CORTIS Are Here to Break the Mould.
Channelling the spirit of teen rebellion like none before them, CORTIS are Korea’s most alternative best-selling boy band – breaking K-pop’s rules as they prioritise originality, authenticity and creative self-determination.
CORTIS for Perfect Issue 11.
Photographer: Park Jongha
Creative Editors: ES Consultancy
Fashion Editors: Park Jiyeon, Park Sangwook
Writer: Paul Flynn
All five members of CORTIS – MARTIN, JAMES, JUHOON, SEONGHYEON and KEONHO – are sitting on a snug sofa in a blank antechamber of a photography studio after their Perfect shoot. They are thinking about what the zeitgeist was when they were growing up. ‘I feel like it was groups like A$AP Mob and Odd Future,’ says MARTIN, the band’s natural leader and bottle blond. CORTIS all look fabulous, of course. They are wearing great clothes, of their own choosing. They have amazing hair. They are among the prettiest boys on the planet. But they are thinkers, too.
‘For me, Steve Jobs is one of the biggest figures when you talk about the zeitgeist,’ adds JUHOON. ‘He really has changed the world. That idea he started was to make you think different. Now everybody has iPhones or MacBooks. It also kind of applies to us, because we are trying new stuff, crossing the lines and breaking the mould.’ This idea of thinking outside the box – or ‘colouring outside the lines’, the phrase from which letters were plucked to assemble their name – is central to CORTIS.
The USP for CORTIS in the K-pop cannon is ‘agency’. ‘We can’t be free all the time,’ says SEONGHYEON, ‘but we can in our music, and that’s what we try to express.’ This looseness, with some wildly eclectic influences, appears to be working. On their irresistible second EP, GREENGREEN, there is a song called ‘YOUNGCREATORCREW’, an undulating, explosive groove which uncovers a manifesto, a band identity. With CORTIS, you don’t just get the immaculately manicured package, you get the roughness of unformed ideas, too. They hang together with adolescent humour, the last remnants of teen cool, an identity perched on the precipices of adulthood. An adorable ideas factory to chime with its generation. ‘When we were working on the EP,’ says SEONGHYEON, ‘we knew we needed a refresh. We wanted to reclaim the things we did before our debut. The creative process helps us dive into what we want to do.’
From the start, their jump-cut videos credited them as co-directors. They are the autonomous loop on the K-pop wheel. ‘All five of us are not just in love with music,’ says KEONHO, ‘we are in love with creating things. That just naturally makes its way onto the album and into the creative process.’ If one were to dream into life the perfect K-pop proposition for 2027 – one guaranteed to appeal across the board, from tweens learning the basic laws and principles of pop adoration through twentysomethings weeping through the last episode of Euphoria – well, CORTIS are your boys.
Given some eccentric influences and cool styling references, I’d wondered aloud if the boys had thought about changing their genre from K-pop to maybe K-hop or K-rock. Sometimes a CORTIS tune feels like it’s found its way out of a trap mixtape or the campus of a college rock radio station. Wasn’t K-pop supposed to be all about the rules? MARTIN interjects to correct me. ‘I’ve listened to a lot of Korean music recently, checking out the charts and stuff, random playlists, and there are so many K rappers and K rock bands, alternative rock bands too. I’m a big fan of this artist called Meaningful Stone, in Korean, she’s amazing. I love her voice. There are amazing alternative bands out there. If you dig deep into it, there are so many great artists and I feel like there will be an explosion of it one day.’
For K-pop to future-proof itself, it has to learn to defy the algorithm. ‘It’s very easy to try and match the algorithm,’ says JAMES. ‘To try and get more views, get more likes on certain things. “This got a lot of views? Let’s recreate it and make a similar thing.” That’s not us. Just recreating things, it wouldn’t be the same as the original, it wouldn’t be as good as the original. We try to stop that and we try to create new things.’
The smart money says CORTIS are the next K-pop sensation to experience BTS levels of exponential fame. If so, the boys are keeping their humility intact on the journey there. They also want to touch something outside of the usual metrics of success. This summer, they were the only Korean boy band to play the Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago. Their hometown dates have included unusual bookings. ‘Recently we’ve been performing a lot of college festivals here in Seoul,’ says KEONHO. ‘It’s our first time performing in front of the populace, not just our fans. They’re roaring and cheering us on and we feed off that energy.’
‘For me,’ says JAMES, ‘there are three elements that are important when we talk about the zeitgeist.’ First, he begins, there is the matter of how something affects you personally. Then there is the question of the environment, how it influences the culture around you. Third, ‘There is evolution.’ Allow him to expand. ‘Because I was born around the 2000s, there is this mindset of breaking the mould, breaking the rules.’
From their opening offering, an irresistible call to arms, ‘What You Want’ (sample lyric: ‘smelling like a teen like we Nirvana’), there was a distinct flavour of low-key insurrection about CORTIS. Just because they’re the prettiest boys on the block, it doesn’t mean they didn’t come to shake things up. ‘You think of movies like The Matrix or Fight Club,’ JAMES continues. ‘Those movies usually talk about breaking the system, they talk about the pressure you get from the system. Those movies, and people like Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves, they really had a big impact on me.’
Has K-pop just found its cool? ‘I always wanted to be cool, to be honest,’ laughs MARTIN. ‘It’s been a forever thing. I still want to be cooler and cooler, to sound better and better, even to smell nicer and nicer. It’s a whole thing. Everything comes together to make the word cool. It’s also about being yourself. Cool should not look like you’re acting. It’s got to be a whole lifestyle. You’ve got to be yourself.’