Group CORTIS member James celebrated his birthday on the 14th by gifting fans, known as COER, with a special video. CORTIS James birthday content was unveiled at midnight through the team’s official YouTube channel, featuring a cover music video of the American hip-hop duo Paris Texas’s track ‘‘[BDAY Project] Paris Texas – Everybody’s Safe Until…’’ with footage filmed directly by James.
Demonstrating his status as the team’s ‘idea bank’ and ‘young creator crew’ member, James took charge of the entire production process, including song selection, choreography creation, direction, and editing. The video conveys the theme that ‘to be reborn, one must fight the past self.’ In the footage, James holds a vintage camcorder, engages in a tense standoff with himself in an alleyway, and delivers self-choreographed action moves paired with intense facial expressions.
Adding a playful twist to the heavy, short-film-like atmosphere, a ‘October 14’ subtitle and a mischievous ‘It’s my birthday’ voice appear near the end. Despite the busy schedule of their first summer tour ‘PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN,’ James communicated closely with the filming crew, directing camera angles and special effects, which proudly earned him the credit ‘Directed and edited by JAMES.’
Following James as the catalyst, CORTIS plans to successively release individual, unique self-produced content for each member’s birthday. Meanwhile, CORTIS achieved remarkable success with their second mini-album ‘GREENGREEN’ released last May, surpassing 500 million cumulative streams on Spotify as of October 12 and selling over 4.35 million copies on the Circle Chart. Having firmly established themselves as global trendsetters, the group is set to perform back-to-back at ‘The 18th Melon Music Awards, MMA2026’ at the Seoul Gocheok Sky Dome on November 14-15 and the ‘2026 MAMA AWARDS’ at Kyocera Dome Osaka on November 20-21.
