Photo = GALAXY Corporation

 

Singer TAEMIN will release his new song ‘PERMISSION,’ which he first unveiled at Coachella.

 

The song was first revealed last April at the largest music festival in the U.S., ‘Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival,’ and had already drawn heated attention. Ahead of its official release, we looked back on what TAEMIN proved at Coachella.

 

On April 11 (local time), TAEMIN took the Mojave stage at Coachella and held a solo performance for about 50 minutes. This marked the first time a Korean male solo singer was named in Coachella’s official lineup and presented a solo stage. Until now, most K-POP artists who had performed at Coachella were groups. Without the fandom power of a group, it was a stage where one solo artist had to prove for himself whether he could fill a global-scale festival stage.

 

The result was overwhelming. The Mojave stage was packed with tens of thousands of spectators, and despite the Korean lyrics, the crowd sang along. Immediately after the stage was livestreamed, ‘#TAEMCHELLA,’ a fandom support hashtag combining TAEMIN’s name and Coachella, rose to No. 2 on X’s (formerly Twitter) real-time trends in the U.S. and worldwide. It is considered an extremely rare case for a Korean male solo artist to record such social indicators. Praise poured in from local audiences and critics, calling it “TAEMIN’s artistic peak,” and Vogue also selected TAEMIN as one of Coachella’s best dressers.

 

What made this response special was that TAEMIN designed Coachella not as a simple performance, but as the launch stage for a new musical world. On this day, TAEMIN unveiled six new songs at Coachella before their official release. Rather than filling the stage with existing hit songs, he made Coachella itself the starting point of a new chapter. The performance was designed as one narrative from beginning to end. The opening, in which he emerged by breaking through a giant egg-shaped structure called ‘Sphere,’ visualized the message of “self-liberation” from hardship forced upon him by others, and this connected consistently with the themes of the new songs that followed. During the stage for the new song ‘PARASITE,’ he presented a production in which the English lyrics were translated into Korean and projected on stage. The scene of Korean text flowing like water over the bodies of TAEMIN and the dancers visually delivered the song’s message beyond the language barrier and quickly spread across social media. In the second-week performance, the narrative was refined further through the “red thread” VCR, raising its level of completion.

 

The new song ‘PERMISSION’ is an extension of that Coachella stage. The lyrics included in the lyric poster clearly reveal the song’s message. Lines such as “Don't need no permission,” “I'mma set me free,” “Make a way,” and “I'm gonna do what I want when I wanna” all point in one direction. It is a declaration that he will break free from others’ standards and control and move forward in his own way. In particular, the structure that builds repetition with “Don't need / Don't need / Don't need” reads not just as firmness, but as explosive energy. In other words, the narrative of “self-liberation” that ran through the entire Coachella performance has been compressed into this one song. An official from GALAXY Corporation said, “TAEMIN’s unrivaled narrative, which he proved through his Coachella stage, will be completed through this single,” adding, “Beyond a simple music release, this is a song that allows listeners to confirm the artistic direction TAEMIN pursues.”

 

TAEMIN’s new digital single ‘PERMISSION’ will be released simultaneously worldwide through various online music sites at 1 PM on the 22nd (KST).