Sunwoo Jung-a on Life After 'Run With Me' and 20 Years in Music

"After 'Run With Me' became famous, people looked at me and said I seemed serious and like someone who loves books," Sunwoo Jung-a said. "They thought I had a big heart and would hug everyone. But honestly, I'm really petty! (laughs) I'm just an ordinary person who likes cute accessories and experimental music."

The singer-songwriter was talking about what changed after the success of "Run With Me," her best-known song. She said she felt a gap between the ballad singer the public loves and the music she actually wants to make. Now marking 20 years since her debut, she said she plans to follow her own taste instead of other people's expectations.

Sunwoo sat down with K-POPIT at the office of her agency, CAM, in Seoul's Hapjeong area.

She hit her 20th anniversary this year, but she counts her career a little differently.

"It's called a 20th anniversary, but I think I've really been active as a singer-songwriter for about 10 years," she said. "My first album flopped, so I basically couldn't work for a while."

She laughed as she explained. "I spent about six or seven years singing in jazz clubs and performing my own songs at clubs in Hongdae," she said. "Counting from the album, it's been 20 years since my debut. But I think of my real career as about 10 years."

She is widely known today as a singer-songwriter. But Sunwoo first stepped into the K-POP music world as a producer. Of all the songs she has worked on for other artists, she said IU's "Jam Jam" was the most fun.

"IU gave me some writing that felt like an essay, but also like a poem," she said. "I used some of the sentences as lyrics just as they were, and built the rest from there. I turned that story into music, almost like making a soundtrack. It was a story I wouldn't normally have thought of, so it was really fun."

Her path from jazz and indie singer to K-POP producer started with YG Entertainment.

"In my 20s, I worked as a jazz singer through introductions from older students at my college," she said. "But I wanted to be a pop singer, so I'd perform my own songs at indie clubs near Hongik University. At one point, I posted a video on Cyworld of me performing a dance song rearranged as bossa nova. I guess Yang Hyun-suk, the chief producer, saw it."

That video led to her working on a reggae version of 2NE1's "I Don't Care."

"I still remember it clearly," she said. "I got a call from an unknown number during a vocal lesson. Something told me I should answer, and it was Chairman Yang Hyun-suk. I prepared my own album with the money I earned as a producer at YG Entertainment. About half the songs on my second album had help from YG Entertainment."

Then there is "Run With Me." Sunwoo said the song came from a very personal place.

"It holds the feeling of wanting to run away, and of wanting to help someone you love run away with you," she said. "I really wanted that feeling to reach a lot of people, so I thought about it a lot. For example, I love the sea, so at first I wrote, 'Any sea will be fine.' After talking it over with my colleagues, I changed it to 'anywhere.' For some people, the sea might not be a place to run to. Polishing the lyrics was almost painful."

She also admitted, to laughs, that the song is hard to sing.

"I recorded it again several times," she said. "I think it's because it was my first song close to a traditional Korean ballad."

"I always write songs the way I feel them, without trying to look cool," she added. "But strangely, they're hard to sing. It takes me about five years to get used to a song I wrote myself. I'm only now getting a little used to 'Run With Me,' too."

Asked whether it is the song she feels closest to, she said no.

"I gave birth to it, but a lot of people helped raise it," she said. "It's less like my baby and more like a grown child who has already moved out."

Her pick is "Bionda," which means "It's raining" in Korean.

"It's a song I wrote when I was young, and I felt really proud of it," she said. "It's a story about my younger self meeting who I am now. Those complicated feelings came through without feeling heavy. If I could sing just one song anywhere, I'd still pick 'Bionda.'"

She also named "Black Coffee," featuring rapper Woo Won-jae. "Even if no one knows it, just the fact that I wrote this song makes me feel good about myself," she said.

Sunwoo also opened up about "Peacock"(I Won't Ask for More), which she released in July.

"As I got older, I felt an unstable future in my career suddenly getting a lot closer," she said. "I wanted to keep moving forward, but I felt anxious, wondering how far I could go at this age. After 'Run With Me' was loved, I also felt like I had to act the part of a ballad singer."

"Luckily, I've come to think I can just have fun with the time I have left, and that's how I wrote this song," she said. "Even if people around me want something simple and minimal from me, the song is about deciding to spread my bright peacock feathers and live that way."

Looking ahead, she said she hopes to work overseas someday.

"I love jazz and band music so much that I really want to work in English-speaking countries," she said with a laugh. "But honestly, I don't really know how. Should I start by studying English?"

She is aiming to release a full-length album next year.

"My goal is always to relax and make songs naturally," she said. "But once I start, I obsess over everything, even what happens between one second and two seconds. When I prepare my next full-length album, I want to try living somewhere unfamiliar for a few days or a month, even if I come back without writing a single song."

When it was suggested that this sounded like a happy kind of goofing off, she smiled.

"I don't see any reason not to try it," she said.