Key
김기범- Name
- Kim Ki-bum
- Born
- 23 September 1991
SHINee member who went solo after ten years in the group and has released three full solo albums since 2018.
Their story
Ten years in
Key had been in SHINee for a decade before he released an album under his own name. "I think now is the right time to debut as a soloist," he said in November 2018, when Face came out with "One of Those Nights", a duet with Crush. He was 27, and the album had ten tracks. A few months later the repackage I Wanna Be appeared on the same day he joined the army band.
Bad Love
He came back from the military in October 2020, and his first EP, Bad Love, gave him something Face had not: a music show trophy, on Show! Music Core. Taeyeon had joined him on the pre-release "Hate That..." a month earlier. The full album Gasoline followed in 2022 and got a second life the next winter as Killer. By then the Keyland concerts had moved from Seoul halls to Jangchung Arena and Japan.
Records with a story
Each record builds its own world. Pleasure Shop opened a futuristic store in its video. Hunter went darker, with heavy bass and guitar riffs, and he explained that it is about "the battle of a divided self": the hunter is a side of himself he did not know. On the same album Seulgi of Red Velvet joins him on "Perfect Error", a brighter song about believing in yourself.
Where he is now
Hunter, released in August 2025, is his latest solo album and his third full-length one. He took it to three nights of Keyland: Uncanny Valley in Seoul that September, his first solo concerts in a year. In 2026 he is back on stage with SHINee, at KSPO Dome in May, and on the group's June mini album Atmos.
