Lee Jong-hyun

It eventually became the 34th best-selling song in South Korea that year with 2,187,150 digital downloads.

Lee Jong-hyun (born May 15, 1990) is a South Korean musician, singer-songwriter and actor.

He was the former lead guitarist and vocalist of South Korean rock band CNBLUE.

Lee Jong-hyun was born on May 15, 1990, in Busan, South Korea.

His family consists of his parents and two older sisters.

He lived in Busan before his family moved to Japan when he was four years old.

His family moved back to Busan and he finished his elementary school and middle school there.

He was an ulzzang at "BESTNINE" alongside Mblaq's Lee Joon, fellow member Jung Yong-hwa, and Block B's Jaehyo before debut.

The talent scouter from FNC Music (currently known as FNC Entertainment) who visited Busan to see Jung, came across Lee in the street, and suggested him to audition at the company.

On his way to his audition, he met his current fellow CNBLUE member Jung at the Seoul Station.

They then met Kang Min-hyuk, also a current fellow member of CNBLUE, at FNC Music where they auditioned.

Eventually, only the three of them passed the auditions and Lee began training in bass technology at FNC Academy.

Before Lee embarked on his musical career, he was a judo athlete who won a gold medal in a judo championship amongst athletes in his hometown when he was in high school.

However, he decided to give up on sports upon realizing that this was not the field that he would excel in after losing in a match in just a few seconds.

He then started to focus on music.

At first, he learned singing, then piano.

Then, upon watching English singer-songwriter and guitarist Eric Clapton playing the guitar, he was inspired to learn to play the guitar.

Before their Korean debut, they debuted as an indie band, with Lee being the leader, in Japan in August 2009.

Jung Yong-hwa then took over his place following the band's Korean debut.

He made his acting debut in an omnibus movie Acoustic in 2010, followed by his television debut in the Korean drama A Gentleman's Dignity in 2012.

Lee debuted with CNBLUE in South Korea on January 14, 2010 with their lead single "I'm a Loner".

They made their major debut in Japan in October 2011.

Lee, together with Jung, composed many of the band's released songs, such as "Blind Love", "Lie", "Rain of Blessing", "Kimio", "My Miracle", "Come On", "No More", "These Days" etc., which all gained positive feedback.

"Come On" ranked number 5 on Oricon's Weekly singles chart while "Blind Love" ranked number 4.

"Get Away", one of his compositions, was used as the ending theme song for the Japanese broadcast of American TV series Gossip Girl.

Lee released his first solo single "My Love" in 2012, as part of the soundtrack for SBS drama A Gentleman's Dignity, which he starred in.

The song was written by Lee himself.

"My Love" debuted at number four on the Gaon Digital Chart.

The song earned Lee five award nominations, ultimately winning "Best OST" at the 2013 Seoul Music Awards.

In December 2013, Lee and his fellow label-mate Juniel formed a duo called "Romantic J" and released a digital single album titled "Love Falls".

Inspired by the movie Music and Lyrics, the song was compose by Lee, with lyrics written by Juniel.

The single peaked at #27 on the Melon Chart.

The duo subsequently promoted the song through

Mnet's M Countdown and SBS MTV's The Show.

He appeared in television dramas Orange Marmalade (2015), Lingerie Girls’ Generation (2017) and Evergreen (2018).

On August 2, 2015, Lee held his first solo fan meeting in Japan at the Tokyo International Forum and met with 10,000 fans.

Lee made his solo debut in July 2016, with the studio album Sparkling Night.

The album debuted at number seven on the weekly Oricon Albums Chart and number nine on Billboard Japan magazine's Hot Albums, eventually selling 13,529 copies.

Lee then embarked on the "Welcome to Sparkling Night" tour, his first series of solo concerts.

In August 2019, Lee departed CNBLUE after the backlash over a private direct message towards a YouTuber, and amidst allegations of him viewing illicit videos and having inappropriate sexual conversations degrading women in the Jung Joon-young KakaoTalk chatrooms, a part of Burning Sun scandal.