Wednesday, July 3, 2013

More Than Just K-pop - Part V - Busker Busker


Part V – Busker Busker

 

This one is a little near and dear to my heart as the only way I could have rooted for these guys more, is if I were from Cheonan. The real hallmark of Busker Busker is that they exposed the K-pop world to something that wasn’t K-pop and nearly beat them at their own game.

It all began with frontman Beom-jun’s vision of a collective of street artists, amply named… “Pinky Pinky”? Wait, what? The Sangmyung University students grew in numbers until they were joined by their English Professor, Brad, who then said “I got a better name for this” and they were henceforth known as “Busker Busker”.

The collective decided to audition for the Korean version of American Idol, Superstart K. That season, the producer had decided to audition pre-existing groups as well as soloists and they jumped at the chance to give their group a national stage to perform on. Only three managed to make the audition.

The group caught the country’s attention and admiration with their rendition of SHINee’s “Juliette”, with the group Two-gye Wol. Despite the large part Busker Busker played in the arrangement and performance, and the out and out screwing up of the male half of the other group, Busker Busker was eliminated off of this performance, which had nothing to with Two-gye Wol having the only pretty girl in the competition. Sorry, the live version is unavailable to post here. 

Another band broke the cone of silence and saw that they were being trashed by online groups and quit the competition, allowing the re-entrance of two groups, including them and Haze. It quickly became a race for second place as Ulala Session had everything going for them, other than looks. They were fun, wrote their own music, did their own choreography, had a sad backstory and were only held back by their lack of hotness. One of the four was often away during the competition for chemotherapy and he’d still come back and rock the stage with the others. He has since passed away, but leaves this legacy behind: they used the show to prove talent will rise. Two samples of their work: Swing  (Skip to 2:00) and Western Sky (The second with subs, and you can get the preamble as to why they chose it, and then get why it made people cry when they sang it)

Back to Busker Busker, they were constantly dogged by the judges, specifically the two male judges, who refused to take them seriously as musicians, as they were neither pretty or flashy. They proved them all wrong with several solid performances, including “Makeolina”, "Dream Girl" and the self written “Seoul People”.

The competition was over, but the head judge, Lee Seungcheol continued to bad-mouth them in the press, saying they were turning their backs on their fans by writing music instead of touring the rehashed songs they performed with the other Superstar K Top 11. They wrote their album, recorded it, and topped the charts for over a month with each and every track from the album. Not just a couple of singles, Every. Damn. Song.
First Love:
 
The Flowers:
Cherry Blossom Ending (Actual video, no subs; win some, lose some)


With the rise of Busker Busker, and to a certain extent Ulala Session, the cookie-cutter convention had been kicked to the curb. Koreans had suddenly decided that originality was worthy of recognition and that looks didn’t trump talent.

Then “Gangnam Style” happened.

Oh well…

For links to all the articles in the series so far, check out the list in the original post: http://sunnysmartshoppingkorea.blogspot.kr/2013/06/more-than-just-k-pop.html

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