The band’s origins lie in the pistachio green basement of South Korean entertainment company Pledis.
That’s where members were selected, rejected, coached and pruned over a long and gruelling apprenticeship.
“It lasted maybe four to five years,” says rapper Jeon Won-woo, known to fans as Wonwoo.
He was one of the first recruits back in 2013 and survived several rounds of auditions, all of which were documented in the online series Seventeen TV.
The show was unscripted and unedited, often running for hours at a time. Fans on the livestream could choose the camera angles, watching as the teenage trainees ate meals, external, faced evaluations, external and, on one notorious occasion, were scolded for fooling around, external.
At one point, the series vanished for eight months, leaving fans wondering if the group had been dropped.
Looking back, S Coups says that hiatus – during which three members were replaced without explanation – helped Seventeen take control of their destiny.
“Our deal was pushed back a little and Woozi, one of our members, thought we could debut earlier than planned if we made our own music.”
Woozi, real name Lee Ji-hoon, turned out to be the band’s ace card.
A classically-trained musician, he has co-written and produced the majority of their output – more than 140 songs to date.
“He inspired the other members to take an interest in making their own music, so they started to learn song-writing and lyric-making, too,” says S Coups.
“Being engaged in our creative process goes a long way towards making our music more authentic. so we take great pride in it.”
“That’s the great weapon we have,” adds Wonwoo.
