IU

Who is IU?

IU (아이유) is a singer and actress represented by EDAM Entertainment. She debuted on 18 September 2008 on Mnet’s M Countdown with ‘Lost Child’ (‘미아’). The introduction to her debut record, Lost And Found, released the same month, called the song “Hybrid Pop”: a ballad carrying electronic sound and a hip-hop rhythm. Her fan club is UAENA.

From ‘Good Day’ to Modern Times

‘Good Day’, the title track of her third EP Real (9 December 2010), is built on layered strings and brass. IZM noted that its closing run of high notes was nicknamed the “three-step booster” online right after release. In November 2019 Billboard placed it first among its 100 K-pop songs of the 2010s.

Her third full album, Modern Times, was recorded over nine months, from January to September 2013, and released on 8 October. It moves through swing, jazz, bossa nova and Latin pop. IU composed two of its songs and wrote the lyrics for four. The title track, ‘The Red Shoes’, was recorded with a Japanese big band conducted by Kazuhiko Toyama. IZM’s Lee Gi-seon wrote that the album is “full of excellent tracks even if you forget their function and the road she has travelled so far”.

Songs sung again: A Flower Bookmark

A Flower Bookmark (16 May 2014) is a record of seven older songs IU chose herself and sang again. The title compares the album to a faded petal kept between the pages of an old book, and Kim Chang-wan joins her on ‘The Meaning of You’. The series continued with A Flower Bookmark, Pt. 2 in 2017 and A Flower Bookmark, Pt. 3 in May 2025. On the second volume she wrote a short note for each track, and of ‘Last Night Story’ she wrote that it was “also the song I had the most fun working on of this album”.

Records she made herself

Her fourth EP, CHAT-SHIRE (23 October 2015), was the first she produced in full. Its seven songs place what she saw and felt in fictional characters. Her fourth full album, Palette, followed on 21 April 2017, again produced by IU, with G-Dragon on the title track ‘Palette’. The pre-release single ‘Through the Night’ came out first, on 24 March. Billboard wrote that Palette proves how putting an artist’s personal experience into the music can lead to her best work.

She wrote every lyric on her fifth EP, Love poem (18 November 2019). In its introduction she said she was not embarrassed to call it a love poem “because everything in it is sincere”. Her fifth full album, LILAC (25 March 2021), was again produced by her with every lyric her own. NME wrote that “despite the many contributors, IU makes sure each song bears her own mark”. Her sixth EP, The Winning, was released on 20 February 2024.

On screen

In Netflix’s When Life Gives You Tangerines (2025) IU played both the young Ae-sun and her daughter Geum-myeong. The series won best drama at the 2025 Baeksang Arts Awards. Accepting best actress at the Blue Dragon Series Awards that July, IU called it “the work that I think will become the greatest pride of my life”. The year’s awards are gathered in this story.

In 2026 she played Seong Hui-ju, daughter of the Castle Group conglomerate, in MBC and Disney+’s Perfect Crown opposite Byeon Woo-seok. The two had appeared together in SBS’s Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo in 2016. At the press conference she introduced Hui-ju as “a woman who has everything but the official title to match”.

What to listen to now

The single Unknown Planet came out on 10 September 2026. IU wrote the lyrics of both title tracks, ‘Unknown Planet’ and ‘Dear my crazy soulmate’, and the single leads into her sixth full album, her first in about five years since LILAC. The release is covered in this story. Her music videos and official clips are posted on her YouTube channel, 이지금 [IU Official].