JEON SOMI

Canadian-Korean singer Jeon Somi was a member of 11-piece K-pop supergroup I.O.I. before breaking out solo with “Birthday” after the band’s dissolution. The song’s blend of bouncy pop and family-friendly rap defined Somi’s unique style and resulted in a massive chart hit. The single appeared on her debut long-player, XOXO, in 2021. A Top Ten album in South Korea, it was followed by her 2023 EP Game Plan.
Somi was born Ennik Somi Douma in 2001 in Ontario, Canada, but relocated to South Korea at the age of one. Growing up in Seoul, she was known as Jeon So-mi and was interested in singing and performing at an early age. In 2014, Jeon joined JYP Entertainment and appeared in televised music competition shows. After winning first place in the 2016 season of Produce 101, Jeon became part of the expansive girl group I.O.I. Around the same time, she started co-hosting SBS MTV’s The Show with Wooshin from Up10tion. Her time with I.O.I. was short-lived as the group disbanded in 2017, but Jeon kept busy with acting and various musical projects like a collaborative single she created with Eric Nam and the girl group Unnies; the latter made up of the cast of Sister’s Slam Dunk 2, a reality show she was part of. In 2018, she ended her contract with JYP Entertainment and joined YG Entertainment subsidiary the Black Label. Working with producer Teddy, Somi recorded her debut single as a solo artist, “Birthday.” The song was a huge hit, peaking at number 22 on the Gaon chart and being streamed tens of millions of times. Two years later, she returned with the high-energy “What You Were Waiting For,” which charted in five countries, and in 2021 she landed her first Top Ten single as a soloist with “Dumb Dumb. Later that year Somi issued her first full-length effort, XOXO, which debuted at number six on the Gaon Album Chart. An EP, Game Plan, arrived in August 2023. It featured the single “Fast Forward,” which reached number 14 on Billboard’s World Digital Sales chart. ~ Fred Thomas