My Two Cents On the Post-Fair Trade Sanction JYJ Issue

Ok so as you all should probably know at this point is that I'm a huge DBSK/JYJ fan, they got me into Kpop and shall forever be number 1 in my heart regardless of all the other rookies companies are shoving in our faces these days! I know that the Fair Trade Commission's sanction was given out two weeks ago so I probably should have talked about it then, but it's only now, after I got to think it over, that I feel like I should discuss the possibilities with this new chapter in their book.

For those of you who don't know the situation between JYJ and SM Entertainment.. Oh dear it will take too much space to type it all out now.. Basically Jaejoong, Junsu and Yoochun were members of DBSK and took SM Entertainment to court over the unfairness of their extremely long contract that gave them barely any of their earnings and made them work for basically nothing when they should have been millionaires. At the time DBSK were at the top of their career and so SM didn't want to comply, it lead to the three members leaving the group and they formed JYJ which from then on despite still selling out concerts and having great album sales, etc, JYJ have never been on a music show, variety show or talk show in Korea due to SM's power in the industry. They have only managed to be in dramas and theatre musicals. The Fair Trade Commission ordered SM and the Korean Federation of Pop Culture and Art Industry for blocking JYJ in many ways, not only the lack of tv appearances.

Wow I'm surprised I managed that.. I intended on just saying "google it".. Which you should to read up further as I gave a very brief summary!


Anyway! The sanction!


The other day I read allkpop's article, giving two of their authors' opinions on the matter. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with both authors mainlyjennywill at times. One point in particular was about how if one network allows JYJ on one of their shows, SM will make their idol artists boycott that show. I personally think that the greatest flaw of this article is that they just talk about JYJ's possibility of appearing on music shows, which by far will be their hardest goal to achieve.

The reason that it is the hardest goal as music shows need idols. And SM Entertainment possess some of the most popular idols. PDs don't want to agitate the sole supplier of some of their most valuable stock in fear of it not being shipped to them any more. We probably will never know if SM actually said anything to these networks in relation to JYJ or if it was an unspoken threat that keeps all of the networks in fear of testing the waters. In my opinion, music shows are the ultimate goal of JYJ. They belong on music shows just as much, more, than only artists purely for their music alone.

They need to push for variety shows.


The point made by jennywill on how they are allowed on dramas as SM have less power there but "dominates in music-and-variety land" is debatable in my opinion. Music land? Yes, SM do have a huge power in Korea's music industry. Variety land? I'd say not so much..

As a huge fan of Running Man I will be using it as my main example. So how dominant is SM Entertainment in Running Man? Well it is a SBS show and SBS do have a generally good relationship with SM. However none of the main cast and former main cast are under SM Entertainment, one member, Song Jihyo, is in fact under JYJ's new entertainment company, C-Jes.

I did a tally of Running Man's guests according to the list of guests on their wiki page (with 8 people that I remembered added which were not on the list) , to date from the 1st episode to the 157th episode there has been 211 guests. 24 of those guests belong to SM Entertainment, 19 being idols. A total of 74 idols have been a guest on Running Man. A total of 132 of Running Man's guests have been non-idols, 5 of which are with SM.

That means 11.4% of Running Man's guests have been from SM Entertainment. 2 of which have been on more than 3 episodes - Jessica and Kim Sooro. 25.7% of idols on Running Man have been from SM, yet only ever had 1 group on it at the same time - TVXQ as Yunho and Changmin. YG Entertainment have had both 2ne1 and Big Bang as a whole on Running Man. JYP Entertainment have had at least over 10 of their idols on the show. The most "guested" guest is Jung Yonghwa from CN Blue (FNC Entertainment) and after him in the ranks is Nichkhun from 2PM (JYP Entertainment). Overall I think the only reason that SM have had a quarter of idol appearances in Running Man is simply because their most popular groups have a lot of members. 7 of Girls Generation have appeared on the show which makes up for 36.8% of SM's idol appearances.

So does this mean SM don't dominate the guest list? Well generally speaking, it is difficult to answer. That 11.4% might be the highest total for entertainment agencies but I can't do a tally for them all as I simply don't know a lot of the guest's agencies! When you put the simple figures together 24 does sound very small next to 211. So I guess they don't necessarily dominate.

In my opinion if JYJ/their fans/C-Jes were to put pressure on the PDs of huge variety shows such as Running Man or Infinity Challenge, that don't depend on idols and sometimes don't depend on guests full stop to get their high ratings, they could possibly manage to get on one of those shows. The wide variety of audience that watches these shows will be perfect to bring JYJ back into the spotlight and end up being a gateway back into the rest of the television world.

However I don't know if in reality that could happen the main thing I do agree with in the article was their agreement with what JYJ said about how there still is "a long way to go in the dark tunnel", but I can always keep the faith that it will all work out!!

WOULDN'T THEY NOT JUST FIT RIGHT IT?!

Note: Figures from above may not be 100% accurate, seeing as I noticed 8 people who weren't included in the guest list there may have been a few more, though I doubt the number missing would be high. Take it from me, I've watched Running Man from episode 1 onwards.

My K-pop Drinking Game~!

What's up interwebs?!

Ok so Sunday was my 19th birthday! And so to celebrate it, yes I did celebrate it despite my previous rant about how awful summer birthdays are and how I don't want to have a birthday any more, I invited over my 4 best friends to stay over and inevitably do a Kpop themed drinking game!

Now I do have one friend who usually doesn't drink much/at all so I did allow for her to just drink Pepsi instead but she decided to join the fun and add Malibu to that and have weak shots so...yay for alcoholism and peer pressure!!

Surprisingly only one of my friends got drunk....

Anyway I have decided to give to you my Kpop mv drinking game~

First of all I decided that it would be fun if the game was specific to the person so I wrote up three different categories; words, actions and sets, as well as having various things that we all would drink to. In the end I decided that it was in fact too complicated and annoying to work out and remember when to drink so I edited it down to just the commonly used words and the group drink things!

Drink if your word is:

• oh
• ah
• oh my god
• yeah
• hey
• ___'s back/ ____ is back
• go
• hello
• here we go
• wow
• ok
• girl/boy
• bad boy/bad girl
• yo
• everybody
• swag
• no
• dance
• party
• 소리질러 (sorijilleo)
• 사랑해 (saranghae)
• 오빠 / 누나 (oppa/noona)
• 입술 (ibsul)
• 어떡해 (otteokhae)
• 머리부터 발끝까지 (meori buteo balkkeut kkaji)

There probably was more but you can add/take out whatever ones you want for your own version! 

So I tore up all these and put it in a hat (well actually my headphone's bag) and everybody pulled out 5 words. Every time a person's word was said during a song they took one drink.

For the group drinks I had a long list and so before we started one of my friends, Linnirs, helped me edit it so we wouldn't be constantly drinking.. Well we had a limited amount of alcohol that we already had started drinking! She also picked out what ones we would do a shot to, you can change it for your game.

Everybody drinks if:

• Lip touch *
• Hip thrust
• Company/producer's name said
• A dance we all can do (and do the dance)
• Bias solo - specific to person
• Group name spelt out
• Aegyo
• Celebrity cameo (as an actor) *
• All members/backup dancers all touching one member

*Take a shot

Options that didn't make the cut for our game:

• year is mentioned
• dubstep breakdown
• abs
• unnecessary model
• bad acting
• rapper says their name
• foetus
• all in black/white
• tight pants
• key change
• money note (drink for the length of the note)
• someone is tied up
• wink
• body roll
• drinking

We actually tried to find a Kpop mv playlist for around the year 2010/2011..the good old days that weren't actually that long ago and when all of us got into Kpop properly! We thought we found one but it actually had recent songs in it as well so that was unfortunate but it was still good! You can find that one here!

I might compile my own playlist of songs from 2010-2011 so if I hopefully complete that I will add it to this post! Provided procrastination doesn't take over..

Edit: Here is my 2010-2011 Kpop playlist~ It still is a working progress but with almost 100 videos I'd say you'd be sorted for the game :')

Lastly..

THANKS GUYS FOR A FUN BIRTHDAY! KPOP MV DRINKING GAME WAS A SUCCESS WOO! Pity we didn't have Soju...which is SO GOOD! If you haven't tried it you should!! Wow it is amazing! Yeah so..

BEEP

BOREDOM: Random Music Shuffle Game Things..

After my VIXX post I got a lot of views which has encouraged me to post more even if over half of the views are probably definitely spam but anyway!

So here's a random post where I do music shuffle games which might turn out terrible due to my music collection! I just randomly picked these ones from the tumblr tag "ipod shuffle games"


Lyrical poem. 
Put your iPod on shuffle, press play and the next button. Write the first line of the lyrics in the first ten songs to create your poem. Don’t lie, the poems actually come out really cool. oh dear why am i doing this OK I THINK I HAVE TO CHANGE THIS ONE TO ENGLISH LYRICS ONLY.. otherwise I won't have any idea what's going on.. Engrish lyrics included

"SHINee's back
 You know what time it is?
 I am a ghost
 Into the valley
 This is a JYP production
 I've been to Jupiter
 Look down, look down, don't look him in the eye
 I take her down to the aquarium
 I heard a knock upon my door the other day
 If she wants to dance and drink all night well there's no one that can stop her."


Well that was....interesting...

NEXT


Soundtrack to my life~

Opening Credits: Et Ducit Mundum Per Luce by Angels And Airwaves

Waking Up: 알렉산더 (Alexander) by Zico

Falling in Love: 뒤돌아봐 (Look Back)  by Zico feat. Park Kyung

Fight Song: Humiliation by Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz (The Hunchback Of Notre Dame OST)

Breaking Up: Dying Man by Harim

Life’s Ok: Dancing In The Rain by BAP

Getting Back Together: Heart's All Gone by Blink-182

Wedding: Love Is by Prana

Birth of Child: O Mie (A Thousand) by Aliona Moon

Final Battle: 넌 언제나 (You Always) by DBSK

Death Scene: Ruby Soho by Rancid

Funeral Song: Every Day by U-Kiss

End Credits: VVIP by Seungri

Now I'm gonna do one with just my Korean songs to see how that works out

(note: some songs may be in Japanese but they're by Korean groups so I include them)

How am I feeling today?
Ugly by 2ne1     dun be so negative

Will I get far in life?
Burn Out by Block B    more negativity!

How do my friends see me?
Juliette by SHINee

When will I get Married?
One Kiss by Jaejoong        ......?

What is my best friend’s theme song?
I Swear by DBSK

What is the story of my life?
Believe by DBSK

What was high school like?
Share The World by DBSK

How am I going to get ahead in life?
Burn It Up by BAP     like a pyromaniac!

What is the best thing about me?
Touch by Miss A

How is today going to be?
Phantom City by Phantom

What is in store for this weekend?
I Remember by Bang Yongguk feat. Daehyun

What song describes my parents?
Winter Rose by DBSK      hey they both were actually born in winter!

My grandparents?
Billion Chuck by Zico

How is my life going?
Abandoned by Jay Park feat. Dok2

What song will play at my funeral?
It's Time by U-Kiss     thanks.

How does the world see me?
A Person Like Tears by Changmin     does the world creep on me when i'm watching films? o.o

Will I have a happy life?
Purple Line by DBSK

What do my friends really think of me?
Hyde by VIXX     nappeun saram anide

Do people secretly lust after me?
Oh (rock version) by SNSD performed by Jungmo

How can I make myself happy?
Embrace One's Soul by TRAX      O.O deep

What should I do with my life?
Like Now by DBSK

Will I ever have children?
Something by Harim

What is some good advice for me?
I'll Treat You Better Next Time by Zico

What is my signature dancing song?
Lovey Dovey by T-ara    which is funny because i fail at the shuffle dance

What do I think my current theme song is?
A.D.I.T.O.Y. by 2PM

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Over, It's Not Over - Miss$ vs. Block B by unknown?

What type of men/women do you like?

Rising Sun by DBSK

You guys totally can't guess who my favourite Kpop group is... Nope..

Hating On Rookies: Are People Too Harsh? (Part One)

This week saw the debut of probably more groups than I noticed but two groups in particular caught my attention, G.I. and Delight! Scrolling through comments I've noticed they've both been receiving hate so I decided to give my view on these two rookie girl groups. I've decided to split this into two, focusing on the two groups separately in separate posts.



G.I. (지아이)~

   G.I. debuted with Beatles, a song most definitely not named after the band. From what I've seen this group have not been receiving as much criticisms as Delight and perhaps are, so far, the more successful after just a week or so of being in the spotlight.
   The main criticism I have seen from people in regards to this group is about the amount of autotune in this song. Now personally I have never really been a huge fan of a lot of autotune in songs, however I have to admit that if it fits the type of song then there shouldn't be a problem with it! After listening to this song I believe that, sure maybe they could have toned it down slightly in some parts (mainly around the 1 minute mark in the mv) but altogether I think it suits the song!
   The one main problem is the fact that they are rookies and this is their debut song. Debut songs are supposed to showcase the group's talent! Show off the powerfully vocals, the fierce rapping and whatever else. Layering vocals with autotune does not enable the group to do so and as potential fans we are left wondering about these rookie's musical abilities as we simply cannot tell due to the extremity of the autotune!
   One of the aspects of their debut that bugs me a lot is how they only have released a single that features Beatles and a remix of Beatles. As I said before, debuts should showcase a group's talent! Just one song is not enough to do so! I want to hear G.I. take on different genres to show off different member's strengths and so each of them get a piece of the limelight. But unfortunately this wasn't the case and so has left me really disappointed with Simtong Entertainment.

If you haven't seen it check the Beatles mv out now and decide what you think yourself~

 
   Now the one thing that stopped me from automatically deciding whether or not I liked this group was the autotune. I had to wait for their debut performance to check out how they handle this type of song live. Worst case scenario was them not being able to create an interesting live version of the song due to the lack of studio quality autotune.
   After watching the debut stage I had one definite positive reaction, whether it was the dance moves or the camera angles or the stage lights and background, they seemed to have a pretty good stage presence for a debuting group!
   Vocal-wise definitely some members stood out as being great and not so great. Now I don't know any of there names (seriouslyithinkallrookiesshouldwearnametags) so I shall refer to them in the video below. The girl with the hat with the fringe/bangs is really the only questionable member. Perhaps it was nerves, perhaps it was her microphone, perhaps she just has an airy voice, well whatever it was I felt she definitely needs to produce stronger and louder vocals to keep up with the rest of the group's power. The girl with the cap and the girl with the turquoise hair seemed to be a bit weak but have potential. The blonde rapper girl was pretty solid for a rookie. The blue haired girl definitely stands out the most. Easily. I can't wait to see more performances from her in particular as she will hopefully get even better even though for a nervous debut stage she performed really well.
   In terms of style their trousers reminded me of EXO's shiny trouser which I never was a fan of. Also their lab goggle type glasses were a bit strange but I didn't dislike them that much.
 
Check out their performance here~

All in all, it was a pretty good debut in my opinion and I look forward to seeing more from G.I.!