“Hell is a teenage girl” - Zin Choi’s darkly sweet alternative R’n’B
Written by Jamie Finn (@jamiefinn2209)
At seventeen, Seoul-born singer-songwriter Zin Choi has a back catalogue, a philosophy, and absolutely no interest in slowing down.
There's a moment on the track microGiant, Zin Choi's defiant thesis statement, where things start to click. The housey production is airy, almost sweet, and underneath it sits the quiet resolution of a girl who has decided that she doesn't care what anyone thinks. "She does what she wants," Zin says, in relation to the autobiographical lyrics, "and she looks cool doing it."
Zin Choi is seventeen. She has been making music seriously since she was fifteen, when she self-produced her debut EP. She is the daughter of Hitchhiker, the Korean electronic artist and K-pop producer, whose gloriously strange avant-pop track 11 (Eleven) sampled the voice of his then five-year-old daughter. That voice, it turns out, hasn't changed all that much. "I recently realised I could still make the same sound," she says, laughing. "So that's my weird hidden talent."
It’s easy to lead Zin’s story with her impressively cool lineage. But spend some time listening to her music, and that framing starts to feel not just reductive. For one, her parents, she says, largely stayed out of her work. "They let me have fun and do whatever I want. They respect my style and trust me." The production, the visual work, the aesthetic, all belong to her. She describes having "her own font" in everything she does.
Like many people, Zin’s creativity comes from being bored. “From my experience,” she explains, “when someone is bored enough, they do something that they like. So I did what I liked. I made music. And I think my passion and talent that I had developed led me to debut as an independent artist at such an age.”
That visual sensibility is worth dwelling on. Zin creates most of the artwork and video content that accompanies her releases, and she approaches it, not as an afterthought, but as the actual starting point. "Even in the process of creating a song, the first idea is always visual for me," she explains. "The phrase I often use is that I think in images." The result is work that feels cohesive: the sound and the look emerging from the same place
Her songwriting has an interesting contrast, with bright surfaces and darker interiors. Runaway, taken from her recent collaborative EP with Saturnko, is a summery indie track where she confesses she's tired of being the only one who keeps trying and that she “doesn’t like people.” Zin insists that it’s more complicated than that. “I love love love love love love love love love love love love people,” she says. “It’s just that I feel like I'm always waiting for people, and I'm the only one trying. But the thing is, I will never stop trying. I will always try my best for Zin to get what she wants.”
Asked whether burying difficult themes inside cheerful production is a deliberate choice, she doesn't hesitate. "I think it's both. My artist choice is a seventeen-year-old girl. Zin. And as she grows, she feels the things that everyone goes through. But because it's her first time, everything feels more crazy in her loud mind." She pauses. "Hell is a teenage girl. And she chooses to be one."
Not all of Zin’s songs explore anxiety, though. Her recent track UFO track is about sharing Doritos with an alien at the end of the world. Which flavour Doritos would she hare with an alien? “Sweet chilli pepper Doritos.”
Her collaboration with Saturnko had an interesting start. Initially invited to DJ and sing at their party, the whole thing evolved naturally into a joint release and a joint debut performance on April Fool's Day.
She also worked with Cadejo, a collaboration she speaks about with real excitement. "Cadejo is so important to me. I will always be thankful. To look someone eye to eye and lead the music and build a song together on stage is something so special and very, very difficult." She hopes to work with more artists her own age. "I don't have a lot of friends that make music," she says, with an honesty that briefly cuts through the jovial tone. "I do hope I meet some people that are cool. We can be goofy and have fun while creating songs."
Outside the studio, Zin has been putting on parties, deliberately alcohol-free, deliberately welcoming to younger people who, in Seoul at least, don't have much of a space that's theirs. "In Korea, we don't have teen house parties," she says. "Whenever I bring it up to my friends, they say it sounds scary. So I wanted to show people that parties are fun." The aim is clear: good music, good DJ transitions, people singing along, maybe crying a little.
Zin is incredibly prolific, with an output that goes beyond impressive and actually comes a bit scary. Yet she describes her creative pace as actually slow relative to the speed of her ideas. She says her mind never stops. When asked whether any of this might eventually become a problem, she considers it briefly and shrugs it off. "If that's an issue, I am the luckiest person in the world."