Brian Joo
Name: Brian Gintaek Joo
Korean Name: Joo Min Gyu
Birthday: January 10, 1981
Birthplace: Los Angeles, CA
Religion: Christian
Height: 170-173cm (5’7”-5’8”)
Weight: 60kg
Mini Biography:
Brian was born in LA, but his family moved to Absecon, NJ when he was very young. He has one older brother named Jason. His parents taught him how to speak Korean growing up and when he was 17 he left to go to Korea to debut as a part of Fly to the Sky with Hwanhee under SM Entertainment. It says in a lot of his biographies that he attended Rutgers University for a year before going to Korea, but that actually is not true. He was accepted to Rutgers, but never went, but he did go to college in Korea and graduated. After their contract was up, they decided to move to a different company because they disagreed with how SM was marketing FTTS and they didn’t think that the whole SM Town vibe fit well with an R&B duo. It was around this time that Brian released his first album The Brian (2006).
After this he continued with Fly to the Sky for awhile, but started to run into a bit of a rough patch. He started to feel a little insecure and underappreciated within the group and this led to some tension between him and Hwanhee. Although this was a tough time in his career, he did get through it and the two are now on good terms again and are still close friends. They are both very supportive of one another.
In 2009, Brian and Hwanhee decided to take a break from their FTTS activities to concentrate on their solo careers. In December 2009 Brian released his second solo album Manifold. In March 2010, Brian did the Korean cover of Jason Derulo’s “In My Head”, after being approached by Jason to do it. During this year, he was also a part of 3rd Wave, a Christian group in which Brian was asked to be the main vocal. Together with other artists such as Choi Siwon of Super Junior and Van Ness Wu, 3rd Wave released an all English album entitled I Will Be There. Over his career, Brian has also released a number of singles for OSTs, solo and with other artists.
He has also been very well known for making his way around the variety show circuit as well as being the MC for various shows. He has many friends in the business so it is not uncommon to see him taking pictures with, or talking with many other artists. One of his closest friends in the business is Choi Siwon and he and Brian hang out a lot. Brian has two nieces and is very close with his family even though he doesn’t get to see them very much. He also has three dogs: Chester, Jersey, and Beckham (they are all Maltese). Beckham is the newest addition and was a gift for Brian’s birthday this past January.
Brian released his first mini-album, Unveiled, on April 7, 2011, an album he had been working on since around October 2010. The title track and single from this album is “사랑하다 끝났어” where Brian tried to show a more serious and emotional side. A few months later, during the summer, Brian successfully completed his first US club tour.
In late August 2011, Brian made his musical debut in RENT, playing the character of Mark.
MV links:
1 year ago
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