Damn Idol, Episode 199
* * *
Title : STAGE
Artist : Sedalbaegil
Track : 13
Track List
01. Show must go on
02. Stage (Title)
03. 3AM
04. Passing Through Time
05. What We Drank Last Night
06. Back in time
07. Down force
08. One & Only
09. Winter Cream
10. You Know, I Thought About It
11. Dream Chaser
12. DuDuDuDeDe
13. Time Traveler(Bonus)
* * *
The moment Sedalbaegil’s songs were released at midnight, the buzz exploded.
As Han Sion had predicted, Lion Entertainment’s plan to settle things with first-week album sales went up in smoke.
When Sedalbaegil hadn’t released their digital tracks, the only metric for comparing the two groups had indeed been album sales.
But there was no way that would last forever.
The moment the songs were released, they could be compared by digital performance, and since they would be appearing together on M Show’s music broadcast, they could also be compared by the quality of their stages.
This was something born from the arrogance of a successful agency head.
As if the public were an entity that could be forced to gather and disperse at will.
With the situation turning out like this, it began to feel as though the curtain had truly risen on Sedalbaegil VS Mix Way.
‘Those bastards…….’
Choe Daeho thought Sedalbaegil had timed their digital release on purpose, but that actually wasn’t the case.
It was about time for them to release the songs anyway.
No, if anything, they were slightly late.
Originally, they had planned to distribute the album online in the second week after release, but unboxing the unit albums and the second full album had become a trend, so they had postponed it.
But once the third week came around and Mix Way began charging in, interest in the unit albums started to fade.
The only exception was Han Sion and On Saemiro’s unit On&On’s album.
The popularity of the unplugged album, which excluded electronic sounds and consisted only of pure instrumental sounds, did not fade easily.
It did not blaze up all at once like Choe Jaeseong’s album, which had led the trend, but it burned slowly and steadily.
As proof, On&On had already been occupying 7th and 8th place on the weekly chart for several weeks.
Because of that, memes that had started among Han Sion and Lee Ion’s fans began to spread.
-From now on, music chart rankings go 5, 6, then 9.
-I agree. 7 and 8 have been vested in On&On.
Thanks to that, something amusing happened as well.
Until now, whenever Sedalbaegil needed choreography, they had commissioned famous dance teams.
To dance teams, Sedalbaegil was a client that was enjoyable to work with.
First of all, because the person requesting the choreography was the company’s CEO, composer, and singer all at once, the communication process was simple.
On top of that, the songs were good.
For K-pop choreographers, whether a song was good or bad had quite a large impact.
A song that naturally made them excited when they listened to it would produce good choreography, while choreography they forced themselves to make for the money was often not enjoyable.
Moreover, Sedalbaegil was also a team that never complained about the difficulty of the choreography.
For all these reasons, Sedalbaegil and the dance teams were on fairly good terms, and they were especially close with the teams that had worked with them in the early days when they were being kept in check by Lion Entertainment.
Unlike the teams that had watched Lion Entertainment’s reaction in the early days and refused Sedalbaegil’s requests, only to regret it now.
But when these teams uploaded their own content on YouTube, they used “five, six, nine, ten” as their way of counting the beat.
There was no particular comment on the video, and Sedalbaegil’s name was not mentioned either, but it was still a signal anyone in the know could understand.
-Oh, didn’t Ms. Merry make the choreography for this comeback track?
-Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Feels like that signal.
-I wonder which song they’ll promote with.
-STAGE is confirmed for starters. It’s the title track.
-Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
-Isn’t it kind of iffy that people who make choreography for countless groups are openly favoring just one group like this....
-I kind of think so too....
-What are you talking about lol. When they make choreography for other groups, they upload cover videos of those too lol. They promote them and everything.
-Choreographers always say their most recent client is their favorite idol.
-That is called “capitalism,” kid.
-lololololololol
But for the public, for Sedalbaegil, and even for Lion Entertainment, music show promotions were secondary.
What mattered right now was the digital chart ranking.
-lololol wow, look at them lining up the real-time chart.
-But any idol group with some level of fandom can do that lol. We’ll know once it reflects on the daily chart.
-No no, lining up the chart from midnight isn’t easy. Usually fandoms start lining things up after 2 a.m.
Sedalbaegil’s songs, released at midnight, began flowing down from the very top of the real-time chart.
Of course, as someone had said, the real-time chart was a place governed by fandom firepower.
But as someone else had said, lining up the chart from midnight was not easy.
That was because from midnight to 1 a.m., it wasn’t just fandoms; the general public was still active too.
On top of that…….
The chart was not lined up in track order.
1 - Winter Cream (new)(hot)
2 - STAGE (new)(hot)
3 - Passing Through Time (new)(hot)
4 - Time Traveler(new)(hot)
5 - Show must go on(new)(hot)
Winter Cream, which was in first place, was track 9, while the title track was in second place.
Third, fourth, and fifth were tracks 4, 13, and 1 respectively.
-lololol Sedalbaegil albums are always like this lolololol
-Right lololol. In the first album too, Summer Cream flew up out of nowhere.
-I’m a newbie who became a fan this time, but wasn’t Summer Cream a promoted track?
-No no, Summer Cream wasn’t a promoted track lolol. It was just so popular that they performed it at events.
-For real, it was a “fine, here you go” promotion lol
-Ah, here’s a screenshot. (photo)
1 - Summer Cream (new)(hot)
2 - Pin Point (new)(hot)
3 - Holiday (new)(hot)
4 - State Of Mind (hot)
Pin Point had been the title track, and State Of Mind had been pre-released with an MV.
But Summer Cream and Holiday were lower tracks that had received no promotional boost at all.
They were cases that blew up purely because the songs were good.
So the current situation could be viewed from a similar perspective as well.
It was especially obvious just from the fact that Winter Cream, which anyone could see was a sibling song to Summer Cream, was in first place.
-Holy shit, Winter Cream is so good lololol
-Wait, it’s already time for ski resorts to close, and they’re giving us a masterpiece like this...?
-I guess it’s Winter Cream because they made it in winterㅠㅠ Spring is almost hereㅠㅠ
-Wow, if this had come out at the end of the year, I feel like we really would’ve heard it on the streets more than carols.
Sedalbaegil’s fandom, TT, gave Winter Cream as much support as they had given Summer Cream.
-Hul, holy crap, the bonus trackㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-Time Travelerㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-He couldn’t write TT, huh lololol
-Seems like Sion’s taste was reflected!
-Still, they call us TT these days lololol
And they gave even more support to Time Traveler, the bonus track and thirteenth track.
Including a fan song in an album was not that unusual, but fans liking it was not unusual either.
Especially when it was a fan song of such tremendous quality, as it was now, it was impossible not to like it.
Of course, the vast majority of TT had already bought the album and listened to the song before the digital tracks were distributed online.
So the reactions coming out now were reactions meant to show the public.
Why?
-Doesn’t the second album seem even better than the first?
-I honestly can’t choose which one is better lolololol
-Look at those kids who were going on about the sophomore jinx shutting their mouths lololol
Because they were confident in the quality of the second album.
In the entertainment industry, there were far too many cases where a debut succeeded and the follow-up album flopped, or the first movie succeeded and the sequel failed.
There were many reasons, but the biggest among them was the reverse halo effect.
When expectations were at 0, everyone screamed if something scored 80 points, but when expectations were at 100, people called an 80-point work disappointing.
In that sense, expectations for Sedalbaegil’s second album were not 100, but 1,000.
Maybe even ten thousand.
It was because Self Made had been far too successful, and the unit albums had also been far too successful.
So it seemed like it would be difficult to satisfy the public with any ordinary work, but…….
Han Sion was not ordinary.
-Honestly, I can’t deny he’s fucking selfish and dictatorial, but I admit his composing ability.
-Yeah. He’s a necessary evil.
So even individual fans who disliked Han Sion, especially Lee Ion’s fans, were in a mood to acknowledge Han Sion’s ability this time.
They said they did not acknowledge him as a person, but it was hard to deny his composing ability.
Of course, not all of them were like that, and there were still people who cursed Han Sion.
But for those with even the bare minimum of reason, it was not hard to imagine how much pressure Han Sion must have felt while preparing the second album.
Like that, Sedalbaegil’s songs, released at midnight, began accumulating terrifying numbers on the real-time chart.
Since the real-time chart at dawn was called fandom time, there were also attempts by Mix Way’s fandom to pour in a total offensive and stop Sedalbaegil.
But it was impossible.
In terms of fandom activity and cohesion itself, Mix Way was stronger.
Because people naturally became more active when they felt a sense of crisis.
In contrast, TT had been continuing support for several weeks starting from the unit albums, and if one broadened the scope, they had been continuing support since Self Made.
Moreover, unexpectedly, TT did not feel much sense of crisis.
Because they were well versed in idol culture, they knew all the more clearly that a “first-week sales comparison” was meaningless.
-Our boys didn’t even schedule fansign eventsㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-Exactlyㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-They’ll probably set something up in a different wayㅠㅠㅠㅠ Like last timeㅠㅠㅠㅠ
So even while Mix Way’s fandom was making every possible effort to overturn the real-time chart, TT remained calm.
1 - Winter Cream (new)(hot)
2 - STAGE (new)(hot)
3 - Passing Through Time (new)(hot)
4 - Show must go on(new)(hot)
5 - You Know, I Thought About It(new)(hot)
Because there was no particular change on the real-time chart.
It was true that the rankings were fluctuating and changing, but all of those changes were happening within Sedalbaegil’s second album.
“……I wonder what the daily chart will look like.”
“Wouldn’t one of ours stay in the top 3? Our numbers were good too.”
“If it’s not in the top 5, I’m going to avoid the CEO…….”
Even after leaving work, Lion Entertainment employees checked the chart whenever they had time.
Because they knew this result was directly connected to the mood at the company tomorrow.
The real-time chart and the daily chart were not tightly linked, but judging by Sedalbaegil’s firepower, there was no doubt they would enter the daily chart.
The problem was what rank they would maintain.
Since Sedalbaegil had a slightly more favorable release timing, being within the top 3 would be a decent defense.
Even if it was only in the top 5, they could somehow bring up various metrics and try to argue their case.
But if it was not even in the top 5, that would be a bit difficult.
The Lion Entertainment employees fell asleep thinking such thoughts, and the next day, they came to work and waited for the daily chart update time.
The company was quiet.
Perhaps not only they, but even the higher-ups, maybe every single member of Lion Entertainment, was waiting for the daily chart update time.
And finally, the chart updated……
“Ah.”
In the extremely quiet office, a new hire who had only just arrived at work let out an tactless gasp.
11. Please
Because Mix Way’s title track, which had been in first place, was now in 11th place.
It had been pushed down a full ten spots.
And from 1st place to 10th place, every single song was from Sedalbaegil’s second album, STAGE.
That was not all.
“Ha……. I don’t want to go in.”
The next day, Mix Way’s title track had been pushed down to 14th place.
This was not even the real-time chart, but from 1st place to 13th place on the daily chart, every single spot belonged to Sedalbaegil.