Together X Together interview: K-pop group on new music, world tour
"This was a pretty long series," Taehyun, 23, tells USA TODAY. "Sometimes we did question ourselves, 'Are we taking it too long?' But now that we are coming to a close, I felt a little bit sad that we had to say goodbye."
"The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" marks the group's first studio album release in nearly two years, and it reveals Tomorrow X Together's artistic growth and emotional depth.
"This album is really about us and 'you' together striving toward a better tomorrow, and it means so much to us because 'together,' which is part of our very name and essence, is included in the title," Beomgyu, 24, says.
How 'togetherness' shaped TXT's new album
The ethos of Tomorrow X Together's recent release is found in the latter half of its title.
"Without togetherness, we wouldn't have come this far with the story," says Taehyun. "When we think about togetherness, it could mean the five of us, but I think it also includes MOA (the group's fans), because without MOA, this wouldn't have been possible."
"The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" accompanies the five members through a track list of transformation.
"Because we have solo tracks in this album, a lot of the members wanted to really show their true colors by participating in many aspects of the album creation," Hueningkai, 22, says. "I think this album really shows how we have grown as artists."
Tomorrow X Together talks 'minisode 3': 'Never expected' fans to show 'this much love'
TXT's inspiration for 'The Star Chapter: TOGETHER'
Tomorrow X Together's past installments were "a big inspiration to writing tracks in this album," because the storytelling and narrative continues from them, Taehyun shares.
"When I look back on the past installments that I was part of creating, I think I get inspiration from a lot of different things," says the group's leader Soobin, 24. "It could be the members, my family members, the fans ... the themes that we talk about in our songs are something that's very everyday and something that everyone can really relate to."
For this album, the guys worked on solo tracks - a first for some, but not for members Yeonjun and Beomgyu. The former released his first mixtape "GGUM" on Sept. 19, 2024, while the latter dropped his solo project "Panic" on May 15.
"My solo work 'Panic' was one of my favorite genres. I thought it was really my vibe," says Beomgyu. "(For) 'Take My Half', which is my solo track in this album, I wanted to stick with my own vibe, but add a new twist to it."
"For 'GGUM', I focus mostly on rap and dance for that track, but for 'Ghost Girl', it's more about vocals," says Yeonjun. "This time around, it's a rock genre, and YUNGBLUD produced it for me. I really wanted to live up to his vibe. It wasn't very easy, but it was a very exciting challenge I was willing to take on."
As for the album's lead single "Beautiful Strangers," Hueningkai says "it's really about conveying the message that 'I can grow thanks to the power that you gave me.'"
"I think this was the perfect song that would really convey the message of the entire album and really wrap up and seal the narrative of 'The Star Chapter'," he adds.
'Where I live my dream': Tomorrow X Together on Madison Square Garden shows, tour-day-in-the-life
TXT's fourth world tour and hopes for the future
To accompany the album, Tomorrow X Together will embark on their fourth world tour, "ACT: TOMORROW." It kicks off on Aug. 22 in Seoul, South Korea, and the guys will set out for the States starting Sept. 9.
"We're going to meet MOA in the States, as well as all across the globe," Soobin says. "We're really, really looking forward to that."
Tomorrow X Together will make stops across seven US cities, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Newark, NJ.
As for Tomorrow X Together's future, the group hopes their music can continue to be a guiding light for those experiencing growing pains.
"We've been spending the past six, seven years singing about the growth of these boys and the circumstances that they face and the emotions that they experienced," says Taehyun. "There were times when I sung a song first, and then later that experience happened to me, or the other way around."
"This might be a little bit personal, but I just hope that we are seen as artists that give positive impact to people," Hueningkai adds.
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The Herald Scotland
6 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
Together X Together interview: K-pop group on new music, world tour
"The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" is a bookend, building upon EP "The Star Chapter: SANCTUARY", released on Nov. 4, 2024, and its themes of salvation, empathy and connection. "This was a pretty long series," Taehyun, 23, tells USA TODAY. "Sometimes we did question ourselves, 'Are we taking it too long?' But now that we are coming to a close, I felt a little bit sad that we had to say goodbye." "The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" marks the group's first studio album release in nearly two years, and it reveals Tomorrow X Together's artistic growth and emotional depth. "This album is really about us and 'you' together striving toward a better tomorrow, and it means so much to us because 'together,' which is part of our very name and essence, is included in the title," Beomgyu, 24, says. How 'togetherness' shaped TXT's new album The ethos of Tomorrow X Together's recent release is found in the latter half of its title. "Without togetherness, we wouldn't have come this far with the story," says Taehyun. "When we think about togetherness, it could mean the five of us, but I think it also includes MOA (the group's fans), because without MOA, this wouldn't have been possible." "The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" accompanies the five members through a track list of transformation. "Because we have solo tracks in this album, a lot of the members wanted to really show their true colors by participating in many aspects of the album creation," Hueningkai, 22, says. "I think this album really shows how we have grown as artists." Tomorrow X Together talks 'minisode 3': 'Never expected' fans to show 'this much love' TXT's inspiration for 'The Star Chapter: TOGETHER' Tomorrow X Together's past installments were "a big inspiration to writing tracks in this album," because the storytelling and narrative continues from them, Taehyun shares. "When I look back on the past installments that I was part of creating, I think I get inspiration from a lot of different things," says the group's leader Soobin, 24. "It could be the members, my family members, the fans ... the themes that we talk about in our songs are something that's very everyday and something that everyone can really relate to." For this album, the guys worked on solo tracks - a first for some, but not for members Yeonjun and Beomgyu. The former released his first mixtape "GGUM" on Sept. 19, 2024, while the latter dropped his solo project "Panic" on May 15. "My solo work 'Panic' was one of my favorite genres. I thought it was really my vibe," says Beomgyu. "(For) 'Take My Half', which is my solo track in this album, I wanted to stick with my own vibe, but add a new twist to it." "For 'GGUM', I focus mostly on rap and dance for that track, but for 'Ghost Girl', it's more about vocals," says Yeonjun. "This time around, it's a rock genre, and YUNGBLUD produced it for me. I really wanted to live up to his vibe. It wasn't very easy, but it was a very exciting challenge I was willing to take on." As for the album's lead single "Beautiful Strangers," Hueningkai says "it's really about conveying the message that 'I can grow thanks to the power that you gave me.'" "I think this was the perfect song that would really convey the message of the entire album and really wrap up and seal the narrative of 'The Star Chapter'," he adds. 'Where I live my dream': Tomorrow X Together on Madison Square Garden shows, tour-day-in-the-life TXT's fourth world tour and hopes for the future To accompany the album, Tomorrow X Together will embark on their fourth world tour, "ACT: TOMORROW." It kicks off on Aug. 22 in Seoul, South Korea, and the guys will set out for the States starting Sept. 9. "We're going to meet MOA in the States, as well as all across the globe," Soobin says. "We're really, really looking forward to that." Tomorrow X Together will make stops across seven US cities, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Newark, NJ. As for Tomorrow X Together's future, the group hopes their music can continue to be a guiding light for those experiencing growing pains. "We've been spending the past six, seven years singing about the growth of these boys and the circumstances that they face and the emotions that they experienced," says Taehyun. "There were times when I sung a song first, and then later that experience happened to me, or the other way around." "This might be a little bit personal, but I just hope that we are seen as artists that give positive impact to people," Hueningkai adds.
Telegraph
11-07-2025
- Telegraph
Lord of the Rings director wants to resurrect extinct giant flightless bird
Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson plans to spend millions on resurrecting a giant flightless bird that was hunted to extinction 500 years ago in New Zealand. The 63-year-old believes it is possible to bring back the moa, at 10-12ft once the tallest bird on Earth, centuries after the creature was killed off by Maori hunters. The moa had sturdy legs and a long neck, and lived on a diet of leaves, twigs and fruit. They used to inhabit a vast swathe of New Zealand from the coast to the mountains. New Zealander Sir Peter has teamed up with Dallas-based Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences in an attempt to bring his country's lost giant back to life, almost Jurassic Park-like. It is the company which earlier this year claimed to have 'de-extincted' the dire wolf, when it announced the birth of three pups. Sir Peter, who is estimated to be worth £1.3 billion, has not only invested £11 million in the company, but he has made available his private collection of 400 moa bones. Using the DNA from the bones and that of the nearest surviving relatives, such as the emu and the South American tinamou, Colossal believes it can genetically engineer a moa. 'The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do,' Sir Peter said. 'There were probably 150,000 giant moa walking around,' he added. 'We don't want to release them into the wild and we don't want to put them into zoos. We want to be able to give the moa a natural environment as big as we possibly can'. It is not just the moa and dire wolf on Colossal's agenda, Sir Peter added. 'The Colossal team is working diligently towards bringing back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and many other extinct animals – that hitherto only lived in our imagination,' he said. 'We're on the eve of de-extinction stepping out of the realm of speculative science fiction, into an awe-inspiring new reality.' Other eyebrow-raising achievements claimed by Colossal include developing 'woolly mice' with traits of the woolly mammoth by using the genes of Asian elephants. Experts voiced doubts that the moa could be brought back from extinction. 'It's not possible to de-extinct things,' Vincent Lynch, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Buffalo, in the US, told The Telegraph. 'Technically, given enough time, I think they can probably do what they say that they're going to do, which is genetically engineer an emu to have some moa-like traits 'But that doesn't make it a moa – that makes it a transgenic emu,' he added. 'The genetic engineering part is challenging, I think that they would have to create a sort of artificial egg to grow it in. I don't know that that's been done before, so they would have to invent that. 'The genetic engineering approach that they're going to use has been done before, but not at this scale and not in an emu.'
The Independent
08-07-2025
- The Independent
'Lord of the Rings' director backs long shot de-extinction plan, starring New Zealand's lost moa
Filmmaker Peter Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa. His fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird has led to an unusual partnership with a biotech company known for its grand and controversial plans to bring back lost species. On Tuesday, Colossal Biosciences announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa – which once stood 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall – with $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh. The collaboration also includes the New Zealand-based Ngāi Tahu Research Centre. 'The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do,' said Jackson. 'Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa.' Outside scientists say the idea of bringing back extinct species onto the modern landscape is likely impossible, although it may be feasible to tweak the genes of living animals to have similar physical traits. Scientists have mixed feelings on whether that will be helpful, and some worry that focusing on lost creatures could distract from protecting species that still exist. The moa had roamed New Zealand for 4,000 years until they became extinct around 600 years ago, mainly because of overhunting. A large skeleton brought to England in the 19th century, now on display at the Yorkshire Museum, prompted international interest in the long-necked bird. Unlike Colossal's work with dire wolves, the moa project is in very early stages. It started with a phone call about two years ago after Jackson heard about the company's efforts to 'de-extinct' – or create genetically similar animals to – species like the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf. Then Jackson put Colossal in touch with experts he'd met through his own moa bone-collecting. At that point, he'd amassed between 300 and 400 bones, he said. In New Zealand, it's legal to buy and sell moa bones found on private lands, but not on public conservation areas – nor to export them. The first stage of the moa project will be to identify well-preserved bones from which it may be possible to extract DNA, said Colossal's chief scientist Beth Shapiro. Those DNA sequences will be compared to genomes of living bird species, including the ground-dwelling tinamou and emu, 'to figure out what it is that made the moa unique compared to other birds,' she said. Colossal used a similar process of comparing ancient DNA of extinct dire wolves to determine the genetic differences with gray wolves. Then scientists took blood cells from a living gray wolf and used CRISPR to genetically modify them in 20 different sites. Pups with long white hair and muscular jaws were born late last year. Working with birds presents different challenges, said Shapiro. Unlike mammals, bird embryos develop inside eggs, so the process of transferring an embryo to a surrogate will not look like mammalian IVF. 'There's lots of different scientific hurdles that need to be overcome with any species that we pick as a candidate for de-extinction,' said Shapiro. 'We are in the very early stages.' If the Colossal team succeeds in creating a tall bird with huge feet and thick pointed claws resembling the moa, there's also the pressing question of where to put it, said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who is not involved in the project. 'Can you put a species back into the wild once you've exterminated it there?' he said. 'I think it's exceedingly unlikely that they could do this in any meaningful way.' 'This will be an extremely dangerous animal,' Pimm added. The direction of the project will be shaped by Māori scholars at the University of Canterbury's Ngāi Tahu Research Centre. Ngāi Tahu archaeologist Kyle Davis, an expert in moa bones, said the work has 'really reinvigorated the interest in examining our own traditions and mythology.' At one of the archaeological sites that Jackson and Davis visited to study moa remains, called Pyramid Valley, there are also antique rock art done by Māori people – some depicting moa before their extinction. Paul Scofield, a project adviser and senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he first met the 'Lord of the Rings' director when he went to his house to help him identity which of the nine known species of moa the various bones represented. 'He doesn't just collect some moa bones – he has a comprehensive collection,' said Scofield. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
