Sam Son is the director behind music videos for such songs as “Queencard” and “Super Lady” by (G)I-DLE and “Drama” by aespa. That makes her the director of videos that are watched by millions all around the world. We asked the creative marvel about how she comes up with the unique vibes and styles that define her work, famous for their far-reaching nods to the entire history of pop culture, as well as her thoughts on K-pop music videos in general and where the medium is headed.

Teen Vogue named (G)I-DLE’s “Queencard” and aespa’s “Drama” as two of “The Best K-Pop Music Videos of 2023.”
Sam Son: 2023 was a big year for fourth-gen girl groups standing in the spotlight, and I was able to direct a bunch of their music videos. (laughs) I tried hard to create a unique style for each artist that didn’t overlap with others, and getting all this praise from different places has meant a lot to me.

Teen Vogue also dubbed “Queencard” “one of the best homage slash parodies we’ve seen yet.” “Allergy” and “Queencard” are reminiscent of teen shows you might find on Netflix. Was there a particular reason you made dialog-free music videos in that style?
Sam Son: It was tricky planning out how to connect the two videos together like a series since there’s no dialog in them. It all unfolds really quickly, meaning I had to get the tone, mood, and message across in a really short timeframe, so I parodied typical teen movie tropes to make it easy for viewers to catch on. I structured the story such that even without any dialog or additional explanation, they’d realize, “Ah, she’s the ‘Queencard’!”

I heard the stop-motion for (G)I-DLE’s “TOMBOY,” which won Music Video of the Year at the 2022 Melon Music Awards (MMA), was inspired by the movie Kill Bill.
Sam Son: I’m a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, but the stories in noir films revolve around male characters a lot of the time. I thought, Wouldn’t it be a really fitting subversion if (G)I-DLE was the star of the story instead?

There’s a line in “TOMBOY” that goes, “Do you want a blond barbie doll? / It’s not here, I’m not a doll,” and ironically, there’s a Barbie doll in the video. Is this meant to subvert the norm too?
Sam Son: Barbie spends her happy time away with Ken and has an unrealistic body, which makes her a symbol of traditional stereotypes about women. The “TOMBOY” video uses its visuals to shut down such stereotypes, so giving it a twist where the Barbie gets violent revenge on Ken seemed like an effective direction to go in.

“Nxde” revolves around the idea of loving yourself for who you are, with Marilyn Monroe playing a key role. Was your intention there to flip the image around like with Barbie?
Sam Son: Marilyn Monroe was such an icon of her generation, and so she’s been interpreted and consumed in pop culture and in art. I thought it might come across as arrogant if I reimagined her my own way for that reason, so I wanted to present her like a piece of art, making homages to the famous movie scenes and iconic dresses everyone remembers her by.

It’s sort of like going through a series of different exhibitions at a museum.
Sam Son: Exactly. My idea when making it was to combine different elements to create a new message. I show her as a work of art at the beginning, but later the video switches to shots of a paper shredder like Banksy’ work Love is in the Bin. It’s supposed to be a funny and clever way of pointing out how people look at art. Even I sometimes zone out a bit at exhibitions. (laughs) Sometimes we go on about pretentious interpretations of art, but there’s no one definitive reading, you know? I wanted to explore that feeling where no one really knows what something truly means.

On the other hand, I can also see how you use well-known works or genres to mask your intentions. “Queencard” is stylized like a Netflix series, and you gave a backstory to the characters each of the members play.
Sam Son: When you see celebrities’ lives through social media, all you get are glimpses of their perfect houses, their perfect appearance, their perfect clothes, and so on. But having worked with K-pop artists, I’ve come to see that even though stars seem perfect, they have their own things they struggle with and their own hills to climb. So I wanted to take the curiosity around whether these perfect people have worries of their own and show that even the “Queencard” that SOYEON wants to be in the video has her own issues.

“Drama” by aespa feels like it’s an homage to both Kill Bill and Sin City. How do you feel those references impacted the music video?
Sam Son: I really love how aespa’s whole vibe reminds me of steel. (laughs) It’s not the kind of steel blade you get in the Marvel Universe—it’s the steel vibe of a traditional Asian warrior’s blade. I decided to be relatively liberal with the aespa members’ action sequences and costumes to put the groups’ unique style on display, while I restricted the use of homage to express only the synesthetic mood of colors, textures, vibes, and smells as a whole. I like the grotesque yet impactful mise en scène you get with Kill Bill or the “Cell Block Tango” scene in Chicago. Those are really well-known scenes, even if you haven’t seen the movies, and you can still pick up on their tone and mood. I feel like you still get the full effect of that direction through the homage even without showing the blood and violence of those scenes.

Since it conjures up images of Kill Bill, the red in “Drama” naturally makes you think of the color of blood.
Sam Son: Exactly. I really like shades that are close to blood red—something deep like crimson—and I did my best to work that into “Drama.” Even though it’s the same color, I think there’s different shades of red in the East and the West. I focused on making everything be faithful to aespa’s unique image, all while drawing on movies for the tone, like steel or blood vibes, and while being liberal with ideas for the costume choices and action sequences.

While the Kill Bill parts are represented with red, the parts that are in homage to Sin City are in black and white, and use a lot of black especially.
Sam Son: Even when reusing the same color, the way you use accent colors can determine the atmosphere of the main one. I drew on European and American culture for “Nxde” and went with a shade of red close to the color of ketchup. I made this pairing of red and yellows to evoke the atmosphere of an airy, youthful movie. For “Drama,” on the other hand, I paired its red with black to make it feel darker. It’s like a collection on a fashion show runway: There’s a wide variety of different clothes and styles, but in the end, you still pick up one particular vibe for the season in the end. Music videos are the same way. With so many different scenes, I use a mix of several colors, but ultimately, I mainly focus on the tone and mood I’m setting.

You really put all these different pieces together and make it so that it gives a feeling of, in your words, a steel vibe.
Sam Son: When I’m developing an idea, I start from the color or texture of an object that comes to mind after first hearing the song—like a chrome-plated dagger, or a pink leather bag. For “Drama,” I started by saying, Let’s make it a beautiful Asian blade.

Like “Drama” is a sword, “Super Lady” is armor, and “INVU” is silk clothing?
Sam Son: Exactly. That’s basically the feeling I go off of.

Every single image that comes to you is influenced by a wide variety of things, from films spanning multiple eras to different textures and the world of K-pop. What do you think this means collectively for the end result of your work?
Sam Son: Having been influenced by genres from abroad, K-pop has developed a character all its own. That applies just as much to the videos, too. What makes my music videos special is that, even though I draw a lot from pop culture, art, and older sources that influenced our generation, the videos don’t actually turn into those things directly. It makes me think a lot about the future of K-pop and what we can do that will be significantly different from the West.

One thing that sets K-pop music videos apart is the emphasis they place on choreography. The performance for “Drama” pays tribute to Chicago and Boléro. What was the effect you were going for?
Sam Son: It’s simple, really: I’m just really into bolero music and dancing. (laughs) I could tell “Drama” was my kind of song the first time I heard it, but it’s also got this creepy feeling, almost like casting a spell, so I thought it should be creepy and mysterious. I wanted to reference the way Chicago creates a greater sense of space by having extras in the shadows, or how it makes it feel like there’s someone hiding somewhere. Bolero dancers gradually come together on a circular red stage, giving it this sense of harmony. aespa only has four members, so the camera gets in closer on them compared to larger groups, which automatically makes the videos feel like they have this relatively tight sense of space to them. That’s why I wanted to use homage and plenty of backup dancers: to make aespa’s performance feel roomier.

The music video for (G)I-DLE’s song “Super Lady” also notably places greater emphasis on the dancing than their previous ones. SOYEON has said, “I ended up writing the song hoping it would be used as our concert opener,” and appropriately, the music video mostly takes place on stage at a concert.
Sam Son: With “Super Lady,” we tried to focus more on the dance aspect than on storytelling or anything conceptual. We spent a lot of time talking about whether to shoot it more like a music video or more like concert footage. The location we shot it in is a stadium where concerts and award ceremonies are really held, so we intentionally allowed things like the stands, battens, and big screens to be shown as a creative decision so people could instantly tell it’s a stadium.

“JUICE” is another dance-centric music video. What did you have in mind when putting it together?
Sam Son: “JUICE” was all new for me, since I feel more confident directing something with story, so I thought a lot about how to film the performance in a way that it wouldn’t just look like standard live footage. So, even though it was a dance video, I wanted to give it a three-minute storyline with a beginning, a middle, and an end, transposing the choreographer’s intentions onto the storyboard. I figured out where we needed to show off their footwork, and where to show the excitement of the audience. I think it’s important to build to a climax that allows the viewer to experience a moment of catharsis. I prepared for things like the camerawork and the editing stages thoroughly in advance so that the performance would really pop. The planning stage of “JUICE” started with asking how we could recreate a brilliant sunset indoors. We made the lighting incredibly strong and aimed for a dystopian atmosphere like the anime movie Akira.

Another angle you explore in your music videos is science fiction. The music video for SHINee member KEY’s song “BAD LOVE” features several different versions of the idol in space.
Sam Son: Well, KEY’s a real fashionista, so for that song, instead of just writing him a sci-fi story to act in, I looked to David Bowie for inspiration to show him taking on several different characters and looks. The surreal futures shown in 20th-century sci-fi are fun because of how they get your imagination flowing. I wanted to try something different with “BAD LOVE” and make it feel retro.

“Gasoline” and “Good & Great” are science fiction videos as well, but they have completely different visual styles and characters than “BAD LOVE.”
Sam Son: As an artist, KEY’s focus centers heavily around visualizing, so I refer a lot to his albums’ concept photos and the overall sense of genre. So I often asked myself, What vibe is he going for on this one? For “Gasoline,” KEY immediately mentioned the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots and the episode “Jibaro.” So we went in a gold-centric direction like in that episode. KEY’s also very interested in fashion, so sometimes we start from ideas related to that. “Good & Great,” for example, began with an idea as straightforward as office fashion. A lot of music videos in K-pop present a lot of different images in the first and second verses, then mix them all together in the third verse. I made sure he wore the most attention-grabbing outfits during the third verse in order to make it climactic.

It sounds like that whole process of communicating and collaborating with artists and their agencies requires substantial know-how.
Sam Son: KEY gives ideas all throughout the filming process, and he’s such a nice person. He’s always sharing ideas and always asks me, “What do you think?” to try and support my vision. Making a music video involves coordination between many different teams, and I’m grateful that KEY facilitates that throughout. It’s fun working with the same artist multiple times, learning about their nature and personality, and they’re all quite different, so I end up being a little bit like the artist, actively engaging in discussion. (laughs)

“Best Friend Ever” could similarly be said to be tailor-made for NCT DREAM. You really seemed to capture the spirit of the group through the music video, as you wrote online: “It’s about seven dreams filled with seven years of friendship among seven people.”
Sam Son: I wrote the outline for “Best Friend Ever” around the idea of a surreal dream. I felt NCT DREAM had this youthful yet nostalgic and poetic atmosphere about them. So I took photos with a film camera and filled the ending with NCT DREAM’s signature nostalgia. I wanted to encapsulate their layered seven-year history, almost like the whole mise en scène feels like deja vu, so that when the fans watch the video, they could reminisce about NCT DREAM’s seven years together and at the same time make a promise for the future together. I spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of group NCT DREAM really is.

How does it feel seeing your intention get across to viewers? They share a lot of their personal views and own interpretations of the music videos online once they’re released.
Sam Son: I love how they’re embraced not as some one-off, fleeting content but as something that is open to endless interpretation. (laughs) Even if that interpretation differs from what I intended, inserting things that make people stop and think what it might mean is my idea of fun. Just like in the videos we’ve been talking about, when I plan out a music video, I really do try to feel the unique story behind and style of each group, so I’m always curious to see how people who truly love them will react.

It must feel a lot different with all the international attention K-pop is receiving lately.
Sam Son: The global demand wasn’t as high back when I was working at another K-pop music video company as it is now. These days, with the huge increase in international viewers, it feels like the way trends are set and the way people consume artist content has changed. I never expected K-pop to receive so much global attention, so I keep wondering what it means to be K-pop and what it means to be loved for being K-pop. It still feels like a pretty big question to me.

What is it that you ultimately want to do through your K-pop music videos?
Sam Son: You know how songs are getting shorter these days? I found it fun to create continuity through story and visuals in (G)I-DLE songs like “Allergy” and “Queencard” like they were part of a series, but I’d also love to try shooting music videos that are like films or longer pieces, maybe around 10 minutes in length. I think it would be nice to branch out in terms of genre, too. And I’m trying not to think too much about how it will be received. (laughs) When I’m at the storyboard stage, I try my best not to worry about whether people might not like something or if it’s too far ahead of its time. For example, if I try to come up with a variety of female characters in girl group music videos, those worries could actually lead to monotonous, overly similar portrayals of women instead. So I mostly just push forward with my plans—no regrets. I just hope people will keep an open mind about these kinds of adventurous new projects and angles. (laughs)