Damn Idol Episode 125
* * *
Knowing the future is a good thing.
The time when my heart raced and I felt thrilled at the thought of using future knowledge had passed long ago, but it was still convenient.
This was also how Sedalbaegil was able to secure an appearance on Color Show.
In about two or three years, Color Show would change the nature of its content.
From a static structure that laid out beautiful visuals and focused only on the singer’s song, to one where direction was added without interfering with the appreciation of the music.
I knew exactly what that felt like, and I captured it in our video.
So what happens then?
Colors Media’s strange trigger—the one that says even if they lose in music, there’s no way they’ll lose in visuals—gets pressed.
Well, this is only something you can do if the music is good too.
If you try something like this with half-baked music, you’ll only hear that you failed to stay true to the essence.
In that sense, Sedalbaegil’s Colorful Struggle came out far better than I’d expected, so I think we would have been invited even without using this method.
It just would have taken longer, from our standpoint, since we needed nonstop noise.
Because we’d be the first purely Asian guests—excluding Asians active in America—
and a K-pop group on top of that.
And that wasn’t the only advantage of knowing the future.
Didn’t someone say it before?
Those who forget history have no future?
It might not be a quote that fits my situation exactly, but I’m someone who has witnessed the history of the show business industry countless times.
How the public reacts to certain issues, what happens in certain situations, who becomes dissatisfied in certain structures.
There are differences in responsiveness depending on the scale of the situation and the individual’s disposition, but most things move along similar lines.
That was how I was able to obtain Take Scene’s old recording files.
Judging by the character of its head, Choe Daeho, and the structure of Ryan Entertainment, I had a guess as to who might sell me the recordings.
Choe Daeho probably couldn’t even imagine who sold them, but……
I’ll save that fun for later.
Anyway, like that, through countless regressions, I’d become able to guess the future of the show business industry to some extent.
But that didn’t mean I could overtrust it.
There were always exceptional situations, and exceptional people.
Like the members of Sedalbaegil, who displayed an unbelievable mentality.
And.
“No, what is this…….”
Like our fans.
“Uh…….”
I was truly flustered.
The incident began like this.
On Sedalbaegil’s official homepage, which we’d made to our tastes, there were quite a lot of spaces where we could accept opinions from the fandom.
Naturally, there was also a board where votes could be held.
In the future, it would be a space to select an album’s title track according to the fans’ opinions, or to post votes about performance schedules.
But that wasn’t the urgent matter for now.
It was the fandom name.
We had decided on the official color, but the fandom name, light stick, and cheering phrases had not been decided yet.
So the very first vote was held for the fandom name.
Naturally, the candidates were received from the fans as well.
But the one chosen as the overwhelming first place was.
[Regressors]
This.
“…….”
The reason it was chosen was clear too.
Hadn’t the team name Sedalbaegil originally meant a team for three months or a hundred days, including the B Team selection period?
In the end, we came to continue promoting as one team, but that was its first meaning.
So someone suggested it.
If you only promote for three months and a hundred days, then we’ll regress to that time forever.
I think it’s a good meaning.
But it’s a little flustering.
Usually, when you look at idol fandoms, they mix the group name with English and make something cool.
But of all things, Regressors……?
The members’ reactions to this were, if anything, cynical.
Especially Choe Jaeseong.
“It’s because you gave the group a sloppy name, hyung.”
“I did?”
“Wouldn’t it be because anything you attach to Sedalbaegil sounds weird, so it ended up as Regressors?”
“When I said ‘three months,’ didn’t everyone say it was fine?”
“That was because we were in front of the camera. Anyone could see you were B Team’s ace, hyung, so when you brought up an opinion, we were just doing office politics.”
That was how it had been?
I’d thought it was fine.
But it was too late to change the name now.
We had only just broken free of Ryan Entertainment’s influence and were spreading the name “Sedalbaegil” to the public.
Well, yeah. It’s not like anyone did it knowing the truth.
They must have just done it.
But now that I thought about it, it was kind of fun.
The fandom name of a team called “Sedalbaegil,” which hadn’t existed in this world until a regressor intervened, was Regressors.
It even felt somewhat fated.
Thinking that, I looked through the official homepage where the fans were posting their opinions, and as expected, they wanted additional promotions.
Honestly, I felt a little sorry.
Because there weren’t many opportunities for the fans to see us.
But domestic broadcast activities right now wouldn’t be easy.
Choe Daeho’s restraining influence still remained.
However, it was only “still.”
There wasn’t much left.
Once that restraint broke even once, we would pour out into the world like a burst dam.
In as little as one month, or as long as three.
As I was thinking that, Choe Jaeseong dragged himself over on his butt.
“But hyung, about Colorful Struggle.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“We’re not doing domestic promotions with this, right?”
“We might?”
“With the English lyrics?”
“I’m thinking about that a bit, but there’s a version tailored for the K-pop market.”
The version we would sing on Color Show was closer to R&B sensibilities, not K-pop sensibilities.
The verse and chorus weren’t clearly divided, and it had a strong flowing feel.
I’m not saying one is better or worse; I’m talking in terms of genre sensibility.
So there was a version arranged to suit K-pop.
I’d never made Colorful Struggle into K-pop before, so it was my first time attempting it too.
The members, who had been strewn all over the practice room, seemed to have heard me and gathered like flies swarming meat.
Wow, I guess I’ve been influenced a lot by Ion hyung without realizing it.
Reflexively, I thought, “Is it rude to call Ion hyung a fly?”
Is this K-etiquette?
Just then, the person in question, Ion hyung, opened his mouth.
“Then why didn’t you let us hear it?”
“It’ll confuse you. So I’ll keep not letting you hear it. It might influence the R&B version we’re singing on Color Show.”
“Uh, can’t you just let us hear the beat?”
“No. Your skills are lacking.”
Sedalbaegil’s skills had improved so much recently that they could get a rough idea of what it was like just from hearing the beat.
Since they’d been living with me, it seemed they were slowly beginning to realize how to listen to music.
But they weren’t skilled enough to grant objectivity and independence to their own value judgments.
In truth, it wasn’t an easy thing.
If you could do that, you’d possess an ear that surpassed most top-tier composers.
The fact that they’d become good enough to even aim for that in just a few months was astonishing.
“Now, now. Let’s just practice.”
After that, we sweated buckets in the practice room.
The stage we were preparing for now was our first performance.
There wasn’t really any other word to attach to it besides performance.
Calling it a concert seemed like it would be too small-scale, and calling it an indie performance seemed like it would be too grand.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure either.
So soon, we were going to conduct a survey on the official homepage about people’s intention to attend.
It would only be a simple survey, so there would be plenty of inflated numbers, but we had to decide the size of the venue.
I thought about 1,000 to 1,500 people would probably attend.
While I was devoting myself to practice like that, I checked my phone and found a welcome message from Chris Edward.
He said the songs had been delivered to all the masters, and that Yankos Greenwood had even sent a draft.
Since they were people in dominant positions in their respective fields, they were truly easy to work with.
They didn’t even consider the possibility that they might be scammed, or that there might be copyright disputes over co-composition.
It was because they’d lived for far too long in a world where management took care of everything as long as they worked on the music.
Thinking that, I downloaded the song Eddie had sent me.
To be honest, I didn’t have much emotional reaction to the song itself.
I had collaborated with them on compositions countless times, and I could roughly predict what kind of song would come flying in.
It wasn’t as if there were no random elements, but most of the results were completed within three or four versions.
In fact, in the case of a reggae master like Roots Robbie, there was a 99% chance he would make roots reggae.
There were times when he made moombahton too, but that was truly rare.
So Yankos Greenwood’s song would also likely be a version I had heard countless times in previous lives.
Thinking that, I played the song from the pop jazz master, but……
“……!”
I was startled.
Because a melody I was hearing for the first time in my life poured out.
What is this?
Critics reacted sensitively to whether something was pop jazz or jazz pop, but I didn’t really care about things like that.
As long as the pop elements and jazz elements blended beautifully, it didn’t matter which one took priority.
But Yankos Greenwood’s song this time was neither pop nor jazz.
It was something else inspired by the two.
Something that even I found difficult to define hastily by genre.
But more important than anything was the fact that it was incredibly good.
I understood what Yankos Greenwood had been thinking when he made a song like this.
He had brought out the feeling of his younger days, when he hadn’t been technically or methodologically complete.
But why?
I hadn’t received Yankos’s songs in every round, but I must have received them at least over twenty times.
But not once had he ever sent a song like this.
As I was thinking that, Gu Taehwan suddenly spoke.
“It sounds like our song.”
“What?”
“That. Didn’t you compose it?”
Originally, I’d only planned to listen to the intro of the song through my smartphone speaker.
Because I could tell what kind of song he’d made just by listening to the opening.
But I was listening to the song in surprise, and thanks to that, the members of Sedalbaegil ended up hearing it too.
But it sounded like our song?
“In what sense?”
“I don’t know? I can’t explain it.”
“What is this? It’s good.”
Listening to the members each add a comment, I realized the reason.
Why had I sent music sources to the masters?
It was so Sedalbaegil could stand on its own against Ryan Entertainment’s pressure.
In other words, it was a song made for Sedalbaegil.
That had influenced my music, and in turn, it had influenced the masters.
Thanks to that, music I was hearing for the first time poured out.
“…….”
Interesting.
This is interesting.
In this life, it didn’t seem like many things were going the way I intended.
Like how I’d planned to debut with Take Scene, but had chosen Sedalbaegil instead.
But that was precisely why, for the first time in a very long while, I felt alive.
Since Sedalbaegil’s independent activities began, I could hardly remember feeling regression depression.
“It’s a song that’ll go into our EP album.”
Since I was at it, I told them everything.
“Yankos Greenwood, Lucid Bean, Moscos, Eric Scott, Roots Robbie, Mary Jones, Donald McGus.”
“Huh?”
“These are the names of the musicians who’ll be participating in our EP album.”
I thought the members would be shocked out of their minds.
“They’re foreigners.”
“These days, there are a lot of collaborations between foreign composers and K-pop.”
“Right.”
But why was their reaction like this?
Was this an issue that could end with them simply being foreigners?
“Don’t tell me you don’t know who they are.”
“Are they famous?”
“……
No. They’re aspiring composers. Of course you wouldn’t know them.”
Just wait and see.
When it’s revealed that these people participated in our EP album, we’ll see what happens.
I think I’ll have to criticize them for being ignorant after that.
* * *
There were many ways to release teasers for an idol group, and each company had slightly different policies.
Ryan Entertainment’s teaser policy was one week before and one day before.
They would release the teaser in two parts, then release the music video.
And today was the day Take Scene’s debut teaser would be released.
In truth, there had been a lot of talk inside the company.
People said that although they knew there were many schedules already planned, shouldn’t the release be postponed?
But the schedule had already been pushed back once because of the clash between Dropout and NOP.
They couldn’t postpone it any further.
So even as they released the teaser, there had been a lot of back-and-forth about just how harshly they would be cursed.
But there were advantages too.
Because the more criticism came from the outside, the more Take Scene’s fandom would band tightly together.
And so……
[TAKE# “Scene Stealer” M/V Teaser 1]
The teaser was released.
But unlike what Ryan Entertainment had imagined, there wasn’t much cursing on the teaser.
Because……
All the attention had been drawn elsewhere.
To something released on the same date, at the same time.
[A Color Show Teaser]
To Sedalbaegil’s Color Show teaser.