Treasure will 'Reboot' for newest album, show off its latest upgrades

It’s a complete “Reboot” for Treasure, YG Entertainment’s youngest and currently biggest act, as its senior boy bands take breaks and girl group Blackpink’s contract renewal is still up in the air. The band will drop its second full-length album ...

Boy band Treasure [YG ENTERTAINMENT]

It’s a complete “Reboot” for Treasure, YG Entertainment’s youngest and currently biggest act, as its senior boy bands take breaks and girl group Blackpink’s contract renewal is still up in the air.

The band will drop its second full-length album “Reboot” at 6 p.m. on Friday, July 28, 10 months after its last EP, “The Second Step: Chapter Two” (2022), and two and a half years since its first full-length album “The First Step: Treasure Effect” dropped January 2021.

“The name ‘Reboot’ is quite literal, meaning that we’re rebooting ourselves,” Jihoon, the leader of Treasure, said to reporters in a press conference held the morning ahead of the album’s release.

“Treasure had been going for an energetic, sporty and young music and look in the past,” he said. “But three years have passed [since our debut], and we wanted to show you a newer side that has come with members’ maturity both in our minds and looks.”

“Reboot” contains 10 tracks including lead dance number “Bona Bona,” for which members Junkyu, Choi Hyun-suk, Yoshi and Haruto participated in writing the lyrics. Treasure members also took part in writing the lyrics and melody for many of the tracks within the album, including “I Want Your Love,” “Run,” “G.O.A.T,” “Stupid” and “Wonderland.”

“Move,” a song released last month by Treasure’s five-member subunit T5, was also included in the album.

Boy band Treasure [YG ENTERTAINMENT]

“This album really has a bit of every genre, from pop and hip-hop to ballad,” said Choi Hyun-suk, co-leader of Treasure. “It’s the result of the hard work that the members have put in and the training we’ve gone through. We’ll really be able to show you what we have with this album.”

The band has a lot on its shoulders. Boy bands from the agency — Big Bang, Winner and iKON — are either taking a break or the members have been working solo, while girl group Blackpink's contract renewal is still in talks. A new girl group named BabyMonster is set to debut in September, but a K-pop scene filled with promising girl groups from other agencies makes competition tough.

Treasure’s timely return was announced by Yang Hyun-suk, YG Entertainment’s founder and chief producer, in June when he apologized for not having been able to focus on making new music for the group due to “various circumstances."

Neither Yang nor the bandmates gave any details on what kind of circumstances they were referring to, but Treasure did go through a major change last year.

The band bid farewell to its former member Bang Ye-dam, who was the main vocalist of the group, and Japanese member Mashiho last November, bringing the number of members from 12 down to 10. This album is the first project as a 10-member group. Member Haruto will also be taking a break for an unspecified amount of time due to his grandfather’s illness.

Boy band Treasure [YG ENTERTAINMENT]

“We took more responsibility than before to release music that is worth all the love that we’ve been given so far,” Jihoon said when she asked how the members felt about the two members leaving the group. “We were feeling a sense of responsibility as strong as the happiness we felt while preparing for this album.”

Treasure has been gaining a wider fan base overseas than in Korea, especially in Southeast Asia.

Of the top 10 countries that took up the largest number of views on its official YouTube channel last year, Korea came in at No. 7 and took up only 3.3 percent of the 509 million views that were made within a year. Indonesia came in at No. 1 with 26.9 percent and was followed by Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia.

The band recently finished its Asia tour in May, after performing 40 times in 17 countries around the continent and meeting with 420,000 fans in total.

“I feel that we’ve really improved our live performance skills such as our stage manners, among all the many things that we experienced during the tour,” Park Jeong-woo said. “I would carefully like to think that the reason many fans from overseas like us is because of the unique charms that each of us has as Treasure.”

Treasure signed a partnership deal with U.S. music company Columbia Records earlier this month for its promotions and activities in the North American market, seeking to expand its foothold in the Western music scene.

Boy band Treasure [YG ENTERTAINMENT]

“We saw how many fans are out there waiting for us during the Asia tour,” Jihoon said. “We’ve always said to ourselves that we want to perform around the world. That’s our ultimate goal. I believe that the U.S. deal is going to bring us one step closer to that dream and be an opportunity for us to learn a lot.”

The bandmates will meet with fans in an online session tonight at 8 p.m., which will be livestreamed on YouTube, TikTok and fan community app Weverse.

To find out more about Treasure, visit https://celebconfirmed.com/

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]