Tiffany Young

Pacific Music Group (PMG)

It’s the afternoon in Seoul when Tiffany Young shimmers onto the screen with her signature warm smile. Her dark hair falls in loose waves against a simple black top from a room that’s startlingly spare: white walls, white furniture, a white lamp, and minimal decoration, save for a single olive-green wall accent. The whole composition feels intentional and that’s likely because, it turns out, everything in Tiffany’s life right now moves with purpose.

“Intentional,” she says, when the word comes up in a question, “is the perfect keyword of this chapter.”

In the nearly two decades after leaving her native California at 15 to train under SM Entertainment and eventually debuting as one-ninth of Girls’ Generation — a group that helped construct the commercial and cultural framework for K-pop to be exported globally — Tiffany Young has been many things. She’s a K-pop pop idol, a load-bearing girl group member, a soloist who gambled on the American market, a Broadway-caliber theater performer. And for the last several years, something altogether more elusive: a woman quietly and methodically rebuilding her life from the inside out and arriving, finally, at the truest version of herself as an artist.

Earlier this month, Tiffany released “Summer’s Not Over,” the lead single from her debut full-length album — her first solo music project in seven years and the first full-length album of her career. In April, she signed a 360 deal with Pacific Music Group, the ambitious pan-Asian entertainment company founded by Ne-Yo, MC Jin, Indian singer-actor Sonu Nigam, and former Warner Music Asia president Jonathan Serbin.

“We found the right partners who really heard me, understood and wanted to be along to support this journey both as a musician and as an actor,” she says of her new team. “I felt ready to go back into the studio. We found the right records and it’s been a long time since I’ve been so excited to put a music project together. I also found a real-life partner to be happy with as well, so I’m feeling very healthy, whole and healed — both professionally and personally.”

But to understand where Tiffany Young is now, you have to follow the trail she left to get here.

Girls’ Generation debuted in 2007 and became a cultural phenomenon in Asia, topping the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity 40 ranking in 2011, 2012 and 2014. As part of its sub-unit trio, Girls’ Generation-TTS, Tiffany made chart history in 2012 when Twinkle became the first-ever entry on the Billboard 200 from a K-pop girl group. Her solo debut arrived in May 2016, a sugary, unexpectedly smooth EP called I Just Wanna Dance that cracked the Top 5 of Korea’s Circle Chart as well as Billboard’s World Albums chart.

The years that followed included a full-scale U.S. campaign including award shows, media appearances, touring and her 2019 indie release Lips on Lips, featuring a collaboration with Babyface, which sent her to a new peak on Billboard’s Independent Albums chart. In retrospect, some of the music from that period felt like it was pulling her toward too many other artistic identities rather than deeper into her own. Glossy, maximalist Gaga-esque records like “Magnetic Moon” and “Run for Your Life” were impressive, but not quite revealing of where the promising star was heading. The 2020 pandemic changed everything not just for the world, but specifically in how Tiffany approached music.

“The landscape truly changed,” she says. “The way we’re taking in music, music videos, content in general. And while everybody has been close to technology, I have been very close to the theater and live musical theater. It’s been very full circle, where all that theater training has been great for this album recording as well.”

With three seasons as Roxie Hart in the South Korean production of Chicago, Tiffany commits to a 70-show season, sometimes including two shows a day. “There’s a level of athleticism needed for that type of performance,” she says, empathizing at a time when Megan Thee Stallion cut her Broadway run in Moulin Rogue! short by three weeks. Beyond musicals, Tiffany appeared in the Disney+ K-drama Uncle Samsik and mentored contestants on singing competitions like Girls Planet 999, Veiled Cup, and Peak Time. She was performing constantly, even if it was not in the way the K-pop industry tends to watch.

She also shares that she was learning how to live differently. She is now engaged to actor Byun Yo-han, mentioned with a similarly quiet assurance as her music. Her mornings begin early: meditation, exercise, walking her dogs, a private hour before the day’s emails, scripts and studio session briefs flood into in her inbox.

“I start my morning bright and early so I can have some me time alone,” she explains. “Meditation is always there, maybe squeeze in some cardio, take my dogs on a walk, and then I start my day.” However full the day has been, she prioritizes returning to her peace by the evening: “Coming back home and having some quiet time to myself and my dogs. It’s great…my life has always been so much about work that needed immense organization. I just applied that passion and organization skills in my personal life as well. That healthy, wholesome feeling absolutely falls through in the art I create.”

That attention to detail has colored her vision as she returns to music 10 years after making her initial solo debut.

“Now, it’s finally fun to watch,” she says of her earliest solo performances with an empathetic brightness that holds grace for her younger self. “She’s a whole new person. I’m like, ‘Oh, I understand why I made those choices.’ They weren’t intentional because I was really kind of learning to be my own, finding what I’m good at, what I like, what I don’t like, what I love, what I hate as an artist. This whole era is very much about the details in the best way with the best people. I really love letting other creatives do their best work. Most of the vocal arrangement was done with me and my engineer — it’s just been such an amazing time. It really is all falling into place and I’m letting everybody do their own thing.”

“Summer’s Not Over” is the sound of someone who has stopped proving things. Built around Tiffany’s signature vocals — sun-saturated, effortlessly melodic — the single arrives less like an artist coming back home.

"Summer’s Not Over" is the sound of someone who has stopped proving things. Built around Tiffany’s sun-saturated, effortlessly melodic signature vocals, the single feels like an artist coming back home.

“It was originally a very, very minimal song,” Tiffany explains. “I just love the melody, I love that it had summer in it and I rearranged the heck out of it. It turned into this beautiful, siren-esque vocal performance. We took a lot of heart and soul in arranging this song — we changed in some really, really cool drums — but still wanting to keep it simple and very like an opening-act type of record. We spent a lot of time on the final mix, we had multiple versions, but this one felt cinematic just like the way we wanted to create the music video as well.”

Just like the mythological sirens whose chant-like calls pull listeners in to make discoveries, “Summer’s Not Over” boasts sonic treasures like a gospel choir tucked into the mix (which Tiffany hopes to incorporate into a future performance) and visual treats for those who take the time to dive into the music video.

Shot on Korea’s Jeju Island, the music video is rooted in references and inspirations she has carried with her for years like Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and the gothic romanticism of fairy tales, choosing The Little Mermaid as her Disney princess of choice early in childhood: “It all goes back to, ‘Am I home? Am I lost? Do I love it? Do I hate it? Am I resisting it? Am I gonna keep letting myself grow out without change?’ Am I gonna find beauty and innocence in something.’”

Alongside her new PMG team, she worked with Korean director Itchcock of BTS Films who met her vision without hesitation.

“There were no ‘no’s in the room,” she adds. “They were like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool, let’s do it.’” The result is what she proudly calls “a K-pop record wrapped in gothic fantasy romance — all made in Korea.”

“There were no ‘no’s’ in the room,” she adds. ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool, let’s do it.’” She speaks with evident pride about the result: “I’m so happy that we got to bring such a K-pop sounding record with this new gothic-fantasy, romantic, innocent world together. And I’m proud to say that this was all made in Korea.”

Tiffany came to Pacific Music Group with a body of unreleased work and endless demos, but a clear directive: “I was like, ‘This is where I’ve been and what I can do — show me what you got. I want to put out my best, so can we be the best collaborative partners? You’ve heard what I can do, but please give me material that’s gonna excite me because I know that’s gonna excite the fans.’” She adds how, crucially, “I’m finally in the space where I’m not trying to prove myself.”

While a release date isn’t concrete, Tiffany says she wants to unleash the full LP with “Leo energy.” In the meantime is preparing to originate the role of Yumi in Yumi Cells, the Korean musical based on the beloved webtoon, in June. She’s specifically seeking out live-performance platforms on television and radio. “Live radio, singing live there and talking about my album — or Girls’ Generation albums — have been such an important space for me growing up,” she says of her promotional plans. “Everything’s changed, but I still like to stick with my analog, vintage, classical, going-to-the-theater type of mindset. I really wanted to return to that.”

And hovering around all of that will be the next time we see her with Girls’ Generation. While she shares that she and her band mates are “always working on a Girls’ Generation comeback,” she notes that their 20th anniversary in 2027 is “the big one.” Tight-lipped, she only shares that this time of her new music and SNSD’s upcoming anniversary “is going to be a fun era for the fans.”

Tiffany Young has been in the water a long time — navigating the tides of group stardom, the undertow of an industry that rarely knew what to do with a voice like hers — but something seemed to have shifted when she stopped fighting the current. The room behind her says it all: white walls, nothing extraneous or distracting, and somewhere in the middle of it all, the voice she’s been waiting her whole career to let ring.

"My first title track [single] was ‘I Just Wanna Dance,’ but I realized I just wanted to sing," she says in a moment of reflection. “All this time, I just wanted to sing. This lead single is really all about the voice. Because you gave me this moment to give myself justice, the music is for everybody to come together and sing.”

Summer’s not over — and clearly neither is Tiffany Young.