Damn Idol Episode 115
After the heavily edited version of Résumé came out for entertainment value, the atmosphere of the self-produced content changed slightly.
It was because Sedalbaegil had begun practicing for recording.
In fact, the training conducted under Han Sion’s leadership throughout the week was difficult to capture in the self-produced content.
There were many tedious and repetitive parts, and it was a story difficult to grasp theoretically as well.
If that content had been included in its entirety, Korean vocal trainers would have protested quite a bit.
So in the self-produced content, all the difficult parts were excluded and the focus was placed on “practice.”
Because Sedalbaegil had truly worked hard.
-Wow, they practice all day.
-For real. How many hours has it been?
-This is my first time watching idol content; don’t other groups do this?
-No. Everyone works hard. But it’s rare to see a group focus solely on singing like Sedalbaegil. Idols have so many things they need to worry about.
-You mean like knife-edge choreography?
-That too, but they also have to communicate with fans, and variety shows, photoshoots, music videos, etc. There’s a lot to do.
-Why don’t these guys do stuff like that?
-Fuck
-Why are you cursing;; I wasn’t asking with bad intentions.
-Nah, it wasn’t aimed at you.
Before long, recording began at LB Studio.
-Wow, they sing fucking well
-So people calling them Vocaloid and whatever were just hating?
-It’s fucking hilarious that controversy even erupted over whether any group doesn’t tune their tracks. It’s just because of those has-beens, Drop Out and NOP.
-Now they just need to shove a news link in their faces and be done with it.
-Agreed lol
After that came busking.
When Sedalbaegil first did busking, they didn’t bring cameras along, but after being captured by news cameras, they filmed for their self-produced content.
Because if they stopped busking immediately after being on the news, their intentions could be seen through.
The busking content was quite fun, but fans focused on another part.
-Are our kids this unpopular?
-I know right; why are there so few people? There are really none except for the day-trippers.
-What do you think happens when other idols do busking? Not top-tier, but around second-tier.
-Second-tier? If they’re even third-tier, I think several times more people would gather than that.
Of course, there was a slight misunderstanding in their thinking.
Sedalbaegil had busked without any publicity and deliberately gone around places with few people.
But it wasn’t entirely wrong either—Sedalbaegil’s popularity had a strange aspect to it.
First of all, many members of the public knew them.
If you only looked at recognition, they were on the level of 1.5~2-tier.
Because they had achieved good results on Coming Up Next and on the music charts.
If you only looked at Han Sion’s recognition, he would probably be top-tier.
Especially since it had been revealed that he composed songs for NOP and Drop Out this time.
But regardless of recognition, their popularity felt somewhat low.
Because being recognized and being fanatical are different.
-It’s kind of like rappers’ recognition. Even if they blew up on Show Me the Money or whatever, they hang out well in Hongdae or Itaewon. Without caring too much about people’s gazes.
-Right. The vibe is a bit similar.
-Well, what can you do ㅠㅠ We have to watch what the kids are doing and support them.
-It feels like stanning an indie musician rather than an idol.
Around the time fans were having those conversations, the busking ended, and Sedalbaegil appeared on MBN News.
-lolol Someone sent me a Katalk saying my bias made it to the society section lol
-Me too lolol Turns out it wasn’t the society section but the culture section.
-Wouldn’t an idol reacting to the news be a world first?
And so Episode 2 of the self-produced content ended.
However, in the Episode 3 preview, the story fans had been waiting for came out.
[“Shouldn’t we communicate with our fans too?”]
* * *
Sedalbaegil’s dormitory was a detached house.
I had wanted to get one in Yeoksam-dong, near my parents’ house, but there were no suitable properties.
Turns out, before gaining popularity, idols’ dorms were really awful.
They said they would gather and live in semi-basements or one-rooms with cockroaches.
But well, there’s no need to do that when we have money.
I had looked for a luxury apartment or a detached house and decided on this place.
There was no special reason; there just happened to be a usable property for a practice room and studio five minutes away on foot.
Actually, I had tried to secure a practice room quickly, but I hadn’t given much thought to the dormitory.
In the first place, I understood that living in a dormitory was for controlling idols.
But since we’re a crew, the word “control” doesn’t suit us.
We didn’t even sign contracts, so whatever.
To some, it might look like I’m being a pushover.
I had spent no small amount of money on Sedalbaegil so far, yet there were no safety measures to recoup it.
In the worst case, even if the members excluding me left tomorrow saying, “We’ve decided to work with Ryan,” there would be nothing I could do.
Because we didn’t sign contracts.
Nevertheless, the reason I chose this method was because I am a regressor.
I had decided to go as far as I could with Sedalbaegil anyway.
I didn’t know how far we could go, but if we were to even get close to 200 million copies, it couldn’t be done through coercion.
Because creativity brought out through coercive demands has its limits.
If it’s not from one’s own ambition, passion, and desire to improve, it’s useless.
That was why I didn’t control them.
I got a bit sidetracked, but I thought the practice room was urgent; I had no particular thoughts about the dormitory.
However, because of Onsaemiro, I secured a dormitory as quickly as possible.
I didn’t ask in detail, but it seemed there had been conflict at home since Coming Up Next ended.
It was a predictable part.
Onsaemiro must be the first treasure his parents had ever had, so they would want to sell him dearly.
But since that treasure had chosen independence, how anxious they must have been.
Ryan Entertainment had probably caught onto this early and prodded Onsaemiro’s parents.
That was why I got a dormitory and extracted Onsaemiro.
Turns out, before the dormitory was secured, there were times he slept at jjimjilbangs or shabby motels and came back.
An idol can’t sleep in places like that.
At the same time, I gave him some advice.
“Scrape together everything from home—resident registration card, passport, driver’s license, personal seal, hell, even ID photos and your student ID. If you’ve ever written anything like a power of attorney, that too.”
“Why?”
“Because your parents might act hastily.”
Onsaemiro was still legally a minor because his birthday hadn’t passed yet.
The thought of “Surely they wouldn’t go that far” was useless in a capitalist society.
Because capitalists are the ones who’ve made money doing such things.
Besides, who knows if Choe Daeho might dig into this to attack us.
Onsaemiro made a slightly bewildered expression, but in the end, he came up to the dormitory loaded with bags.
“You don’t have a passport?”
“I’ve never gotten anything like that?”
“Then get one quickly. You never know when we’ll do overseas promotions.”
“Can we?”
“Of course. It’s easier than domestic.”
What I clearly felt while having this conversation was that Onsaemiro had shed much of his inferiority complex.
If it were the old days, he would have been embarrassed by the question about not having a passport, but not anymore.
Well, perhaps the Sedalbaegil members had become that much more comfortable with each other too.
The dormitory they moved into through this process was two stories and quite spacious.
The first floor had only one room, but the lounge area including the living room was incredibly wide.
The kitchen even had two large ovens, and while it might be a stretch to call it a garden, if you went out through the kitchen door, there was an outdoor dining space where you could have barbecues.
It was slightly cramped for five grown men to sit in, but it wasn’t to the point of being uncomfortable.
The second floor had one single room and two triple rooms—this was our dormitory.
For reference, I’m the only one who uses a single room.
This is the power of money.
To summarize, the second floor is our dormitory, and the first floor is a hangout space.
I had brought in things like game consoles too, and the speakers and turntables were extremely expensive.
But on Mondays, the first floor became not a lounge but a conference room.
Because I had made a rule that every Monday morning would be a crew meeting.
And today was that day.
Having woken up earliest, I was doing yoga and stretches on the first floor while refining my tone when Choe Jaeseong came downstairs yawning in his pajamas.
“So this is what an army reveille sounds like?”
“Go make some coffee.”
After that, the members came down one by one.
Usually, Yi Eon is the fastest, followed by Choe Jaeseong, Gu Taehwan, and then Onsaemiro.
But today, Choe Jaeseong seems to have woken up a bit earlier.
And so the members sat on the sofa in their pajamas holding coffee and toast.
I checked if the cameras were rolling since we might use this for the self-produced content, and just as I was about to start the meeting, Choe Jaeseong opened his mouth.
“But Sion hyung, why aren’t you wearing pajamas?”
“These are my pajamas.”
Sportswear is my pajamas.
“You should wear something cute for the fans to like it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Why indeed.
Because I’m a storied American who crossed the water from the land of machismo.
Personally, the thing I’m least confident about is acting cute.
If the fans like it, I’ll try, but I’m not sure.
Hmm…
If I were certain that wearing cute pajamas would sell more albums, I could wear them.
The members took their seats like that, and the meeting began.
No matter what team I lead, I tend to place importance on team meetings.
There can never be zero individual complaints about team activities, but if you manage them in advance, they don’t escalate into incidents.
First, we talked about our past performance and briefly discussed plans for what to do going forward.
“We’re going to do performances.”
“What kind of performances?”
“Indie performances, that sort of thing. Up until now we’ve only been guests, but we’ll be the hosts.”
“What’s the purpose? Money?”
“No. We need to figure out our fans’ tastes.”
I don’t really know who the main target demographic consuming Sedalbaegil’s music is right now.
In Résumé’s case, it easily topped the charts, but strictly speaking, that was noise marketing.
I attracted a ton of attention through the Narak Detector and revealed that we were related to Drop Out.
People curious about what the connection was flocked to our self-produced content, and we released Résumé there.
Luckily, Yang Seokhun turned our video into content.
We achieved number one easily thanks to that series of processes; who knows what would have happened if we had just released the song.
Because we’re currently in a situation where we can’t properly promote.
What proves this is the view count of Episode 2 of the self-produced content.
Narak Detector
- Episode 1 of our Independence Diary, which stood at the center of the issue leading to Drop Out, achieved 9 million views.
But Episode 2 of Independence Diary only has 200,000 views.
Of course, since it was released two days ago, it will gain more over time, but isn’t the limit around 300,000 to 400,000?
This will likely drop even more when moving to Episode 3.
So we need to check our fans’ tendencies through performances.
Whether those cheering us on are an idol fandom or a musician’s fandom.
But unexpectedly, all the members shook their heads.
“We shouldn’t check; we should make it that way.”
“We’ve been doing way too little fan activity.”
“We’ve been busy until now, but we have time now, don’t we? Shouldn’t we do real-time streaming and things like that?”
I was ready to listen.
In the first place, the reason I tried to do typical idol activities was because I lacked knowledge in this area.
But the members’ ensuing explanations were no different from an alien language.
Photocards? Top loaders? Etiquette shots?