Posted on October 16, 2011 at 12:19 am, under asian pop.
Someone’s getting fucking fired tomorrow, but lo and behold, Changmin and Yunho practicing to a 5-membered version of Maximum.
I love it when someone leaks new practice videos of SM’s army practicing in their famed sky-blue wallpapered dance room. These videos show works-in-progress and there are too many over-polished and over-gleamed appearances in K-pop — works-in-progress are much desired.
This version of the song proves one important thing to me.
I think Junsu, Yoochun, and Jaejoong’s singing is better when they sing SM produced songs. There is no hard and fast rule on this and it’s mostly my preference, but I just never really liked JYJ’s stuff post-split. Their JYJ song style is different: the dance tracks were a little too hip-hop-y for them, the ballads were a little too tragic and reeked too much of the an-idol-composed-this syndrome. (I still haven’t listened to “In Heaven” in full.)
I really wanna know why Yunho looks like an Angry Bird doing the Irish jig on the yellow cover.
All of TONE‘s covers are incredibly uninspired. They’re the covers you look at when you see them at the CD store (do these…still exist?) and you go, “…Okay.” And then you shrug before you put it back down and head on over to judge other CDs by their more awesome covers.
The covers actually match perfectly with the content of the album — both bland and possibly a regression in style and execution compared to past works.
Tohoshinki’s past albums have always been a great mix of everything. There were the uptempo ballads, the downtempo ballads (I call them the ‘weepies’), the dance tracks, the tea-time melodies, the jazzy lounge tracks, the randomly intriguing pop songs that have a very distinct J-pop feel to them. They were all really unique in their own way and I would be incredibly happy as a listener because I got a little of everything. Of course there were the one or two throwaway weepies that I just did not care for at all, but they were the minority and they were usually on the second disc of the album or something (and this distinction between material from the first disc and the second disc is a big one).
To show you that I am a delightfully delinquent blogger, I will humor you by answering a formspring question that someone asked me a year ago (I started this post in July, 2010). He/she asked,
There’s just something so impressive and attractive about trying really hard.
All in all I think DBSK’s greatest achievement as a group was their success in Japan, and their Japanese concerts are nice markers in the different points of their careers. FITB was the tip of the scale: when they finally succeeded on some measurable standard that they and their companies had delineated for them, but not so successful that they could stop striving. They were good enough to be recognized, but they still had something to prove. There is something rawer about FITB that I don’t think can be found in any of DBSK’s other concerts. I’m also biased because I really like how they were dressed and mmmm suits :3
Watched this week’s Strong Heart and Changmin’s a really good storyteller. I guess this is easier to showcase now that there are only two active speaking members as opposed to five who had to divvy up screen time. He was funny as hale and looked really good to boot. I am seriously digging the grey suit, the maroon cardigan, the cuffed pants, the New Balances.
Anyway. As I watched this, I just got really sad. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of days, but no matter whose side you take on this fiasco, the truth of the matter is that on the point of technicalities, JYJ loses. They lose completely. Logistically, they aren’t allowed to use the DBSK name, and they aren’t allowed to lay claim on anything that was produced under that name. That’s what entertainment law has dictated.
But that doesn’t mean that they contributed any less to DBSK’s success, and the reality of it is that they no longer have anything to show for their work. They’re not even allowed to sing or utter the songs that they spent 6 years of their lives performing. Homin can at any point in time fall back on that, but JYJ can’t. And this is fucked up because Homin alone did not make those songs as good as they are — that was a combined effort of all five of them, but only two of them can even sing them.
And as I watch Yunho tell stories about how Kang Ho-dong loved to make him show off his popping skills, SBS chose to air clips of Star King from their “O” days. Junsu and Yoochun were in the shots where Yunho was “popping” and it was just mean, damn. How are you gonna not allow three ex-members face time on your station in the present moment, but use footage in which two of those ex-members appear alongside an active member to illustrate a point? That’s not cool, SBS.
I really wanna know why Yunho looks like an Angry Bird doing the Irish jig on the yellow cover.
