WOODZ Opens Up About Dealing With Mental Illness Through Music In “Welcome To My Baverse” Trailer
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In the new documentary series Welcome To My Baverse, a group of idols will be coming forward to show new sides of themselves and reveal their deep, innermost thoughts about the K-Pop industry. During the teaser, it was revealed that WOODZ, MONSTA X‘s I.M, and SUMIN are the first three participants.
After the trailer was released, people were especially moved by WOODZ’s brave statements about how everything he’s been through over the past few years has taken a huge toll on his mental health.
At the very beginning, he explains that “It didn’t start off as depression, but it started as bipolar disorder.” Later on, WOODZ shocked thousands when he said in one of the audio clips playing over his video footage that “Honestly speaking, the song is about suicide.”
While the teaser itself doesn’t indicate which of WOODZ’s tracks it is, fans have speculated that he is referring to the single “meaningless” because of what he mentioned previously in an interview with STATUS Magazine.
‘meaningless’ is like my diary. In the lyrics, I used the notes that I wrote down when I wasn’t able to find any reason for my life and tried to put stories in the track.
— WOODZ
WOODZ hasn’t had the most stable career, but it is due to no fault of his own. His first debut was with UNIQ, a joint collaboration group between YG Entertainment and Yuehua Entertainment in 2014. They went on to have many hit songs, including the popular track “Eoeo”.
However, a dispute regarding the restrictions placed on Korean companies promoting in China in 2016 left them in an extremely difficult position, causing UNIQ’s activities to come to a halt by 2018. Still, throughout that inactive period WOODZ continued pushing forward with numerous different solo projects under different names, such as Luizy, Luizinho, and FLOO.
A little while later, WOODZ seemed to have a breakthrough in 2019 when he appeared on the survival program Produce X 101 under his full name, Cho Seungyoun. Placing fifth overall in the show’s finale, he made another debut with X1.
But then, everything came crashing down once again when voting controversies about the final lineup caused the group to disband less than half a year after their first EP.
Following that debacle, WOODZ once again returned to the path of a solo artist. He went on to release two highly successful albums, EQUAL and WOOPS!, each placing 2nd and 4th on the Gaon Music charts respectively.
To learn more about WOODZ’s story, you can watch the trailer to Welcome To My Baverse and his individual episode coming out on August 28 on the Baverse Studio YouTube channel:
