Omijacha

Wow! A product line named for Lee HI in N.America and internationally. I hope it sells really well. Next up: I hope she gets a fingernail polish line too... Everyone knows how much she likes doing creative things with her nails. I don't know a lot about cosmetics and stuff. But I know that the way things are in the Kpop music world, artists really need these kinds of things going on the side in order to keep going. So it's good to see that things are happening for her... ...Now we just need some news about her next album. No more 3-year hiatuses. No more 3-year hiatuses. ... That's my chant for now.

Yes, I agree for the most part. But one of the things that I have noticed (having been an avid Kpop Star viewer for all 6 seasons) is how it seems kind of uneven how some contestants are allowed (or encouraged or whatever) to select songs that do play to their key strengths, while at other times it's really easy to see that the contestant in question was really uncomfortable and stressed out by a song choice that was totally unsuited for them and had obviously been pushed on them. If I had the time, I would go back and find the several of the particular episodes and performers I'm talking about. But just as an example off the top of my head, I remember clearly the time when there was a preliminary contest (I think it was like the one this year where Kim So-Hee won and JYP got the right to save a contestant later on). YG made the Shorties do an old Seo Taiji song that was completely inappropriate for them. Their strengths being the use of intricate, finely detailed and melodic harmonies, there was absolutely nothing in that 1990's quasi-hip-hop song that was good material for the type of music that played to the Shorties' key strengths.

"Conspiracy theory" is a ridiculously overused term. Anytime anyone questions anything and simply suggests that some person or organization isn't necessarily giving you full and complete disclosure about everything, someone always (like a conditioned response) hurls the "nutty conspiracy theory" accusation. Why is that? Aside from your "conspiracy theory" accusation, the rest of what you write is a reasonable and well-supported argument...and good response to the questions I had. I was just trying to have a conversation about something that I thought was noteworthy on the subject of song selections. I'm not trying to attack JYP or his songwriting abilities. Sometimes, the rearrangements and performances using his songs have been spot on. Other times, it seems that they've been a bit forced and inappropriate for the contestant in question. You may be right. It may be that JYP is such a great songwriter that his songs would be featured in at least every other episode, regardless of any connection or influence he may have on the show. But I still think there is room to question and suggest that there may be policies in place in connection with the show's management that heavily favor JYP song selections. If he weren't a judge on the show and a person who has substantial influence and bargaining power vis-a-vis the show producers, I highly doubt that we would see JYP songs selected with anything near the frequency that we see on Kpop Star. I doubt any other audition programs that do not have strong JYP connections have ever had anywhere the number and frequency of JYP song selections in their shows. (In fact, it is very rare, from what I've seen.)

I just think there's room for questioning. I don't think it's a matter of right or wrong. In fact, it would probably be really hard to consistently make an entertaining show that did not include a huge amount of scripting and control by the producers. I just like to observe patterns and question things rather than being a completely passive viewer. But sometimes the suspension of disbelief and going with the flow makes it easier to enjoy the show. The huge number of JYP song selections every season is hard to overlook. During the first few seasons, I was willing to say that it's just a case of the contestants wanting to get on JYP's good side by picking one of his songs. Maybe that is the case. But it seems like a bit of a stretch -- given the huge number of all songs in existence -- that almost every episode or every other episode someone "selects" a JYP song just because they like his songs or want to get on his good side. In fact, I found it interesting that it was exactly at this point in Season 4 that Katie Kim had her huge breakout performance with a JYP song and at this point in Season 6 that Shannon had her breakout performance with a JYP song. Maybe just a coincidence, but an interesting one to me.

I do think that they have a similarly limited list on Kpop Star. In addition to all of the JYP songs, every season of Kpop Star has included multiple repeats of pop song selections from previous years. It may be necessary as a practical matter because they can't be separately arranging for permissions from copyright holders/agencies every time a performer makes a selection. The term "conspiracy theory" itself has just become a catch-all phrase that is used to stop people from questioning and thinking for themselves. I'm just raising what I think are valid questions (especially given the long history of TV shows of various kinds presenting tightly scripted and planned stories as though they are just happening spontaneously). It may be that Kpop Star is less scripted than some shows. But I'm pretty sure a lot of it is less spontaneous and less in the hands of the performers than ordinary viewers are led to believe. I remember when Brad of Busker, Busker delivered his revelations about how that audition program (S-K) actually operated behind the scenes and how even winning order was often decided before the performances. Incidentally, Busker, Busker was (IIRC) supposed to ultimately place behind Ulala Session (the pre-decided winner) and they were told in advance that this was the way it was going to go. But Busker, Busker had enough charm that their popularity with viewers was able to over-write the scripted outcome. So I guess that means there is some room for performers to create their own destiny with the opportunities that they get.

TBH, there's always been a big question in my mind as to how much choice they really have when they pick songs. For example, I strongly suspect that JYP has some kind of arrangement with the show for his own songs to be promoted. (In EVERY season, it seems like JYP songs are selected at least a dozen or more times. Sometimes it seems like there's at least one JYP song in every episode.) My best guess is that the performers are given only a few possible song choices and are sometimes so strongly pushed toward one song that they really have no actual choice. From the producers point of view, it's important to only let the performers do "safe" songs from a copyright permission perspective. There is probably a limited list of songs that they know will be easy to get permission or that otherwise won't result in any copyright issues (which may be another explanation as to why so many JYP songs are used). I also wouldn't be surprised if there are times when the producers have a desired outcome and giving one contestant a really good, popular song that matches perfectly with that contestant's abilities, while giving another contestant a really inappropriate song...is one way of managing outcomes in the desired direction. (I remember when the Shorties were dominating every episode in season 3, YG pushed the Shorties into doing a really unsuitable song ... and they never regained their momentum after that. On the plus side, it allowed some others to get more spotlight. But it seemed kind of underhanded...) I know the contestants initially always announce their song choice like it was completely their own choice. But in later comments, it usually becomes clear that the "choice" was really made for them by somebody else.

Well, I was hoping that the YG Life website manager would prove me wrong by at least putting up one item to mention Lee Hi's GDA award and performance. SADLY ENOUGH, they just proved me right by totally ignoring it. Not even one mention of it. Meanwhile, it seems like they'll put up "news" items for everyone else, no matter how trivial. I bet if TOP told them he found a sock that he lost last week, they'd put up a "HOT ISSUE" news item for it. But if Lee Hi were to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a Grammy Award and hit number one on Billboard, they would probably still completely ignore it. It's looking more and more like the YG Life website manager really does not know that Lee Hi is in YG.

Originally, each judge had the right to pick two gg trainees (i.e. the idog gg contestants) and five others from general categories (mainly vocalists). Yu Hee-Yeol gave up his gg trainee selections because he said he's not really in a good position to give meaningful assistance to idol group trainees...so JYP and YG each got an extra gg trainee card (for a total of 3 each).

I thought Breathe was relatively high in total digital sales. I know that her Seoulite album's total digital sales are really high. Last I checked it was about number 2 or 3. And Breathe itself was quite high. It's only her physical album sales numbers that are relatively low. (And even her physical sales are similar or better than a lot of famous singers' physical sales. Physical sales are waaaay down overall for almost everybody, except for a few idol groups that have huge fandoms.) But, you're probably right that it will be hard for her to get enough votes and have a high enough digital sales # for Breathe for this GDA.

Thanks for the good news! Do you know if she's a candidate for any awards? I forgot about the Golden Disk Awards. I think she should get an award for the Seoulite album. But after the long 3-year hiatus, I guess her active fandom is not big enough now to outvote the popular idol groups. But at least it looks like she'll be performing -- and that's actually better than only getting an award. Edit: Yaaay! We've finally advanced to page 614 on this thread. It seems like it was stuck on page 613 forever.

Wow! It's starting to feel like the dungeon days again. I hope we'll start hearing about some Lee Hi projects and songs for 2017. If she gets another long hiatus of nothing, she should really start thinking about getting some good lawyers. She should at least take some time to do a few nicely done song covers on youtube for fans. Going years at a time without putting out any songs for fans to enjoy is not a good way to build a career as a singer.

As it turned out, they only showed her singing in the performance and almost nothing else. (They did let her stand on the stage for a minute at the end of the performance. But the MC didn't ask her anything. (In contrast, Hyuk Oh was actually the star performer for that team. Under the arrangement they used, It was more like Hyuk Oh was the main performer, featuring (and carrying) the other two guys. And the MC spent more time interviewing Hyuk Oh than he spent on the other guys. Lee Hi's performance, on the other hand, was a real featuring role.) In any case, she reportedly composed the melody of the hook (which she also sang) and it was a really good and popular performance.

I sometimes wonder if the person (or people) at YG who are responsible for the YG Life website, etc., even know that Lee Hi is a YG artist. It's so hard to find any mention of her among the "Hot Issue" items or any similar places. I've been looking at all of the other "Hot Issue" news items, which include almost ridiculously trivial "news" about other artists. Almost things like "GD seen in public wearing shoes" "TOP got a haircut" "CL has a new fur coat". Every little thing about some groups and artists is included as a "Hot Issue" item. But when Lee Hi does something like performing on Infinite Challenge with Dok2 & Yu Jae Seok, composes the melody of the hook ... and the song goes as high as number 5 on Melon....it just gets completely ignored. There's just nothing but the sound of crickets at "YG Life". It's not a "Hot Issue". It's nothing at all. The only time they bother including anything relating to Lee Hi is only when she's in the middle of the core of the peak week of promoting an album (once every 3 years). Other than that, they seem to ignore her existence completely. Sorry for the rant. It's just been bugging me for a long time and just became really obvious again this past week as the YG Life website continued to completely ignore everything related to Lee Hi. I mean, seriously, the person in charge of the YG Life Hot Issue news list must really hate Lee Hi or doesn't know that she's under contract with YG or something. But it's really bad. I scrolled through more than 10 pages (more than two hundred listed news items) going back to September...and found not even one item about Lee Hi...ZERO (0), ZIP, NADA! And it's not that I finally found any news item about her that far back. I just gave up. And it's not like there are not any news articles to include. Using a search engine, it's fairly easy to find articles about the performance on Infinite Challenge -- or even news about the small bits that she got as a back-up singer for Yang Hee Eun at the GayoDaeJeon show. But for some reason, you won't see any of those news items included at YG Life. "YG Life" has absolutely no interest in anything relating to Lee Hi. I'm sure that even if she won a Nobel Prize and was invited to sing at a gathering of all of the world's leaders and then invented cures for 10 major diseases, YG Life would be totally uninterested and would just completely ignore such news events. Soooo strange! If a person wants to easily and quickly see the latest news about Big Bang (or its individual members) or CL or Sechs Kies or, to some extent, Black Pink or iKon, YG Life is a really good resource. If you want to see any news about Lee Hi, YG Life is worse than worthless. It's the last place to go to look for any information about Lee Hi. You can probably find more Lee Hi related information on the moon or on Neptune than you'll ever find at YG Life.

Looking forward to seeing Lee Hi on Infinite Challenge (MBC TV). If I recall correctly, she's supposed to be on this coming Saturday. I hope she's got some new song releases coming soon. It'll be ridiculous if YG blocks her from releasing any new music of her own (or OST songs) for another year or more. I saw the Charlie Heat tweet above. Keeping my fingers crossed that something like that will be released soon.

The preview for next week shows that she and Yu Ji-ni are paired up for the "team" performances. The preview shows them both with glum looks on their faces and a sad hugging scene. It could mean that Ji-ni was eliminated or Shannon. Or not. But it's worrisome that they showed those scenes in the preview.

TBH, I think the producers have private interviews with the contestants about what's on the contestant's mind and so on, and then often come up with dramatic story lines that they introduce into the show about each contestant...and probably the judges, like JYP, know what the story line is. There have been so many times where I've seen comments from the judges that are obviously pre-scripted to support a certain dramatic narrative. I don't doubt that Shannon is sincere and wants to take her career and singing to the next level. But that's obviously also the "Shannon story line" that the producers have adopted for her participation in the show. I also suspect that JYP was just following a script in his judging comments (even if Shannon didn't know it at the time). I always find it ironic when JYP plays the role of ultimate singing coach and judge of subtle nuances of feeling in a singer's performance. JYP himself is not famous as an excellent ballad singer and is not famous for deeply emotional and naturally emotive singing. He's famous for pop-dance singing. His formula for singing (half air/half sound) is based on what he needs to do to sing while hopping and dancing around. It's a kind of staccato/syncopated singing style matched to the rhythm of the dance steps, and it's a style that avoids long sustained notes so that he doesn't sound like someone singing while sitting in a massage chair. Although I'm sure that he has some valuable insights on singing in general, I don't think anyone needs to take his judgments as the final word on anything.

Antenna does seem to be more about music (not teeny-bop idol groups), while YG and JYP are a bit too obsessed with manufacturing idol groups. At first I had a favorable opinion of YG and JYP because they seemed to appreciate the talent of a lot of the same Kpop Star contestants that I really liked. But it's frustrating to see how those same talented people are treated like second-class citizens/or supporting cast at the companies after they sign their contracts. The companies do provide good production support when music is released, but YG and JYP always give top priority to the idol groups. And YG's a mess overall. It's ridiculous how bad the company is at managing/scheduling musical releases. It should be no problem having every artist at the company release music every year and several times a year. The company often wastes several months out of each year releasing virtually nothing. AKMU is definitely the most successful act to come out of all seasons of Kpop Star and Lee Hi is a close second (no thanks to YG treating her like she doesn't exist most of the time and apparently doing only the bare minimum required under contract in allowing her to release an album once in a blue moon). But a lot of AKMU's and Lee Hi's success is due to the momentum that they carried with them from Kpop Star and, if anything, YG has mostly slowed them down and made them lose a lot of their original fanbases due to long periods of inactivity. And don't get me started on Jimin. JYPE's negligence is a crime. At first, I was willing to buy the excuse that she was so young that they weren't promoting her heavily in order to not push her too hard to fast. But it's been 5 years now and JYPE's non-existent promotion for her makes YG's almost non-existent promotion of AKMU and Lee Hi look good in comparison. She has world-class vocal ability. I hope she doesn't just fade from the scene due to neglect. (And why aren't they doing fun inter-company collaborations with AKMU, Lee Hi, Jimin and Ahyeon, etc.? Are the companies so territorial and petty that they can't figure out how to cooperate on some collaborations? Seems like well-promoted collaborations would be a win-win for both companies.)

I keep wondering if she's got something going on right now. I hope so. I hope we're not at the beginning of another long hiatus. I've watched the first two episodes of the new season of Kpop Star and it seems like all of the top stars from the past seasons (Jimin, Ahyeon, AKMU, Katie Kim, Sam Kim, Kwon Jin-ah, Bernard Park, etc., etc. are making appearances....except for Lee Hi. She's nowhere to be seen.

The range of relatively inexpensive, creative things that YG could do for each and every artist to keep them relevant, to maintain positive buzz, to increase their popularity/fanbases, etc......is unlimited. The things that YG actually does to promote them is so underwhelming and inadequate that it can be viewed as gross negligence. Look at how Gummy is thriving now that her career doesn't depend on whether YG will once in a while decide to maybe pay some attention to her for a few days once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, Lee Hi has gotten even less support and promotion than Gummy did. I am grateful, however, that she was allowed to work with HighGrnd and was at least allowed to finally release one full album after 3 straght years of neglect. The fact that she's nominated for a MAMA award is a small miracle. But it also depressingly reminds me of how YG threw her under the bus in 2013, when she had millions more votes than anyone else for female rookie of the year. She was the overwhelming favorite for the award. But YG didn't even once mention how far ahead she was in the voting or even say anything at all about her and the MAMA award. Instead, he media-played for the pogo-stick jumpers who ended up getting the award (even though they were a few million votes behind Lee Hi...and even though according to their actual debut date they should have competed for the 2012 award. (They had to essentially pretend that they debuted at a later time in order to qualify for 2013.)) It would be nice to see Lee Hi get some recognition at MMA or MAMA. But I'm convinced now that the actual selection process mainly consists of a bunch of corporate execs making back-room deals. Sometimes there is overlap and the artists with the most talent and popularity win. Other times....not so much.

It's weird. It looks like all the other artists doing OST songs for the Moon Lovers drama are also separately putting out full versions. But YG's not doing this for Hayi. Thanks, YG, for reminding us how important it is to you to always treat Hayi like she's a nobody. (it's extra weird because YG is involved in producing the drama. But I have to remind myself that YG's the one who completely ignored Hayi and instead media played for Crayon Pop when they were competing against Hayi for the 2013 MAMA Rookie of the Year Award, even though Hayi was several million votes ahead in the fan voting and CP are not in YG's company. Another SMH moment from YG.)

Hearing Hayi's singing in the OST for this scene convinces me more than ever that she should have been allowed to do an OST song for the DOTS drama. I'm absolutely certain it would have been a huuuuge hit if she had. I hope that they'll release a full version of this OST song by Hayi. (But so far nothing...and since YG seems to like shoving Hayi off to the side as much as possible, I'm worrying that they won't even bother releasing a full version.)

I better not get started on my dissatisfaction with YG's management philosophy...I won't be able to stop. lol BTW, you can hear Hayi singing in this scene from the drama: link

TBH, it wouldn't be surprising if it even turns out that the DOTS producers asked for Lee Hi to do an OST song for DOTS, but YG said no. (Recently, she mentioned that she had received OST offers, but was not allowed to do them. She didn't specifically mention any particular drama, but it wouldn't surprise me if DOTS was one. She would have been perfect for a DOTS OST song.) DOTS was such a big hit show, it will probably be hard for anything to get that level of popularity for a long time, but just like you I hope that the drama will be very popular and that Hayi's OST song will be a hit.

She's obviously a great performer on stage. (Even when I didn't know much about 2NE1, she was often the one who caught my eye the most.) The term "stage presence" is probably one of the most abused concepts in Kpop (or all kinds of pop). For one thing, it's entirely subjective. (Which is why people argue about it so much.) Just for example, a person with excellent concentration and interest in music can be fascinated for hours just watching a master violinist sitting in a chair and performing or watching an amaziing vocal artist doing nothing but singing, and will think that a lot of the singing, hopping around, exaggerated expressions and stuff that idols do is just meaningless and distracting...and is only "stage presence" in the same way that a person biting off chicken heads and running around with his head on fire is "stage presence" ... It grabs attention, but it's not necessarily good. lol Meanwhile an antsy kid with ADHD absolutely needs to see a performer singing, dancing, shooting flames out her butt and juggling flaming torches at the same time in order to stay a little bit interested...and still may find it too boring and lacking in "stage presence". In my subjective opinion, Minzy's always had fantastic stage presence. (I just hope she'll dial back on the twerking now that she's out on her own. She's got so much talent, she doesn't really need the twerking. She should just leave the twerking to the people who can't do anything else. ;o)

Usually they put mostly rookies, nugus and less popular acts at the beginning. But also, I think for ratings purposes, they always try to put the most popular acts later, so that people will keep watching. If BP weren't rookies, they would probably be put close to the end of the show. My guess is that they won't put BP first because they want to keep teasing the viewing audience with "coming up" teasers featuring BP.