Now the question on everybody's mind (literally, everybody that I inform - my friends (who were VERY amused), cousins (who were genuinely shocked) and family (my mum was just happy that I am idolising a guy)) is how did this all start?
About 2 months ago, I was watching MCountdown because there was nothing else interesting on the television that day. It also happened to be the day of Shinee's comeback. Given that I knew the existence of the group (due to Lucifer and Ring Ding Dong), I was mildly interested in knowing what their comeback was going to be like.
They first performed Love Sick, which I wasn't very impressed with.
Next was their performance of View, which really impressed me. Okay, it wasn't so much the performance as it was the song itself. View is a song with a deep house genre, which happens to be a genre I really like to listen to for English songs. Furthermore, the song View sounded clean. It's very hard to explain this concept, but basically, I have never really been obsessed with Kpop because it has always sounded very 'noisy', for a lack of better description. There are a lot of messy EDM elements, along with the lack of a catchy enough chorus, that make every song sounds the same as the other.
I was truly, very surprised to hear a Kpop song sound like that. In my mind, I was thinking that "wow, kpop has finally got to this level". And that piqued my interest enough to go onto Youtube to find and listen to the song View (on loop).
Along the way, I spotted Taemin's danger at the suggested playlist on the side. I clicked it and viola! Was I surprised by the whole image change of Taemin! I remembered him most recently then on Henry's Trap. His new image was really sexy and all grown-up (which I really liked!!).
Furthermore, Taemin's Danger was actually pretty catchy for me to add it to my playlist. The dance choreography was really impressive as well.
Next, I listened to an OST song he sang called U. That was then I decided that I really liked this guy. I had actually listened to U before (while watching To the Beautiful You), but didn't know it was sung by Taemin. And his voice while singing U is really good/smoothing.
So there you have it.
After obsessing myself over Taemin's solo album (yeap, I was 1 year late and missed all that), I decided to listen to Shinee's albums. Since Taemin was a member of Shinee, in order to listen to more of Taemin, Shinee was the only way to go haha. Basically, my like for Taemin developed into a like for Shinee.
And... Shinee turned out to be a group that really suited my tastes. Now, note that at this time, the last Shinee song that I listened to properly was Lucifer / Sherlock (which I didn't really like at that time). That was really long ago. 2013-2014 was my A-level study period so... yeap, I was also more obsessed with English music at that point due to Katy Perry's Prism.
Turns out that 2013 was a massive year for Shinee, with Dream Girl, Why So Serious and Everybody. After listening to their most recent albums (I kind of went backwards in my timeline with Shinee), I was genuinely surprised at the various genres present in their albums. I also really like their songs, which are slightly influenced by American pop I think.
The Misconceptions of You (Dream Girl album) was probably the first Shinee album that I fell in love with because it had a lot of catchy songs like Punch Drunk Love, Girls Girls Girls, Aside and Beautiful. Overall, it was a very good album to listen to if you were, like me, transitioning from US pop to Kpop.
Afterwards, I became more and more impressed with Shinee's vocal and dance performance. Yeap, they sing and dance live.
It helped that I was right in the midst of Shinee's comeback (Odd album) so there was always some new material/ performance at those music countdowns.
And now.... there is going to be a repackaged album for Odd (Married to the Music)!! Will I buy it?? Hmmmm probably hahaha. I shall see.
Anyway, I just thought this was interesting to share. This is a 2014 interview between Jonghyun and Taemin (both are members of Shinee) at Jonghyun's radio show called Blue Night. I guess it is because it is a talk between members, that's why the interview turned out to be quite insightful and meaningful with regard to the Korean music scene and the idol life.
[ENG SUB] 140818 SHINee's Jonghyun & Taemin - MBC Blue Night - Video Dailymotion
And that's all from a new Shawol and Taemint (yeap, that's what the fans call themselves haha).
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