"So Funny"—YG Entertainment Producer Raises Eyebrows For Public Method Of Scouting For Song Leads

Instagram posts by HAE, an in-house producer at YG Entertainment, are circulating online for a less-than-positive reason.

HAE (center) with fellow producers | @haethehae/Instagram

HAE is the CEO of SoundJungle and the composer of songs such as “Hello” by TREASURE, “DREAM” by BABYMONSTER, “I Want To” by MINO, and “Call Anytime” by JINU.

Unfortunately, he is now making headlines for something else—posting what is essentially a job listing via his Instagram account. He uploaded a graphic calling for producers to submit a song for an unnamed rookie girl group.

Title track lead for 7 member debuting girl group…deadline October 7th.

What is a lead? It’s a list containing information about necessary songs that producers order from the artist’s agency or management company in order to receive tracks for the artist’s album release.

— HAE

He gave a list of words such as “Heavy Bass,” “Old Money Fashion,” and POP + K-Pop” to inspire the producers. He also mentioned Somi‘s “Dumb Dumb” and “XOXO,” RIIZE‘s “Get a Guitar,” and Dua Lipa‘s “New Rules” as songs their track should be in line with.

Netizens guessed that he was collecting title track suggestions for a possible new girl group under THE BLACK LABEL or another K-Pop company.

Yeah, I agree with you. I don’t think this is baemon related. It could be tblngg or any group… if you look on kprofiles there is so many companies debuting girl groups and big groups are coming back in trend. Iland2, attrakt, hihat, wm, cube and plenty more.

— Isadora (@PUSSYTARlAN) September 28, 2023

This surprised many people due to the public nature of his announcement. Searching for song leads is something that almost always happens behind closed doors.

K-Pop companies often reach out to songwriters they know and ask them to create tracks that could possibly make it to their artist’s future album. They then work with these producers until their songs are perfected, similar to what Michelle Cho revealed about her Produce X 101 days in an interview with ReacttotheK.

The one that required a lot of change, Produce X 101. We had, I think, version 39 or something…I think they were trying to find the ideal sound.

— Michelle Cho

Another producer who works closely with SM Entertainment, Rodnae “Chikk” Bell, is directly contacted by them whenever they want to request for a possible new song.

Now, we just kind of finish songs now, but back then it was like, “If you like it,’ [good] but let’s move on to the next one so we can get as many as possible.’

— Chikk