Fête de la Musique conference emphasizes K-pop's unique songwriting process, AI-related authenticity issues

“Body to Body,” the opening track of BTS’s latest studio album, “Arirang,” credits four producers and 10 songwriters and lyricists.

Such a lengthy credit list is hardly new in pop music. But K-pop’s fast-paced, international production process has leaned especially heavily into this fragmented collaboration model, bringing together writers and producers from around the world to create songs that can travel across borders.

That model, however, may be approaching a turning point, according to K-pop producer Andnew, as the rise of AI places renewed value on clearly defined artistic identities.

“I think the number of songwriters and producers involved in one project will begin to decrease in the future,” said Andnew, the founder of the music publishing company Salpot Music Group, during a panel discussion — themed “From K-pop to Global Pop: Rethinking Music Without Borders” — at the Thila Ground in western Seoul on Monday.

“One of the main reasons more writers became involved in the production system was to create stronger combinations of melodies, and advances in AI are helping resolve that aspect,” he said.

“Recently, there has also been a growing tendency to use songs written by [K-pop] artists themselves rather than by professional songwriters. So I think the current system will likely continue until next year or so, but after that, [the preference for] songs that focus more on the individuality and originality of each songwriter or artist will gradually increase.”

The session — hosted by the French Embassy in Korea, organized by Leeway Music & Media and the first in the Fête de la Musique+ conference series — took place as part of Fête de la Musique, an annual French music festival launched in 1982 on the idea that people should enjoy music together in shared spaces. The festival now takes place in more than 100 regions around the world.

The panel comprised industry experts and musicians who discussed K-pop’s rapid global rise, its collaborative songwriting system, the globalization of its sound and lyrics and the sustainability of the genre’s international popularity.

Participants included Andnew; Alex Karlsson, a veteran K-pop producer and creative director behind songs such as SuperM’s “Tiger Inside” (2020), Ateez’s “Bouncy” (2023) and “Work” (2024) and BTS’s “We Are Bulletproof: the Eternal” (2020); Amy Gadiaga, a French jazz musician; Tarafa Sahloul, the founder of record labels Mutant Ninja and Kid Katana Records; and moderator Chung Hyo-won, the CEO of the music publishing company Amplified Music.

This year’s Korean edition of Fête de la Musique runs from June 1 to 30, coinciding with the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and France, and is the largest one to be held in the country. As part of the festival, the French Embassy in Korea is hosting the Fête de la Musique+ conference series, with two more sessions scheduled for next Monday and June 22.

During Monday’s discussion, Chung noted that K-pop’s production process has been changing. In the past, labels often selected songs written by professional songwriters and then presented them to artists. Now, more artists — such as Stray Kids and some members of NCT — are becoming directly involved in production and possess a stronger sense of their own styles and ideas.

Karlsson, however, did not think that AI would further enable this shift, given the legal complexity of using the technology in music production. In fact, the growing emphasis on performer involvement, he argued, is better understood as a response to anxieties over authenticity in the AI era.

“I think this is a signal of needing more authenticity at a time [when] AI is proof of unauthenticity,” he said. “It’s a response to AI, not jumping off the wave of AI.”

Karlsson, who has worked in the K-pop industry since 2013 and is now based in Seoul, said that the genre has expanded far beyond what many early participants imagined possible and pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic as a major turning point.

Due to the lockdowns, the U.S. and European pop industries saw their production infrastructure shrink, he explained, making creative circles tighter and more exclusive. K-pop, by contrast, continued to request songs from international writers, preserving a more open pitch-based system.

“[If] you get a K-pop single, [you’ve] won the songwriter game,” Karlsson said. “It weighs more heavily than any American cut or placement you can get, because the politics aren’t about knowing the artist, being [their] friend or being in the room with them. It’s about writing the best song.” This is why, he said, K-pop is now “the most honest arena to fight in” for top songwriters.

He then noted that Western pop has increasingly absorbed elements from K-pop, particularly since the late 2010s. He cited songs by Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj, as well as Calvin Harris’s 2017 hit “Feels,” as examples of Western pop beginning to reflect K-pop’s genre-fluid approach.

“I’d say a lot of the pop acts coming out of America are maybe not leaning in fully genre-wise, but K-pop has always been genre-fluid, [taking] from rock, from hip-hop, from electronic,” he said. “In that aspect of it, I think you’re seeing a lot [of that] in the States — the genre-bending aspect.”

As part of the monthlong Fête de la Musique festival, French and Korean songwriters will also participate in a joint songwriting camp designed to foster new creative collaborations.

According to Philippe Bertoux, the French ambassador to Korea, the initiative “has the potential to become a leading platform for Korean and French artists and music professionals,” fostering “new collaborations, new ideas, new projects between [the] respective musical ecosystems.”

Citing BTS’s, Stray Kids’ and Blackpink’s performances in Paris, as well as Stray Kids member Felix’s appointment as an honorary ambassador for the French Embassy in Korea, Bertoux said that pop music plays a central role in the cultural exchange between the two countries.

“Obviously, because pop music transcends borders, it plays a very important role [in Korea and France’s relationship],” he said. “It’s one of the fields in which the exchanges between our two countries are the most energetic, fruitful and joyful.”

BY SHIN HA-NEE [[email protected]]