Today was work and music, in that order.
Workwise, I was trying to sort out my laptop, which had done
funny things following a Microsoft update last week (basically all pinned apps
disappeared and some are also gone from the start menu, making them almost
impossible to find). Yesterday, I was too busy to sort it out as I could still
access what I needed at the time (except Chrome, which was a bit of a pain but
liveable with). Today, I knew I had to get it sorted or eventually it would
really piss me off. I now have a bunch of black tiles in the start menu that I
can’t get rid of (annoying for the part of my brain that needs them gone) and I
still don’t have anything in the start menu for most of the missing stuff, but
they are now pinned or have desktop shortcuts, which is good enough.
With the music, I was supposed to be focussing on soloists, but a few bands snuck in at the end, Jay B, Key, Zico,
Kim Jae Hwan, Park Ji Hoon, Lee Jin Hyuk,
Baekho, Woodz, Ha Sung Woon, Kino,
Junny, Max Changmin, Onew, Woosung, Onewe, BDC,
RoaD-B, Tan, Just B, Bandage,
Tempest, TVXQ!, Kingdom and finally
the mighty Pentagon while I was writing this. I calculate I’ve
got 110 more albums from 2022 to listen to (assuming I haven’t forgotten any) before
I can make my final lists – I really did listen to a lot of K-pop last
year. Then, I’ll need to re-listen to the top 20 in each category to make sure
my picks are correct. It’s unlikely the current top 5 albums overall will
change as they’ve long been massive favourites, but there’s still everything to
play for in the rest of the lists – yes, I am beginning to wish I hadn’t
bothered, but it’s too late now 😂.
Funnily enough, it’s actually possible that the current number
1 album might end up at number 1 again this year too, as the singer has just announced
that he’s releasing a repackaged version in February. Apologies, you can skip
the next bit if you want, but I thought I should explain a bit more about K-pop
and their amazing selling skills.
Show me the money
K-pop agencies are the masters of milking money from the
fans. Just with the official releases, repackages, various extraneous goods,
lightsticks and other merch, you need to be rich (or have really nice parents
in the case of youngsters) to be able to afford it, and let’s not even discuss
the price of tickets to see one of those bands in concert 🙈 (if they even
remember where Europe is during their ‘world’ tours that only take in Asia,
Japan and the US/Latin America/Canada 🤬). There is also a thriving industry outside
of the official companies, where you can buy just about anything related to K-pop
(which is how I ended up with this wooden spoon for Christmas – thanks, Jo 👍).
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| It really looks like them (BTS), too! |
Obviously, it doesn’t help that everything comes from South Korea,
so there are extortionate shipping costs on top of the other extortionate costs,
or you have to wait a million years for it to arrive. Japanese stuff is even
more expensive, and Chinese is almost impossible to get unless it’s
Lay (Zhang Yixing) from
EXO (yes, of course I found a way to
include them 😂). A select few bands are beginning to
produce US versions too, so they can sell more copies for the Billboard Charts
(they’re still expensive to ship to the UK, though, 😔
and often have different inserts to the original Korean versions). Check out
the few K-pop albums available at HMV to see how much more expensive they are
than western albums. Increasingly, bands are also producing original English language
albums –
Onewe will be releasing their first one,
Gravity,
on 28 January.
Albums – as I mentioned in a previous post, in K/J/C-pop
all releases, regardless of type, are classified as an album, whether it contains
one track or a dozen. This means they can be sold for the same (expensive)
price, because you often don’t know the track list until release day (although
some bands are getting better at this because they know their fans will buy it anyway),
and you still have to pay the same shipping costs. If you’re unlucky you can
pay £30+ for what turns out to be a single track and an instrumental version.
Not that fans care about that, you just want to hold the physical copy of the
album in your hands. They will also probably still buy the digital version too,
as it will have an exclusive booklet (on iTunes), and helps contribute to sales
and the many awards that K-pop gives away annually, where sales and streaming
play a big part.
Album packaging – the reason you want a physical copy
rather than the planet-saving yet slightly soulless digital/streaming version is
because agencies are extremely creative at producing enticing CD packaging. I’m
not talking the standard cd case and lyric booklet combo that millions of
western albums have (to be honest it’s been a long time since I bought an album
by anyone other than Gary Numan and I never get the standard
version, so they may also provide fantastic packaging, but they certainly never
used to).
For every album that is released there is almost always at
least 2 versions of it (and sometimes more – for instance, the album currently
at number 1 in my overall list had 4 different versions. Confession: I bought 3
of them and have regretted not getting the other one ever since 😭).
The CD itself will be identical, although it may have different printing on it
depending on the concept, but the external packaging and the inserts will be
different in some way – in the case of the aforementioned album, there was a
1980s style video case, a digipack that looked like a 3.5” floppy disk and 2
different ‘fan magazine’ type covers. Among the inserts were photocards in
those foil packets that you get for things like football card albums, in keeping
with the concept, which had begun with the previous album when 5 versions were
released (including a cassette tape version). Others, use things like spine art
to ensure you get a full set – if you only buy one of each album you only get
half the picture/word.
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| Kingdom's albums spine artwork |
Inserts began with photocards, which quickly became
extremely collectible, and are still one of the main reasons people buy physical
copies. Often, the different versions have different photocards, so collecting
a full set is big business – if your band has 9 members, you have to be lucky
to get the card of the member you want (I never am lucky) and if you want both the
full sets you’ll need to buy at least 18 copies of the album (and then swap/sell
your extras) or buy them from photocard sellers. And then there are the 'rare' photocards (D.O.'s forehead card is the obvious example - I do not own, and alas will probably never own this card).
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| The infamous Universe card |
But it isn’t just photocards.
Normally they come with photobooks and posters (even digipacks) and a selection
of bookmarks, polaroid photos, stickers, postcards and lyric sheets all
furthering the concept. One of my favourite bands even produced a board game in
one of their releases. The album covers look like hardback books. When you
open them up and lay them flat, you can play the game – if you have both parts
– the game pieces are miniature standees of a band member (one for each version).
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| inserts for Xiumin's albums |
Recently, agencies have started getting into NFT’s and
releasing ‘albums’ through them too – yet again for the cost of a normal album,
but all you (usually) get is a single digital track and possibly access to an
online photo library. If you’re really lucky, you might also get sent a physical
photocard. You also have to check carefully as these are often mixed in with
the normal physical versions in the online store and they’re not always
transparent in the description as to what they are.
If you’re now thinking about all the landfill created by all
these eventually discarded CDs (because apparently I’m the only person never to
throw any of them away; which is why I own several thousand), so are the
agencies. In fact, SM Entertainment dedicated a whole hour to an online sustainability forum on 1 January, just before their annual 4+ hour free online
concert starring all their artists, where they discussed the steps they’re
taking to make their products more sustainable and offset their carbon footprint – it was actually quite
interesting (if you’re into that sort of thing).
Repackaging – this is one of K-pop’s biggest scams in
my opinion, although now I’m thinking about it and looking at my collection, I
think it’s generally only SM Entertainment that does it. Basically, the
same album is re-released a few months after the original version, but it has
been renamed and has new covers and inserts. It also has a couple (or more if
you’re lucky) of new tracks that can’t be bought in physical version anywhere else
(so yes, you end up buying the same album twice – or more, if you’re like me
who gets twitchy about not having complete sets). It’s a bit like that old
favourite that they do in the UK of releasing a ‘Greatest Hits’ package and
sticking a brand new track on that’s not available elsewhere, so even though you own every album and all the tracks, you have to buy it to get that one track.
Other agencies release Japanese versions of the albums as
another way to make money from the fans – they usually have an extra, unreleased
Korean song on there, that makes it a must-have. And let’s not forget all the
goods available in the band’s store – everything from posters, right through to
clothing, cuddly toys, jewellery and the concert staple, the band’s lightstick
(I currently own 10, and will be buying the CIX one if I can get it).
There isn’t
just one version either, some bands have 2 or 3 different versions 9and special bags to transport them in); they
generally get better quality (and more expensive) as the band becomes more
popular. I actually like lightsticks at a concert as they give it a warm
feeling and feel sad that western artists don’t get to experience the beautiful
lights they create. Some of them are quite inventive, although increasingly,
bands tend to go for the orb on a stick type, which are almost interchangeable
(the band-related bit is what’s inside the orb).
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| these are some of the more unusual lightsticks |
Before I move away from K-pop, today is the Chinese NCT unit WayV’s
4th anniversary, so congratulations to them! 🎉🎊🎉. Their leader, Kun,
recently chose an unusual way to promote their latest album, Phantom. Rather him than me, then again he is a certified skydiver, and a pilot, and also a magician. He really is very cool!
Also, Baekhyun (EXO) posted his last video
before his discharge from mandatory military service. Knowing we were going to
miss him, he filmed a video for each month that he was away, and this final one
talks about the fans (EXO-Ls) and his expectations for the future. It’s
only 19 days until his discharge, and we know from what Suho (the
leader) and other members have said, that once he’s back the band will be releasing
a new album (I really hope it’s OT9 with Lay 🙏
even though he’s a busy boy with his own entertainment agency to run as well as
everything else he does). D.O. also mentioned it at his birthday
party, yesterday, and confirmed he will be releasing a new solo album
shortly. We already know that Kai will be releasing his third
solo album (probably shortly before he enlists 😭) and that Chanyeol has been
working on his solo. Hopefully, our maknae, Sehun, will also grace us with an
album (or a track at least), and maybe even an EXO-SC release before
he, too, heads off for enlistment 😭.
If you’re still awake, or you just skipped the lecture, my
most interesting post today was some fleece-lined ankle slipper socks (which I’m
calling slocks) because my feet keep getting cold and with the weather dropping
to potential snow levels, or even lower, I need to keep my toes warm. I’m
pleased to report they’re working well so far – better than 2 pairs of fleecy
socks – so I might buy more for when I put the current ones in the wash. The
other thing I got was a bottle of peanut butter whiskey called Sheep Dog
(it’s amazing what late night random Amazon searches bring up 😂).
It smells and tastes exactly like peanut butter, with the bite of the whiskey
coming through at the end. Definitely a 👍 from me.
I’m off to watch Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist 2
as Missing the Other Side 2 isn’t subbed yet. I haven’t yet
decided about Unchained Love. I’ll probably watch another couple of episodes
before I decide whether to drop it.
Oh look, I beat the midnight deadline. Well done, me! 😁🥇
