Damn Idol Episode 18
From their debut until now, Way From Flower had achieved success without any real ups and downs, but their debut song had only been so-so.
Not a flop, but a little below average results?
What made them rising stars wasn’t their title track, but the follow-up track from their first album.
When the company saw that the debut song’s results were ambiguous, they quickly switched their promotional song to the follow-up, and that had been a godsend.
That was why Han Sion’s song choice felt even more ambiguous.
Singing a girl group song, well, that could happen. If it was a choice meant to bring out his own uniqueness.
But wasn’t “Flowers Bloom” far too vague a choice?
Both in terms of results and the song’s distinctive qualities.
Amid the atmosphere of curiosity, the first to speak was composer Lee Changjun.
“Contestant Han Sion. Did you arrange this song as well?”
“No. My mentor advised me that this time, it would be better to sing the original song without any arrangement.”
“So you’ll be singing it exactly as the original?”
“Yes. Instead, I lowered the overall key a little.”
Lowering the vocal range made it even stranger.
That meant he wasn’t trying to show off refreshing high notes either.
Though if he had, it probably would have been tacky.
If it had been another contestant, Lee Changjun would already have thrown out a negative impression.
But the stage Han Sion had shown was far too intense for that.
The other judges had merely been surprised by Han Sion’s talent, but Lee Changjun’s impression went beyond that.
Because he had spent his life making a living through composition, he knew that what Han Sion had done was close to impossible.
He had arranged the bland chord progression of the original song with his voice?
It was absurd.
Even if one had the arranging ability to pull it off, actually performing it with one’s voice was an entirely separate domain.
“To be honest, I find it puzzling. But I am looking forward to it.”
So he had no choice but to say that.
Unexpectedly, the one who gave harsh criticism was CEO Choe Daeho.
“I won’t mention the singing. With Contestant Han Sion’s skills, it’s worth looking forward to without question. But from a performance standpoint, I can’t say I’m expecting much.”
When several contestants nodded, Choe Daeho added an explanation as if speaking to the viewers.
“As the name suggests, ‘Flowers Bloom’ has many point choreographies shaped like flowers blooming.”
Even the intro began with the members crouched like flower buds, then scattering as though blooming.
“It’s choreography that’s difficult to express alone. A flower doesn’t bloom just because a single petal trembles.”
Blue cut in.
“Rather than explaining it here, wouldn’t it be better to see it directly onstage?”
“Yes. That’s true. I got a little ahead of myself before even watching the stage.”
When Choe Daeho readily acknowledged it, trainer Yu Seonhwa, who had been preparing a comment, also closed her mouth.
Once the atmosphere settled like that, Han Sion, standing on the stage, took one step back.
Standing right in the center of the stage, Han Sion grinned.
It wasn’t an intentional smile.
He had smiled without realizing it.
Because he thought the stage would be fun.
Seeing that smile, Choe Daeho felt something particular.
Han Sion’s usual atmosphere had a strangely damp feeling to it.
Even though his actions and words weren’t like that at all, there were times when he looked gloomy, and he also gave off a somewhat obsessive air.
But in this moment, when he stepped onto the stage, he was different.
He shed the outer shell that surrounded him and showed the real thing.
Only onstage.
‘That’s the kind of thing that drives people crazy.’
At that moment, the MR of the competition song began to play.
* * *
When I was young, I wanted to be a genius.
When the name Han Sion came up, I wanted to hear people say, “He’s a genius.”
Of course, I wasn’t a genius.
But I did have enough talent to act like a genius, pretending to be special.
To be honest, during the early regressions full of dark history, I think I did act like a genius a bit.
Back then, I was a brat, I was young, and regression hadn’t become that painful yet.
I think I even thought of it like a game where I had unlimited coins.
But as time passed, as my musical skills grew, and as regression became burdensome, I realized something.
A genius isn’t someone who makes special things special.
A genius is someone who makes obvious things obvious.
Rather than someone who creates a sound that doesn’t exist in the world with an instrument they never even learned, the real genius is the person who uses every playing technique they learned that day as if it were only natural.
The people who had called me a genius after seeing my genius act had only been paying lip service.
Or else they were empty husks who didn’t even have the ability to judge what a genius was.
From then on, I became a real genius.
Because if I buried every trial and error other people didn’t know about in my past lives, only the obvious things remained.
Especially in composition.
I don’t compose through flashes of instinct or genius improvisation.
I simply choose the most appropriate thing from among everything I’ve already expressed before and use it.
It’s just that the harvest inside my composition farm is dozens of times greater than other people’s.
That was why.
♬♪♪♩~
The moment I heard Way From Flower’s debut song, “Flowers Bloom,” I was able to realize it.
‘This…….’
It’s a man’s song.
The elements that make up the main melody and the chord progression of the whole song are like that.
“Flowers Bloom” was clearly made for a male vocalist.
But for some reason, during the production process, they raised the overall pitch and turned it into a girl group song.
The problem was that the difference in quality between the man version and the woman version was enormous.
If the woman version was a 40-point song, I felt like the man version could get more than 80 points.
Could that much of a difference happen simply from raising the vocal range?
It absolutely could.
Stacking notes is an extremely delicate task.
A major chord gives a bright and positive feeling.
A minor chord gives a dark and sad feeling.
But a C major chord is do-mi-sol, while a C minor chord is do-E flat-sol.
Just one flat note makes it feel like the complete opposite.
So raising the pitch of the entire song was truly an ignorant thing to do.
Of course, there were some partial arrangements made to suit a woman’s vocal, but honestly, they were as good as nonexistent.
I don’t know why they ruined a good song, but honestly, I’m not interested either.
Maybe the composer got offended and acted self-destructively, or maybe there were some circumstances related to money.
What matters to me is that the man version of “Flowers Bloom” is a very good song.
That’s why I’m singing it.
Way From Flower expressed “blooming” with this song, but……
I intend to express something else.
* * *
The intro to “Flowers Bloom” was a cold melody, with the sound of the flute giving off a chilly feeling.
It signified winter before the flowers bloomed.
But winter does not last forever, and spring comes.
The moment the kick drum announcing the end of the intro struck, the warm main melody poured out, and flowers bloomed.
The choreography was the same.
In time with the cold intro, the members, gathered together like flower buds, gently bloomed.
When they had fully bloomed, the choreography symbolizing spring began together with the kick drum striking on the first beat.
But that was the original choreography.
“……?”
Han Sion did not make a single movement during the intro.
He simply stood at a slight diagonal, nodding his head to the beat.
‘What is this? Original choreography?’
‘Is he insane?’
When covering a current senior artist’s stage, taking the choreography in a different direction could be interpreted as saying that the existing choreography wasn’t good.
Even if he himself had no such intention, Way From Flower’s fans would take it that way.
There was no way he wouldn’t get cursed at.
The moment the contestants thought that, the kick drum announcing the end of the intro landed with a boom.
At the same time, Han Sion began to move and started singing.
Put a period on the long night
At last, greet the world, Hi
Dudu-Deh, Deh
Several thoughts flashed through the minds of the people watching the stage.
The first thought was that he was good at dancing.
It wasn’t as if he had shown an incredible dance move.
How many flashy movements could there be in a song that had only just started?
Despite that, the reason his dancing skill was visible at a glance was because it was a solo dance.
There was nothing to deceive the eye, yet it looked natural.
On top of that, considering that he was showing stable live vocals even while dancing, it meant he had practiced.
Yesterday, something I’d never even dreamed of
Today, the day I waited for, Yes For Day
Stretch out both arms
Dudu-Deh, Deh
But what was more intense than Han Sion’s dancing was the song.
The song was good.
During the first phrase, it had definitely sounded a little awkward.
Because a low note that was completely different from the original song everyone knew had struck their ears, there had been a sense of dissonance.
But that dissonance disappeared quickly, and the melody began to stick in their ears.
The sound was attractive.
Far more than the original.
As if this were the original song.
‘What is this?’
It was different from “Under the Streetlight.”
Back then, the MR had stayed the same, and he had sung the song differently.
But right now, both the song and the MR were the same.
He had simply lowered the octave, and the feeling the vocal gave had changed to match the lowered octave.
Originally, “Flowers Bloom” was a song sung brightly, like a blooming flower.
But Han Sion’s song now felt calm and blue.
Though the genre was completely different, it was similar to the fun that post-Britpop gave.
Could he create this feeling with just an octave change?
What else had he done?
The warm temperature surrounding me
And your hand brushing against my skin
But no.
This time, he had really only changed the scale.
However, he had not lowered every part of the song evenly.
The intro, where the flute was the main focus, stayed exactly as the original.
The first two measures were lowered by a perfect octave.
The next two measures by eleven semitones.
The next two measures by seven semitones.
The next two measures returned to the original.
The clothes that wrap me softly
The softness that fills me, softness
In truth, Blue had been a little dumbfounded when he saw what Han Sion had done.
He had told him to sing the original without arranging it, but how was this any different from an arrangement?
To that, Han Sion had asked in return how it could be called an arrangement when he hadn’t touched the sheet music at all.
All of it must have been for today
For today, it must have been, it must have been
Meanwhile, the song began to move toward the chorus.
A large reason Way From Flower had failed to achieve meaningful results with “Flowers Bloom” was that the chorus was ordinary.
Honestly, it was a little tacky too.
Because it split the beat squarely and repeated words that seemed plausible.
But Han Sion did not repeat them.
Bloom!
Bloom!
“……!”
The chorus was the original.
The scale he had lowered returned to where it had been, shooting upward.
The auditory pleasure produced by Han Sion’s high note, cleanly raising a woman’s key in full voice, was tremendous.
Amazingly, this was not an arrangement either.
Originally, six members were supposed to take turns singing “Bloom, bloom, bloom. Bloom, Bloom, Bloom” like an echo.
Along with choreography where six petals spread wide open.
But Han Sion was alone.
So he had stretched the note out and sung it just once.
And yet, it sounded far too convincing.
But this was not the end.
An even more shocking second hook was waiting for the people.
Was it more dazzling?
No.
Did he burst into an even higher note?
Not at all.
Always wait, Blossom
Always wait, flower
A low note that felt as though ice water had been poured over them.
He had dropped it by a perfect sixteenth, in other words, two octaves.
And yet it was astonishing that his volume had not died at all.
The low note reversed the atmosphere of the song.
As if the earlier high note had been a final desperate struggle, it swept the mood away completely.
Thanks to that, the judges and a few contestants realized it.
Han Sion was not singing from the perspective of a blooming flower.
He was someone unable to accept the end, crying out that he, too, wanted to bloom again.
Just before withering away.
A falling flower.