Damn Idol Episode 159
* * *
By the time Pin Point was performed, quite a lot of people had flocked to Gunam University’s festival livestream.
It was thanks to the news spreading in real time that Three Months One Hundred Days was singing a mix of every song on the album.
When people first heard the news, they thought Three Months One Hundred Days would sing non-promoted tracks in between their promoted songs.
But the reality was the exact opposite.
Aside from State of Mind, the promoted songs had been reduced as much as possible, and instead, they put their weight behind the non-promoted tracks.
Ordinarily, it would have been a baffling choice, but this time it was fine.
Because the songs were good.
-No, you guys were the only ones listening to songs like this? That’s selfish.
-;; You can buy the album too.
- hahaha Just finished ordering it.
-What are the songs between Résumé and S.O.M??? I want to add them to my playlist
-They’re Survival Tactics and We Made It!
-Oh, it was two songs?
-Yeah, they combined two songs into one.
-Am I the only one dragging the video back and looping track 1 forever? Gu Taehwan is so goodㅠㅠㅠ
It was an era in which listening to every song on an album had become unfamiliar.
So singers, too, were gradually minimizing the number of tracks on full-length albums.
But Three Months One Hundred Days did not hide their affection for their own album.
If no one could relate to it, it would be useless narcissism, but if they could, it became admirable pride.
-It’s nice to see them taking pride in their own album.
-Yeah, the songs are good. I should’ve given it a taste when it first came out.
Around then, Pin Point began.
Starting the title track from almost the very end of the song was an absurd thing to do, but Han Sion’s mashup—the technique of mixing multiple songs—was at an astonishing level.
The latter half of Pin Point connected so naturally to the latter half of State of Mind.
If you listened without knowing, it sounded as though the song had always been that way.
The song, which had begun from the interlude that Mary Jones had lavishly praised, moved onward.
Before long, it reached the chorus, then the group choreography after the chorus.
And the outro.
When the album had first been released, the TTs who listened closely to the songs had left many comments like these.
-I’m looping the part where Pin Point moves into Holiday.
-What is Ion doing!
This meant Han Sion had paid attention to the connecting section between Pin Point and Holiday.
But Han Sion’s intention had failed.
No, I Ion had failed.
To be precise, there had not been enough time to accomplish the intention.
So Han Sion had made the line he originally intended easier and included it on the album.
Han Sion thought of it as a decent success.
After all, what he had intended was an exceedingly difficult method.
I Ion reproached himself for having failed.
He already had little weight on the album, and he had not even managed to fulfill the role he was supposed to perform.
But there was no reason to leave failure as eternal failure.
Throughout the album’s promotion period, I Ion practiced Pin Point’s outro.
Not the version included on the album, but the original version.
Now was the time for it to be revealed to the world.
♬♪♪♪♪
The beat of Pin Point that had been flowing out suddenly grew faint along with the final movement of the group choreography.
Saying the beat grew faint was an odd expression, but there was no other way to describe it.
Because the effects that had been added to make the sound fuller vanished, leaving only the core melody.
And that was not the end.
The core melody composed by Mary Jones slowly began to break down.
The main loop broke apart, and the connecting notes disappeared.
The synthesized sound split into single notes, and part of the chord that had been developing the song vanished.
As if a song were being played on a shattered LP record.
At that moment, I Ion’s voice appeared.
EHm
— EHmm
I Ion’s voice seeped through the sound as it broke apart.
Some parts as humming.
We
-Other parts as words from the lyrics.
Ehhmmm Tonight
-And still other parts as a mix of words and humming.
In that way, I Ion’s voice breathed life into the melody as it thinned and scattered.
In the album version, this act had reproduced the original.
In other words, by inserting a voice into the scattering sounds, it had reproduced Pin Point’s main melody.
Then, as if slowly fading out, it connected to Holiday, which began with a similar chord.
In truth, that alone had been a sufficiently excellent track transition.
Perhaps Han Sion and I Ion, who had not been satisfied, were the strange ones.
But what they were showing now was beyond that.
I Ion was not reproducing Pin Point’s main melody.
By adding new notes, he created a new sound.
“……!”
“It’s Holiday!”
The TTs at the venue shouted.
Because Holiday’s intro had begun to be heard.
It was happening right before their eyes, but it was something like magic.
When I Ion’s voice was breathed into Pin Point’s sound as it thinned and scattered, it became Holiday’s intro.
The two songs did use similar chord progressions, but how was this possible?
And without the slightest sense of incongruity, at that.
Meanwhile, a leisurely yet solid drum sound slipped in.
The drums sounded while I Ion’s voice still continued, and at one moment, the beat burst out.
It was truly a perfect track transition.
-Wooooooah!
-Waaaaaaah!
With Holiday’s cheerful beat and the audience’s cheers as the backdrop, Gu Taehwan’s opening began.
Today is a good day
Good day,
Start the car
The song continued as they lightly danced the choreography made by Choe Jaeseong.
The sky is blue
The clouds are white
The feeling is you and I
After singing, I Ion grinned and stepped back.
Holiday, Summer Cream. Apiary.
With three easy-listening songs, the middle-to-late portion of the album was the section the general public liked most.
In the section where Onsaemiro went forward and I Ion stepped back, Han Sion and I Ion’s gazes met.
The two looked at each other and grinned.
‘Not bad, right?’
‘It was perfect.’
Their emotions were exchanged.
During the filming of Coming Up Next, Han Sion had once made the members of Three Months One Hundred Days record a C chord.
And when he played them all at once, I Ion’s voice alone stood out conspicuously.
The reason he had done such a thing was to prove that I Ion’s tone was too rough-edged to blend in.
In a way, it was cruel.
But Han Sion, who was sincere about music, had no choice but to notify his teammates of the problem.
However, Han Sion at the time had not said everything he knew.
I Ion’s tone definitely stood out.
It did not blend in.
But once he reached a certain level of skill, I Ion’s tone could be called this.
‘An unrivaled tone.’
However, Han Sion had thought I Ion would not be able to reach that point.
Even for Han Sion, it had taken a long time to hit the exact notes with his voice.
He had thought there was no way I Ion, who had not even regressed, could reach it through painstaking effort.
But Han Sion was wrong.
I Ion still could not handle many parts on the album, and he was not assigned ordinary verses.
In order for I Ion’s voice to shine, they still had to adjust the beat’s EQ, and they had to pay attention to placement.
In the past, such actions had been consideration meant to hide a weakness.
But now it was different.
They were devices meant to emphasize a strength.
Because as long as those devices existed, I Ion’s voice could become an unrivaled tone.
It would be impossible on the second album, but by the time they released the third album…….
‘Ion-hyung’s voice might be able to determine the color of the album.’
Han Sion thought that.
Now Three Months One Hundred Days contained two elements needed for a masterpiece.
Gu Taehwan, who created the best intros.
I Ion, who created the best track transitions.
And.
There was a vocalist who had reached the highest level through countless regressions.
* * *
[Gunam University Festival Three Months One Hundred Days Fancam]
[The Idol Who Performed Every Song on Their Album Today]
[The Singer Hired for an Event Who Put On an Album Concert?]
Three Months One Hundred Days’ performance, in which they sang thirteen songs over thirty-seven minutes, became a major topic of conversation.
The live video of Summer Cream that people had been expecting all this time immediately began racking up a huge number of views.
But that was not all.
[Is This Possible? I Ion Creates a Melody with His Voice]
Because of his outstanding looks, I Ion had been a member who quickly stood out in Three Months One Hundred Days along with Han Sion.
But he had never stood out musically.
Even while Onsaemiro made his name through Masked Singer, Choe Jaeseong through Stage Number Zero, and Gu Taehwan as a master of openings.
So today’s fancam had a bigger ripple effect than expected.
In particular, it spread quietly yet fiercely through idol-related communities.
But because it was a fancam, there were also those who said they could not believe it.
-I’m not saying he was bad, but wasn’t there a lot of AR laid under it?
-Right lol Saying this is 100% live is just fan bias.
At the venue, it could be clearly distinguished, but through a fancam video, the AR and the voice could not be properly told apart.
But the day after the Gunam University festival.
Three Months One Hundred Days turned on a streaming broadcast on their official homepage for the first time in a while.
Then they presented a full-song live performance that was even more detailed than what they had shown at the university festival.
As if they had prepared for quite a long time, they were serious about it, even changing outfits.
On top of that, unlike at the Gunam University festival, where they had rushed on without any particular comments, they talked a lot about the songs.
[We didn’t have much time at yesterday’s event. Even that went over time, so it was hard to put in comments.]
In particular, Han Sion also added a detailed explanation of I Ion’s track transition.
[Actually, dominant chords and diminished chords are used for intensity, and since they have a tritone, they create instability, you know? In terms of things like that, Ion-hyung’s tone is…….]
-What is he saying?
-Just pretend you understand. He’s so passionate.
-Wow, amazing!
-Tritone!
-Diminished!
Most did not understand.
The live performance from that day was once again cleanly edited and uploaded to Three Months One Hundred Days’ official channel.
And in that way, activities for the album were slowly coming to an end.
Some said that ending promotions was hasty.
In Korea, album sales were slowing, but overseas, the weekly sales were instead increasing.
That meant there were people flowing in belatedly, and that the album still had plenty of life left.
Not only that, even the “slowed” domestic sales overwhelmed the album sales of most singers, excluding first-week sales.
But in any case, Three Months One Hundred Days had made their decision, and welcome news was also delivered to the fans.
The fan signing schedule would be announced within the week, and they would hold a concert in line with the date Choe Jaeseong’s Stage Number Zero ended.
* * *
When Stage Number Zero began, it had been described grandly, but its format was simpler than expected.
Once the regional preliminaries ended, it was Stage Number 100.
That did not mean exactly one hundred people remained, and because there were people classified similarly, there were about one hundred thirty of them.
From there to Stage Number 50, it proceeded as a group song mission, and from 50 down to 25, it was a duet mission.
They called it a duet, but it was no different from going head-to-head one-on-one.
And so they arrived at Stage Number 25.
From here on, each individual had to show their ability as a solo singer, and it was also around the time when agencies started nibbling with scouting offers.
Choe Jaeseong, naturally, made it safely to Stage Number 25.
On the broadcast, he appeared as though he were doing his very best, but to be honest, it was too easy.
Choe Jaeseong was someone who received Han Sion’s directing every single day, matched Gu Taehwan’s openings, Onsaemiro’s high notes, and I Ion’s exact pitch combinations.
Most missions were easier than making guide tracks to record an album.
And around then, Choe Jaeseong was able to understand what Han Sion had said to him.
“If our members competed fairly on S.N.Z., you’d climb the highest.”