WOODZ has put a number on what the viral resurgence of “Drowning” meant for his career, revealing on JTBC’s “Knowing Bros” that his royalties jumped more than tenfold after the song took off. The singer-songwriter appeared on the October 31 broadcast of the long-running variety show, episode 549, alongside veteran singer Lee Seung-chul, with Noeul’s Kang Kyun-sung joining as a guest “brother” for the day.
During the episode, WOODZ introduced “Drowning” as a mega-hit that reached No. 1 on both the music charts and the karaoke charts. He explained that while he made the song with friends, he wrote the lyrics on his own. When cast member Lee Sang-min asked whether he had become a full member of the music copyright association, WOODZ answered honestly that he had not yet, saying he still needed to accumulate more. Even so, he said the difference in his royalty income before and after the video that sparked the song’s resurgence was “more than tenfold,” drawing surprised reactions from the cast.
Asked by Seo Jang-hoon whether a single song could earn tens of billions of won, WOODZ deflected the headline figure and pointed instead to the halo effect. The success of “Drowning,” he said, lifted interest in his other songs as well, spreading the benefit across his catalog rather than stopping at one track. It was a measured answer from an artist who has built his reputation as a self-producing singer-songwriter, and it framed the windfall as a career-wide shift rather than a one-song lottery win.
WOODZ also revisited the performance that started it all: his turn on the Armed Forces Day special of “Immortal Songs” while he was still serving in the military. He admitted he had not expected that stage to explode the way it did. His condition was poor that day, he said, and life as a soldier — with a routine built around preparing for lights-out at 9 p.m. — meant his voice was not ready when it was time to sing. He recalled thinking he was in trouble as he worked to warm up, and said the furrowed expression he wore on stage may ironically have made the performance feel more desperate and affecting.
The story behind “Drowning” has become one of the defining chart reversals in recent K-pop history. The track was released in April 2023 as part of WOODZ’s fifth EP “OO-LI,” where it initially sat as a b-side rather than a promoted title track. It began climbing in late 2024 after a clip of WOODZ performing it in military uniform went viral, and it kept rising until it reached No. 1 on Melon’s Top 100 in May 2025 — roughly two years after its release. The song went on to top Melon’s 2025 year-end chart as well as the Circle year-end tally, and Genie Music named it the most-streamed song of 2025 on its platform.
The longevity of the run has been just as remarkable as its peak. In May 2026, WOODZ’s agency EDAM Entertainment confirmed that “Drowning” had spent 70 consecutive weeks in the top 10 of Melon’s Top 100, the longest such streak in the chart’s history. The previous records belonged to NewJeans’ “Hype Boy” at 49 weeks and BTS’ “Dynamite” at 36 weeks, putting the scale of WOODZ’s run into perspective. For a song that began life as an album track, the numbers describe a rare second life driven almost entirely by a live performance and word of mouth.
That second life unfolded while WOODZ was away from the spotlight. He enlisted on January 22, 2024, serving in the Army band, and completed his service on July 21, 2025. The viral performance and the chart climb happened during that service period, meaning the song’s biggest moment arrived while its singer could not actively promote it. The “Knowing Bros” appearance is therefore something of a closing of the circle: the artist finally narrating, in his own words, the commercial reality behind a phenomenon he watched unfold from inside the military.
WOODZ, whose real name is Cho Seung-youn, debuted in 2014 as a member of the boy group UNIQ before launching his solo career under the WOODZ name in 2018. He moved to EDAM Entertainment and has taken part in writing and composing his own material throughout, including all seven tracks on “OO-LI.” After his discharge, he wasted no time: he released his first full-length solo album “Archive. 1” in March 2026, with all 17 tracks self-composed, and embarked on a world tour spanning more than 17 cities across Asia, Europe, and North America.
No official statement from EDAM Entertainment accompanied the broadcast, and the royalty figure itself came from WOODZ’s own remarks on the show rather than a formal disclosure. What comes next for the singer is a catalog with a proven long tail: a song that topped the year-end charts two years after release, a record-breaking top 10 streak, and now a public account of how dramatically that reversal changed his income. If “Drowning” proved that a great performance can rewrite a song’s fate, WOODZ’s latest appearance shows an artist still reckoning with just how much it rewrote his own.
