Ink & Stone

(G)I-DLE finished up promotions for their latest comeback last Sunday. It was a great comeback! They got ten music show wins and had stable digitals. I think "Hwaa" is still charting, actually! It's very satisfying to see their consistent growth, especially for this comeback when Cube (their agency) allegedly didn't support this release. At this point, I'd rather Cube just let the girls take creative control and direction. This same thing happened when they debuted! They had one song in mind for the girls, but Soyeon didn't like it so she went away and wrote the demo for "Latata."

On the other hand, this leaves management and promotion up to Cube and anyone who knows Cube knows they suck in this area. It's a pity. This agency excels at identifying and training talent. Especially at identifying! But they fall down hard after that. (Let's not talk about the current debacle of Elkie leaving CLC right now.)

I know Miyeon's drama debuted. I'm not sure how it's doing but I haven't heard anything egregious about her acting, so hopefully it's going well. Minnie's drama starts in a couple months. 2021 started off well for my girls, so hopefully it continues that way.

( a couple vids for them! )

Now that the girls' promotion cycle is over, my boys (Ateez) are gearing up for their comeback in March. LOL They're going to be really busy this year. They're going to be on Kingdom and some of them are going to be in a drama (Yunho is the second male lead even!). I'm just not going to be able to keep up with all this content, so I'm likely just going to listen to the music. I suspect the fanwars during Kingdom are going to be immense and I'm way too old for that nonsense. Oh boy groups and their parasocial "I'm your boyfriend" nonsense that kicks off this behavior. I hate it. I hate all of it.

They performed on Immortal Songs 2 this weekend (the theme was Rain's discography) and they won! Again! It's nice that immortal Songs keeps inviting them back. I hope 2021 will propel the boys in a major way, the same that 2020 propelled my girls in a major way (a serious accomplishment considering the actual factual pandemic).


I appreciate that they didn't do "Rainism." (Someone else did though.) "Rainism" is the staple Rain track that boy groups cover all. the. time. It's tiresome. So it was refreshing. Say hello to San's core of steel and Yunho, Seonghwa & Wooyoung coming over the chairs at the end. And for a flashback to 2004, here's the original song.

So if Sistar were the Queens of Summer, I guess Ateez is really going for the Kings of Halloween title. I'm here for it because I love all things spooky and I love my KPop performance boys. Especially because they really lean into the "Let's look like the actual factual living undead, fuck looking pretty" during their Halloween performances.

( 3 vids )

Rock Ateez is my fav Ateez, but I'm a big fan of live bands providing backing music for KPop groups during their performances. Check out Blackpink's Coachella performance for DDDD and you'll see what I mean. And I say this as someone who doesn't like DDDD that much -- this version is stellar; the rock band vastly improves it.

Haha, just kidding. SHINee is my forever love and I like NCT 127 when they're not releasing noise. (I really liked their last album, Neo Zone!)

Anyway, Ateez released a new EP yesterday. It launches a brand new series called "Fever" that, as far as I can tell, chronologically takes place before their first album series "Treasure" in the group's lore. Basically, this is what we know about the group's lore: they're a bunch of pirates/outlaws, they have doppelgangers, and there's implied time travel and multiverses.

The theme for this comeback is schoolboy, which isn't my favorite but I guess it's a rite of passage for KPop boy groups. And I guess we're going back to the beginning before the doppelganger nonsense. Overall, the album is easy summer listening -- it's both wistful and nostalgic. I like that we're continuing the trend from "Answer," where the vocalists are getting more focus. Don't get me wrong. I love Hongjoong's rapping, but thee vocalists are great.

( thoughts about the tracks )

Even though I prefer the kind of albums Ateez drops during the winter months ("Say My Name," "Hala Hala" & "Answer"), I think this is a solid, summer album. They continues their tradition of no skips from me, which is really the biggest compliment I can give ANY album.

* I'm talking Burning Sun & Seungri and the fact that there are fans who refuse to cancel him appalls me. Of all people who deserve to be cancelled, it's him!

Trying to get back into the habit of doing these reading round-ups. In reality, I won't post them every week but I can at least aim for more than 5 times a year, LMAO

Recently Finished
Nada. I didn't finish much of anything in December and going back to November is just silly. That's not recently.

Currently Reading
The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black - The final installment of her latest trilogy.

What's Next
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo - Finally going to get a start on this!

Bonus KPop Vid
Ateez drops their new EP on Monday and they released a performance preview of the title track this morning. Give their stylist a raise.

The KPOP world took a lot of hits this year. Members left. Some took breaks for health reasons. An alarming number of suicides occurred in a short amount of time.

There were bigger stories, too. The Burning Sons story dominated the first half of the year. Melon, the parent company of the MMAs, has been plagued by chart manipulation allegations, and the discussion around them has only been increasing over time, not fading away. MNet, the parent company of MAMA, is currently embroiled in a huge rigging scandal involving their Produce series. As a quick intro, the Produce series is a reality TV/survival show in which various agencies send idols/trainees to compete for the chance to debut in a temporary KPOP group where the makeup is literally determined by viewers. It's kind of like American Idol, right? There's a lot of criticism about the Produce series and how it's pretty much wrecked the next generation of idols, but I don't want to get into that here. I never watched the show. I was never invested in the groups that formed as a result. (I am here for Chungha, though, who is a Produce S1 alum and did debut in the girl group that formed. But only her.)

But with the issues surrounding Melon and MNet, it's not much of a surprise that their respective awards shows have been lackluster. The MMAs didn't even broadcast their show. They streamed it. The MAMAs took place over three nights last year. This year, it took place on one night and it felt empty. Some of that is because it was held in Japan, and to say that current South Korean-Japan relations are tense is an understatement.

To literally no one's surprise, BTS swept the major awards at MAMA much like they did at the MMAs. Again, I don't begrudge them this. They really are the biggest KPOP act right now, but it is boring that they keep sweeping.

I wasn't especially driven to watch any of the performances, although I'm glad to hear that Mamamoo got the major stage they didn't at the MMAs. It might have even been overkill, but they did win Queendom, an MNet show. So, I can't hate.

TXT and Itzy won the rookie awards. Again, not a surprise. Oneus and Ateez also performed. I always like watching rookie groups perform because it's nice to see what could be coming down the line. Considering how spare MAMA was, I'm a little surprised both groups were invited as performers tbh but since Oneus is Mamamoo's junior group, I imagine that helped. (There's a thing in the KPOP industry where senior groups can help leverage opportunities for their junior groups.) That leaves Ateez, which I still haven't quite been able to puzzle out. Their senior group is technically Block B, but they're not promoting in any way, shape, or form. Not to mention that while Ateez is gaining popularity internationally, they're virtually unknown by the South Korean general public. So props to their agency for making that happen!

( Read more... )

And everyone's made a liar out of me and started taking prompts for the January talking meme! I'll make a proper post about it tomorrow.