Damn Idol - Episode 46
* * *
In idol communities, talk of Coming Up Next had begun to leak out bit by bit.
Talk about the program itself had already surfaced, so it was more accurate to say that talk of the participants had started circulating.
What lit the first spark was a photo of I Ieon taken by someone who had brought a telephoto camera.
-How much retouching went into this, lolololol
-If he really looked like this, would he still be a trainee? Someone would’ve snatched him up long ago.
-If he looks exactly like the photo, this granny will open her wallet and provide for him.
Of course, at first, the prevailing opinion was that it was all thanks to the camera.
In fact, the most circulated photo had also been heavily edited.
The twist occurred when photos taken by ordinary people began quietly circulating.
Not all audience members who attended Coming Up Next recordings were regulars of idol forum culture.
Rather, in the program’s early days, ordinary people made up a larger proportion.
The photos they took with phone cameras had an extremely ordinary sensibility.
-(photo), (photo), (photo)
-I think this is a realistic level of candid shot.
-His visuals aren’t realistic, though…?
Even so, he was handsome.
The framing and focus were completely off, yet he radiated light.
There were still plenty of skeptical eyes, however.
-No way, is it real…?
-We’ll know when it airs, lololol. I vote for “I’ll be disappointed when I actually see him.”
-One week until broadcast.
People had started to grow curious.
-(photo) Isn’t Take Scene much better in terms of facial harmony?
-Agreed. Definitely the Ryan-type look.
-Look at how trendy they all are.
-lololol Here come the people gritting their teeth and insisting that Take Scene’s cuts are unedited while I Ieon’s are the only retouched ones.
-Does Take Scene already have a fandom?
-There are Ryan fanatics, lol.
-It feels more viral than real fans. Looks like Ryan is already pulling some strings.
Moreover, Take Scene was a group more than qualified for Ryan Entertainment to produce a survival program to push.
They had the visuals that CEO Choe Dae-ho had poured his heart into selecting, and solid skills built through long training.
Furthermore, “Scene Stealer,” which was to be their debut song, was receiving excellent internal reviews.
And so, just as buzz about Coming Up Next gradually grew beneath the surface, actual audience members began appearing in communities.
But what they talked about was neither I Ieon nor Take Scene.
It was Han Sion.
-Sedalbaegil’s 4th place tore it up.
-Yeah, my mom’s son-in-law. Ah, of course, I’m the bride.
-Looking forward to the broadcast. I got goosebumps seeing the stage live, lololol
-Ah, I wish it would air soon. The song will be released too, right?
-If it isn’t released, then it was such a shameless show, lolololol
People’s reactions to Han Sion’s stage were consistent.
He tore it up.
However, posts describing in detail what kind of stage it had been were surprisingly rare.
The reason was simple.
They didn’t know exactly what Han Sion had done, so it was difficult to write about it.
They knew he had presented a perfect stage of “Under the Streetlight” with a group sound.
But the competition song had been a remix of the original “Under the Streetlight,” and they didn’t really understand what had been done to it.
There had been no VCR about the song production process either.
All they remembered was that it had been insanely good and the chorus had properly exploded.
Those who had actually attended the recording tried to write a review of Han Sion’s stage but……
-Han Sion was sitting right in front of the keyboard under a pin light, and as soon as the drums and guitar started, he began singing……
-“What the hell is this sound.”
No matter how they tried to describe it, many gave up writing because they couldn’t capture the feeling of that day.
As a result, people ended up speaking vaguely, and only the repeated refrain of “he tore it up” kept coming out.
Thanks to that, at some point it became a meme.
-Ah, I saw it live, and Han Sion tore it up, lololol
-Right, right. Rip-sion, agreed.
It wasn’t exactly a positive reaction.
But the Coming Up Next production crew monitoring the internet reactions didn’t worry much.
Because once the stage was made public, none of it would matter anyway.
And among those writing attendance reviews on the community, there probably weren’t many who had actually come to the recording.
Even if just one hundred people told their stories to only five people each, that’s five hundred.
And if those five hundred told just one person each, that’s a thousand.
For all the commotion in the communities, there were no fatal spoilers.
Competition videos were occasionally posted, but they were immediately taken down.
Rather, what put the production crew on edge was the “Self-Produced Mission.”
In the Self-Produced Mission that began after a short break, Take Scene was doing well.
I Level and Ready had received composition training for a long time since their trainee days, and Fade had quite a good ear for choosing notes.
However, if there was a behind-the-scenes story that wouldn’t appear on broadcast, it was that Take Scene was revisiting a song they had already touched once during a monthly evaluation.
It wasn’t an act of deception to remake an already completed song.
But they were fixing up a song they had self-produced once and received feedback on—fixing it according to that feedback.
It wasn’t rigging, but it was something that would make viewers feel uncomfortable if they found out.
So it was something that had to proceed without the viewers knowing.
While Take Scene was making steady progress like this, Sedalbaegil’s situation was a bit iffy.
‘Is it going well? Or is it going down the drain?’
The production crew couldn’t tell.
But if they had to describe Sedalbaegil’s self-production process in just one sentence…….
It was close to, “Han Sion is getting scolded!”
* * *
Click.
-“Ah. Day 1 of self-producing, Sedalbaegil’s making film……
Is it? Anyway, it’s the first start.”
Holding the 8mm camera distributed by the production crew, I Ieon babbled in front of the camera with a slightly awkward expression.
The reason the camera had been thrust into I Ieon’s hands was the reason everyone expected.
Only a few candid photos—not even still cuts—had been released, yet the buzz was no joke.
Of course, it was something those who had seen I Ieon’s visuals expected, but you never know what will actually happen until it hits you.
An idol’s looks may be a factor of potential, but not all success in this world is built on potential alone.
Just as there was a boy group member who ranked first on a list of top natural handsome men chosen by plastic surgeons, yet completely flopped in Korea and gained popularity in South America.
Anyway, for this reason, I Ieon was holding the self-camera.
The first step in self-production was a planning meeting.
“Isn’t Sion the leader? Shouldn’t Sion lead the meeting?”
“Ah, that’s right. I’ll do it.”
He was the leader in name, but until now, there had never been a moment where the leader role was necessary.
So they were a bit worried about whether Han Sion could do it well, but…….
“To gain the floor, you must raise your hand, and you may not interrupt while another is speaking. If everyone agrees, shall we begin?”
Surprisingly, he was proficient.
He even looked comfortable in the leader’s seat.
Considering Han Sion often seemed to lack social skills, it was an unexpected sight.
And so, Sedalbaegil’s self-production meeting began.
“We won’t be making a new song just because it’s self-producing. We’ll focus on a direction of arranging an existing song to fit Sedalbaegil’s style, and to do that, I think we need to start with song selection.”
“Do you have a direction in mind?”
“Personally, I was thinking of adapting a major pop song.”
“Adaptation?”
“Ieon-hyung, if that’s a question, could you raise your hand and get the floor first?”
“Ah, sorry. It wasn’t a question, just a counter-question.”
“Yes. By the way, do you all know how K-pop songs are usually made?”
Everyone checked each other’s reactions, but no one nodded boldly.
Among trainees, many focused solely on performing songs and didn’t know exactly how songs were produced.
Of course, once they debuted, they would learn bit by bit through observation, but no one in Sedalbaegil had debut experience.
So everyone perked up their ears at Han Sion’s explanation.
It was something good to know at least once, and even those who roughly understood the concepts didn’t bother pretending otherwise.
“There are countless ways to compose, but the standard method is this.”
[Composition
-Arrangement
-Lyrics
-Part distribution.]
On Saemiro raised his hand, gained the floor, and asked.
“What’s the difference between composition and arrangement?”
“If I come up with a core melody going ah
- ah
- ah, this is composition. The core melody is called the top line; it’s the act of creating the top line. But no one knows what kind of song this melody will be completed as.”
Saying that, Han Sion tapped his MacBook and inputted the ah
- ah
- ah melody he had just vocalized on the piano.
“Let’s say this is the top line. What genre would an arranger want to make with this line?”
He tapped the MacBook again, and over the piano melody going “ah
- ah
- ah,” cheerful synths and trumpets entered.
Soon, bouncy drums joined in, and it became music of a familiar genre easily heard at events.
“……Trot?”
“Correct. But another arranger might think differently. What trot track would I write with this? I should write a hip-hop track.”
Han Sion tapped the keyboard again, the “ah
- ah
- ah” melody began looping, and heavy old-school drums layered on top.
Soon, densely programmed hi-hats chopped up the beat, and brass sounds interjected intermittently.
An 80s East Coast hip-hop track was completed in a jiffy.
“This is arrangement. It’s the act of deciding what beat to produce from the top line. Depending on arranging skill, even if you make a track in the same genre, the sophistication changes.”
“…….”
“…….”
“Was my explanation too difficult?”
Han Sion tilted his head at the somewhat strange atmosphere among the members.
But the strange atmosphere wasn’t because it was hard to understand.
“Hyung, was that an already existing song just now?”
“Floor.”
“Ah.”
When Choe Jae-seong raised his hand, Han Sion pointed at him.
“I was wondering if the beat you just made is an existing song.”
“Of course not. I just came up with the top line. The beat was made for the sake of explanation.”
Han Sion’s reaction was that it was no big deal, but the Sedalbaegil members were quite shocked.
They were all people dreaming of becoming singers, so of course they had many friends who did music.
Amateur composers?
Even just the people they had attended practical music academies with numbered over a dozen, and they had heard quite a lot of tracks made by them.
They had even heard tracks made by academy instructors.
Yet, the track Han Sion had put together in one or two minutes seemed to overwhelm all those tracks in quality.
If he hadn’t done a show with a pre-made beat, it meant Han Sion possessed outstanding talent in beat-making as well.
‘Isn’t Han Sion not the type to do that kind of show?’
While everyone was thinking that, Han Sion continued his thought.
“Anyway, what I’m saying is, let’s take this top line from pop.”
“Can you give one example?”
“Um…… you all know Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby,’ right? We take the top line from the highlight of that song and lay a beat that suits us. We’ll adapt the lyrics ourselves with some creative input.”
“Exactly what are we taking? The chorus that goes ‘baby
- baby-
’? Or the beat sound when that chorus comes out?”
“It doesn’t matter. It just has to be the sound the public thinks of first when they recall the song ‘Baby.’ Whether that’s the song or the beat. Or we could take both.”
Having heard Han Sion’s words, the members began to exercise their imaginations, trying to recall the feeling in their heads.