This was written on the 25th of August 2018:
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I'll just leave these photos here
OT5 always
I purposely chose this pic because it portrays them as normal people
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I'm not sure how I got to this point, today, to decide to write a post about 2 very different groups; 12 different individuals. But here goes..
I can vaguely remember how I fell into the kpop abyss. I was watching youtube, presumably on my mom's old, thick and heavy white Macbook in my old home in the living room sofa. I was either 10 or 11 years old. I chanced upon dbsk's Hug music video and the rest is history. I invested a lot of my mom's money in them, their merchandise, cd, almost everything they released unofficially and officially. I made a lot of friends on Livejournal that shared the same love for dbsk as I did. We sent each other Christmas and birthday cards and it didn't matter that we lived in different continents. Back then, kpop wasn't as widely known as it is now. Kpop was 'gay', it was weird and people didn't understand why I would like a group of 5 feminine looking guys. It was a good 4-5 years of being part of this fandom until their split, it was devastating for 15 year old me.... I thought they had unbreakable bonds and chemistry. I thought their company had treated them right, and I was proven so wrong. Their company's skeletons slowly came out and though I tried to support the 2 groups (dbsk as 2 and jyj) separately, it was proven to be so hard. I never saw dbsk as 5 live and that still hits me with regret to this day.
Even though dbsk split in 2009, I still went to jyj's live concert in Singapore. I went to as many concerts as long as the artiste came to Singapore. FT Island, 2NE1, the Korean Music Wave... I mean, its no doubt kpop was a big part of my life till 2011/2012. It was there for me as a sense of relief during the most stressful formative years of my teenage life. It allowed me to sieve out the fake friends from real in school, because if your friends don't want to hang around with you because of your taste in music, can they really be called 'friends'? It was a source of comfort. I always thought dbsk would be reunited eventually and to this day I still hold on to that small ounce of faith that it can happen.
I stopped following kpop after 2011/2012 because dbsk's split really did it for me. There wasn't a point anymore and it was too much to bear for my 15 year old self to contain. I figured I was just growing out of this phase and them splitting was kind of God's intervention for me to focus on other more important things in life. At that time, it was the final 2 years of my junior college years (before university), important decisions had to be made and it was probably one of the most important exams I would've taken at the end of 2012. Even then, when my school organised a trip to Seoul in 2011, I jumped on that opportunity like bees to a pollen. My parents never allowed me to travel to Seoul on my own and they never expressed interest in going there. Even though my ultimate kpop group had split up, going to Seoul was a dream come true and it was so much more than just kpop and pretty faces. Till this day, I have not gone back but it holds a very special place in my heart.
Fast forward to mid 2017. BTS was blowing up. I was seeing all these articles about them going to attend the Billboard Music Awards and suddenly this genre of music that was shunned upon, given weird looks, is suddenly...mainstream!? Its normal?? People aren't 'bullied' or made fun of for listening to kpop anymore?? I mean wow, what a time to be alive lol. I had not followed kpop for the whole of my university life (2013-2016) but I still listened to OG kpop groups as and when I felt nostalgic. In 3 years I'm sure tons of groups would've debuted and tried to make a mark in their world...and it had to be BTS that caught my attention?
Spring Day was the first song I listened to of BTS. I was immediately enthralled. I wouldn't want to go into specifics but BTS and dbsk are SO different, I was surprised I even liked bts' style of music with the rap and all. My bias in dbsk was Junsu and he has the vocals of an actual angel. My bias in BTS is Yoongi and he's a RAPPER. Nonetheless, they were like nothing I had come across before and I was truly intrigued. Fast forward today and I'm sulking just as I was 10-12 years ago because 'when is bts ever going to come to Singapore for a concert?!' - to be fair, they have for 1 concert and 1 music event, I just wasn't aware of their existence at that point in time. I see parts of me now, as a 23 year old, mirroring my 12-year old self and it is hilarious.
I love bts because of their rags to riches story, the fact that they came from nowhere, and that they were from a small company but they're taking over the world now. I guess this also stems from the fact that after dbsk's split, I refused to support anything that came out of sm entertainment although it isnt the artists' fault, they're just tainted for me. I love that they broke the notion that the whole kpop industry is manufactured and fake. The fact that they write their own songs and produce is an amazing feat for the industry. Also to produce songs that talk about things that many people would NOT want to come out and talk about is something the kpop industry needs to get on (e.g. the government, crazy fans, mental illness etc).
I have also come to realise that Yoongi is probably my bias now because i identify with him - his struggles with anxiety, depression and his music really speaks to me, especially the me at this point in my life. I read somewhere that a fan said she wished she knew about bts in 2013 when they first debuted and another fan replied that 'you found bts when you needed them the most' and that is the truth. 2018 hasn't been an easy year for me and I find a lot of comfort in bts. Mostly, it's their lyrics that i feel they took the mess in my heart/head and put it in fathomable words...
I know well enough from the dbsk saga that some groups don't stay together forever. I only wish that bts be together as long as it is possible for them to (i.e. the legendary Shinhwa, 20 years...and counting). I know that just as I look back at my Cassie days with bittersweet memory, I will also look back at my ARMY days in maybe 10 years time, without any regrets.
X
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