s die onstage today.” (laughs)

There was no way that kind of feeling wouldn’t come across. And at the time, the company president kept sending us messages with a lot of pressure behind them…

Q: Pressure? (laughs)
G-Dragon: Things like, “If you guys don’t work hard onstage, everyone’s going to have a terrible time.”

So that day, we had no choice but to go all out. (laughs)

Q: He really pushed you hard. (laughs) But even if someone pushes you, not everyone would necessarily think that way.
G-Dragon: I think it’s because I have this awareness of being the main character. On a music program, there might be around thirty artists appearing within one hour, and each person gets about three minutes.

So when I step onto the stage, I have to become the main character of that stage. Once my stage ends, the main character changes again. When you’re at home, you’re the main character there, so you behave comfortably and do whatever you want.

Even if there are a huge number of people around, if you think of yourself as the main character, you can act freely and receive the audience’s reaction from that position.

I think that makes it possible to perform with confidence.

Q: That sense of being the main character seems to carry directly into the album too. The first six tracks feel like they have a story: you introduce yourselves with the “Intro,” raise the atmosphere with “HIGH HIGH” and “OH YEAH,” then come down from the stage and tell a woman not to go home. (laughs)
G-Dragon: We’ve always placed a lot of importance on flow at YG, and especially on BIGBANG albums.

If an album is one complete work, it needs a certain smooth progression.

So it starts high, gradually comes down, then there’s a point where it almost feels like you completely lose yourself and the flow breaks once, and after that, we show our individual solo colors. We’ve always paid a lot of attention to things like that.

T.O.P: As for the solo songs, both of us had actually made them quite a long time ago.

It was only later, after this project album was decided, that we decided to include solo tracks.

My song came from music I had been writing since I was filming the movie 71: Into the Fire and the KBS drama IRIS.

Q: Unlike the solo tracks, the songs you made together needed to maintain a consistent mood. How did you decide on the album’s overall direction?
T.O.P: I think it was instinctive.

Instead of sitting down and deciding, “This is the direction we’re going in,” the two of us went into the studio, stayed up all night together for several days, wrote lyrics, and tried recording them.

In the past, G-Dragon would make his own recorded parts and I would make mine, and then we’d come together afterward and revise whatever needed changing. But on this album, we constantly gave each other advice so that the other person’s part could become better. We also received a huge amount of help from the musicians we worked with.

In another sense, you could probably call this album an instinctive result produced by YG. (laughs)

Q: So the combination itself happened naturally?
G-Dragon: The combination itself was like that.

Before we made this album, we were working on BIGBANG’s album. Since it was going to be BIGBANG’s first album in a while, we wanted to try all kinds of things. There was a collaboration between me and T.O.P, one between Taeyang, I tried working with Daesung.

Q: Those other combinations sound interesting too.
G-Dragon: But the other members were busy. (laughs)

They had solo promotions and variety appearances.

The two of us had a little more free time, so we naturally ended up working together more than the others did. (laughs) At the time, some of the other work was being delayed, and the company president saw that we had been trying different musical combinations for BIGBANG.

He suggested that rather than making BIGBANG’s album a collection of different collaborations, we should make it an album centered on all members’ voices.

Q: From what you’re saying, it sounds almost accidental. How did you actually make the music together? “Baby Good Night” feels especially interesting because the two of you interpret the same sound and melody completely differently.
G-Dragon: I got that song when I was at Kush hyung’s house - he goes by e.knock now.

I had just casually gone over to his house, and he played me a track he had arranged and said, “I made this. What do you think?”

The moment I heard it, I stole the song right there. (laughs) Then I started humming a melody over the sound, and that became “Baby Good Night.”

T.O.P added his rap, then I added my vocals, and on this album I ended up singing properly for the first time. After that, we made “Don’t Go Home” too.

T.O.P: “Baby Good Night” was actually the first song we finished for this album.

G-Dragon had been working on BIGBANG’s album, and I had just finished filming 71: Into the Fire, so when we started working together, that was the first song we recorded. We were satisfied with it too. From then on, the two of us ended up working together quite often.

I think that’s why “Baby Good Night” became the first song that really started this album.

Q: What was the idea behind “Baby Good Night”?
G-Dragon: We decided on the theme first.

We asked ourselves: if we had lovers, what kind of song would we want to sing for them? I wrote the lyrics and melody while imagining watching a lover sleep and gently stroking their hair. I really wanted to make a very sexy song. I also hoped it could become one of those songs people listen to when they want to create a certain mood with someone they love. (laughs)

Q: Is that also why you included French narration in “Baby Good Night”?
G-Dragon: We used narration quite often on BIGBANG albums too.

But if I did the narration again, fans might like it, but I thought they could also get tired of it. (laughs) I also wanted to create a more cinematic feeling through dialogue between a man and a woman. I wanted to use a language whose sound matched the track.

Q: So you think certain pronunciations fit certain sounds. On this album, it feels like rather than pronouncing every word very clearly, you adjusted your delivery to create the best balance with the atmosphere of each song.
G-Dragon: Ever since I was young, people pointed out my pronunciation a lot, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how to correct it. I think one thing people of my generation sometimes notice is that when you listen to foreign music and then that distinctive feeling gets transferred into Korean, the atmosphere can completely change. It’s almost like when a film gets dubbed and suddenly feels different.

So I wanted to write the lyrics in Hangul as much as possible, while changing the intonation. For example, with the pronunciation of the “round and round” part in “KNOCK OUT,” I might roll my tongue a little more.

I thought of the voice itself as an instrument. That’s why I paid attention to the effect created by every individual sound of the voice.

Q: Come to think of it, on this album your voice sometimes sounds as though you’re applying effects to it yourself.
G-Dragon: Yes. I use techniques like that quite often. I try to make my voice feel as much like an instrument as possible.

Even if there’s a sound that could be produced with an actual instrument, I sometimes try to make that sound with my mouth instead.

Q: On the other hand, T.O.P seems to pronounce his words more clearly on this album than on anything you’ve released before. It’s almost the opposite choice from G-Dragon.
T.O.P: It wasn’t intentional. I was just performing by feel, but I did change my vocal style a little.

BIGBANG makes music that a lot of people listen to, so I wanted every syllable to be heard clearly.

I wanted it to feel as though I were speaking right next to the listener’s ear.

Original interview: 10Asia, December 31, 2010

Translated by @kwoncircles on X