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JOSHUA of SEVENTEEN Talks Acting, Solo Acoustic Songs and a Coachella Dream Over Seafood in Seoul
At Seoul’s Noryangjin fish market, SEVENTEEN’s JOSHUA talks acting, producing solo music, and his acoustic influences from John Mayer to YouTube singer-songwriters — and admits playing Coachella is a dream he hopes to make real.
They set up the cameras between the tanks and the fluorescent hum of Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market, one of Seoul’s 24-hour institutions. It’s late morning but the place still smells like salt and hot oil; vendors shout, plastic crates scrape the floor, and JOSHUA is smiling like someone who’s half in on a secret. Billboard’s Tetris Kelly sits across from him with a plate of live octopus and a pair of metal chopsticks. The conversation moves easy—about music, acting, and the kind of solo records fans have been waiting for.
This is not the stadium-bleached SEVENTEEN we usually get in press photos. Solo projects can flatten a person into a press release, but here JOSHUA is tactile: he picks up a scallop, explains a lyric idea, gestures with his hands when he talks about guitar. He admits he’s been trying his hand at acting “It’s very new, but I’m learning new things,” he says, with the modesty of someone surprised by their own appetite for risk. “It’s helping me express my emotions more because I feel most of the time I might be a little closed off … I’m having a lot of fun with it.”
That curiousness is bleeding into music. JOSHUA says he’s producing his own solo work and, crucially, making time to write. For longtime K-pop fans, that’s meaningful: idols’ schedules rarely leave room for craft. “I’m trying to do more of that these days,” he tells Kelly. When he talks about the music he wants to release, his eyes light up for acoustic guitar. “I want to show acoustic music because that’s what I grew up on and that’s how I got into music, so I want to show more of that side of myself to my fans.”
“I really love John Mayer, ever since I was a little kid. That’s how I got into wanting to learn guitar.”
It’s not a surprising reference—John Mayer’s name has been an easy shorthand for anyone who grew up on late-2000s singer-songwriter radio—but JOSHUA speaks about Mayer with the specificity of someone who stole licks from YouTube lessons. He also cites Gabe Bondoc and AJ Rafael, musicians who built careers in the margins of pop through intimate, guitar-forward videos. And then, almost casually: “And I really like Justin Bieber.”
That last line lands because it frames JOSHUA’s taste as less about genre purity and more about identification. He and Kelly trade a few excited words about Bieber’s Coachella set—this was all filmed before that performance—and JOSHUA admits, plainly, that playing Coachella is on his list. “That was like one of my dreams, to go and perform at Coachella,” he says. “So hopefully in the future.” It’s the kind of goal that feels simultaneously audacious and believable from an artist who tours with SEVENTEEN’s full unit and already moves through arenas and festival-sized stages.
Fans will hear a lot from this chat: a producer-in-the-making, a guitarist inspired by Mayer and YouTube folk, a performer who actually wants quieter moments. There’s a tenderness in JOSHUA’s plan—acoustic songs that show the person behind the choreography—and a practicality too. He’s learning to write and produce because his schedule finally allows it, and because he seems genuinely interested in the slow work of shaping a solo identity.
Watch JOSHUA’s full Takes Us Out episode to see him sample pajeon, admire a blue crab, and sketch out future song ideas between mouthfuls. The market’s chaos makes a fitting backdrop: it’s messy, real, and noisy, and it allows JOSHUA to talk about ambitions without the gloss of a comeback trailer. Fans should be paying attention.
