Omijacha

Hayi was so pretty and classy on Happy Together. At first I was a bit frustrated because the first half of the show was mostly taken up by that erotic movie director guy. But it was a good start for Hayi, after 3 years, to get back into actually being on a show where she can interact with other people. She handled herself really well and looked gorgeous. I think the last episode of DOTS aired just before Happy Together. I have to confess that I haven't watched the drama before and all I saw was the last 10 or 15 minutes of the entire series. Everybody died (the guys) and there were buckets of tears and then they weren't dead and there was lots of kissing. I was totally lost. LoL. Anyway, I guess all of the people coming out with songs in the next few weeks are going to be really happy that they won't have to compete with more DOTS OST songs.

Cool! I was wondering if there would be a bonus track. Now I'll have I'm Different. I was hoping to get I'm Different on the physical album.

If the DOTS producers used "Up All Night" as an OST song, it would probably be on top of the charts for the next 6 months.

True. YG will just do what he wants to do regardless of the relevant facts. I think Hayi is doing everything she can right now to put herself into a position where it will be difficult for YG to put her back into the dungeon. But it's going to be hard, given YG's strong personal bias against investing much of anything in female artists and especially female solo artists.

I've just been really enjoying listening to all of the songs on her album and forgetting about chart positions and stuff for a while. The album is really pure gold and the only reason that chart positions and stuff even matter is that we're just hoping for her to get recognition and more opportunities to release a lot more music in the future (and of course hoping that YG won't stuff her back into the dungeon for another 3 years). But whatever happens on the charts, the album speaks for itself and deserves to be prized by music lovers for its own sake. It's always a bit of a shame the way that music is marketed and distributed in Korea. The vast majority of the general public will probably never even hear the unpromoted gems in both part 1 and part 2. I know I'm going to be listening to and enjoying the songs on this album for years (the same way that I've been enjoying the songs on her First Love album).

That smile in the photos on the bottom row!

Yep, it does seem like YG is always trying to push Hayi into some kind of "mystic" (mysterious, inscrutable, enigmatic, slightly dark & troubled) image, when her real personality is funny, straightforward and sweet. Deeper analysis: "I want you to have a mysterious image" is just YG's cover story and phony excuse for keeping her in the dungeon instead of being a good manager and letting her take collaboration offers, interact with fans and appear on tv shows, etc.

I think you've nailed it. The whole time I was listening to all of the part 2 songs (except for My Star), I was getting a feeling of driving down a road on a rainy night and seeing lights reflecting from the wet road as I listened to the music. The mood is literally night and day. I love both moods. And I'm really loving Hayi's own song, Passing By. It really puts me into a reflective mood.

In the case of the "First Love" album, part 1 came out as digital only. But when the digital part 2 came out, the full physical album (combining parts 1 and 2) came out at the same time. It should be handled the same way for Seoulite too...I hope. Edit: Latest announcement from YG says that the physical album will be out on 4/27.

I'm hoping it will be available on the 20th. But, yeah, I haven't found and definite announcement anywhere concerning the physical album. It would be really negligent of YG if the physical album doesn't come out right away. Edit: YG says the full physical album will come out on 4/27 (one week after the digital release of part 2)

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to watch Sugarman. But Hayi's singing on the song sounded great. The song itself is not a particularly dramatic song. It's more of just a chill "la~la~la~la" song from beginning to end and only has a relatively low-key climax part. It is not the type of song that would give any vocalist much room to do any expressive ad-libs or to do anything artistic with the phrasings. (The number of syllables that have to be sung in each stanza and the rapid pace of the note progression means that the singer doesn't get any room to play with any particular notes.) The song choice and arrangement was obviously not intended to highlight or showcase Hayi's vocal strengths. It's basically the type of melody and song that has to be sung in a sweet, lilting flow and pretty much any typical wispy-voiced idol group singer with a cute-girl voice could do it. It's therefore a song that Hayi of course can do perfectly well without much effort. But it's not a type of song that allows Hayi to blow people away with the full power and range of her vocal abilities. It's like inviting one of the world's top cyclists and Tour de France winners to a variety show competition and in the "competition" they are assigned to ride a child's tricycle instead of a real racing bicycle. It's therefore not a real "competition" in any meaningful sense. It's just entertainment and games. Hayi did great with what she was working with and I don't see any particular reason why Hayi would have been chosen second (especially in terms of vocal performance). Boram's song is obviously a more dramatic song to begin and had dramatic ballad-type climaxes and flourishes...and there were actually two performers in her song. Just at the level of the songs themselves, a dramatic ballad-type song is likely going to have more impact than a a chill la~la~la~la~la~la~la~la type of song, I guess. But when I imagine what Hayi could have done with that ballad song and her own arrangement? The audience would have been blown away.

It may not really be part of the main song... It could just be an intro before the main melody and singing kicks in or something like that.

TBH, I think last year (Season 4) had the largest number and variety of exceptionally talented people. Every year has had its stars. But last year, there were so many really first-rate talents that the judges were just making up ridiculous excuses to eliminate people even before the top 10 was decided. Just for example, both Jun So Hyun and Kang Pureum were already singing better than most professional singers and didn't even make it into the top 10. This year, Ahn Ye-Eun stood out the most due to her creativity. There were other good singers in the top 10, but several of them did nothing but ballads and none of them really have vocal tonality, style or color that would stand out as being particularly distinctive in Kpop.

Only the winner gets the right to choose a company. Everyone else, including the runner-up, may be recruited by a company (or several companies may try to sign them). But no company is required to recruit them. In some cases, it can turn out quite well. In Lee Hi's case, for example, she was the runner-up, but several companies were interested in her, so she actually had a lot of possible choices. I don't think JYP or YG would be interested in Ahn Ye-eun. But Antenna may be interested in making an offer to her.

Actually, the winners in Season 1 and Season 2 are both from Korea. Park Jimin spent 7 years in Thailand, but was born in Korea and is a Korean citizen. She was living in Daejeon, Korea when she auditioned to be invited to participate in Kpop Star. Akdong Musician are Korean citizens who spent less than 2 years living in Mongolia. Akdong also auditioned in Korea for Kpop Star. So they're just Korean citizens who have some experience living overseas. OTOH, Bernard, Katie and Soo Jung were all citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. and auditioned in the U.S. to be invited to Kpop Star.

So cute!!

Well, she didn't become the most popular contestant in the first season of Kpop Star by accident. Of course her singing was the main thing, but almost everyone adored her personality too. All she has to do is be herself, as long as there is no "evil editing" by the show producers. There will always be childish idol fans who expect everyone to act like hyper-active aegyo cartoon characters. But most of the general public like the fact that Hayi doesn't put on the same cookie-cutter cartoon personality that a lot of the idols do.

Yes, in any case, it's really amazing that it's so close even though they had the advantage of an additional 9 days.

Mamamoo also had a 9-day headstart for March. Mamamoo's song was available for the entire month. Hayi's song only came out after 1/3 of the month of March was already gone. Hayi was significantly ahead for 2 weeks. But Mamamoo's total for the month is based on 31 days worth of streaming and downloads. Hayi's is based on only 22 days.

Mamamoo is doing great. As to whether they ended up beating out Lee Hi for February? It would be super weird if they didn't ....mainly because...Lee Hi actually did not release any music this year before March 9 (and still has not put out a physical album at all). So I don't think there is any suspense there.

Wow! It's really happening! And one of Hayi's own songs is included. The titles and featurings all look very promising. I have to say the title of Hayi's song sounds the most interesting. (But I'm looking forward to every song of course.)

Yes. I feel really bad about the whole 2NE1 situation. At the same time, I'm hoping that it will not spill over to negatively impact on Hayi's promotions. After 3 years of waiting... it's a shame that these sad events with 2NE1 have to happen in any case and really unfortunate that they're occurring during Hayi's long-awaited comeback. It's upsetting that the news about her second half of the album is getting buried by all of the Minzy-related news.

Can't wait to see it! It'll be Hayi's first chance in years to do something like this.

Oh, yeah. It is a weird color scheme. A few days ago, I think I read somewhere that you can change it in your user settings or something. But I haven't gotten around to actually doing it yet. Edit: If you look at the bottom of the page, you can click on "change theme" . You can then choose one of the options. I think "Royal Hallyu" is the original theme.

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