NEWS
A Seoul court has granted ADOR‘s request for an injunction preventing NewJeans (aka NJZ) from pursuing independent activities under their new name.
Today (March 21), the Seoul Central District Court’s Civil Division 50 ruled in favour of ADOR, a subsidiary of HYBE, granting the company’s injunction to prevent NewJeans from carrying out activities independently under their new name, NJZ.
According to sources from South Korean news publications News1 and SBS, per Soompi, the injunction also prevents the girl group from signing advertising contracts on their own. NewJeans have yet to issue a public response to the injunction.
ADOR first filed the injunction in January. The suit was first filed to preventing the K-pop group from signing advertisement deals as independent artists, before it was expanded to encompass “all musical activities” pursued as independent acts.
When asked for comment at the time, ADOR told NME in a statement that it “felt it was necessary to extend the scope of the injunction due to the unilateral expansion of NewJeans members’ activities, including new music releases and overseas performances”.
The HYBE subsidiary emphasised that its aim is “to ensure that they can continue their activities under our existing contractual agreement”, rather than “hinder the artists’ careers”. It also reiterated its previous denial of its alleged attempt to cancel the group’s ComplexCon set, saying the extension of its injunction was not a “retaliatory measure”.
Following the injunction grant, ADOR and NJZ continue to be engaged in legal battle as the company’s lawsuit against the quintet to verify the validity of their contracts with it is still ongoing.
That was filed after NJZ held an emergency press conference on November 28, announcing that they were terminating their exclusive contracts with ADOR. The next day, the label refuted the statement, claiming their contract with the group “remains in full effect”.
Reneé Rapp is seen as a “huge inspiration” by SZA.
The 25-year-old artist performed SZA’s Good Days in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, accompanied by two acoustic guitarists and a harp player. SZA, 35, was deeply moved by the rendition.
She posted a short video of the moment on Instagram Stories and wrote: “Renee is a HUGE inspiration, energy, voice spirit.”
During her chat with the BBC, Renee shared her thoughts about the track. She said: “I mean, I love SZA. I mean, she was one of my favorite artists in high school. And she's remained one of my favorite artists to this day. I think she's amazing. She's also, I mean, she's an incredible songwriter, but I think because she has so much swag. People don't realize how good of a singer she is. She's a fantastic vocalist and is really, really, really articulate. And I don't cover a lot of songs anymore. So I wanted to cover something that was, like, slightly challenging and also really vocally impressive, and frankly, hard for me to do.”
Renee is currently in the middle of promoting her second album, Bite Me, and opened up about how much more enjoyable it was to create compared to her first project.
She explained: “I mean, I feel like everything was incredibly different. I stopped listening to people that don't make music, because if you don't make music, then why the hell am I listening to you. And I also think the biggest difference, I think I just got a lot better. I think I have just become a better songwriter. I think I understand how to make pop music now in a way that I didn't really before. And I was very sure about what this album was and thematically, what it needed.
“So I felt like I was quite like, headstrong in like, what was gonna work and what wasn't. Because, nobody knows something better than yourself. I think a lot of things were different. I also just, like, had a lot of fun making it, like, I made it with like, three people, mostly, like, it was always like, four of us in the studio all the time, and we got so close, and some of us were already so close. So it was also just like a mess. It was such a mess, like we were just tweaking every day. It was so fun. And I don't think I enjoyed making the first one as much.”
