On November 3. BTS’s Jungkook finally released his much-anticipated solo album, Golden.
The response to the record has already been record-breaking, with the album achieving the biggest first-day sales by a soloist on Hanteo. Even revered music publications have reviewed the album with high praise.
Jungkook’s “Golden” ends its first day on Hanteo with 2,147,389 copies sold, claiming the biggest first day and first week ever for a soloist in Hanteo Chart history! pic.twitter.com/kmdSLueBhd
— BTS Charts & Translations (@charts_k) November 3, 2023
#JungKook becomes the first soloist to sell over 2 million copies of an album in one day in Hanteo history (‘GOLDEN’). pic.twitter.com/AkCuDSEySF
— chart data (@chartdata) November 3, 2023
Within just 24 hours of its release, Golden seems to have hit all the benchmarks of commercial and critical success, cementing Jungkook’s position as a powerhouse popstar globally. While these achievements might look effortless for someone as gifted as BTS’s golden maknae, the singer recently revealed the actual grueling process that went into making the record.
Jungkook hosted a live broadcast on Weverse to chat with fans after his album’s release and gave a detailed breakdown of the recording process. Though he was straightforward about confessing why he didn’t participate in the songwriting part of the album, he was the final decision-maker in terms of choosing the tracks. Jungkook said he spent a lot of consideration in picking the songs and mentioned that he received a lot of help from HYBE chairperson Bang Si Hyuk.
Aside from the production process, his job was no less demanding as a vocalist. He played each song on the album one by one during the livestream. When the title track, “Standing Next To You,” came on, the singer recalled it being a particularly hard song to record, especially because of the long chorus and layers of harmonies.
However, it was also the first song of his career he never had to do a second recording. Jungkook mentioned that he finished recording it in “a little over four hours.”
After he finished playing the entire album, Jungkook seemed satisfied with his work. He revealed that Golden was produced in a very short time, which led to a hectic recording schedule. In a week, he estimated to have recorded four songs. On a single day, he would record a new song and then spend time fixing the recording of the previous day.
Aside from this tight schedule, another challenging aspect was perfecting the pronunciation for the tracks since all of them were completely in English. As the eleven songs all came from different writers and producers, the guides were also done by different people, and so were the pronunciations in each song. The BTS maknae spent a lot of time practicing each little pronunciation with certain nuances that the producers demanded.
While talking about his struggles and hard work with Golden, Jungkook didn’t forget to mention the other people who have worked just as relentlessly on it. He sincerely thanked all the songwriters and producers involved with the record and even mentioned how perfect the mixing and mastering process was.
It’s safe to say that despite his many challenges, Jungkook successfully pulled off a versatile and demanding lineup like that of Golden, proving once again why he lives up to the title of the “golden maknae.”
