Damn Idol Episode 153
* * *
[M-MIXDOWN‖Sedal Baegil
–Colorful Struggle(K-pop Remix) & State Of Mind]
[M-MIXDOWN‖Sedal Baegil
–Pin Point]
[M-MIXDOWN‖Sedal Baegil
–A Cappella Encore]
-Looks like Ssaeng Show’s shifted its route to Sedal Baegil? Look at that upload speed.
-Who uploads a separate fancam for an encore stage too? lol
-They turned the stage upside down.
-lolololololol
-Wow, but this is insane. Look at them connecting K-pop Struggle – State Of Mind – Pin Point a cappella.
-Feels like they might’ve prepared it in advance?
-Isn’t it freaking cool when they start dancing while singing Pin Point?
-Yeah, it’s a cappella but I swear I can hear the beat.
-Lee Ion is so damn handsome.
-I think Gu Taehwan pulls off Hong Kong noir the best? Look at that punk-ass face.
-Fr. He looks like he’d fire a gun, pour gasoline, then toss in the cigarette he was smoking.
-I’m replaying the video endlessly. Is this what they call getting hit by the stan truck?
-Sedal Baegil fan club’s recruiting its second class. Join.
There is no real significance to placing first on a music show.
Do they give you money for first place?
No.
Appearance fees are the same for everyone on the broadcast, and calling it an appearance fee is generous when it doesn’t even amount to a fifth of the makeup costs.
So appearing on music shows was a loss by the logic of capitalism.
Then does placing first make your song climb the music charts?
That isn’t true either.
Because first place is already given to people whose songs rank high on the charts, so it means nothing.
And yet, agencies and singers still stake their lives on first place.
The reason was simple.
Because the industry’s perception changes.
Popularity and mainstream are different words.
In the Korean film market, a documentary film can take first place.
But that doesn’t mean anyone considers documentaries a mainstream genre.
They simply think that particular film was exceptionally popular.
Unconsciously, people had viewed Sedal Baegil that way until now.
Han Sion’s absurd composing ability, the luck pouring down as though heaven itself were helping, and Sedal Baegil’s skill in seizing it.
They had thought it was temporary popularity born from those things.
Of course, if one thought about it logically, it couldn’t possibly be temporary popularity, but human perception was not always decided by logic.
But the moment they reached first place on a music show, the story changed.
They became mainstream.
They became the ones running at the very front of the mainstream.
Agencies would analyze the reasons behind Sedal Baegil’s success and try to transplant them into the new groups they launched.
Trainees would take someone in Sedal Baegil as their role model and leap into the music industry.
And so…….
‘We’ve entered people’s perception of the mainstream.’
Seeing the flood of interview and broadcast offers pouring in, Han Sion was certain.
It was an achievement they had accomplished exactly nine months after jumping into the K-pop market.
* * *
While Sedal Baegil was taking their first music show win in Korea, something interesting was happening in America.
It began with Donald McGus.
Donald McGus uploaded praise for the album he had participated in through his SNS.
Up to this point, it was nothing unusual.
Donald McGus, the blues master, had always been someone who lifted up talented younger musicians when he discovered them.
If you were a fan of the blues, you were willing to listen at least once to music Donald McGus recommended.
There could be differences in taste, but surely Donald McGus wouldn’t recommend some artist who wasn’t even on the right level.
But people were disappointed after seeing Donald McGus’s recommended album.
-What is this? A K-pop album?
-Korea?
-Right. And though it mixes in English, it’s an album made in Korean.
-Is McGus broke now?
-K-pop nerds have been multiplying lately.
No, to be precise, they did not even listen.
Americans have a subtle tendency to reject the cultures of other countries.
They would insist otherwise, but the culture America accepts is limited to the Western sphere.
So many gave up on listening based solely on The First Day’s country of release.
Or they listened to the beginning of track one, and when a language they couldn’t understand came out, they turned it off.
The reason Sedal Baegil had achieved good results on Color Show was because they used perfect Billboard English.
Of course, those who listened to the album gave it glowing reviews.
-Don’t give up because of the language barrier. I stumbled onto this album and it’s insane.
-Korean artists did something like this?
-It’s incredible, isn’t it? Honestly, tracks 2 and 3 weren’t my taste. But aside from that, it’s full of crazy songs.
-I see some very familiar names in the co-composer credits?
However, their numbers were not large.
The same thing happened again.
This time, it was Mary Jones, who had been teased by Donald McGus.
Mary Jones was inferior to Donald McGus in terms of musical achievements, but she had greater influence with the public.
[Zion is a musician with tremendous talent. You can tell just from the fact that he chose my song as the title track. Maybe this is the Next Level of techno.
Ah, of course, it’s a bit of a shame that he collaborated with a museum-piece artist like Donald McGus.]
The playful hate speech between Mary Jones and Donald McGus became a minor topic of conversation, but once again, the response to the album was similar.
Mary Jones recommended it?
Huh? It’s a Korean album? And there are tracks made in Korean?
Not listening.
Even so, the small number of fans who liked Mary Jones listened to the album and left rave reviews.
In particular, they loved Pin Point enormously.
Mary Jones and the followers of techno actively agreed with the words Next Level.
-Crazzzzzy! Where are the other techno albums these artists made?
-There aren’t any.
-Why!
-Because these guys aren’t techno musicians.
-Then what do they do?
-This is an improvisation they did with Donald McGus at Seaside Heights. (Video)
-This is Color Show. (Video)
-Uh, wait, I saw that video making a huge splash on Reddit. That was these musicians?
-I watched Color Show before? Sedar was these guys?
But this, too, was only the opinion of a minority.
The next to jump in was Jankos Bolero Greenwood.
The master of pop-jazz brought up Sedal Baegil’s album more politely than the other artists had, but he teased Moscos.
Jankos and Moscos had always been close friends.
What Jankos joked about was their ranking on the Korean music charts.
Of all the tracks on The First Day, the lowest-ranked one was On & On, which had been co-composed with Moscos.
But the master of house was cool about it.
[That’s how house has always been. It doesn’t blaze hot, but it stays right there. Maybe that’s why it’s HOUSE.]
The situation began to turn in a strange direction.
A small number of Jankos’s fans listened to the album, and a small number of Moscos’s fans listened to the album.
But even if they were small in number, four musicians had already recommended it.
As their fans accumulated…….
-It’s like an album gathering the best tracks on Billboard.
-The language is unfamiliar, but there’s more than enough fun to be had listening in terms of genre.
-Is it okay for this many different genres to be in one album?
-Why wouldn’t it be?
-No, but are these guys the biggest names in K-pop? The tracks are one thing, but their vocals are no joke either.
Perceptions were changing.
-Who the hell is Zion that he collaborated with these people?
-Maybe he’s the son of the president of North Korea?
-It’s South Korea, you idiot.
-Chris Edward mentioned it. Apparently Zion was originally close with Chris Edward, and while filming the HBO documentary, Chris played Zion’s music for the masters he met.
-That’s it?
-They say that’s it?
-No, if that kind of crap is enough to get a collaboration, then anyone in the world could do it.
-Ah, that’s not all. Apparently he played them some damn good music.
Around this time, people who knew Sedal Baegil’s activities accurately began posting.
Not only Seaside Heights and Color Show, but even Coming Up Next came up.
In truth, the buzz made by Seaside Heights had already passed once before.
It was hard to bring back a past issue.
But if it was summoned again, it became an even bigger issue.
-Right! I’ve heard this song before on the Billboard R&B chart.
-Is there nobody who can tell me what Sedar Back Ill even means?
-Now I want this album. It’s only twelve dollars.
-Wow, I just discovered SBI’s Color Show. It was an incredible song.
Color Show had always been content that caught fire slowly and gradually.
The views on Sedal Baegil’s video began rising like mad, and…….
-HOT R&B SONGS...
2
2. Colorful Struggle
- Sedar Back Ill
-They re-entered Billboard.
Their ranking was even higher.
It was thanks to the remix version’s results being counted together.
In truth, because of the language barrier, it had not become popular enough to be counted on Billboard, but The First Day’s popularity was greater than expected.
There was no way Billboard Magazine would miss this.
[The Advance of K-pop with Eight Masters at Its Back?]
It received some criticism for putting the young composer Chris Edward on the same line as the other masters, but the article itself sold well.
They reported especially persistently on the collaboration process.
Because it was impossible to properly understand the situation from what was publicly known.
Chris Edward could play the song of a musician friend for the masters.
But the masters then made songs using that source, and the artist called Zion arranged them into K-pop?
And that made it co-composition?
Something was strange.
It felt as though a middle link was missing.
But the more Billboard Magazine investigated, the deeper into the maze they fell.
Because they said Zion seemed to have drawn out the collaborations by using songs that embodied their childhoods as bait.
Content an editor could not understand could not be printed in a magazine.
In the end, Billboard Magazine borrowed Donald McGus’s remarks for its evaluation of Zion.
[When I first met Zion at Seaside Heights, it felt like I’d been struck by lightning.
The guy was made of talent down to each and every cell.
If we’d stayed still after hearing music like that, there’s no way we would have spent decades making music, right?]
And so Sedal Baegil’s album began selling in America as well.
Alex of HR Corporation, Chris Edward’s manager and the first person to have had a point of contact with Han Sion, could only sigh in regret.
What if they had made and released an English version instead of the Korean version?
What if HR Corporation had promoted it?
Couldn’t they have easily sold a million copies in America?
But strangely, Han Sion had no great interest in entering America right away.
And so the issue that had begun through the masters’ SNS accounts and concluded through Billboard Magazine…….
[Sedal Baegil Re-enters the Billboard Chart!]
[Sedal Baegil’s The First Day! Billboard Magazine Proves It Was Co-composition, Not Sampling.]
Naturally, it was stirring up an enormous storm in Korea.