Damn Idol Episode 131
Album 1
2. The First Day
It was nine in the evening when I arrived in Korea, but there was somewhere I had to go before Sedalbaegil’s dorm.
Uncle Hyeonsu’s house.
Because today was my uncle’s birthday.
We had spoken often on the phone all this time, but it had been a while since I’d seen his face.
Was the last time when I visited his hospital room with the members?
“Hey, punk! I’m going to forget what your face looks like.”
“I’m sorry. You’ve been well, right?”
“Me? I’m still a hospital-bound ghost.”
“How did you fix your coordinates in the horizon coordinate system?”
“What?”
Ah, right. This meme hadn’t become popular yet.
Human memory really was strange.
Why was it that I remembered useless memes like this, but couldn’t remember the abbreviations Choe Jaeseong taught me?
Just then, my uncle pulled me into a tight hug.
“You little brat, you’ve been doing well for yourself lately.”
“I’m just working hard. Happy birthday.”
“Don’t say birthday like that. Makes me feel old.”
I grinned and handed him the presents I’d bought in New York.
I knew exactly what he liked, so they were all things that suited his tastes.
“But Sion.”
“Yes?”
“Why do all the clothes look small? Is it just me?”
“I bought them two sizes too small on purpose. So you can lose weight and wear them.”
“Even you are pressuring me to diet now?”
“Yes.”
This was genuine advice from a regressor.
If my uncle became able to wear these clothes, he would meet a truly good marriage partner.
I’d once been curious and asked to hear their love story, and it was a bit absurd.
When my uncle lost weight, he gained a strange confidence and was seized by an impulse to open his own private clinic.
So he went to a real estate office, and there he fell in love at first sight with the owner’s daughter.
What was funny about this was that when you repeated regressions, you usually witnessed randomness.
Like the comedian Burnett Adel, who sometimes got caught for a drunk-driving hit-and-run even though I hadn’t done anything, and sometimes didn’t.
But with my uncle, there was no exception.
If he lost weight, he always met my aunt. If he didn’t, he never did.
I had no idea what correlation there was between dieting and opening a clinic, nor did I know why a man with no money to open one would go to a real estate office, but…
In any case, my aunt was a good person.
It would be nice if they met in this life too.
“Uncle, should I get you a gym membership?”
“Hey, brat, do you think I don’t have money? I don’t have time.”
“If you lose weight, I’ll get you celebrity autographs.”
“I don’t have any celebrities I like.”
“Then just lose weight.”
“You little…”
As we were bickering like that, the delivery food arrived.
After setting up the food, I lit the candles on the cake I’d bought.
We sang happy birthday and started eating, and then my uncle spoke.
“But Sion.”
“Yes.”
“Can you really get celebrity autographs?”
“Why? Is there an autograph you want?”
“Not exactly, but to get an autograph, you’d have to meet celebrities. You can’t go on variety shows and stuff, can you?”
“If I keep working hard, something will work out.”
“For saying that, you sure keep stirring up trouble. After Color Show, what’s next?”
I’d never once told my uncle the details because I didn’t want him worrying for nothing.
But he seemed to know everything already.
Well, he was a smart man.
According to my father, my uncle was too smart to graduate at the top.
Studying was so easy for him that he only did it half-heartedly.
Though he wasn’t such an ultra-ultra-genius that he could place first even half-heartedly, more like an ultra-genius.
That was my father’s analogy.
“I have a plan.”
“Is there anything I can help with?”
“Just lose weight.”
“Hey!”
But there really wasn’t anything in particular I needed help with.
If I needed help, it would be a little later.
Probably about a month from now.
“So, if all your plans go well, what are you going to do? A world tour or something?”
“We can’t do a world tour already.”
We’d just promote like any other idol group.
Go on music shows, hold fan signing events, appear on reality variety shows, things like that.
We did have self-produced content, but until now, ours had always been used only functionally.
Whether it was to create provocative issues or to carry out political maneuvers against Ryan Entertainment.
Of course, we’d filled it with enough popular entertainment value, but after looking at the official homepage, I saw that the fans also wanted smaller, more everyday moments.
Not just the before-and-after of some issue, but things that showed the chemistry between the members.
I agreed.
I needed to experience things like that, and the members wanted to do things like that.
It was a point where our opinions aligned.
“Still, your face looks good. You’re getting along with the members, right?”
“Yes. They’re all good people.”
“If you have time next time, bring them over. I’ll buy you something tasty.”
“When you lose weight, Uncle.”
“Hey…”
“I mean it.”
* * *
Inside Ryan Entertainment, there was talk of moving up the release schedule for Take Scene’s music video.
Of course, it was because of Sedalbaegil.
Whether Sedalbaegil had intended it or whether it was a coincidence, hadn’t Take Scene’s teaser been completely buried by the Color Show teaser?
There was no guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen with the music video.
So the suggestion was to twist the usual pattern by which Ryan Entertainment released music videos.
But this was rejected at Choe Daeho’s level.
The official reason was that the schedule had already been set, so they shouldn’t cause confusion for the artists.
But the real reason was pride.
It was unthinkable for Ryan Entertainment to run away from Sedalbaegil.
Since the Korean show business industry began in the 1980s, an artist had never beaten capital.
No, not just in Korea.
Even the famous Beatles had struck out on their own because they resented the fees they paid their agency, only to get burned badly and return to the embrace of capital.
So running away was out of the question.
The industry would make him a laughingstock.
That was what Choe Daeho truly thought.
Besides, perhaps it really was a coincidence.
The idea that Sedalbaegil could control the video release schedule of a giant company like Colors Media was highly likely to be delusion.
They could not change the schedule any further.
The debut, originally planned for late August, had been pulled up to July, then pushed back to August again because of Drop Out and NOP.
And so, on August 26.
Take Scene’s official music video was released.
[TAKE# ‘Scene Stealer’ Official M/V]
Choe Daeho and the other Ryan Entertainment employees kept their eyes fixed on the Color Show channel.
But even after thirty minutes passed, no new video was uploaded to the Color Show channel.
Last time, it had gone up less than a minute apart.
‘So it really was a coincidence?’
But historically speaking, “Did we get them?” was a magic incantation.
The distinctive Color Show background spreading in rainbow hues.
Five boys with their arms around one another’s shoulders, smiling brightly.
A team name written not as an English translation, but exactly as it sounded.
[Sedar Back Ill
– Colorful Struggle ‖ A COLOR SHOW]
A video had been released in which not a single thing failed to grate on his nerves.
Choe Daeho realized, to his surprise, that his hand was trembling.
“Fuck.”
He spat out a vulgar curse and calmed the trembling.
Then he moved the mouse and clicked the video.
It began with Han Sion’s electric guitar performance; as the members entered one by one, musical elements were added, and at last the song exploded.
Colorful Struggle.
Absurdly enough, as Choe Daeho watched that video, he thought the music was good.
Countless thoughts and negative emotions flashed through him…
Even so, the song was good.
He simply couldn’t deny it.
* * *
Recently in the show business industry, there had been talk that while Color Show was an incredible piece of content, people were harboring excessive expectations for it.
It was because reporters had pushed out articles with overly provocative headlines in order to sell advertising clicks.
It was good that there was a lot of buzz, but the direction of that buzz was too sensational.
[Sedalbaegil, as Color Show’s First Korean Guest, How Much Must They Achieve?]
[What View Count Did the Japanese Musician Who Appeared on Color Show Record?]
Things like that.
If Sedalbaegil belonged to a major agency, the PR team would not have sat by and watched.
Media marketing originally required proper handling.
But Sedalbaegil had no PR team to handle the press, and the reporters wrote whatever articles they pleased like trucks with broken brakes.
This was a little dangerous.
When expectations were high, people were bound to be disappointed even by “decent results.”
Imagination was always more splendid than reality.
However…
Sedalbaegil satisfied people’s expectations.
This wasn’t about views or external results.
It was about the music.
-Dude, isn’t this insane? lololol
-Wow, that was sick. I’m someone who has zero interest in idols, but what are these guys? They’re this good?
-Do idols do this kind of thing these days? I’m not interested, so I didn’t know.
-No no, it’s just these guys doing this.
-They’re not even idols in the first place lol. Aren’t they just an indie band?
-But when I watched their self-produced content last time, Sedalbaegil seemed to think of themselves as idols. They said they wanted to become idols.
-Oh, really? Yeah, well, whatever they are, as long as they’re good at their main job.
-To think that young men from our country have shone on such a global program. It’s truly wonderful to see. However, I do feel it’s a shame that they used English lyrics instead of proud Korean lyrics.
-Ugh, uncle;; Who sings in Korean on Color Show?
-I’m falling for Han Sion’s guitar playingㅠㅠ
-I really like the part where Lee Ion starts by shouting. It feels like it opens up a blocked meridian or something?
-Is this song also made by Han Sion?
-Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
-Does this guy have a songwriting pocket attached to him or what? Every song he releases becomes a hit.
The views on Color Show began climbing like mad.
Along with that, the views on Sedalbaegil’s self-produced content, which showed the story of their Color Show challenge, also got pumped up.
The interesting point was that the view count of the video uploaded to Color Show’s official channel and the view count of the video Sedalbaegil uploaded to their own channel were similar.
This meant two things at once.
First, they had generated buzz domestically extremely well.
Second, they had failed to generate buzz overseas almost completely.
In truth, it was only natural.
From the perspective of overseas music fans, there was no reason to click a thumbnail video with an unfamiliar name they didn’t even know how to read and Asian boys they’d never seen before.
-Are these boys K-pop artists?
-Fuck. Color Show has really gone to the dogs.
As of 2017, K-pop’s status was that of a subculture.
Once a little more time passed, it would begin to move out of the subculture position and into the mainstream, but not yet.
Because of that, quite a few people left critical comments without even watching the video.
-No no. Friends, watch this video.
-Craaaaazzzzy! This is insane!
-From the song to the production, it’s completely nuts. This is the best Color Show video I’ve seen so far.
-Can someone tell me where I can hear these guys’ hit songs?
-Why doesn’t this K-pop group dance? I really like their dancing.
-Because they’re perfect with the song alone.
-Can’t deny that.
The difference in temperature between those who had watched the video and those who hadn’t was far too stark.
But that only lasted a moment.
-Wait. Is this guy seriously the one who played with Donald McGus? He looks exactly the same.
-What are you talking about?
-(Link) It’s the video that turned Reddit and the forums upside down.
-Oh my God. What is this?
-It’s an improvised performance that happened in Seaside Heights. It’s insane.
Because Han Sion and Donald McGus’s improvised performance was in the middle of generating an incredible response in foreign communities.