Damn Idol Episode 55
* * *
On Saemiro’s voice and mine competitively climbed higher in range as we poured out the chorus.
But there was no hostility in that harmony.
A competitive spirit?
Yes, that seemed about right.
Then, as if telling us not to fight, Choi Jaeseong added harmony, and Gu Taehwan slipped in a hum as if to say, what did it matter?
And Lee Ion, standing in the center as if saying we should just dance instead, launched into a big movement.
It is not easy for a live performance to surpass practice.
Most musicians only hope they can do as well onstage as they did in rehearsal.
But right now.
We were giving a performance far better than anything we had shown in practice.
The tension born from competition.
The pressure from the audience.
The anxiety over making mistakes.
This was the reward given to us for overcoming all of that so brilliantly.
A crooked smile slipped out.
The word “we” felt unfamiliar.
Until now, I think I had only referred to them as something like “the Sedalbaegil members.”
Yes, I am a defensive person.
Infinite regression means never being able to settle into any human relationship.
You can show kindness to a friend from a past life only to be scammed, and you can watch someone you loved come to hate you.
Experiences like that gave me defense mechanisms, and those walls only grew thicker as time passed.
But right now, at least on this stage, we were “we.”
Because in the desire to put on a good stage, no human relationships or calculations of gain and loss were involved.
Once I stepped down from the stage, I would become someone who weighed profit and loss again, someone who measured the value of connections, but……
Don’t believe me just watch!
Don’t believe me just watch!
Not here.
I was happy.
And so, the first stage Sedalbaegil had presented as a complete unit came to an end.
* * *
The moment Sedalbaegil’s final chorus ended, lightning struck down onto the stage.
Crack!
It was a flash bright enough and a roar loud enough to startle the audience, who had been completely immersed in the performance.
And when that light vanished.
Sedalbaegil could no longer be found anywhere on the stage.
The musicians looked bewildered by Sedalbaegil’s sudden disappearance, but……
Boom! Boom-boom! Boom-boom!
They did not stop the music.
At that moment, the lights onstage blacked out, and words appeared on the screen that was part of the stage setup.
It was the ending.
“Waaaaaaaah!”
Even as the audience cheered, they thought back on the stage they had just seen.
‘It’s a time travel concept, right?!’
The background onstage had looked like it belonged somewhere around Goryeo or Joseon, and the instrumentalists had also been wearing traditional clothes and holding traditional instruments.
Yet each time lightning struck, the members of Sedalbaegil appeared, and their outfits were extremely modern.
No matter what anyone said, this was time travel.
People who had crash-landed in the past had spread modern music and disappeared.
Moreover, considering the ending of the stage, Sedalbaegil had returned, but the music had remained in the past.
‘That’s fun!’
Most of the audience stopped thinking at around that point, but those familiar with idol culture did not.
‘Insane!’
Thoughts about Sedalbaegil’s concept began branching out on their own inside their heads.
If the team’s worldview was time travel, they could do a lot of interesting things with it.
The first thing that came to mind was medieval Europe.
What if Sedalbaegil arrived in the era when Beethoven or Mozart lived?
They could even sample classical music from that period and make a song.
It meant a song with an orchestral feel based on strings could be born.
They did not necessarily have to go into the past, either.
It would also be possible to set it in a dystopian future Earth, or a world where humanity had gone extinct and only robots remained.
‘Cyberpunk works too!’
Of course, a conceptual stage was worse than not doing one at all if there was no good song or no skill from the members to pull it off.
If attempted clumsily, it would only make people cringe out of secondhand embarrassment.
But Sedalbaegil seemed capable of it.
They could not trust the VCR one hundred percent, but Han Sion’s producing ability seemed real, and the members’ immersion in the stage had been outstanding.
It had been an incredibly fun stage.
“When does this air? I want to watch the stage again from the beginning.”
“Wow, I thought Take Scene was good too, but Sedalbaegil was the real deal.”
“That was freaking insane.”
Around the time the audience still could not calm their excitement and kept chattering, Blue came up onto the stage.
The judges’ critiques began.
* * *
As the judges of Coming Up Next began evaluating the stage, Chris Edward and Alex also looked at each other.
Alex was the first to speak.
“No disagreement that it was an astonishing stage, right?”
“Of course not. I’m glad I came to Korea. It made me want to write a song.”
“That’s good. Then what score are you giving this stage?”
“Hmm…… I’m torn.”
Alex tilted his head.
He had expected him to shout 100 points immediately, so it was an unexpected reaction.
The answer was even more unexpected.
“I think I’ll have to give them 84 points.”
“Really? Why?”
“It should’ve been better. It could’ve been better. A few elements left something to be desired.”
“For example?”
“The biggest disappointments were the short one and the pale one.”
“Who? Say it by the color of their clothes.”
“Purple and black.”
The ones Chris Edward pointed out were Choi Jaeseong and Lee Ion.
“The short one has too pretty a voice, and he doesn’t properly understand the funk and soul genres. So his singing kind of floated.”
“And?”
“The pale one’s tone stands out too much. Han Sion knew that and laid the groundwork for him with EQ, but the fact that he chose a singer who needed that kind of accommodation is itself grounds for a deduction.”
“Wait, wait.”
Alex understood what Eddie was saying.
But the perspective of his evaluation felt somewhat strange.
Chose a singer?
Grounds for a deduction?
“They’re just contestants on a reality show. They were in a situation where they couldn’t choose their singers.”
“Ah……!”
Chris Edward belatedly realized his mistake.
When evaluating the previous team’s stage, he had scored them according to the standards of a competitive stage on a reality show.
But with Sedalbaegil, he had scored them by an absolute standard.
He had placed them on the same line as the greatest music currently in existence and graded them accordingly.
And even then, the fact that he could give them as much as 84 points was astonishing.
“What was the previous team’s name again? Ready Action?”
“Take Scene.”
“Ah, right. You’re saying I should evaluate Sedalbaegil by the same standards as Take Scene?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s 100 points. No matter what yardstick you use, within this show, they were the best.”
“What do you think would happen if they released the track?”
“Hard to say. The original song is so famous that there are a lot of variables, but…… I think it would enter the Hot 100 without much trouble?”
Alex nodded as well.
Listening to Uptown Funk—no, Seoul Town Funk—had made his heart race.
And Alex had almost never failed when he invested in music that made his heart race.
However, what he had to think about was not this stage, but Han Sion.
Would Han Sion work in America?
If he thought Han Sion would, how much could he invest?
These were matters management had to decide, but in the first place, Eddie had been the first to recognize Han Sion’s genius.
“Eddie, do you think our genius boy would work on Billboard?”
“As a composer? Or as a singer?”
“Either.”
“As a composer, one hundred percent. I could bet my entire fortune on it.”
“Hmm……”
“Alex. You can trust me on this. Sion has never properly shown what he’s capable of. This reality show is a shackle on him.”
What would it have been like if Han Sion had sung Seoul Town Funk alone?
Or if five Han Sions had sung it?
What if producer Han Sion had recruited five singers?
Whatever the case, Chris Edward could say with certainty that it would have been several times better than the current stage.
Why had someone with that much talent gone on something like a reality show?
Was he still not certain of his own talent?
As Chris Edward was thinking that, he sprang up from his seat.
“I think I need to meet Sion right now. Where do I go?”
“Wait. The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. The interpreter is supposed to come tomorrow too.”
“Interpreter, my ass. One piano and Google Translate will be enough for us to communicate.”
At the look on Chris Edward’s face, as if he might rush out at any moment, Alex had no choice but to nod.
In truth, he also wanted to meet Sion right away.
Still, there were procedures.
“Fine. Then let’s meet the person in charge of the program first.”
“You do that. I’m going to the waiting room.”
“Huh?”
“Living as a successful artist sucks a lot of the time, but it has its good points too. People understand even if you act moderately impulsive.”
Chris Edward grinned and began approaching the filming staff.
Alex sighed and picked up his smartphone.
It was time to ask Mr. Kang, the person in charge of the program, for understanding.
* * *
The excitement and elation that came from a successful stage lasted quite a while.
Maybe that was why the members who returned to the waiting room were in rather high spirits.
“Ah, I feel so damn good.”
“Ion hyung, you were incredible when you went into verse two!”
“We didn’t make any choreography mistakes, right?”
“Probably none!”
Well, it was understandable.
The audience’s reaction had been good, and the judges’ evaluations had been good too.
The total score we received from the four judges was 396 points.
Blue and Yu Seonhwa gave us 100 points.
Lee Changjun and Choi Daeho gave us 98 points.
Lee Changjun deducted two points, saying the stage had been excellent but the song composition was a little scattered, and Choi Daeho deducted two points, saying it had been wonderful but the five members’ teamwork had not been perfect.
Well, I think they just came up with suitable excuses.
If they gave us all 100s here, they would have nothing left to say in future critiques.
While I was thinking that and watching the members chatter away, Choi Jaeseong tapped my shoulder.
“Our leader and producer of Sedalbaegil should say a word too!”
“Mm, everyone worked hard. It’s not easy to do better in the actual performance than in practice, but you were perfect.”
“Sometimes, Sion hyung, you really seem like someone who’s already debuted a few times.”
Not a few times. Several dozen times.
Just then, Lee Ion looked at me and smirked.
“Now you’re suddenly pretending to be calm?”
“……”
“What did you say onstage as soon as the performance ended? Our members are so……”
“Stop. Please stop.”
……
I had not meant it.
Because of the satisfying stage, endorphins had flooded my brain and compliments I did not mean had come out.
So this was, in a way, the hardship of a regressor.
Because I had repeated similar things for far too long, everyday life did not feel real, but when I performed, realism came rushing in.
You could consider it a kind of accident caused by my loving music and the stage too much.
While I was thinking that, the members burst into laughter.
“It’s my first time seeing Sion look embarrassed!”
“Do it more. Do more.”
……
Damn it.
Surely this would not make it onto the broadcast.
The members kept excitedly chattering for a long while after that.
Saying useless things like they hoped the episode would air soon, or that the Sedalbaegil team needed to decide on a chant.
“They said we have free time until eight today, so should we all have dinner together?”
Choi Jaeseong made the most useless suggestion of all at the end.
“Sounds good. Is everyone okay with that?”
“Sounds good!”
“Yes. I’m fine with it too.”
Once even On Saemiro agreed, I had no choice but to nod.
Fine, well, I was a person with social skills too.
We would have to live together in the dorm for more than two months from now on, so it would be better if we became comfortable with one another.
As I was thinking that, the waiting room door suddenly burst open.
A white man wearing sunglasses appeared.
“Wow!”
The Sedalbaegil members seemed flustered by the sudden appearance of a foreigner, but I recognized him at a glance.
Eddie.
No, wasn’t that Chris Edward?