No one can accuse Brown Eyed Girls vocalist Gain of not being willing to starve for her art.
In an interview Thursday for the Seoul Broadcasting System radio program "Cultwo Show," the 28-year-old singer described the frantic pace of the marathon shoot for their most recent music video "Brave New World," released earlier that same day.
"We shot the music video for 'Brave New World' over three nights and four days," Gain said. "We went to various places in Korea, but when you watch the music video, you're going to think that we went abroad."
The demands of filming the clip even forced her to receive intravenous (IV) therapy.
"I was able to keep going with the aid of IVs," Gain said. "It was difficult because we couldn't eat at the proper times. You definitely feel better after getting an IV."
The extreme lengths Gain went through appear to have paid off, as the new Brown Eyed Girls album "Basic" shot to the top of the South Korean pop charts Mnet, Olleh Music, Naver Music and Soribada, shortly after being released and the "Brave New World" music video received over half a million views in the first 24 hours.
According to a spokesperson from the girl group's label APOP Entertainment, "Basic" is an appropriate title for this 10-song album, which features a wealth of South Korean songwriting and production talent, including Primary, Jeong Seok Won, Park Keun Tae, G.gorilla, Primary, KZ, Lee Min Su and Kim Eana.
"The essence and basics of Brown Eyed Girls are good vocals, music and performances," the APOP rep told the Korean entertainment media outlet eNEWS.
"In order to relay the full experience of that meaning, this album stays true to the basics of Brown Eyed Girls."
Band member Miryo, 34, claims the back-to-basics approach was inspired by the impeding 10th anniversary of the group's debut album "Your Story" in March.
"The album started with the question, what is BEG's basic [sound]?" she said Wednesday at a full band press conference on Wednesday, according to local newspaper the Korea Herald.
"What were we like when we started?" Miryo continued. "When we look back, we began with our vocals as our strength. Then our performances allowed us to gain the love of the public. That's our core."
But the group also wasn't afraid to break from their classic sound when it came to adopting metaphysical album titles like "God Particle," "Atomic" and "Fractal."
"When we revealed our track list, a lot of people were really surprised because they weren't titles you'd typically expect from a girl group," said Brown Eyed Girls's 34-year-old frontwoman JeA. "But we weren't trying to make it difficult."
Gain concurred that it wasn't an effort to confound fans.
"It's a pop album and we didn't want it to be too complicated or deep," she said. "So we interpreted those scientific terms using the frame of love."
According to the singer, one of the aforementioned cryptically titled compositions in particular is more of a return to form for the band, than anything experimental.
"'God Particle' is very funky," Gain said. "It sounds like the genre we used to do on our first two albums. I think our fans will like it," she said.
With all of the effort and attention that went into making "Basic," the sixth Brown Eyed Girls full-length release, the K-pop star is understandably tense about how the album will be received, admitting that she has grown less immune to criticism lately.
"I didn′t get hurt by malicious comments before, but recently after our comeback was announced, I′ve been looking at the comments," she said.
"Now that I′m older and I′m at home a lot because I haven′t been working for a while, I get hurt by the malicious comments. I keep looking at those comments."
