Were you there?
Because Girls Generation was there lip-syncing their hearts out for the Korea Times Music Festival in Los Angeles on May 9th.
Interestingly, the pop acts who actually want to debut in the U.S. – BoA and Se7en were missing. Should they really be neglecting their Korean-American fans?
About law? Hell no.
The only thing that Girls Generation knows is how to dance to their hit single, “Gee.” So the 3 girls, 5 sticks and 1 dot will be teaching dance steps to (most likely) uncoordinated law students.
The idea to expose Harvard law students to Korean pop culture is the brainchild of SM Entertainment head, Lee Su-man. For the past 3 years, SM Entertainment has invited Harvard MBAs to Korea for a lecture on the Hallyu wave.
Knowing that Korea in general is obsessed with anything Ivy league, Lee Su-man’s association with Harvard, even if he has to invite students to Korea, smells like a publicity stunt.
The Harvard Law Students will arrive in Seoul on March 23rd to “research” Korean popular culture and will learn SNSD steps on March 26th.
Son Dambi’s breakthrough hit was meant for Ivy?
With “Saturday Night” sweeping the #1 spots on music programs, the new hit maker has become the reigning queen of dance. Although I feel that “Saturday Night” does not deserve the recognition, Dambi definitely does. Woman has worked her booty off in incredibly short skirts and showing off her curves at every turn. Last year along with her rising popularity on the now declining, “We Got Married,” Dambi’s “Crazy” chair dance became a huge sensation and made Dambi a bona-fide diva. Yet, it has recently been revealed that the producers of “Crazy”, The Brave Brothers, created this song for the fallen sexy dance icon of Korea, Ivy, in mind. Dambi’s management, however, heard the song first and scooped it up. Ivy has been out of the limelight for the past two years due to a sex tape scandal unleashed in 2007.
For those of you who don’t know, Ivy debuted in 2005 and rose to prominent fame for showing great potential as a female pop act. Her biggest hit was “Sonata of Temptation,” shot her to fame. She was a BIG NAME and rising toward A-List status, but then suddenly her ex-boyfriend came onto the scene, and threatened to release a sex video of her and there were huge allegations that Ivy had cheated with her ex-boyfriend on Wheesung. The supposed sex tape was never made public, but her success took a nose dive nonetheless.
Although her ex-boyfriend was arrested and sentenced to jail for just a year, Ivy was forced to stop all activities. The fallen pop act was also slapped with a 120 million won fine for tarnishing her endorsement with Reebok, in addition to litigation with her management company, Fantom Entertainment. Not only that, her music video for “Sonata of Temptation” got a lot of bad press because, apparently, the director decided to simulate the fight between Tifa and Loz from Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, which by the way is just a pretty movie with no substance, without proper permission from Square Enix. So poor girl has been through a lot of crap. How much she brought onto herself is debatable, but still that much bad press could kill somebody.
Luckily though, at least she has found love. Earlier this year, reporters found out Ivy was dating songwriter Kim Tae-song frolicking happily in the snow. It has also been reported that Ivy plans to come back into the music industry, but there has been a lot of negativity by antis, protesting her return. There has also been random speculation that Ivy was dating Kim to boost herself, but songwriters barely get notice and don’t make a lot of money.
Well, despite the new man, Ivy is staying under the radar, as revealed by the lyrics she wrote for Girls Generation’s (SNSD) “Dear Mom” under the pseudonym, “The Lighthouse.” Current boyfriend Kim had composed “Dear Mom,” which is off of SNSD’s latest mini-album, “Gee.” The song is pretty simple, yet touching, and you can feel that Ivy feels bad for not being a better daughter and woman in the past.
But she has the future to make it up, right?!
Who knew something like the word “GEE” was worth stealing?
So apparently, there is a Korean brand clothing store called “GEE.” This is not a recent phenomenon trying to ride on the success of SNSD’s Gee style. The brand has been around since 2007, and features simple fashionable clothing at relatively cheap prices for the “wide” demographic of skinny petite girls. Interestingly enough, even the logos are exactly the same with the sparkly color and fancy cursive. “Gee” seems to be plagued by Engrish though, as their tagline is “Girl’s BLAND Style Gee.” Way to sell your clothes by calling it boring.
It is uncertain whether they were consulted about using their fashion or name, but it seems highly unlikely as TV specials on SNSD’s “unique” style of sausage tight jeans and light tops do not mention this brand at all.
The store “Gee” doesn’t seem to be angry though because their website features a colored skinny jeans special that specifically references SNSD’s “Gee” in its description. Although the brand came first, they are totally capitalizing on SNSD’s fame now. They also get a catchy little theme song for themselves out of it. Check out the site at: http://gee.co.kr/
[hat tip to PM]
The fresh faced image isn’t so fresh anymore.
Korea is just getting a flood of new girl groups this year. I could name a whole bunch of them, but many are still in the process of training and haven’t officially debuted yet, so I’m just going to ignore them like they will be ignored in the possible future.
T-ara had a good chance of being ignored too because it seems that their debut song “Good Person” for the Cinderella Man drama OST is a ballad. There is a tendency for groups debuting with ballad singles to be overlooked by the larger Korean music industry. They may get a lot of accolade for their superb singing skills and get a lot of praise for showing “potential,” but generally, until they amp themselves up in the image department and produce some catchy fluff, they get little attention.
Good thing for T-ara though because they are conforming to what seems to sell right now: Girl’s Generation (SNSD).
Do we really need more SNSD? They haven’t even gone on a break yet, and they are already announcing ANOTHER comeback album to be released in the latter part of 2009. Honestly, all the pictures released of T-ara make them look like Kara clones, but with SNSD style. The white concept is played out, and the bright, pastel color concept of the music video for the new SeeYa, Da Vichi, and T-ara’s Park Ji-yeon joint project is not so refreshing anymore. The name of their joint digital single is roughly translated to mean “Women’s Generation / Forever Love.” Mnet Media is able to churn out really promising talent with amazing vocal abilities, but they don’t seem to be very creative in the image department. 
Nonetheless, I don’t doubt T-ara in the singing department…yet. Let’s just see when they actually perform on stage. If you’re curious, here are the faces of T-ara.
Is it really that great of a song?
The media for the “Gee” virus is almost heavier than the press surrounding the swine flu (H1N1). Variety shows just love dancing to its catchy beat and music programs always welcome a different rendition of the song. The Infinity Challenge crew, Navi, K.Will, UI, and countless others are riding on the “Gee” storm will their own versions. Most of them are all actually better than SNSD own performance. That’s because all the other artists pull out really nice acoustic and R&B covers- except for Infinity Challenge’s parody but that was way more entertaining than watching SNSD performing it.
Youn-ha has even made it into the press recently specifically because she is doing an R&B cover of the song on an upcoming episode of “Music Vacation LaLa,” which is a really fanciful title for a show by the way. How is that really newsworthy? Poor Younha can’t get press for her own songs that she has to cover a teeny bopper’s to get some press.
For “Gee,” it’s already been 4-5 months now since the release – let it go already!
