Lee Hyori Talks About Severe Emotional Effects Of Past Plagiarism Controversies

With her sixth album set to be released soon, Lee Hyori recently hosted a live show to chat with fans about her life and career.

During her July 3 broadcast, she spoke about each of her solo albums. While talking about her 2006 album “Dark Angel,” she mentioned the controversy around her track “Get Ya!,” which was accused of plagiarism by the songwriters behind Britney Spears’s “Do Somethin’.”

“The song became wrapped up in a plagiarism dispute,” said Lee Hyori. “I remember being depressed.”

She explained that as “Dark Angel” was her second album following her hit first album, she had thought that it would do well too. “Because [the controversy] happened, I was very hurt, and I realized that work doesn’t always go the way you want it to,”she said. “It was a period of time that made me stronger.”

Lee Hyori would later be swept up in controversy again with her fourth album “H-Logic” in 2010, which contained many songs submitted by rookie composer Bahnus that turned out to have been plagiarized from other artists.

“I liked working with rookie composers then,” explained Lee Hyori. “A young man submitted about thirty demos to me, and they were really great. ‘How could they be so polished?’ I wondered, and I was really happy.”

“When we were recording, I’d ask him to send a version of the track without the background music, and there’d be a delay and he’d send something else,” she went on to say. “But I couldn’t look into it properly.”

“I can’t explain how I felt back then in words,” Lee Hyori said. “When I heard that they were all fake, I thought I was going to go crazy, I wanted to hide in a hole. I wanted to die.”

“I canceled everything on my schedule and booked a room at a hotel,” she continued. “I went there on my own and didn’t come out for four days. Someone at the hotel came in to check if I was alive or not.”

Lee Hyori went on to say she knew her fans were very sad at the time, and she stated it was her fault. “It’s a relief that I’m able to talk about that time now with a smile,” she continued. “I got through it thanks to my friends and fans who supported me.”

Meanwhile, Lee Hyori’s new album “BLACK” is set to be released on July 4. When she told fans that she is planning on promoting the album for only a week, she admitted that she’s also a bit sad about it because she worked on it for six months.

However, she explained that she believes live performances at concerts and festivals, where she can communicate with fans, are a better fit for her now than music shows.

Although Lee Hyori said in the broadcast that she isn’t going to dwell on chart rankings for her new album, she did make a first place promise to fans. “[If the song gets to first place,] I’ll release another song as a single this year,” she said.

As we wait for Lee Hyori’s return, you can watch her music video teasers for “BLACK” as well as her art films for her new album. She has also shared her song “Seoul” as a pre-release track!

Source (1) (2) (3) (4)