Damn Idol Episode 43
The screen, which had briefly shown the participants’ faces, flickered, and the match order appeared.
1. Main Dancer
- Choe Jaeseong VS ILEVEL
2. Sub-Vocal
- Han Sion VS Reddy
3. Lead Vocal
- Gu Taehwan VS Fade
4. Lead Vocal
- Yi I-on VS Si Yu
5. Main Vocal
- Onsaemiro VS Juyeon
Even to Choe Sehui, the competition order seemed fair.
The main dancers—who offered plenty of visual spectacle, on the premise that dance was the main focus—went first, followed by the competition order of sub-vocal, lead vocal, then main vocal.
Idol groups that had been around for a while stopped distinguishing skill levels by position at some point.
The lead vocal of a certain group called “variety idols” had even filmed YouTube content where he went around asking, “Don’t I sing better than the main vocal?” He had actually snatched the main vocal position for their next promotional song.
To that extent, it was common for idol groups that had been active for a long time to undergo upward equalization at some point.
But rookie groups were different.
Because rookie groups hadn’t shown anything yet, public taste didn’t intervene in the evaluation, and showmanship didn’t come into play either. It would be decided solely by the cold evaluations of experts.
But…….
“Isn’t the sub-vocal a bit off?”
The Han Sion that Choe Sehui remembered had a feel of someone good at music. She didn’t know if he sang well, but he was definitely very, very pleasant to listen to. Plus, his singing ability seemed to be upper-tier if you excluded Juyeon and Onsaemiro.
“Could the song he sang back then have been his specialty?”
That kind of case happened from time to time. People who spent their entire trainee days polishing only one or two songs.
While Choe Sehui was thinking that, after Blue’s brief hosting, the competition abruptly began.
“I like that there’s no waiting time.”
The battle of the main dancers that began like that was, as expected, centered on dance. The first to take the stage was Choe Jaeseong, the maknae of Three Months and One Day.
[Main Dancer - Choe Jaeseong VS ILEVEL]
Choe Jaeseong covered a song by the boy group Airplay, which had peaked about four years ago. It was a song that had been famous for its acrobatic, high-difficulty choreography.
A stage with acrobatic, razor-sharp group choreography was not easy to cover alone. However, Choe Jaeseong completed the stage quite convincingly. He sang stably even while dancing, and the original solo dance he performed in the part where group choreography should have entered was quite impressive. He meshed well with the backup dancers who came in after the solo dance, too.
“He’s pretty good? And his face is cute, too.”
“Then add one point to the Samgyeopsal-d’or?”
“Not that much. Barely passing?”
The subsequent ILEVEL stage looked a bit more skilled. He covered an R&B song by a foreign singer whose title was hazy but that had been heard everywhere on the streets. It was pretty good. However, even though backup dancers had been there from the start, the stage felt a bit empty.
“Which side are you on?”
“Ah, it’s hard. Aren’t both kind of ambiguous?”
“A little?”
Choe Jaeseong had flashed brilliance here and there but showed immaturity overall, while ILEVEL was skilled but didn’t shine. As survival program audience members always did, the two, possessed by critics as they discussed at length, eventually voted for different people. Choe Sehui voted for Choe Jaeseong; her friend voted for ILEVEL.
After a brief stage cleanup, it was Reddy who appeared.
[Sub-Vocal - Han Sion VS Reddy]
She had expected him to sing since he was a sub-vocal, but surprisingly, Reddy decorated the stage with 100% rap. And it worked.
“Woooooah!”
People burst into cheers. He performed Villain, the biggest hit by Black Star, who were called hip-hop idols. It felt like a concert, not a competition. His rapping was really good, and his gestures and performance were professional.
“It’s like Show Me!”
As her friend said, it felt like watching Show Me the Money, the competition program for trending rappers.
“If he gets a bit popular, he could release a solo album.”
“Right? He’s totally good.”
The reactions of other audience members sitting around Choe Sehui were similar.
With Reddy’s stage over like that, perhaps to calm the mood for a moment, the stage went dark. In the meantime, her friend spoke to Choe Sehui.
“That’s Han Sion? The kid who talked to you.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”
“From what I saw earlier, he didn’t look like that. I thought he’d coldly ignore you if you talked to him.”
“That gap is electrifying, I told you.”
“But Gap-moe-kun won’t have it easy, right?”
“Gap-moe-kun my ass.”
Choe Sehui looked at her friend in disgust, but the friend pointed to their surroundings. Many people were looking at their phones. It wasn’t that they had all suddenly received calls or gotten bored. They were looking up Reddy. Because it had been quite a good stage.
The moment Choe Sehui, who had inwardly hoped Han Sion would do well, swallowed hard—
Snap.
Light poured onto the darkened stage. Soon, the worst possible stage setup began entering Choe Sehui’s eyes.
“Crazy, is this a seventies-eighties live café?”
Pin spotlights, round chairs, guitar, keyboard. As her friend said in shock, they had gathered everything you shouldn’t do in an idol survival program.
Of course, this wasn’t to say fans hated seeing the idol they supported play guitar or piano. Showing versatile talent on self-produced content or variety stages was fine. But this was an idol survival program where sincerity and grit in one’s main job were evaluated.
Playing guitar and singing a lyrical song under piercing pin spotlights? If it were a team stage, it would be fine. Because idol groups with excellent vocal lines as their weapon always had demand. But this was a solo stage. And she had heard it was the first stage of a competition between two teams. And they were setting it up like this?
At a glance, it looked like he wouldn’t dance, or even do simple choreography.
“Is the problem Han Sion, or the PD?”
Unless he showed off a singing ability at a level that would make everyone marvel, it didn’t seem like a positive reaction would come out. She knew, of course, that this thought might be excessive immersion. The general public watching Coming Up Next might not think much of it. Or they might even like it. But at least on the idol boards, it was a setup with too many elements to be criticized.
What put the finishing touch on this uneasy feeling was the song choice.
Under the Streetlight Remix.
Oh my god.
If it’s Under the Streetlight, isn’t it that one-chorus wonder? That old song you could hear endlessly if you went to karaoke with guys. After the terribly boring first verse comes the chorus where they scream at the top of their lungs, and after the even more boring second verse comes the chorus again. She already hated it just from the song choice, and they even said it was a remix.
The comments that would flood in after the broadcast unfolded like a scroll before Choe Sehui’s eyes.
-LOL
-LOL he should’ve just appealed with all his might that he wants to be a balladeer instead of an idol LOL
-No way. He probably broke his leg from intense practice and has no choice but to sing sitting down.
-Wow, I saw the future. He’ll go on about real music on social media, post gloomy stuff and act all cryptic, get into lawsuits, then debut as a solo singer lol
-If he does well, he’ll go on variety shows and sell emotions with old members too?
-Fuck, are you all Doctor Strange?
-Dol-mammu! I’ve come to bargain!
-LOL wtf
And these were just the comments from those dwelling in the shallows. She didn’t even want to imagine the comments that would come from the abyss.
While thinking such thoughts, Choe Sehui suddenly realized she was cheering for Han Sion. Her bias was still Drop Out, but she still hoped Han Sion would do well.
Then someone who looked like a session musician took the guitar, and Han Sion sat in front of the keyboard. Soon, recorded drum sounds began flowing out calmly.
* * *
Before making a contract with the devil.
That is, the me of Round One, before my parents got into a traffic accident, was an ordinary aspiring singer. Looking back now, it was laughable, but I had some talent. If we only considered singing ability, a level slightly better than Choe Jaeseong but slightly worse than Onsaemiro?
Anyway, that’s not the story I’m trying to tell.
Back then, I hated obvious things. Indie poser, Hongdae syndrome, hipster disease. Call it whatever. Because nineteen-year-old me in Round One had exactly that sensibility.
So after making the contract with the devil, I was a bit confused. I had to sell two hundred million copies, but I didn’t know what standard to use for music. Before the contract, I had sought out unfamiliar things because I wanted to be called special, but to sell two hundred million copies, I couldn’t do that. I had to sing what the public liked, but I didn’t know what they liked at all.
I spent several rounds like that without a baseline. My skills steadily rose, and I always scored hits with future knowledge. But that didn’t mean I had a clear baseline.
Then one day.
I realized an extremely simple fact.
—There is no correct answer in music.
There was a time when hard rock, which sounds noisy now, ruled the world, and there was a time when alternative, which sounds boring now, kicked hard rock’s ass. Korea was the same. I may not know the flow of Korean music well, but there are a few things I know for sure. At not-too-distant points, hyperpop became trendy in K-pop, and then suddenly jersey club became trendy. I remember being surprised to see two genres giving completely different feelings sweep Korea without much time difference.
So there is no correct answer in music.
But because of that, I realized the baseline for music. This is the only standard for good music.
“It has to sound good.”
Alternative rose up and kicked hard rock’s ass simply because Kurt Cobain’s alternative sounded better. There was no other reason.
Then why did hard rock bands that held firm their ground in the alternative era exist? Because those bands made music that sounded better than the majority of alternative bands.
So I have to put out what people like listening to, and what they want to listen to more.
That’s the only correct answer in music, which has no correct answer.
And…….
I am the person who does that better than anyone else in the world.
No, the person who became good at it.
So I intended to show that now.
* * *
The moment the guitar came in over the appropriate drums, the song suddenly started.
Somewhere at the end of a gray alley
—Orange, under the streetlight
The intro of the original Under the Streetlight was long. But Han Sion boldly skipped all of that intro and started singing right after a single phrase of guitar melody.
At that first note, Gu Taehwan, who had been waiting anxiously for his turn, opened his eyes wide.
Han Sion had often said that he could play an important role in the intro. Because he was born with a special sense of rhythm, he could give a better feel even when singing the same song. But Gu Taehwan hadn’t deeply empathized with those words. It wasn’t that he doubted Han Sion’s words; he just didn’t know what it meant to feel better when singing the same song. At most, his meager imagination could only come up with an R&B style where Black singers laid back.
But now he understood.
What Han Sion had wanted, what he had been talking about.
That was exactly it.
The feeling of being instantly drawn in the moment the first note of the first lyric fell.
Han Sion, now on the main stage, was showing an immersion that couldn’t be compared to what he had heard during rehearsal.
And it wasn’t just Gu Taehwan thinking this.
The five hundred audience members were the same.