TAEYONG

Born Lee Tae-yong on July 1, 1995, in Seoul, South Korea, the singer, rapper, dancer, and songwriter is better known by his stage name Taeyong and his membership in K-Pop boyband NCT as well as several of the group’s sub-units. Taeyong first signed with SM Entertainment in 2012 and began working on several projects for the company including SM Rookies, a group of boyband hopefuls in training. He first came to prominence in 2016 as a member of K-Pop boyband NCT U, a sub-unit of NCT. He made his recording debut on the NCT U single “The 7th Sense.” Later that same year, he became leader of another NCT sub-unit called NCT 127, making his first appearance on the group’s single “Fire Truck.” More NCT 127 releases followed including the EPs NCT #127 (2016), Limitless (2017), and Cherry Bomb (2017). Taeyong collaborated with Hitchhiker on the 2017 single “Around” and with Yoo Young-jin on “Cure.” NCT released their debut album NCT 2018 Empathy, which united members of all the sub-units on one album. NCT 127 released their debut album, Regular-Irregular, in 2018. The following year, NCT 127 released their debut Japanese album Awaken, which was followed three months later by Taeyong’s debut solo single “Long Flight,” which rose to number 6 on the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart. In August 2019, he became a member of K-Pop supergroup SuperM, another project for SM Entertainment. NCT 127 released their album Neon Zone in 2020, followed shortly by SuperM’s debut album, Super One. Towards the end of 2020, Taeyong was featured on the NCT album NCT 2020: Resonance. At that time, it was announced that the busy K-Pop star was the new leader of main unit NCT. Not one to slow down, Taeyong was involved with NCT 127’s 2021 album Sticker, which was an enormous success and became SM Entertainment’s best-selling album of all time. In April 2022, Taeyong released the single “Love Theory,” a collaboration with K-Pop singer and rapper Wonstein. Throughout his career, Taeyong has written songs for each of his group’s releases including the NCT 127 song “Cherry Bomb,” which was listed as one of the best K-Pop songs of 2017 by Idolator and Billboard. In June 2023, Taeyong released his long-awaited debut solo mini album, Shalala, which reached number 2 on the Circle Album Chart. He quickly followed that with his second mini album, Tap, which was released in February 2024.