NMIXX's Lily Morrow Is Building the Most Literary Career in K-Pop
The 23-year-old singer-songwriter survived the 2009 Marysville bushfires and auditioned for K-pop Star 4 at 12. Now she reads 17 books a year, threads Greek mythology into pop songs, runs a 26-episode fan book club, and treats fandom as a two-way street—refusing to stay on the surface.
Image: teenvogue.com
She threads Greek mythology into pop songs and waits for fans to find it
Lily fills her songwriting with layered references that reward close listening. In "LOUD," the soaring love song from NMIXX's fifth EP *Heavy Serenade*, she worked in an allusion to Tantalus from Greek mythology — a figure eternally reaching for what he cannot have. In "Crescendo," she loaded the lyrics with musical terminology to mirror the song's romantic sweep, comparing a lover to a crescendo building toward its peak. Lily calls these details "little nuggets hidden in the lyrics," noting that fans might recognize them or look them up and discover something new. Either way, the references create a second channel of connection between artist and listener — one that operates beneath the melody and rewards the kind of deep engagement Lily herself brought to music long before she ever made it. She describes the impulse as leaving "little breadcrumbs" for attentive listeners, a habit born from years of studying the artists she admired.
She started a book club that has run 26 episodes and counting
"Lily's Lost the Plot" began with a question most K-pop idols never ask: why not? Reading has been one of Lily's defining passions since childhood — she grew up watching BookTubers and falling into fictional worlds. At 26 episodes in, the club has covered *Pride and Prejudice*, *Wuthering Heights*, *The Thursday Murder Club*, and films like *La La Land*, *About Time*, and *Parasite*. Most recently, she chose Jane Austen's *Emma*. The selections share a thread: stories about how people understand themselves, connect with others, and navigate growing up. During livestreams, Lily and her fans unpack privilege, toxic masculinity, grief, loneliness, and even the self-absorption that can accompany fandom itself — territory most idol content carefully avoids. "I'm such a nerd," she says. "Honestly, even if there was no one reading along with me, I'd probably still do the live and just talk by myself the whole time."
Her self-penned love song broke containment and became a queer fandom anthem
"LOUD," which Lily wrote for *Heavy Serenade*, is a synthy declaration of love she describes as "romantic but expansive." The lyrics flowed onto paper with surprising ease, she says, and the song quickly escaped NMIXX's own fandom. Fans paired it with fictional couples, beloved characters, Tumblr-era moodboards, and love stories far removed from the group. Many of the most popular edits centered on queer love, with listeners finding something familiar in the song's insistence on loving without apology. "In a perfect world, everyone can be free to love however they want, whoever they want, loudly," Lily says. "But unfortunately, that's not always possible. I wanted to help people going through that." For a self-described fangirl, watching her own lyrics take on a life in fandom spaces was unexpectedly emotional. "Seeing your own lyrics being interpreted in a fandom space," she says, "that really meant a lot to me."
She reads 17 books a year and carries them between music show schedules
Lily reads backstage at Korean music shows instead of scrolling on her phone. By mid-year, she had already finished 17 books — a deliberate shift from the previous year's approach. "Last year was more about the quantity," she says. "This year is about the quality." Her favorite author is Taylor Jenkins Reid. Books travel with her between schedules, a habit rooted in a childhood spent watching BookTubers and disappearing into fictional worlds. The reading feeds directly into her songwriting; literary references surface in lyrics, and the themes she gravitates toward in fiction — self-understanding, connection, the messiness of growing up — mirror the emotional territory she explores in her own music. She has been reading since before she could perform, and the two passions have never stopped informing each other. When she talks about books, she lights up the same way she does discussing music — with an enthusiasm that makes clear this is not a persona but a person.
She survived the 2009 Marysville bushfires and turned to music as an outlet
Lily grew up in Marysville, a town of a few hundred people in Victoria, Australia, where she remembers both freedom and difficulty. In February 2009, devastating bushfires swept through the region. Lily and her family evacuated as the fires destroyed much of the town. Friends were lost. Familiar places disappeared. In the years that followed, she lived with depression and anxiety, and her mother encouraged her to try music as an emotional outlet. What began as a way to process difficult emotions gradually became something more fulfilling. She sang constantly, performed whenever she had the chance, and eventually the family relocated to South Korea, where she was introduced more deeply to her mother's culture and began pursuing child acting and modeling. "I had a lot of sad things happen to me in my childhood," she says. "At the same time, I was living in a small town where I was really free to express myself and play."
She auditioned for K-pop Star 4 at age 12 and finished in fourth place
When Lily was 12, her mother spotted Australian auditions for the South Korean reality competition *K-pop Star 4* and encouraged her to try out. A short time later, Lily and her father were on a plane to Seoul. What followed was months of competition, televised performances, and the surreal experience of chasing a dream in the public eye. She emerged as one of the show's breakout contestants, eventually finishing in fourth place and signing with JYP Entertainment. More than a decade later, those performances remain online. Rather than cringe at them, Lily views the videos as a reminder of how long she has been working toward this version of herself. "Every awkward phase, every performance," she says, laughing. The continuity between the girl singing Alicia Keys on reality TV and the woman writing lyrics for NMIXX is something she sees clearly — both were trying to connect with people through music.
She treats fandom as a two-way relationship built on mutual respect
Before she was an idol, Lily was a fan — of Taylor Swift (she ranks *Speak Now* and *1989* at the top, though the list shifts daily), Noah Kahan, Phoebe Bridgers, and Slayyyter. Stepping onto the other side of the artist-fan relationship gave her a new appreciation for the people she admired for years. "I want to be a respectful fan to my idols," she says, "just as I want to be respected by my fans." She talks openly about what she is reading and listening to because those are the glimpses she always loved getting from artists she followed. "It's not just an idol and a fan," she says. "I'm a person as well. I have my own personality and interests, and I love sharing them with fans, especially when they can relate to me, and we can have cool conversations about them. It's one of my favorite things about being an idol."
Draws on source material published at teenvogue.com.
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