It sort of took me by surprise when I found myself
so excited at the
teaser video for the latest song off the repackage of TVXQ/DBSK*'s album. I think that's the first time i've actually referred to them as TVXQ since ... the drama settled down
(new to kpop? need an explanation of the drama? abridged version - 5 member TVXQ, 3 of them try to sue management for unfair contracts, management try to sue 3 for breach of contract, 2 stay quiet, confusion ensues, lots of fans crying, 3 start new group JYJ, 2 stay quiet, JYJ attempts to be an international group as they face so much trouble promoting in Korea, finally 2 make a comeback still using the original TVXQ name...). I'm not a hardcore Cassie
(Cassie = shortened version of Cassiopeia - TVXQ's fanclub) but it still makes me kind of sad to see just 2 of them under that name..
(i'd like to see all 5 together again... preferably performing "Balloons" ... I say that with hope.. keeping the faith ;_; etc) however their banger of a comeback single certainly helped to cement my support and it seriously wipes the floor with JYJ's dismal efforts (that's a whole other story, shame on you Kanye!! shame on you).
When there's only 2 of them it's not like you even have to make a conscious effort to 'ship it.
So TVXQ / DBSK / U-Know & Max / Yunho & Changmin / HoMin / "The Twin Towers" (as in they're both tall and thin ... I love this nickname) are promoting a new song "Before U Go" and I was SO EXCITED. I'm easily excited by some lovely fringes, flying kicks, guns, suits, bullet proof vests... its enough to get most people worked up really. Action suits them well:
ACTION MAX
ACTION U-KNOW
The whole video teaser was set to
Keep Your Head Down (previously mentioned 'banger of a comeback single') which surely kept my attention and non stop action drama so I didn't even think to listen to this new full song when it got leaked before the video, so I had
no idea I was about to enter into the world of epic action drama video set to the smooth vibes of R&B. I have a few issues I'd like to address.
I'd also like to tell you that in the few days week since I started writing this post, saved it as a draft and nearly forgot about it, I've actually swung round my opinion 180º and almost kinda sorta love the song...
The first 40 seconds is perfect, its basically just the teaser again. "Keep Your Head Down" is blaring out whilst men abseil from the ceiling, punch each other and kick some ass until around 42seconds, random k-drama babe man who isn't TVXQ is on the phone and then uh oh it starts.... as in the song, the song starts, the horrible RnB ballad, the very worst kind of DBSK sexy balladry begins with some twinkling chimes and some soft porno soundtrack wah wah pedal guitar noises and then Max comes in, first line "oooooh mmmhmmm yeaahheeeaheaahheeahaheeahhhh" ok i'd just like to stop you there guys because honestly if there were not visuals right now I would be skipping this track, now, right now. NEVER start your song with a warble, please.
I really thought this new dawn of TVXQ might have put a lid on the sexy balladeering, but who was I kidding, even if you take the boys out of
dated american style r&b smooth grooves sexy time warbling you cannot take the
dated american style r&b smooth grooves sexy time warbling out of the boys. I get it Korea, you still love Brian McKnight and BoyzIImen, all of you, the whole country. Every male idol out there needs to be able to do some kind of soulful improvised vocal warbling on demand if they are to prove themselves as REAL SINGERS / main vocals or whatever, 2PM's Junsu just wouldn't have any pride in himself as an artist if he didn't show off
his ability to burst into R Kelly "Bump & Grind" at every fucking occasion he gets the chance. Heck, SM Entertainment love the ballad warbler so much then event wasted the concept of a "Supergroup" with 'SM - The Ballad' (featuring the unmatched lung power of SHINee's Baby Dino, Jungmo hyung from TRAX, SuJu's slightly sickly, hot as hell, tender voiced Kyuhyun, and that other kid Jino (?!) who they plucked from somewhere), the integral audition process was probably based around a game of improvised warbling Chinese Whispers - see 2mins35 in
this clip and tell me i'm not the only one who wants to slap them round the back of the head. Of course if you are not overly confident in
soulful warbling then go for the breathy vocals and some really
subtle lyrics, we all saw what came naturally to Xiah's Japanese solo time, need I remind you
"stroke you like an arpeggio girl" ?
(although to be fair that was pretty great..).
Back to the video. So its a drama style MV with a story, a story that is sort of hard to follow, mostly because its a TVXQ video and these days even Yunho is hot so its very distracting trying to concentrate on narrative when there are alternating cuts to some fur trimmed HoMin with some sneaky glances of bare chests thrown in. Its also hard to follow because I only just discovered that there is an accompanying full drama MV which explains the story, with dialogue, as opposed to the video cut with the distracting eye candy shots and lack of coherence - so I probably wasn't expected to comprehend the whole thing anyway, but what I got was this....
Twin Towers, Dramababe and Token Hot Chick work for the NDI which I guess is like FBI or CSI or NCIS or whatever, is it a real thing? who cares. Anyway they spend their days sitting around the luxurious HQ at their giant glass desk where U-Know is jokingly throwing scrunched up paper balls at people (as if they even have paper in this fancy futuristic hi-tech crime fighting world) then the gang drink coffee out of tiny paper cups throwing their heads back in glee and sometimes they drive about in open top cars throwing their heads back in glee. Meanwhile at the start we saw some girl is in hospital, I thought it was Token Hot Chick at first, haru haru style I thought it was going to be a love quadrangle, but no, there is some crime going down, the bust at the warehouse with the gambling, some really shady looking guy with a book, someone deciphering a code from the book ... KILL WITNESS .. uh oh. Dramababe is up to no good, shooting Yunho in the leg! killing the witness! SHOOTING YUNHO IN THE LEG - HOW COULD HE! Changmin cottons on quickly through some top secret snooping through a venetian blind and has a rooftop screaming match with Dramababe that gives us a full inspection of their perfect dental work, and then Changmin shoots the air in frustration ?! I kind of thought he would take more serious action on the discovery that his fellow agent shot his best friend in the leg and is most likely a criminal,, but no, just some screaming and shooting the air.
Half expected a dead pigeon to drop from the sky. The city scape looks really beautiful though right?
I was going to make a GIF of Yunho getting shot in the thigh, the blood packet exploding effect was really quite something in slow motion, but I thought maybe its a little tasteless/creepy so instead i'll just include this "hot guy on crutches" screen cap to satisfy my needs... wish we could have had a better fringe though, Stylist Nuna needs to up her game.
Yunho is perhaps not the sharpest pencil in the box, a little slower on figuring out that Dramababe is up to no go, until he borrows his book for some casual car reading and somebody literally spells it out for him:
KILL...CHANGMIN !!! UH OH.
Meanwhile Changmin seems to have quite naively entered into the bad guys lair with Dramababe, despite the fact that he knew Dramababe shot Yunho in the thigh and killed a witness, and yet is still suprised when Dramababe pulls a gun on him, I for one, was not suprised. Dramababe and Changmin tussle, Yunho arrives in his Jeep (seriously, a Jeep? c'mon), shady bad guy might get away but thank goodness ass kicking Yunho is here, finally deciding to actually shoot people rather than mess about with the punching:
Yunho shots the shady bad guy and bursts in on whatever homoerotic tryst was taking place between Changmin & Dramababe, and he's understandably pissed about it. Dramababe is just in the middle of smacking Changmin in the jaw, goes to pull his gun out which Yunho shoots out of his hand, another screaming match ensues, the clock strikes 12 and the girl in the hospital from the beginning is maybe dead or something (its on Dramababes iPhone, didn't really get what was going on here in the MV). Dramababe cries his eyes out, turns down a leather clad hand that offers to help him up, and the DBSK duo walk away in mild disgust, as far as I could see they made no effort to cuff or retain criminal Dramababe in anyway, poor NDI work I feel.
Of course the only way it could ever end was DBSK walking away, just the two of them *cue "just the two of us"*, we all know 3's a crowd (apparently 5 was a crowd too... ouch).
Like I said, it had some plot holes, but if you want to watch the full 15 minute drama with subtitles then you can understand the whole thing, please step this way for
part one and
part two. As well as answering all my questions, the full 15 minute drama did through up a few new questions for me, such as, does Yunho live in a car showroom? Is it really appropriate for Yunho and Token Hot Chick to be dating when they work together? Is it really appropriate for Token Hot Chick to wear that footwear to work? Didn't Changmin get Jealous of Token Hot Chick?? I'll bet he did... or my main question DOES THIS SONG HAVE ANYTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE DRAMA VIDEO?! to which the answer I think I know is a resounding "No".
The full drama also ends differently with a celebration of spectacular bromance as Changmin & Yunho drive off into the sunset in their red convertible:
I almost thought we were going to get a full Thelma and Louise for a moment, sadly not, but I do now like to think of this video as some kind of prologue to
Homme's "I was able to eat well". So there you have it, I held your hand and walked you through this whole complex ballad big budget video short film drama thing, but you know what? I'm still not done.
I wan't to go back to talking about the song. Never in all my days on earth did I think I would see Changmin attempt the glorious singing techniques taught by Nitro's Jim Gilette (Hair Metal on steroids finest) in his "Vocal Power" home video series. Go back to
the original DBSK video and skip to 2minutes52secs and listen to the rising multi octave scream and now watch Jim demonstrate:
Am I the only one who thinks this? I'd like to know. I also want Changmin to practice a little more because Jim Gilette is still the greatest god of vocal power, and I really want to cast Changmin in Nunas Know Best's previously discussed 80s Hair Metal festival special (we are hoping the replace the poor effort of New Years Failure - SBS Gayo Daejun with a glam sunset strip spectacular, I don't remember the details right now, thats not important, were SHINee going to be Guns n Roses? ..)
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UPDATE - DISCRETIONARY READERSHIP ADVISED - OVER 16s ONLY PLEASE...
I've now been writing this post on and off for so long that they now released the "dance version" of the MV which is very convenient because I was just debating whether or not this was getting too long already but I still wanted to talk about dancing.
I spoke earlier about the 'sexy balladeering' requirements of male k-pop idols but I didn't explain to you that there are also 'sexy R&B smooth vibes' dance moves which you
must be proficient in if you want to prove yourself as the ultimate desirable male. Its a simple fact that all k-pop boys need to at least pretend to prove that they are as full of bump n grinding hot blooded lust as
Rain hyung, he's like the bench mark for "sexy", of course we have Rain to thank for recently managed to fit in full body rolls and hip thrusts into even the slowest of warbling ballads, see
this post (which I will never tired of linking too, I conisder it some of my finest work), which he then followed up with "Hip Song", which as the title suggests, had its moments. However, the official South Korean dance for sexy R&B time is surely
The American Style Pelvic (as introduced in
this post) which should typically be performed by the "Prince of Pelvic"
Lee KiKwang (member of Beast) as demonstrated
here and
here to the official dance of the The American Style Pelvic - 'Take You Down" by Chris Brown
(also notably performed by 2PM at star dance battle a few years ago, i'm not giving you the link, you go find it yourself, i'm not some kind of purveyor of smut you know! although I recommend the rehearsal video as I find nothing hot about all white outfits with a doo rag and cap, although if you're a Chansung fan, you kind of need to see him thrusting in Bojangles...)
Well, DBSK have gone in search of new sexy R&B time dance moves, and from the live performances I saw that all they've really got to offer is 'stroking down your own body' thing, basically, touching themselves:
FYI Changmin, you're not doing it right.
The "Before U Go" dance version video does offer up some more thrusting, thigh stroking and chest rubbing (always their own, unfortunately) but honestly I don't even think I want it, thanks but no thanks. They look so miserable, and their hair looks rubbish, and dear god what the hell is Yunho wearing for the second half of it, he looks like such a sleazeball, I almost wish they were back in turtleneck sweaters standing still like the old days (and I have been so nice so far and didn't even bring up Changmin's turtleneck in the drama version!). Really this video has SO MUCH WRONG. Changmin looks like he is going to burst into tears...
I think the director noticed just how awkward their faces were trying to too hard to be erotic so he just opted for the weird blackout lighting where you can't even see their faces most of the time, a wise move. Actually the strobe flashing light kind of made me think of those clap on clap off lights people have and it made me wonder how things would go down if a guy is trying to perform some American Style Pelvic and has already clapped his lighting down to the appropriate mood, every accentuated thrust and clap would have the lights back on?! surely a passion killer. I bet Rain and Kikwang don't make these amateur mistakes, but I totally feel like Yunho and Changmin would... do you see what i'm saying? DBSK you are meant to be the "rising gods of the east" but that was seriously the most lacklustre sexy dance I think i've ever seen, and your rogues gallery of backing dancers (except for the cute one with the loose perm) is doing you no favours (and why oh why is Yunho touching them, at least 3 times?! he should be touching Changmin or nobody, jeeez). Really though, the biggest passion killer of all... a black satin shirt:
My final verdict is ... they should not have made this dance video, and i'm not even sure they should ever perform it live. They recorded their sexy balladeering and that was enough, why couldn't they just leave it at the epic drama gun shooting video (which was totally hot) and leave the sexy dance to the Lee Kikwangs of this world? In fact, I'm pretty sure if they cut a new video with Kikwang doing the The American Style Pelvic for 4minutes57seconds to this song then they would instantly solve the problem of a declining population in Eastern Asia. I'm just sayin'...
- BUNNY
* For real k-pop beginners I don't think we've been through this yet on Nunas. The group is called 동방신기 (Dong Bang Shin Ki) which translates to "The rising gods of the east" this gets shortened internationally to DBSK, or TVXQ from the Chinese 東方神起 tong vfang xien qi ... and in Japan its 東方神起 Tohoshinki but we don't shorten that one. ok?
