[DWU Paper, 643] “We want to bring you music that is purely Royal Pirates” ◢

Three youths who immigrated when they were young met in America and formed a band. Having made their debut about two years ago, this three member rock band is the “Royal Pirates.” After gaining attention for the kpop covers they uploaded onto youtube, they were called to Korea by their current company. Even before their debut singer Cho Yongpil gave them the title of “Super Rookies,” where they stood on their first stage at “Super Sonic 2013.” “We still have a lot left to show you,” the Royal Pirates say. Let’s meet lead vocal Moon Kim, drummer Sooyoon, and bassist James and hear about their journey into music.


Their name became known through K-Pop covers
“When I watched videos of when I was younger on the camcorder, I found I was always singing. I think I’ve liked singing since [I was small]. While I was in middle school, I met Sooyoon at church and from that point on I wanted to genuinely make music.” (Moon) Having both moved to America when they were young, Moon and Sooyoon met at church and decided to start a band. At the time, Moon was the vocalist and Sooyoon took on the drums. Of course, starting at that time, Sooyoon began dreaming of music as well. “Before I started middle school, I only ever studied. Rather, I was a kid who lived up to my parent’s expectations. (laugh) After I started learning the drums, everything changed.” (Sooyoon)
    After Sooyoon was accepted into university, he moved to another area and the two became unable to meet frequently. But still, they did not give on on their band. After arranging K-pop songs to meet the Royal Pirates’ style, they began to receive much notice, and their faced slowly gained recognition. “At the time Wonder Girl’s “Nobody” was popular. We wanted to sing the song in our own style and upload it, so after making a video, that’s exactly what we did. Though we lived in America, we would often go to the noraebang with study abroad students and so we were familiar with kpop. After the video became noticed, my confidence towards music also began to build.” (Sooyoon)
    The band name “Royal Pirates” was also made at this time. “At first, we really thought a lot about what to choose as our band name. I liked the word “royal “ and Moon-hyung liked the word “pirates” so we just stuck the two together and that become our band name. Afterwards we added the meaning of having our music be classic like “royal” and free and unhesitant like “pirates”.” (Sooyoon)

The love-call from a Korean agency
    As a two-member band, Moon and Sooyoon admitted to be lacking in many aspects. “We felt that we were lacking something in terms of sound. From a mutual friend, we were then introduced to James. After a few performances with James, we decided that he would join our band. The process was very natural. (laugh)” (Sooyoon) It was at this time that the Royal Pirates received a love-call from their current agency, “Apple of the Eye.” However, at the time “Apple of the Eye” was not an agency that had anything to do with music. We asked what their determining factor for entering the agency was. “We always wanted to make music in Korea. We received the call right at the time that James came into our band, and it just felt like everything would turn out for the best. I think the feel and the timing were just right.” (Moon)
    After this, the Royal Pirates had their first performance in a Hollywood club called “The Cat Club.” “Since it was our first performance off-line, we worried a lot about it. Although our fans liked the videos we posted online, we couldn’t know how many people would come in reality. We worried that the place would look too empty while we performed. We were so worried that we even surveyed the club the day before we were to perform, but it was closed. (laugh) Surprisingly, there were two-three times more patrons to the club on the day we were to perform. There was even a fan who flew in from Alaska. We were touched.” (Sooyoon) “Through this performance, we were able to do many more, and we even received many requests to perform. It was amazing. We also received a request to perform in a club that Actor Johnny Depp co-owns.” (James) With this, the Royal Pirates began to build up their skill while playing live-house in clubs in Hollywood. “There’s a street in America called “Sunset Boulevard” that houses many live clubs. We performed at about six of these clubs. We had a lot of ambition, so we made exposing performances. Thinking about it now, it was extremely awkward. Rather than the passionate singing and really awesome stage I had in mind, after looking at the videos we just exposed ourselves. (laugh)” (Moon) [Cat Club 6/17, The Mint 7/7, KAH 7/16 (Acoustic Live - Manhattan Beach), The Roxy 8/5-6, Viper Room 8/27]

Ranked 8th on the Billboard World Chart
    Before their official debut in Korea, the Royal Pirates stood on stage at “Super Sonic 2013.” It is the audition where Singer Cho Yongpil directly picked this rookie band out of the masses. “Out of many teams, five were picked to hold a closed performance on the actual stage. After performing, the deliberation time came closer but the gazes of the auditors were good. It felt alright. In the end, our team’s name was called, but since there was another team there with us, we couldn’t show how great we felt- we were very happy. That’s the best memory I have after getting off the stage.” (Moon) In the two years after their debut, the Royal Pirates have released their first digital single (Shout Out) and their first EP (Drawing the Line), as well as their second EP (Love Toxic), among other digital singles. The title song from their first EP “Drawing the Line” even ranked 8th on the Billboard World Chart. “When I first saw the chart uploaded onto SNS, I thought that the fans had made it up. I was thankful for it. I even thought “It would have been really great if they had ranked us first instead.” (laugh) But it was real. It wasn’t the main chart but just the fact that our name and the title of our album was there on Billboard’s main page was really amazing and I was happy.” (Sooyoon) Last August the Royal Pirates released their third digital single (Seoul Hillbilly) and with it began promotions on Daehak-ro and Hongdae, and held buskings all over Seoul. Not only that, but not too long ago they even successfully held their first solo concert titled “T.Y Party.” “It was our first time busking, but it has a lot of charm. More than anything, I liked being able to see each and every one of the fan’s faces up close while performing. Being able to see the spectator’s expressions just like that, I felt like I could really relate to the fans.” (Moon)

We want to bring you our music
“I hope that we are able to freely bring our music to you in the future. It takes such a long time for us to just come out with one album. We haven’t been able to show you even half of the music we’ve made. We have a lot of hidden songs. Because of that, to quickly show you all good songs, we’re working hard to compose right now.” (James) Moon has the same sentiment as James. “We want people to hear our songs just as quickly as we make them. I want to show people through our future promotions what type of music we make, and what type of songs we write.” (Moon) We asked them what the happiest moment while making music for them was. “I’ve had a few moments when I was happy. One of those moments was during the Hyundai Card “Citybreak 2014” concert. It was quite a large stage so we were able to play to our heart’s content. It felt like I could just fly into the sky. (laugh) More than anything else, I’m happiest when my parents are able to see videos of me performing and can tell me that they’re proud of me and that I’ve done well.” (James)
Lastly, we asked what the Royal Pirates goal for the future is. Sooyoon replied with, “Having another solo concert.” He added with a happy smile, “I hope there will be an opportunity for us to perform at Olympic Park. Also, since we came here from America, under the name “Royal Pirates” I hope there will be a day we can go back perform there again.”

[Reporter You Jihyeong]

Duksung Women’s University~ I want to meet you! - James

Duksung Women’s Uni, I love you! Thank you! ♥ - Sooyon

Duk. We’re producing nerds (duk-hu)
Sung. I want to see Seongmal-ro
Yeo. Forget these other (yeo-ro) words
Dae. Attend University (dae-hak) diligently
-Moon

Translations by setsailroyalpirates (heymeowmao)