(WARNING: This post is text and image-heavy with lots of gifs! And for future reference, a lot of my blog posts will be like this, too.)
For my first blog post after the revamp, I’m going to be
talking about *drumroll*…
KPOP!
Now I know most of my readers (i.e. 4 or 5 people) might not
be so familiar with the kpop industry, but bear with me! I’ll try to make
things as easy to understand as possible for the laymen, but entertaining
enough for the diehard kpop fans. Now onto the review!
After what seemed like an endless period of teaser after
teaser, Jiyeon has finally debuted solo! For
those not familiar with the sultry starlet, she’s a member of the kpop girl
group, T-ara. She, along with fellow T-ara member, Hyomin, (my “bias” or favorite) was chosen to debut solo this year. Jiyeon
and Hyomin are actually the first members to debut solo from the group.
Expectedly, there’s a lot of pressure on them to do well.
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| Jiyeon's on the left, Hyomin's on the right. photo cred.: unknown, taken from soompi |
The song is exactly what I expected from the teaser videos:
moody, yet seductive with a flair for drama—all things Jiyeon excels at. But
with countless other female soloists in the kpop industry, does Jiyeon’s solo
debut make the mark?
THE CONCEPT
Something to note about the kpop industry is that an idol’s concept (or overall “look”) can make or break them. You could be
the next coming of Whitney Houston, but if you have an un-focused image with
a poor marketing team behind you, you might as well be the next Hoku (who?). The same goes for if you’ve got supermodel looks. I know I might
be saying this because I was a marketing major in college, but marketing is everything in the
entertainment industry.
So what about Jiyeon’s concept? Well it’s a sexy one, which
is obviously common in many pop music industries, so I won’t get into that too
much. But she’s also got a cool “light world/dark world” vibe going on with her
black and white outfits.
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| photo cred.: fiddle.se |
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| photo cred.: fiddle.se |
In the parts where
she’s at home going about her normal day, she’s wearing simple, light-colored
clothes. Do they symbolize her mundane life? Her lack of fashion sense? We’ll
talk more about that later. We then see her wearing a sexier white outfit
during the dance break, but it flashes back and forth between the white outfit
to a black one. This is just my observation, but whenever she does the more scandalous
moves of her dance routine, she’s wearing the black outfit.
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| photo cred.: femaleidol |
What do I think about the concept overall?: I LIKE IT! It’s
simple, but visually stark and allows interpretation for a story.
THE SONG
The song is produced by Korean songwriting duo, Duble Sidekick (yes, that spelling is deliberate). Their productions have exploded in popularity in
the kpop scene and big entertainment companies have worked with them—including
SM, home to familiar names such as Super Junior and Girls’Generation. But do their credentials match up to the quality
of the song?
Lyrically, the song is about a girl who’s still in love with
her ex and won’t give up on him until he comes back to her. The topic is
nothing new, but the lyrics lend to a somewhat sinister side of the character
Jiyeon is portraying. She’s not just in love, she’s obsessed:
Never ever, I can’t give up on you
Never ever, I’m writing down each letter of your name
Never ever, don’t hide from me
Never ever, don’t leave me
I can’t breathe without you, not for 1 minute 1 second
I like that the lyrics take this dark route because it makes
the song that much more dramatic. It allows for Jiyeon to really act it out on live stages instead of just performing any old love song.
Musically, the song’s…alright.
Its heavy downbeat juxtaposed with Jiyeon’s breathy vocals is seductive, but I
can’t help but feel a sort of déjà vu…
Ah, there it is! Whenever I listen to "1 Min 1 Sec", I
can’t help but think “haven’t I heard this before?” and then I start humming the “ooh ooh ooh” part of Sistar19’s "Gone Not Around Any Longer". Of course, a lot of
pop songs sound similar because, c’mon, they’re pop songs. But there’s something about these two songs that make me
think they were made to be mashed up in a bastardized club remix (I sound like I
don’t want this to happen, but oh god, someone, anyone, PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN!!).
What do I think about the song overall?: It’s ok. It’s
nothing groundbreaking, but it’s not bad by any means. It’s just a “meh” song
that reminds of another song that’s marginally better.
THE MUSIC VIDEO
If you don’t read the lyrics for this song, the music video
might be difficult for you to understand. The first time I watched it without
reading the lyrics, I thought Jiyeon was being stalked by some creepy,
faceless guy she was trying to escape from by living in solitude until he
finally gets her in the end. But after looking at the lyrics, that is quite
obviously not the case.
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| said creepy, faceless guy photo cred.: screencap from the music video |
The more realistic interpretation of the music video would
be that Jiyeon had broken up with a guy for some time now. She wakes up every
day, doing the same routine, and every once in a while, her mind wanders to her
ex-lover. Then she goes into fits of hysteria and the video cuts to dance breaks
where she’s wearing the sexy outfits and grinding her hips against a wall.
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| photo cred.: femaleidol |
To me, the dance breaks symbolize her sexual urges and longing. Whenever she’s wearing white clothes, she’s trying not to
think about her lover and just move on, but as her outfits (there are only 3)
get sexier and darker, her old feelings and hunger emerge. The penultimate ending shows her ex-lover finally arriving. He’s dressed in all black and holding
an umbrella because it’s somehow raining inside
her house (LOGIC!). She then starts crying as rain comes down on her. What I
take away from this scene is that after all this time of waiting, her lover
comes back not to be with her, but to give her closure and say “it’s over,
there’s no chance of us ever getting back together again”.
Finally, we see her in a blank, white room. Presumably,
everything that happened in the music video was all in her head (now the whole raining indoors part makes sense). This is just
more evidence that her character has some serious mental/emotional issues.
So what do I think of the music video overall?: It’s hard to
say because anyone can interpret it differently if they don’t understand Korean
or read the lyrics first. Also the stop-motion parts made me feel queasy during
my first viewing. But just like the song, I give it an “alright” rating.
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| I'm sorry, Jiyeon. Your music video was just too confusing. Please don't give me that look. photo cred: screencap from the music video |
THE CHOREOGRAPHY
If there is one thing I absolutely love and have no qualms
about Jiyeon’s solo debut, it’s the choreography. There are so many props used
for the live stages and even the costumes are put to good use! And though there
are a lot of props and backup dancers, in no way does the stage ever seem over-crowded. The use of the wall as a prop is clever in that the backup dancers can hide behind it when it's not their turn to dance. The choreographer really thought this all the way through and made a subpar “sexy”
song theatrical.
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| photo cred.: park-minyeon |
I like that the choreography isn’t downgraded to just
butt-shaking and hip-gyrating (though there's a lot of that). Jiyeon and the
backup dancers make use of their performance space well with this choreography
and there’s variety in the moves. The part where she and the dancers lift up
their blazers reminds me of Ciara’s “Promise” music video, so
that was a nice, possibly unintentional nod to early-mid 2000s pop
choreography.
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| photo cred.: femaleidol Sorry for the bright flash in this gif, I tried finding a less blinding example. |
What do I think about the choreography overall?: A+++ !!! Definitely some of the best I’ve seen with respect to other 2014 kpop
releases.
THE PERFORMANCE
Ah, my favorite topic to discuss. Because once you take away
the fancy outfits, slick choreography, and overall production quality behind a
kpop idol, you’re left to talk about only one thing: their talent. But who am I to judge talent? Talent, much like beauty, is subjective. What I can talk
about is how much oomph a kpop idol brings to their performances. It’s a kpop
idol’s job to consistently perform well, so even if an amazing kpop vocalist
looks like they’re bored on stage, I am totally going to judge
them for that.
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| Since you've read this far, here's a gif of Jiyeon judging me as I'm judging her. photo cred.: jyjinheaven |
So how does Jiyeon stack up to my performance standards?
Well, I think she’s got the “moody, but sexy” face down…and that’s pretty much
it. She's a decent actor, but something always bothered me about Jiyeon whenever I saw her perform live
and in music videos. She’s technically T-ara’s main dancer of the group, but
she rarely ever hits her moves sharply enough and frankly, she gives off the
vibe of still feeling uncomfortable with performing in public despite being a
seasoned kpop idol. Now if she weren't branded as T-ara’s main dancer, I wouldn’t
judge her so harshly. But since her company gave her such an important title (“main”
anything in a kpop group is considered important), I have every right to judge
her dancing.
What’s disappointing is that, as previously shown in the
dance practice video, her backup dancers tend to outshine her—which is
unacceptable because she’s supposed
to be the idol, not them. They hit the moves more sharply than she does and
this is especially shown in the “mirror” dance scene where she dances opposite
of her choreographer.
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| photo cred.: jiyeon-jjang |
Overall, I thought Jiyeon’s performance value was just okay.
It’s hard for kpop group members to debut solo because they need double the
charisma to make up for not performing with their usual group. Audiences are
expecting better performances out of them because there aren’t any other
group members to hide behind when they slip up on choreography. Unfortunately,
I don’t think Jiyeon brought much oomph
to the table with her solo debut, but she’s popular enough to still be
successful and I wish her all the luck on her career.
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| Jiyeon's clapping because as I'm writing this judgemental post on her, she's making way more money than me. photo cred.: unknown, taken from allkpop |
If you read all of that, thank you and I hope you enjoyed my
review! If you just scrolled through to look at the pictures, I hope you
enjoyed those, as well!
(And I promise that in the next post, I won’t talk about kpop)
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