honestly, I'm not thrilled with the teaser. It's like... Visual Dreams gone awry. Doing the robot was pushing it but, at that point in their career, SNSD could do no wrong. Actually that's probably still the case 
. However, doing the pantomime, and after a painful scandal no less, is just a bad look. Allegedly. I really hate being critical right now but I'm just really not feeling it.
But let me say this... I'd pay 20 dollars just to hear them sneeze on a track for 4 minutes straight at this point. Beggars can't be choosers 
tbh, the teaser could have been them nodding their heads to the sound of screaming babies and I would still get hype as shit....
WARNING - Wall of text incoming.
TL;DR version - part one calls the need for originality in pop music into question (and maybe tries to prod at "originality" itself, maybe). part two deals with motives and motivation from the point of view of the fan. Admittedly, both rely heavily on anecdote.
Hopefully they pantomime all the way to the bank. I'm too emotionally involved in T-ara to move on lol. I took a solid post-work nap to "sleep" on my post, mediate, write a letter of apology, and I still feel the same way. Idk where anyone would get the idea that this is a Like Money or Gee ripoff but I still see shades of Visual Dreams in the non-sexy parts of the teaser just because of personal perspective. I'm personally responsible for at least 500 of the X amount of views that video has on youtube
. I even re-watched the MV and the teaser back to back to back just to make sure I wasn't "netizen-ing" out and being crazy.
Aside from all that noise, but still on the subject of originality because I have a lot to say about it... and I feel like typing, I think we all owe our swag to someone else. My personal feeling is that Pop is more than the sum of its parts and when people make the mistake of breaking it down, zooming in on the choreography alone or the music track alone or whatever else, you'll find reason to cry wolf and say "ah-ha!" this isn't original or I've heard something like this before or seen something like this before. The total package is what's original starting with the group itself. In music theory there is a finite sum of possible chord progressions and variations that are viable for pop music. In general, you'll find the major scale representing the bulk of happy/upbeat songs and the minor scale representing the ballads. In Pop there really isn't any room from the chromatic, aeolian, etc. or even dissonance really. As a musician I pay a LOT of attention to the music in any genre. To make a really long story short... I feel as if we aren't meant to be sonically impressed and that the music(not the lyrics, per se) is secondary and relatively simple; only there as a placeholder of shorts with the classic combo of bass and snare with various beat making accessories like synth, samples, and instrumentation (guitar is the go-to upbeat instrument and violin is the go-to ballad instrument is what I'm seeing from my limited experience).
As for choreography, there has to be a certain amount of pragmatism involved in the construction of a dance routine for a song. We can't have Jiyeon and Hyomin or anyone doing backflips or anything wild while wearing heels, holding a microphone AND trying to look good at the same. I'm seriously amazed that they can do any of this let alone all of it at once lol. BUT ANYWAY... this necessary pragmatism also has the side-effect of creating a state of affairs that leaves choreographers with a finite sum of possible moves. I don't really think I need to even say much more than this. If you're into as little as... let's say... 3 groups heavily then you WILL see recycled ideas. The last one I saw was Gyuri in Pandora doing what Miryo (or was it Gain? I can't remember) did in Abracadabra. It was that jazz-hands wave infront of her face... I can't really describe it but I could locate it on the MV for both if you REALLY want to see proof. Again, not hating or saying "ZOMG RIP OFF!!~!!"... just stating a fact that has no consequence on my feelings towards either member or group. Netizen logic is like... T-ara's moves here kinda remind me of something else I saw, therefore fuck T-ara I hate them now. Fan logic seems to go something like, T-ara's moves here kinda remind me of something else I saw, therefore I find this to be intellectually stimulating and if someone disagrees with me then that's cool because I'm just happy as fuck because there are other fans I can talk to about this and we can have group hugs and love each other while supporting our common interests.
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Ruminations on Fandom: A Love Storyprefacethis is a rant. beware.
/end preface
Getting back to the idea that Pop's originality occurs in the total package leading with the members is meant to instill the idea that what we, as fans, find most attractive about groups isn't the choreography or even the songs themselves but it's the personalities behind the whole thing. Maybe, you the reader, do find that the music is most important or something is most important and that's totally cool because this is just how I feel, but to me I think it's members we fall in love with most. I think about the different people on this site that I know certain things about and the things I know without a doubt is that Shirenu loves Jiyeon and Gain, Stryfe loves Bora, Do Me Do Me loves Boram, Dio loves nobody because he's a heartless bastard(jk!
), and I'm sure you all know that my bias is Boram and it goes on and on. You get a feel for these idols over time and develop an allegiance to the person in particular and not necessarily the idea of the group itself (however, if you feel this way about every member then it would also then follow that your allegiance WOULD be to the group as well) and I didn't realize this until Hwayoung was removed from T-ara. At first, I thought Hwayoung was my least favorite member. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Once she was removed though I didn't even feel like T-ara existed for awhile, and not merely because they literally dropped off the face of the Earth. She was still a major piece to the T-ara puzzle and for me it all came crashing down even if she was one of the smaller pieces in my heart. If they removed everyone from the group and replaced them all with new people but kept EVERYTHING else the same; same songs, same dances, same name, etc. it's not T-ara for me. Would it still be T-ara for you? If so, do you think it's because your allegiance to Hwayoung wasn't as strong as your allegiances to the remaining members? I don't know... but I'm curious as to all of your takes on this if you feel like responding.
Topic: (Group) T-ara (티아라) (Read 793511 times)