‘I want to go crazy’: Why Ten Lee is ready to be the villain

Lately, Ten Lee has been watching a lot of horror films. It’s probably obvious when you see the music video for his latest release, “Nightwalker”, which leads his debut six-track solo album. In it, he plays a scientist who, at the stroke of midnight, turns into a shadowy demon figure, the titular nightwalker who commands those around him into a trance with just an airy flick of his hand. There are hallmarks of the genre scattered throughout the video, like the poker-straight black bob he sports that feels torn from the celluloid of Japanese horrors like The Grudge, or some striking bleached eyebrows and staccato tutting choreography that sends an eerie chill up your spine. 

“Since last year, the villain character has been very charming to me, so I wanted to create my own,” Ten says over video call from Seoul. Inspiration struck when he watched the A24 film Talk to Me, the 2023 Australian horror about an embalmed hand that conjures supernatural forces from the other side. “I liked this kind of thing – this mood from the movie – so I just captured it and sent it to my staff and they were like ‘This is nice, let’s try something like this’.” Tonally, it fits the vibe of “Nightwalker”, which is darkly atmospheric and dramatic, full of industrial thumps, warped vocals and ghostly falsettos.

He may be releasing his first album as a solo artist, but Ten is far from a newbie. As a member of the 20-plus strong group NCT, its Chinese subgroup WayV and SM Entertainment’s supergroup SuperM, Ten straddles many roles and wears a lot of hats. Within those groups, he’s been a part of more than a dozen albums and EPs and has released a handful of intermittent solo songs. He’s no stranger to the rigmarole of producing and releasing music, or developing personas and concepts, and so comes to this debut with a wealth of experience that not many others will relate to. It’s almost like he’s doing it all in reverse. So, for him, the challenge was less about figuring out what to do and more about unlearning old habits. 

“I always planned out everything,” he says about his previous approach to work. “With SuperM, WayV, NCT or even my old solo work, I always had that limitation within me. Like ‘Oh, I can’t go too wild’. But for this album, I just tried to break the barrier, like ‘Let’s go wild, let’s do something that you don’t usually do’. And I did have a lot of fun.” The two mantras he learned to live by are “don’t hesitate and be crazy.”

For Ten, this has involved realising that no idea is too big or too out there. He has made no secret in the past that he saw previous individual solo ventures as a way to share new, possibly unseen sides to himself, the parts that have merely poked through in the eight years since his debut. His 2016 debut “Dream in a Dream” was ethereal and hazy; his 2021 pop-rock single “Paint Me Naked” abandoned his characteristic fluid sensuality for something brighter; his last release, 2022’s “Birthday”, was a sultry bedroom jam. Even the rest of the songs on this mini-album veer in all sorts of directions, like the starbursting threads of a spider’s web. The Latin pop-inspired “Water” leads into the retro funk-infused “Dangerous” which makes way for the silky R&B number “Shadow”. 

If his songs seem to lack aural connective tissue, it’s deliberate. Wherever Ten went last is not where he plans to go next, and with “Nightwalker”, especially a pre-release teaser video that offered another dual-personality style concept, he cements that splintering personality with its narrative. “I feel like in the “Nightwalker” music video and the teaser movie, it’s Ten but in a different dimension. It’s like Spider-Man multiverse. The Ten Multiverse.”

“I feel like I’m in a movie – like I’m acting in different roles... I just wanted to go crazy and do the things that I don’t usually do” – Ten Lee

It makes sense that his mind goes to the pictures when he says wanted the release to feel big and cinematic. With more songs than ever to play with in one go, for the first time, he wasn’t confined to just presenting one version of himself. “I feel like I’m in a movie – like I’m acting in different roles – the ‘Lie With You’ Ten, the ‘Water’ Ten, the ‘Dangerous’ Ten, the ‘Nightwalker’ Ten,” he says. “I didn’t want to like just get stuck in my old role, like ‘Birthday’, ‘Paint Me Naked’ or ‘Dream in a Dream’. They were all very conceptual, right? So for this one, I just wanted to go crazy and do the things that I don’t usually do.”

That also involved enlisting the help of choreographer Sergio Reis, whose work includes crafting the visual identity of Troye Sivan’s latest releases “Rush” and “Got Me Started”. Reis provided the demo for “Nightwalker”’s distinctive routine (which Ten and his team tweaked and adapted) that is almost guaranteed to be impossible to replicate on TikTok. “When I first listened to ‘Nightwalker’, he’s the name that popped up when I was thinking about choreography. I used to find his videos on Instagram and I feel like it’s very, very unique. All the dances are simple but they captivate the audience when you look at his movement.” (Although that’s probably debatable for anyone not considered one of the best dancers in K-pop). 

Following the release of “Nightwalker”, Ten has been embarking on his first series of solo ‘fancons’, which are solo showcases that are slightly more playful than concerts but are punctuated by performances. For the first time in almost a decade, he’s now able to stand on stage alone with enough of his own songs to fill a setlist. “I just want to have fun with this album,” he says “I don’t have big goals right now, I just want to express myself”. 

While he may not have a set path in mind, Ten has officially entered a new phase as a solo star, and it’s one that he doesn’t plan on ending any time soon. Naturally, as someone prone to excavating all the different aspects of himself, he’s already looking ahead to what he can do next. “I’m still growing. I wouldn’t say this is my peak. I feel like I’m still learning but I feel like I’m going in the right direction, so I’m very proud of myself right now.”