Damn Idol Episode 72
Album 7. Choices
Whether you rap, play in an indie band, or make music that’s hard to pin down by genre.
When you make music in the underground scene, there’s an attitude you naturally come to have.
Hostility toward overground music.
And among that, idol music—the most commercial of all—becomes the number-one target for gossip.
After COVID-19, with the rise of world stars, that atmosphere would fade a lot, but in 2017, not yet.
Of course, that didn’t mean every underground musician hated idols.
Some liked them.
But if all your peers hated idols, the mood forced you to keep your mouth shut.
Sim Seongbo, who played keyboard in an indie band called
In truth, Sim Seongbo had recently fallen deep into Han Sion’s music.
“Honestly, isn’t Han Sion fucking all style and no substance?”
But it was a little awkward to defend him against the members’ gossip.
In cases like this, there was only one option to choose.
“Dunno. Haven’t listened.”
Pretend to be indifferent.
From Sim Seongbo’s point of view, Han Sion had really touched the reverse scale of underground musicians.
Han Sion was good at music.
Fucking good, at that.
Insanely good, to the point that Chris Edward acknowledged him as a genius.
And yet he wanted to be an idol, so he danced onstage and acted cute.
‘Did he ever act cute?’
The reason underground musicians kept doing music despite going hungry was because they wanted to create something real.
If I had as much talent as Han Sion, I wouldn’t do something like that.
I could make cooler music from a cooler position.
That was what created a sense of relative deprivation.
So whenever underground musicians gathered, they were busy trash-talking Han Sion.
“Sim Seongbo, you really haven’t listened?”
“I’ve heard it on the street. But I haven’t sat down and properly listened.”
“Yeah? Then try listening once.”
“Why bother? Here?”
“Not like we’ve got anything else to do.”
The guitarist who said that went over to the studio’s shared computer and searched “Han Sion” on a music site.
“He’s got two songs right now, huh?”
“Why?”
“It’s three?”
“What is?”
“There are three songs on the music chart.”
“Huh?”
Sim Seongbo jumped up from his seat and hurried over to the computer.
He was sure that when he’d taken the subway to the studio, the only songs on the chart had been
‘Ah, did the one that aired yesterday get released as a track?’
With’s
It had only been covered briefly on the broadcast, but it had felt really good.
But it wasn’t With’s song that had been released as a track.
What was on the music chart was a familiar title.
-Under the Streetlamp Remake (Feat. Jo Gijeong)
“What the hell, he already made a remake?”
“He got a little popular and now he’s overdoing it like crazy.”
“Isn’t Jo Gijeong the original singer?”
“Probably?”
The guitarist shrugged and played the newly uploaded track.
When the sound of drums began, the members of
It was a drum line positioned perfectly somewhere between calmness and rhythm.
Drums like this were a great beam that could support anything.
You could make something funky, or you could make something heavy.
So what would be placed on top of it?
The answer was Han Sion’s voice.
Because before they could even fully enjoy the drums, Han Sion’s song began, accompanied by guitar, bass, and keyboard.
“……”
“……”
Like the indie band players they were, at first they focused on the instruments.
The bassist tried to pick out the bass line, and the guitarist listened carefully to catch the guitar line.
Sim Seongbo, the keyboardist, focused on the keyboard.
But from the moment it moved past the intro, it became impossible to distinguish each instrument.
The feeling of them becoming one mass and creating a melody was too fantastical.
The bass formed ghost notes behind the drums, and the keyboard caught the guitar’s reverb.
Could this happen?
Was this possible?
Wasn’t this the kind of thing you could only hear on Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones LPs?
He was dying to see the score.
But at the same time, he didn’t want to take his ears off the music.
The previously released
But the
If you loved band play, there was no way to turn away from it.
Thinking that, Sim Seongbo looked at the members’ faces.
All of them had their mouths hanging open with a “heh—” expression, which meant they were thinking the same thing as him.
And so the storm-like 4 minutes and 13 seconds passed, and the song ended.
The studio was quiet.
The first to speak was the vocalist.
“Hey, honestly, I like Han Sion.”
“What?”
“I mean, I’m not an instrumentalist. Honestly… Han Sion’s expressiveness is insane, isn’t it? How does he sing like that?”
“But me too.”
The next to speak was the guitarist.
At the confession of the guitarist who had always been at the very front line of trash-talking Han Sion, everyone wore expressions of disbelief.
“Hey, you trashed him every day.”
“No, I thought you guys would say you liked him. Then I was going to pretend I couldn’t help it and say I liked him too.”
“Are you crazy? Why would you even have to pretend you couldn’t help it?”
“Because he’s so fucking good it makes me jealous… And on top of that, he’s handsome. Fuck.”
“That’s true……”
And so the confession session began, and Evening Promise learned a shocking truth.
In truth, all of them were shy fans.
They had only been too embarrassed, so they were cosplaying as ordinary people—no, as indie-sentiment people.
Sim Seongbo found it absurd, but thinking about it, he was no different.
He had never actively chimed in, but he had just sat there quietly listening.
Once they learned each other’s true identities, there was something they could unite over.
“There’s no score released for this, right?”
“Really?”
“Let’s pick it out ourselves and upload a cover video. If we’re the first to upload it, won’t we get some views?”
“Hey, hey, search YouTube. Another band might have uploaded one first.”
“How long has it even been since the track came out?”
The guitarist who said that searched on YouTube, and they discovered a shocking fact.
[C.U.N] Is This Really an Improvisation? Feat. Lee Hyeonseok, Jo Gijeong ┃ Unaired Footage
The
And that wasn’t all.
[C.U.N] Chris Edward X Han Sion Piano Improvisation Duet ┃ Unaired Footage
Han Sion and Chris Edward sat in front of the two grand pianos prepared by the production team and began talking.
[Sion, let’s start with Norwegian Flower and mix something in.]
[Mix in what?]
[Hmm. How about Tony Bennett? He’s a big boss I really like.]
[Sounds good. Should we use his signature song? I Left My Heart in San Francisco.]
[Oh, as expected. You know a thing or two. Let’s play around within the variations of those two songs.]
After exchanging a conversation that was hard to understand, the two began playing the piano.
Chris Edward started first, and Han Sion, who had been listening for a moment, joined in.
Anyone could tell it was an improvised duet.
But the result was not at the level of improvisation.
It was brilliant.
♬♪♪♪♪♪~
Chris Edward, who had been striking the keys without pause, suddenly burst into laughter and stopped playing.
[Hey, that’s too K-pop!]
[So what? I like this.]
[All right. We have to respect tastes. Then shall I try making Tony Bennett dance?]
When Chris Edward began striking the piano keys again, this time Han Sion burst into laughter.
[You could arrange this as EDM.]
[Oh, I’ll have to write that down in my composition notes.]
Then the camera focus blurred, and the video ended.
In the brief silence, Evening Promise shared similar impressions.
The piano improvisation just now wasn’t something that would become a popular hit or tug at people’s heartstrings.
But Han Sion looked free.
Free enough to communicate through melody with a giant like Chris Edward.
One thing was certain: he had talent.
“How many views does this have?”
At Sim Seongbo’s question, the guitarist checked the view count.
Then he blinked stupidly.
He didn’t know what had happened, but the view count was a staggering four million.
* * *
I think I got over a hundred calls today.
Asking if that thing I did with Sion was really an improvisation.
But yeah, it really was an improvisation.
Originally, Gijeong hyung—so, Jo Gijeong, the original singer—wasn’t in Seoul because of an event.
But the event got canceled, he didn’t have to go down to the provinces, and he suddenly came to our studio.
There, he heard Sion recording, and we said, should we jam once? And what came out of that was……
The remake version that’s currently number one on the music chart.
Ah, but I guess I’ve really become a broadcaster too.
Since this morning, I kept thinking, I need to tell this story on the live stream today.
Aigoo! Thank you, HansioooonSaemiro-nim, for the 100,000 won donation!
* * *
I don’t remember exactly, but I think I had that thought around my twentieth life.
That my music was now complete.
Of course, I would continue to receive new inspiration and write new songs.
I might learn new vocal techniques, and I might master new instruments.
But did that improve the essence of my music? No.
Because I was already complete.
From around then, I started taking a deep interest in marketing.
Even before that, I had thought I couldn’t sell two hundred million copies on skill alone, but from around that point, I became almost obsessive about marketing.
Since my skill wouldn’t improve any further, I thought I needed to make the wrapping more splendid.
So I studied marketing by taking two managers as my role models.
Brian Epstein, the manager who was called the fifth member of the Beatles.
Colonel Tom Parker, the manager who created the Elvis Presley of today.
Then I tried living three completely identical lives.
Because I was curious what would happen if, with the same singer, the same period, and the same songs, I changed only the marketing method.
As a result, the ending wasn’t good.
After living the same life three times in a row, there was no way not to go insane.
I was always confused about whether something was something I’d said in my last life or this life, and human relationships were similar.
I think I greeted a regression in a psychiatric hospital……
Anyway.
What I wanted to say was that there probably wasn’t anyone as well-versed in musician marketing as I was.
In that sense……
‘The situation has changed.’
I can feel the environment surrounding me changing.
PD Kang Seokwoo began releasing content related to me like a runaway train, and unidentified forces were creating positive issues related to me.
It’s probably a joint product of M Show and Lion’s marketing department.
At the same time, to prevent my image from being overconsumed, they didn’t reveal a single thing related to my private life.
According to Uncle Hyeonsu, they even went around threatening legal action if anyone spread stories related to my parents.
The scales of the program had completely tipped.
Coming Up Next was no longer a program for Take Scene, but a program for me.
I was satisfied.
It was the picture I had wanted from the very beginning, and it was the path that brought me closer to my goal.
Nevertheless, the reason I couldn’t feel refreshed was……
“It was a stage created by contestant Han Sion’s individual capabilities, and the other members benefited from that.”
Blue.
“I want to give the stage itself a high score. However, I have doubts as to whether it would have reached this level of completion if there had been no member named Han Sion.”
Trainer Yu Seonhwa.
“Speaking as a composer, contestant Han Sion’s arrangement is close to a cheat key. It was an utterly perfect interpretation of the song. However, Three Months, One Hundred Days failed to reproduce that interpretation.”
Composer Lee Changjun.
“A sharp awl in a pocket. An awl pierces through the pouch. That can be a good meaning, but it can also be a bad one. The pouch called Three Months, One Hundred Days was torn apart by the awl.”
CEO Choe Daeho.
As if they had planned it.
Because the moment the mission ended, they poured harsh criticism on Three Months, One Hundred Days.
Around then, I realized.
That what stood on the opposite side of the scales I had climbed onto was not Take Scene, but Three Months, One Hundred Days.