When Dabin released Giggles in 2024, he was entering a completely different chapter of his life.
The album came after his time with DPR and captures a lot of what he was carrying into that transition. He looks back at growing up and feeling like an outsider, reflects on the years he spent building his career, and doesn’t shy away from the frustration and broken trust that came with everything changing. At the same time, Giggles isn’t all anger. There are softer, more reflective moments throughout the album, including instrumentals that give Dabin space to say something without having to put it into words. Taken together, the album feels like a snapshot of Dabin trying to make sense of where he’d been while figuring out where he wanted to go next.
(Photo credit: CTYL)
At the time, Giggles stood on its own as a look into everything Dabin had been carrying. But two years later, it feels different.
That became especially clear when Dabin returned to Head in the Clouds and performed as DABIN.KR for the first time. In the middle of his set, he paused to speak to the crowd about the last few years of his life. Rather than simply talking about the music or the new chapter he was entering, Dabin opened up about something much more personal: how much of himself he felt he had lost along the way.
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“The last few years, honestly, changed me a lot,” he told the crowd.
He went on to explain that toward the end of his chapter with DPR, he started losing his sense of self. For so long, he had been trying to become who he thought he needed to be for himself, his parents, his coworkers and the people around him. Eventually, he said, “I couldn’t really hear my own voice anymore.”
Hearing that now makes going back to Giggles feel especially worth it. The album came from that period of uncertainty, but Dabin wasn’t looking back on it from the distance he has now. He was living through it. You can hear that in the contrast between the confidence of songs like “Kiss The Ring” and “REC” and the much heavier emotions that come through on “Till I Live” and “WMP freestyle.” There’s also “Ghost K!D,” where Dabin looks back at his younger self and the experience of feeling like a ghost as an Asian kid at a predominantly white school, and “Anechoic Period,” an instrumental he created to represent finally taking a break after being overwhelmed by constant worries and trauma.
Even “Shower Song” feels different when you know what was happening around the album. What starts as Dabin talking through another exhausting week eventually turns into a moment of renewal, with the shower becoming a chrysalis and a place where he can leave some of the past behind.
None of these songs tell exactly the same story, and that’s what makes Giggles feel so personal. Dabin wasn’t trying to package one experience into an easy explanation. He was putting different pieces of his life into the same project while he was still trying to understand them himself.
That’s also why his HITC speech feels like such an important piece of the story.
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At the time of the album’s release, listeners could hear the anger, frustration and exhaustion, but Dabin’s words at HITC give more clarity to what was happening underneath all of it. He wasn’t only trying to move on from a chapter of his career. He was trying to figure out who he was without allowing other people’s expectations to decide that for him.
After he parted ways with DPR, he said he knew he had to start over. He admitted that it was “very big to swallow,” but he also described what happened afterward as a chance to reconnect with the person underneath the artist—not just one side of himself, but “fully me, you know, just me.”
That feels like the missing piece when looking back at Giggles now.
The album doesn’t suddenly become a completely different project because Dabin has entered a new chapter. Instead, his HITC performance gives us a better understanding of where that album came from and why it mattered. Giggles captured Dabin while he was still trying to process everything that had happened. DABIN.KR feels like what came after he finally gave himself permission to decide what was worth carrying forward.
And maybe that’s why revisiting an album from two years ago doesn’t feel out of place at all. Giggles was never only about what Dabin was leaving behind. It was about making enough room to hear himself again.
You can listen go Giggles in full here:
For more reflections on the music we can’t forget, click HERE to discover why RM’s Right Place, Wrong Person still feels like the album we needed.
