fromis_9 Returns With First Album in 3 Years, Every Member a Co-Writer

fromis_9 released their second studio album, Glow ME, on the 21st, their first full-length record since Unlock My World in 2023. The three-year gap between the two records has not been idle time: the group has moved through several lineup changes, contracting from nine members to eight and then to five, and what surfaces on this album is less a response to that turbulence than an absorption of it.

The album's stated theme is the process of discovering a self that emerges from difficulty at its most luminous. Park Jiwon, speaking through their label Ascend the day before release, described it as carrying the message that the full range of emotions encountered in daily life can become a source of radiance, and that the moment of accepting oneself as-is is the most brilliant of all.

The title track 'Vitamin ME' extends the group's established summer sound while deliberately pushing against its own familiarity. Baek Jiheon framed the song as something that maintains the group's identity while offering a new dimension to it, adding that being nine years into their debut made staying in comfortable territory feel like the wrong choice. That instinct toward productive discomfort is one of the more consistent threads running through the album.

What the record demonstrates most concretely is creative participation at a scale the group hasn't reached before: all five members are credited on each of the ten tracks. Baek Jiheon contributed lyrics to 'DAY 1'; Lee Chaeyoung wrote lyrics for 'Cold Blood' and performs it alongside Lee Nakyung. Park Jiwon took an afrobeats direction on 'Teacher,' a genre departure for the group. Song Hayoung, who worked on the composition of 'Screen Time,' said that when the session wrapped she felt an immediate certainty the track had landed. That kind of conviction, stated plainly and without hedging, is a useful indicator of how the members are approaching this album overall.

In Korean idol industry terms, full-member songwriting credits on a studio album are not standard practice, particularly for groups that have been with a label long enough to have an established commercial sound. Labels typically protect what works. The fact that Ascend appears to have given fromis_9 this degree of latitude suggests some confidence in where the group is positioned after nearly a decade.

Song Hayoung addressed the stakes directly: she said the team treated overall quality as the primary concern for a full-length album, that none of the ten tracks were made carelessly, and that she wants Glow ME to prove that the group can still show new sides of themselves nine years in. The group's fanbase, known as flover, has followed them through each iteration of the lineup; this album, in its structure and its credits, reads as a statement directed as much at them as at any new audience.

The album went live on streaming platforms at 6 p.m. KST on the 21st.