2AM talks about competition with SNSD

2AM’s Jo Kwon has revealed his feelings on releasing the group’s first official album after spending nearly 10 years a JYPE trainee.

The group held an album showcase and press conference for “Saint O’Clock” on October 27th and stated, “We still can’t believe it, that’s how glad we are.”

Leader Jo Kwon continued, “When I first received ‘This Song‘ as a trainee, I practiced extremely hard to sing that one song. At the time, I waited for my debut without greed. Having always seen mini-albums, it’s hard to believe that we finally have an 11 track official album.”

With their debut in 2008, 2AM began releasing singles and mini-albums while going into acting and making variety program appearances. After two years and three months, the group finally produced their first official album consisting of 11 tracks.

Jo Kwon added, “Listeners will be able to hear a variety of different genres. There are standard and limited editions produced. You will not be disappointed.”

2AM will be promoting two tracks for this promotion cycle, including “You Wouldn’t Answer My Calls” and “Like Crazy.” Changmin introduced the songs by stating, “‘Like Crazy’ focuses primarily on the melody while ‘You Wouldn’t Answer My Calls’ focuses on each of the members’ voices. Listening to the two different atmospheres will be an enjoyable experience.”



The group relied on research from Nielsen Korea in order to choose their title tracks. Due to receiving a positive response on both of the songs, they decided to go with a double title promotion. Jinwoon added, “We have different outfits and music videos for both songs.”

Jo Kwon went on to thank SNSD for their overlapping promotion cycles. “Our cycles overlapped during our ‘Can’t Send You Even if I Die‘ cycle. We’re competitors with good intentions. I personally bought and listened to ‘Hoot‘ and found that it’s a very bright, cute song. I’m thankful for them for giving me another opportunity to express my kkap.”

Regarding the competition, Jo Kwon continued, “Our song is a ballad that fits well with the cold winter season. I think there will be a lot of people that are looking for ballad songs.”

2AM will be holding their first comeback stage on Mnet’s “M Countdown” on October 28th. The showcase held today was filmed in 3D and will be shown in theaters in December.

Source: Newsen, MK

2AM goes up against SNSD for the third time this year

2AM will be going up against SNSD for the third time this year with their first official album, “Saint O’Clock,” due for release on October 26th, and SNSD’s “Hoot” due for release the next day on the 27th.

This is the third time their promotion cycles have overlapped, the first cycle being 2AM’s “Can’t Let You Go Even If I Die” going up against SNSD’s “Oh!,” both released just four days apart.

2AM’s follow-up track, “I Did Wrong,” was released on March 16th, and again, SNSD followed with “Run Devil Run” on March 22nd.

Although both of 2AM’s tracks were recorded as big hits, the majority of industry representatives believe that 2AM could have fared better if they weren’t up against SNSD during both promotion cycles.

They’ll be facing each other off once more, this time with SNSD’s guerrilla style release, already dominating portal sites and search rankings with just their teasers alone. But 2AM has been showing themselves as strong competitors as well. This being their first official album release, the anticipation for the album has remained consistently high, with their official homepage already crashing with just audio teasers.

Both groups have done fantastic thus far, with 2AM showing their power on digital music charts while SNSD dominating album sales charts. SNSD hit a home run right off the bat while 2AM steadily and consistently worked their way up. Each face-off has brought more changes in the styles of each group, from dance, to ballad, to mature concepts, and to cute concepts, furthering the anticipation of music fans as to what they’ll show off next, and how they’ll fare this time around.

Source + Photo: Everyday Economy, Sports Korea, Nate, allkpop