♥ Right Now, Tomorrow, Forever, 소녀시대 ♥ The Official Girls' Generation (SNSD) Thread

[hess]

I'm not quite sure ....but there's a comment on the vid that summarised it.

Sunny got an invitation that says "We invite those who got unpopular these days". A comedian called Ahn Young Mi (seems to be close to Sunny) sent the invitation to her. Reading the title of the invitation, Sunny ripped it up, saying the invitation is sent to a wrong person lol  cr. [/size]ì •ì› ì–‘

Didn't know they were close. Lol, isn't she the comedian the girls used to imitate all the time? Yoona was really good at imitating her...judging from reactions at least

[hess]

Yeah, I'm not so sure how this photobook will turn out. We've already gotten a sneak peak of why Hyoyeon ditches the rest of SNSD when she goes clubbing. 

 

SM Academy sort of went in the opposite direction and trained them to be all prim and proper. No amount of SM brutality managed to suppress white girl Hyo though. 

[hess]

HAI.

To help with your soshi cravings and nostalgia!

I made http://soshishows.blogspot.com/

All the links have subs, and theyre all online for streaming :] 

Soshi awaaaaaayyyy everyone

BAI.

 

ps: The site was made quickly and roughly, so it's not done, but I thought I'd share from now! I'll continue to add to the list slowly slowly :]

Wow, thanks! Some stuff I've been looking forever for.

 

Btw, the link for Yuri's Champagne appearance [10.11.08] seems to be broken?

[hess]

I blame it on Min lol

Lol. I'm calling it now, Seohyun will be the next victim.

[hess]

Thanks for telling mexx It's up now in case you wanted to watch it :]

Thanks~

 

 

[hess]

Drunk Seohyun

 

 

 

 

lol

[iNFO] SNSD photobook in Las Vegas is actually part of Min's master plan. Please anticipate phase 2 of operation Seo Wasted. 

[hess]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZfJbkIkK1U

Omg, I think I've been to that restaurant at 0:33!

[hess]

I've been wondering what time of the day is considered Taeyeon time by the netizens/ people in korea...... Not sure if what the exact time 9.09 ?? 

 

Can someone tell me what's Taeyeon time? 

 

*laughs at self for not knowing/ forgetting*

i have no idea either. can be 3:09 am/pm

 

Yup. Because her birthday is March 9th. Edited August 18, 2013 by hess

[hess]

I'm pretty sure it is 3.09 AM.

I remember she used to write on Taengstagram comment at that time.

ty SONEs <3 and Yes~! that was the pic I was hunting for all along 

 

It can be either AM or PM. Taeyeon has only written it in the AM though.

[hess]

yea... I remember Sooyoung basically saying something along the lines of how going to school was a good way for members to meet normal people and not lose touch with a normal life.

But if they're getting "assaulted" like that at school now, there's really no point at all in ever attending school.

 

The more she goes, the less crazy people would get when they see her. Guessing that Yoona doesn't show up at school as often as Sooyoung or Seohyun.

[hess]

Looks like Twinkle dance and styling. 

[hess]

:( dp

Edited October 10, 2013 by hess

[hess]

 yuri smile in no breathing poster is just 

Yesss. Love that smile. I like her top too. 

[hess]

 

I went to the movie theater today, and I thought this white girl looked like Tiffany.

Omg, I'm not the only one then. I told my friends they resemble each other and they looked at me like I'm crazy. The smile definitely does it. 

 

LMAO. As always, queen of imitations.

[hess]

Tipunnie be getting them oppas

you could never

 

missed one

[hess]

LMAOOOOOOOOOO

[hess]

By Mii

Lol, Taeyeon looks so happy being the tallest of the group for once.

 

Bet she's standing in this pic 

[hess]

 

 

i can't wait to watch this movie

 Had no idea Yuri's character would be like that, LOL

 

 I can't wait either!! 

[hess]

http://www.thevine.com.au/music/news/can-youtube-award-winners-girls-generation-take-on-the-west-20131108-268040/

This article is on point. Writer really did his research. 

 

That brings us to Girls' Generation. Also known as SNSD (short for So Nyeo Shi Dae), Girls' Generation broke through in Korea with the 2009 single 'Gee'. Relevant to this discussion, before 'Gangnam Style' overtook it in September last year, the Korean music video for 'Gee' was the most viewed Korean pop video on YouTube ever. Similar to the aforementioned videos, 'Gee' boasts bright pastels and eye-catching choreography, but it was the video for 'I Got A Boy' for which SNSD won their YouTube music award.

 

It's reductive to think of K-pop as wholly derivative of, or making concessions to, Western pop music (although in some cases that's undeniably true). However 'I Got A Boy' exhibits some immediately familiar tropes for the Western pop landscape, particularly the kind of girl-group choreography that's been missing since the end of Destiny's Child (or, ugh, the Pussycat Dolls) and a defiant swagger which finds no conflict in revelling in the idea of having a boyfriend. As a song by itself, 'I Got A Boy' is a little disorienting in how suddenly it shifts between upbeat R&B, a heart-racing dance track, and a power ballad. But by essentially being three songs in one it lets the video go places something more straight-forward couldn't. The shifts offer cues for the video to change set, style and tone, and by jumping all over the place like a series of vignettes, it never meets a lull. It also doesn't hurt that the Girls look fly as hell in every scene.

 

In a chart system where success can be determined by an artist's viewable (and therefore shareable) potential, 'I Got A Boy' is perfect. I'm sure some academic has already ventured the idea that its chaotic structure makes it perfect for the distraction-familiar multitasking Millennial generation, for whom non-linearity is no problem as they jump between life decisions with the ease of switching Google Chrome tabs. Maybe that's true. But what I believe is the key to the success of 'I Got A Boy' is that it's almost allergically averse to being boring. From the pummelling synth zaps and crooning vocals, to the explosive colour and choreography of its video, 'I Got A Boy' is catchy enough to warrant repeat listens and visually busy enough to warrant repeat views.

 

At the time of writing, Girls' Generation's 'I Got A Boy' has 75,292,430 views. One Direction's 'Best Song Ever', the favourite to win the award, has 151,885,873 views, more than double. But contradictory to the omens, neither Girls' Generation nor One Direction earned their pageviews from viral videos — these aren't successes of virality, but the steady, meticulous courtship of a massive fanbase. And while Directioners are known to be rabid, that's incomparable to the fervour of Asian pop music fans. 

 

For the YouTube Music Awards, winners were similarly decided—by whose special edition video was shared the most on social media. In this case, fans didn't even have to shell out cash, they just had to spam that link in as many places as possible. Reportedly, 'I Got A Boy' racked up three times as many shares as One Direction's 'Best Song Ever'. The real victors, then, are SNSD's fans, known as Sones, whose dedication ultimately proved greater than the Directioners. Both fanbases are notoriously sycophantic, bordering on psychotic, so for the Directioners, to have essentially let down their favourite boys in the world must be pretty devastating.

 

Girls' Generation have earned that dedication in a way not so dissimilar to One Direction. While their singles, as explained above, are more than adequate, its the way the group have cultivated their personalities which is the real sell. While Harry, Liam, Zayn, Louis, and Niall are pretty bloody charming, Girls' Generation, or more specifically their management company SM Entertainment, have personality down to a science. As this extensive New Yorker profile from 2012 reveals, SM founder Lee Soo-Man spent decades refining what he calls "Cultural Technology," the all-encompassing model for developing artists ("idols") for maximum likeability.

 

Far from being the often exposure-expanding path for Western artists, in South Korea (and Japan), drug and sex scandals are forbidden (in the case of J-Pop and some K-Pop groups, so is dating). While plenty of the visual media surrounding the groups is titillating, it's all for fanservice; idols are expected to remain chaste and more or less straight-edge. Although the management might never admit it, this sexual tightrope-walking fosters an even greater personal connection with fans, portraying the girls as idols female fans could aspire towards as well as idealised women the male fans could feel protective of, like little sisters, or dream about one day marrying. As American fan Jon Toth says in the New Yorker piece, "You think you love them, but then you see Tiffany point directly at you and wink, and everything else that exists in the world just disappears." That's the kind of intense connection Girls' Generation—the crowning achievement of Cultural Technology—foster.

Part of what makes their YouTube Music Award win so fascinating isn't merely that they were popular, but that they were popular largely without the help of the Western music industry. Although the South Korean market is small enough to force idol acts to look abroad for real success, most often that means China, Japan and Taiwan. In fact, Girls' Generation have been so successful in other East Asian countries they've been described as spearheading the Hallyu Wave—the Korean pop culture version of the British Invasion—leading to some nationalist backlash in those countries from people fearing their national identity is being overcome by the popularity of South Korean music and television.

 

But with the YouTube Music Awards, in spite of Western civilisation's self-important conviction as the cultural center of the universe, suddenly, even if most people haven't realised yet, Westerners were made aware of the fact that there are massive pop successes happening outside their borders. For some people, that's a scary proposition, but it also reflects the possibly egalitarian virtues of YouTube as a metric for success. Just because Americans don't know who Girls' Generation are doesn't mean that tens of millions of other people don't know them either, although their Western invisibility being held up as an example of them being undeserving, speaks to just how parochial pop culture can be.

 

In the West, Japanese and Korean pop culture is still relatively maligned. Except for the particularly fashionable Westerners copping the styles of the Harajuku streets, Asian pop culture really only makes an impact here when it's framed as weird and alien. Needless to say, this kind of mocking of another country's culture is virulently racist, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say everyone who loved 'Gangnam Style' was a racist too, I'll at least venture that some of the early reaction to that video was in the same vein of objectification, i.e. "Look at this wacky Korean guy!" instead of "What a fun and entertaining pop song." It's problematic and hopefully changing (although some of the Twitter reaction to Girls' Generation's award suggests otherwise) but ultimately the Girls' success in their home country is plenty to be content about; since their debut in 2007, Girls' Generation have sold more than 40 million singles. That's only just over half of Taylor Swift's and just under half of Katy Perry's total singles sales. For a group you've most likely never (or rarely ever) heard of.

 

Girls' Generation may not need the American charts to earn tens of millions of dollars every year, but it's still a highly sought-after market. It's tempting to think of this award as a milestone moment in the journey of Girls' Generation, and K-pop in general, towards worldwide domination, but history doesn't offer a lot of hope. That New Yorker profile also explains the beginnings of Girls' Generation's attempts to break into the US. A deal with Interscope allowed the group to release their third album, The Boys, in the US last year, promoting the eponymous single with performances on The Late Show with David Letterman and daytime talk show Live! with Kelly, as well as an unrecognisable remix of b-side 'Mr. Taxi' from Steve Aoki and a guest-vocal spot elsewhere on the album from Snoop Dogg.

 

The Boys' US release might've made half a dent in the American consciousness, but it's far from the foothold the group needed. It's not unprecedented for South Koreans to ride onto American shores only to break against the rocks. K-pop group Wonder Girls are somewhat infamously held up as a prominent example, having spent two years focusing their efforts on the American market only to leave a vacuum at home which allowed Girls' Generation to thrive. These stories of foreign failure litter Asian pop history, but in a post-'Gangnam Style' (and now post-Youtube Music Awards) America, the timing might be right. Interscope arereportedly prepping a new release of this year's I Got A Boy, the Girls' record from which their award-winning track was taken - potentially the answer outraged twits were rhetorically asking for when they shouted "Who the fuck is Girls' Generation?" through the bowels of the internet.

 

Whether Girls' Generation can leverage their fleeting spotlight to make a lasting mark on America remains to be seen. Although the timing couldn't be better—short of them winning a surprise Grammy—there is still one glaring question to overcome: how open are American eyes and ears to South Korean performers? To put out a completely English album as a concession to the West risks eliminating the appealing idiosyncrasy of the group. But to try and mass-market a Korean-language record to a predominantly English-speaking country, particularly one with still such prominent and evident racial intolerance, is a difficult sell. Girls' Generation seem to be compromising between the two extremes on brand new single 'My Oh My', released for Japan, and which seamlessly switches between English and Japanese mid-verse. But is it English enough? I suppose we'll see when I Got A Boy gets its US re-release. Until then, there are level playing fields like the YouTube Music Awards which, for all its quirks, at least reflects an ideal of popular music without borders.

Edited December 10, 2013 by hess

[hess]

I wonder if Split Personality has any significance...song title? Concept? Ahh this is so exciting!

It would fall in line nicely with my hopes of "mannish" hinting at something like what Ciara did

[hess]

Yeah the possibilities are endless if split personality has anything to do with the concept or the song. I'm even more excited for Marchen Fantasy now, hopefully the surprise will be a teaser 

 

By the way, one of my friends on Twitter said this:

I know, excited to see what they come out with next!

 

And yeah, that's what it looked like they were mouthing to me too. Dunno what we're supposed to get from that...

[hess]

Are any full fancams of Ma Boy out? One that shows both Yulti, or Yuri focused (saw that a Tiffany focused fancam is out already).

[hess]

Gz to Choi Sooyoung for winning the New MC Award at the 2013 SBS Entertainment Awards!

 

Running Man better cast her ASAP! 

Lol, I think there's a reason she's never been on RM...

Jessica might not run by choice, Sooyoung on the other hand...

 

"taeyeon dragging ailee with her"

  I was watching like a hawk in another fancam for any interactions between them but didn't see anything. 

[hess]

RM isn't all about sports, though...what about the comedy?

besides, it's not like Sooyoung can't do anything. she's good at racewalking xD

True, but some sort of athletic competition is usually incorporated. Lol at racewalking.

 

 

Early Feb is also good in my book. Give TVXQ a proper promotion. No overlapping please...

Aren't there speculations about an Exo comeback in Feb though?

[hess]

Can I just say I frikin love the invention of netiz9n?! Its brilliant. I like the way the tn is showing negative comments too tbh.

I agree. It's good to get an unbiased view.