Crossover group LA POEM has been dazzling throughout this year.

LA POEM (Park Ki-hoon, Yoo Chae-hoon, Jung Min-sung, Choi Sung-hoon) made a strong impression as the winner of JTBC‘s ‘Phantom Singer 3’ in 2020 and entered the music industry and have been actively promoting music. Let’s take a look back at LA POEM‘s 2024 activities, as they have solidified their position as a top crossover group by standing out in more diverse fields throughout this year.

◆ Avengers of the performance industry that shook Korea→USA

LA POEM emerged as Avengers of the performance industry by successfully completing two branding concerts this year. First, La Poem met the audience again in May after a year through the La Poem OST concert ‘Summer Night’s La La Land Season 2’. The concert ended with rave reviews, and there were many anticipating next year.

Then, in October, they held the ‘2024 La Poem Solo Concert [LA POEM SYMPHONY]’. In particular, through this performance, La Poem entered the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts Grand Theater, known as the stage of dreams. Although they had performed on the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts stage before for planned performances, this was their first solo performance and they achieved another career high.

In the same month, La Poem also went on their first US tour in four years since their debut through the ‘LA POEM 2024 USA TOUR’. La Poem toured three cities: Washington D.C., Coppell, Texas, and Los Angeles, and sold out all tickets for all shows, showing off their global presence.

◆ Increased popularity + fandom power through unique transformation

La Poem released the single ‘MIRROR’ in April, which sensually expressed their longing for their goal. La Poem featured easy-listening songs such as ‘Mirror’ and ‘Rose’ as double title tracks, securing both musicality and popularity. Amid rave reviews from music fans, ‘Rose’ and ‘Mirror’ achieved the feat of taking 1st and 2nd place on Bugs‘ real-time chart, a major domestic music site, immediately after their release.

La Poem also took 1st place in the male group category of the ‘2024 Favorite Year-End Vote’, which selects the artist with the best performance in Favorite throughout 2024. In the vote, which is comprised of 80% fan votes and 20% streaming data, La Poem was selected in 1st place with a total of 36.4% support, including 512,529 fan votes and 0.4% streaming. As the competition between crossover groups was fierce, the results of this vote showed the passionate fandom of La Poem.

◆ ‘Awards ceremony love call’ from the beginning of the year to the end

La Poem appeared at the ‘38th Golden Disc Awards with Mandiri’ held at the Jakarta International Stadium in Indonesia in January of this year and decorated a congratulatory stage. La Poem proved their overwhelming stage presence by performing a K-pop medley stage with a magnificent arrangement, powerful harmony, and splendid LED production. La Poem received a hot response on-site by performing the point choreography of each song, and the original singers in the audience also enjoyed themselves and completed the festival-like atmosphere.

Thanks to their popularity, La Poem will appear on the ‘2024 MBC Drama Awards’ (hereafter referred to as ‘MBC Drama Awards’) to be broadcast on the 30th to perform a congratulatory stage. In particular, La Poem was invited as the only congratulatory performance singers for the ‘MBC Drama Awards’, so they plan to show off their irreplaceable presence as the ‘Venges of Vocal Music’ on that day.

In addition to the awards ceremony, La Poem appeared on MBC every1’s ‘LOVE Challenge 2024’ on the 24th and KBS 1TV‘s ‘Jo Soo-mi’s Christmas Concert’ on the 25th, showing off their versatility. Despite their busy schedules, they have continued to share consistently, and recently, they donated 40 million won to the welfare foundation WeStart ahead of the end of the year, exerting a positive influence. La Poem, which spent this year more passionately than anyone else, is expected to continue its upward trend in 2025.

Jeon Hyo-jin, Donga.com Reporter jhj@donga.com