[Exclusive] Hitmaker Behind MAMAMOO's 'Starry Night' Sends Love Call to BTS's Jin

K-POP producer Park Woo-sang(LOGOS), the hitmaker behind songs for MAMAMOO and singer-actress IU, says the song that changed his career was MAMAMOO's "Starry Night." In a recent interview, he also named the artist he would most like to work with next: BTS's Jin.

K-POPIT met with Park at his personal studio on the 19th for a wide-ranging conversation about his career catalog. The room was lined with music gear alongside small, personal touches: potted plants, a clock, warm lighting, figurines. Two walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, giving the space an airy feel that most windowless studios lack.

Sitting in front of his monitor, Park looked back on his years with MAMAMOO and said the hit "Starry Night" was a turning point for the members and for him.

"I think a K-POP producer's ability is a lot like rolling dice," he said. "I was the producer who kept rolling ones and twos. When MAMAMOO were rising as 'beagle idols', known for their playful energy, I couldn't even dream of getting on one of their title tracks."

The break came almost by accident. "I was thinking their music needed a change, and then Kim Do-hoon came by my room and started playing guitar. The chord progression was so good. In 30 minutes we had the first verse, the lyrics and the melody. That was 'Starry Night.' It felt like the first time I rolled a six."

Park called the session "the moment we discovered Hwasa."

"Up to then I'd only cut demos with Whee-in. That was my first time recording a demo with Hwasa. Before that song, it was really hard to capture what made her voice special. She was actually a little hurt about it. 'Starry Night' was different. Her name isn't in the credits, but the 'ya-i-ya-i-ya' hook in the chorus? Hwasa came up with that."

Park later reunited with Hwasa on "Good Goodbye," a well-loved hit that gained fresh attention around the 46th Blue Dragon Film Awards in November of last year. Working with Hwasa, he said with a laugh, is like "drinking a sweet poison."

Asked to explain, he pointed to their earlier collaboration on "Maria." "Hwasa is extremely careful about releasing music. She's always torn between what the public wants and what she wants to pursue herself, so her pile of unreleased songs is huge. One song I pushed her to finish and put out was 'Maria.' She wanted to work on something else, but I insisted. We stayed up all night finishing it. The high after all that work was so intense that I couldn't really write with her again for a while. Nothing else hit the same way."

"Good Goodbye" was their first real project after "Maria." "Hwasa worked with other writers, but I think after pouring so much of herself into 'Maria,' nothing else satisfied her. So she called me. That song didn't come easy either. Once we had enough of a track to lay vocals on, we started building the melody. The intro melody is unusual, right? Once that came out, the work started feeling fun again. After I wrote the chorus melody, we just went back and forth until it was done."

Park then said there is one artist he really hopes to collaborate with, and sent an open love call to BTS's Jin.

"You can find a singer's strengths in a lot of places, but for me the biggest thing is the raw emotion they carry as a person. When you can pour a person's actual desires into a song, past genre and past technique, that's when the results tend to be good. I don't know Jin personally, but I get the sense that behind his bright surface there's a sadness he can't quite put into words. I think we could make something beautiful together."

Toward the end of the interview, Park offered a sharper read on the state of the industry. "I think the era of winning with technique is over," he said. In the past, catching up to foreign music was itself K-POP's growth curve. Now, he argued, the skill level has evened out and Korean production sits comfortably beside any global market.

"When I was young, one of the highest compliments was, 'You smell like butter", meaning the track sounded Western. "Have you been abroad?' Just crossing the ocean set you apart. Now everyone starts from the same line. You can pull up YouTube and hear every kind of sound from overseas, plus tutorials on how it was made."

His conclusion: with technique maxed out, the only way to stand out is to go back to the basics. "If I compare it to singers, high notes aren't a strength anymore. A few months at a vocal academy and technique gets you through the high notes. But emotion, which is the real core of music, isn't something you can learn at an academy. That's where the real ones get separated out."

Park had a warning for aspiring producers, too. Today's industry, he said, is so specialized that it's becoming hard to build fundamentals.

"The role of the individual producer is shrinking. What a few producers used to do is now split among dozens of people: top-liners, lyricists, vocal directors, engineers. Most composers never even meet the singer they're writing for."

He also thinks the overall average is starting to slip. "It feels like the general level, which kept climbing thanks to better tech, is now dropping. The more you lean on AI and one-click tools, the bigger the holes get in your own ability as a producer. My share of the work is smaller and the tech has advanced, so more people are skipping the hard parts instead of pushing through them. Patience, discipline, grit: those things are disappearing. And those are the most important basics."

He was careful not to dismiss technology, though. "Lately I've started to see technology and art as one thing. It's better to trust your instincts than to obsess over technique, but if you don't understand the technique, your creativity has a ceiling. You have to learn enough of the tools for your instincts to sharpen. Only then do you really know what you want to say, and only then can you chase it as far as it goes."

Park Woo-sang's credits include MAMAMOO's "Starry Night" and "Egotistic," IU's "Troll (Feat. DEAN)," Hwasa's "Maria," and Chungha's "Snapping."