Lee Chan-hyukOldest member
이찬혁- Name
- Lee Chan-hyuk
The older brother; writes and produces nearly all AKMU songs and also releases solo albums.
Their story
Two kids and a guitar
Lee Chan-hyuk and Lee Su-hyun were still teenagers when they won the second season of SBS's K-pop Star. Their name, Akdong Musician, meant something like "mischievous children", and it suited them. They could choose between the big three agencies and picked YG, which was an odd home for a folk-pop duo next to BIGBANG and 2NE1. Their debut album PLAY arrived in April 2014, written and produced by Chan-hyuk, with songs like "200%" and "Give Love".
Songs from a navy ship
The Puberty pair, Spring and Winter, showed they could grow up in public. Then Chan-hyuk joined the Marine Corps in 2017. He kept writing on board with a pen and a notebook, and those songs became Sailing, full of sea titles and goodbyes. Its long-titled lead single topped every major Korean realtime chart on release night. They also dropped the childish name and became simply AKMU.
Brother writes, sister sings
The division of labour has barely changed. Chan-hyuk writes and produces almost everything; Su-hyun once joked that her brother does 90 percent of the work. Her voice carries the songs, though, and on Sailing she arranged a track for the first time. The sound moves between folk, pop and the odd EDM detour like "Dinosaur". "NAKKA" with IU won Best Pop Song at the Korean Music Awards. "Love Lee" came back to bouncy acoustic pop.
Where they are now
After twelve years, AKMU and YG parted on good terms in November 2025. Yang Hyun-suk had encouraged them to try something new. They started their own label and in April 2026 released FLOWERING, their first full album in seven years. Chan-hyuk wrote it after walking the Camino de Santiago to help his sister through a hard stretch. In October they played KSPO Dome for three nights before taking the show around Korea.
