MAMAMOO's 'Coloring' Remake Project Marks a Decade with a New Model

On January 21, 2025, MAMAMOO released the first volume of Coloring, a two-part remake album marking the group's tenth anniversary. The project presented four of their landmark songs — "Hip," "Um Oh Ah Yeh," "Starry Night," and "Rainy Season" — reinterpreted by eight artists selected through an open public competition that drew 207 applicants.

The release was not a typical anniversary package. It was a structured argument about MAMAMOO's place in Korean music — an argument made not through retrospective celebration but through the act of inviting other artists to occupy the songs and demonstrate their durability in unfamiliar hands.

A Decade Built on Voice: MAMAMOO's Path to 2025

MAMAMOO — Solar (Kim Yong-sun), Moonbyul (Moon Byul-yi), Wheein (Jung Wheein), and Hwasa (Ahn Hye-jin) — debuted on June 18, 2014, under WA Entertainment, now RBW. Their debut single "Mr. Ambiguous" opened with an a cappella section — an unusual choice in a market where debut-era acts typically led with choreography and production spectacle. The choice declared a priority: vocal performance before visual presentation.

The strategy took time to translate into commercial success. "Um Oh Ah Yeah" in 2015 became a sleeper hit, peaking at number three on the Gaon Digital Chart and establishing MAMAMOO as a vocal group with a distinct commercial identity. "Yes I Am" (2017) gave them their first number one on the Billboard World Albums chart. "Starry Night" (2018) peaked at their highest domestic digital chart position to that point, while "HIP" (2019) entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 96 — their first charting on that list — and "Dingga" (2021) continued a pattern of top-ten domestic performance across eras.

A decade produced, among other metrics, five Mnet Asian Music Awards, five Asia Artist Awards, four Golden Disc Awards, and four Seoul Music Awards. More meaningfully for the Coloring project, a decade produced a catalog substantial enough to be genuinely worth remaking — a catalog with songs that had entered the reference vocabulary of contemporary Korean pop.

The Competition Model: 207 Teams, Eight Winners

In September 2024, MAMAMOO announced a public competition inviting musicians to apply to reinterpret their songs for the anniversary project. The logistical parameters were generous: each of the eight selected artists would receive ten million won — approximately USD 7,300 — plus full production support covering arrangement, recording, and live clip creation. This was not a symbolic gesture. The financial and production commitment placed the competition in territory closer to a professional commission than a fan-facing contest.

Of the 207 applicant teams, eight were selected — a 3.9% acceptance rate that positioned the Coloring project as a curated exercise rather than an open-platform release. The four tracks chosen for Vol.1 each cover a distinct phase of MAMAMOO's career: "Um Oh Ah Yeh" (2015) for the foundational era, "Starry Night" (2018) for the commercial peak of their domestic charting, "HIP" (2019) for the global breakthrough, and "Rainy Season" (2017) as an atmospheric counterpoint from the mid-career period.

The color-coded subtitles assigned to each remake — IVORY, SKYBLUE, MAUVE, CHILLBLUE — extended the project's design logic into the track naming itself, signaling that these were not simply cover versions but curated placements within a visual and tonal framework. Vanilla Mousse took "Hip (IVORY mix)," D2ear handled "Um Oh Ah Yeh (SKYBLUE mix)," Sarah Chung delivered "Starry Night (MAUVE mix)," and the fourth artist brought "Rainy Season (CHILLBLUE mix)."

What the Song Selection Argues

The four tracks chosen for Vol.1 were not selected because they were MAMAMOO's most commercially successful songs in isolation. They were selected because they represent different registers of the group's catalog. "HIP" functions as aggressive, self-assured anthem-pop. "Um Oh Ah Yeh" is playful and retro-inflected. "Starry Night" is lush and romantic. "Rainy Season" is quiet and introspective. The range demonstrates that MAMAMOO's catalog is not a single-register archive.

This matters for the remake project's underlying logic. A catalog that can only be reimagined in one register — as, say, exclusively dance music or exclusively ballads — limits the range of artists who can credibly reinterpret it. A catalog that spans multiple emotional and sonic registers invites artists from different positions on the musical spectrum. Vol.2, released five days later on January 26, confirmed this ambition: former Pristin member Yehana's version of "Egotistic," traditional music vocalist Youngseo's take on "Starry Night," and singer-songwriter Jeon Min-kyung's interpretation of "HIP" placed the project's range in territory that extended well beyond K-pop's conventional boundaries.

Impact: MAMAMOO as Living Reference

The Coloring project's competition model generated its own cultural event before the music was released. MOOMOO, MAMAMOO's fandom, participated in discussions surrounding the competition, creating investment in the outcome that preceded the January 21 drop. The eight selected artists gained visibility that independent or emerging musicians rarely access through conventional channels — a side effect that positioned the project as infrastructure for the broader Korean music scene rather than solely an anniversary celebration.

The Korea Herald's coverage of the project described it as MAMAMOO "marking their decadelong career" — an accurate summary that undersells the mechanism. The Coloring project did not merely mark the decade; it demonstrated the decade's output by testing whether songs written years ago could survive reinterpretation by artists who had their own aesthetic commitments. The songs did survive. That durability is not automatic; it is earned through songwriting and production choices that prioritized longevity over trend-matching.

Future Outlook

The January 21 release positioned the Coloring project as the opening act of MAMAMOO's anniversary year rather than its conclusion. In the months following, individual members' solo activity — Solar's consistent variety presence, Moonbyul's ongoing releases, Wheein's art-adjacent projects, Hwasa's solo career — continued to sustain the group's cultural visibility across different audience segments. The structure of four members with distinct solo profiles and shared group identity had proven to be one of the more durable configurations in K-pop, generating continued engagement without requiring constant group activity. The Coloring project, in retrospect, was a statement that the ten years had produced something worth passing forward — and that MAMAMOO had the institutional standing to orchestrate that transfer on their own terms.