Battle of the B-Sides:: G-Dragon (BIGBANG): A Boy

 Back when I was trying to fully plan out July, foolish creature that I am, I wanted a big name to help balance out what was, at the time, a lot of smaller groups and artists. And, love them or hate them, BIGBANG is one of the biggest names you can do in the world of K-Pop, and they have been for at least fifteen years. But I didn't want to do one of the group songs yet because my instinct tells me that if I'm going to do a BIGBANG song, that's going to be an event. So I planned an event that will be coming up somewhat soon. I also recognize that of the Big 3, SM is definitely overrepresented and I hadn't done anything YG yet (you may remember that I did CL last month, but I decided on her after I'd decided on BIGBANG for the YG representation) (interestingly, I technically had done something YG related much, much earlier, because YG the Dude was part of Seotaiji and Boys, and I have covered a Seotaiji song). Instead, I asked my friend who has been listening to K-Pop since SHINee debuted and is as much of a multistan as I am (although I did have to drag her back into K-Pop a little bit, but she's not the only one I've done that to) which of the four members of BIGBANG I should do a solo song for. I gave that decision to her. She didn't pick a song, but she did tell me G-Dragon, so ya boy, GD it is. Literally every time I think about him, I quote the beginning of Power. It's a bit of a problem because I do it every single time. So, love him or hate him, the big name for July is BIGBANG's controversial leader: Kwon Jiyong, AKA G-Dragon AKA the Chameleon of K-Pop. I don't know what we're doing after this, because my document for the roulette wheel ranges from first gen to fifth, soloists and bands to groups. So b-sides for artists I haven't covered yet is the rule for the month.

G-Dragon debuted as the eighteen-year-old leader of the group BIGBANG in 2006, after spending more than half of his life as a trainee first at SM then at YG and having previously debuted as a six-year-old in Little Roo'Ra. He was the first and so far only solo artist to win the MAMA Artist of the Year and was the first idol to receive the Okgwan Order. He's also very supportive of artists having creative control and also so ridiculously perpetually online that I don't know why I'm always surprised when I run across reels on Instagram that have been liked by him (including one recently that criticized debuting minors). 

A Boy is the first track from his debut album, Heartbreaker, from 2009 and was written about his years of being a trainee. G-Dragon (Babymonster, IU, aespa, Okasian, Zion.T, PSY, HwangTaeji, iKON, Vince, Lexy, SE7EN, and Gummy) is credited as the sole lyricist, as well as composer with CHOICE37 (BLACKPINK, BABYMONSTER, iKON, Cai Xu Kun, MOBB, Okasian, TREASURE, Epik High, LeeHi, 2NE1, and Winner) and producer with Yang Hyun Suk (AKA YG the Dude) (Psy, BABYMONSTER, WINNER, TREASURE, Yang Hyun Suk, LeeHi, zeija, 2NE1, Seotaiji and Boys, SE7EN, Jinusean, Lexy, and 1TYM).

So I didn't listen to this one before I picked it, and the reason I picked this one was because it was actually a solo song and not a collaboration like most of G-Dragon's songs. And when I listened to it that first time to try to figure out what I was going to say about it, I just kind of had to blink in surprise because it sounds so much like Christmalo.win. Which does make sense since there's a direct artistic line from G-Dragon back up to Seotaiji, even if that song hadn't been released yet.

But I wasn't expecting exactly how Christmalo.win this song sounds in spots, especially with the slightly haunted music box vibe the instrumental leans into sometimes, and the chorus especially with how it's sung and the melody itself is so clearly in the same camp of song. 

And there's similar levels of eyeliner going on in that music video, but that's just being a product of the time. There was never a better time for eyeliner than 2008 to 2014. I'm just saying. 

There isn't much going on with this music video in terms of storyline, but let's talk about the symbols because the literature major in me has the zoomies over this music video. 

Although first, I'd like to point out that at 2:26, the back of his shirt says "1958-2009". I'm not sure what's going on with the front of the shirt, and I don't know what the year range on the back is in reference to, but I'm pointing it out for someone. I don't know who. But someone knows. Unless the curtains are simply just blue (this is a reference to the common complaint that not everything in a story is a symbol, and that sometimes the curtains being blue doesn't reference depression or peace or any of the things that a blue curtain could be a symbol for; sometimes the curtains are just blue) (I disagree with that generally because while authorial intent is important, the internalized coding of symbolism for both the author in creation and for the viewer/reader in consuming the product creates another layer of meaning that is actually entirely unconnected to what the author intended. Meaning is almost always produced in the consumption of the product using what tools the author gives in the original creation of the thing using deliberate evocation or implicit bias, which is why you have auteurs in film and why you can analyze an entire body of work that the author has produced to examine the author and the environment that produced the author and that the author is responding to. The cultural shorthand exists for a reason and is literally what my final presentation in my Intro to Film Theory class was on. But yeah. Sure. Sometimes the curtains are just blue.)

I did mention that the literature major in me has the zoomies. This is all G-Dragon's fault. Blame him.

Okay, symbols. First off, all over the place in various different forms and practical mediums, we've got the apple. The apple is a symbol of knowledge, youth, love, lust, fertility, immortality, and beauty, depending on which mythos is being evoked, but what it's being used with here is just fascinating. It starts off almost biomechanical, like it's meant to evoke a steampunk heart. Inside the apple-heart, we have the fetus growing connected into the apple. So, the child (literal youth) is connected to these different concepts via unnatural means; it's not in its native habitat of the womb, so to speak. So we've got the steampunk apple, we've got a glass apple (implying impermanence, fragility, danger), a photorealistic apple (in both red and green, and we're going to get some color symbolism as well here) both in pieces and whole. Interestingly, at :32, the apple reveals its core to be a brain, which means we've gotten the apple connected to the mind and to emotions, which is fascinating because the word 마음 in Korean translates to both "mind" and "heart". The song never uses that word though in the lyrics, but it's implied here with the music video.

The other thing that really caught my attention, in a completely different way, was how prominent the gas mask is throughout the music video. Now, I fully recognize that the reason that it caught my attention was in fact because of the gas mask zombies from Doctor Who, because I literally cannot hear the words "Are you my mummy?" without having a bit of an adrenaline surge. Although that episode had happened by 2009, I highly doubt that a reference to a British science fiction show would have been included in a Korean music video. It's always possible; it's just not exactly plausible. Now, that being said, the gas mask is a personal protection device that needs to be worn when the air and the environment is dangerously unsafe. The first time we see the gas mask is at the second half of the first pre-chorus with the line "오르막길 이라면 내리막길도 있는 법 돌아가기엔 너무 늦어버렸어 I can't let go", which is interesting that that part is talking about metaphorical hills. Considering he literally wrote this about his trainee years and that line talks about how you can't go back, no matter how hard the climb is, combined with the gas mask, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the combination here is saying that no matter how hard you have to work to achieve your dreams, you still have to protect yourself because it's a hostile environment you're in.

We've all heard trainee horror stories. He was a trainee for almost a decade at two different companies before he debuted in BIGBANG. He has to have some nightmares in his closet from that experience.

And he is one of those authors that creates callbacks. We see that here with the last line of the first verse saying "Home, sweet home" which was the title of one of his first songs he came back with after his hiatus, and also with the first two lines of the chorus, which is a direct quote from his first song he released as a thirteen-year-old in 2001, before he was actually calling himself "G-Dragon".

The outro is really cool because you've got the singing from the chorus blended into another rapping verse, which honestly maximizes the real estate of the song in such a great way. 

I wish my Korean was better because I know in my bones that a translation is not going to cut how clever the lyric writing is. The little bit that I've experienced of his lyricism being explained has been enough for me to become fully convinced that the man is just clever. For the record. 

I'm not sure exactly when or where this was performed, other than at some point between August 2009 (when the album was released) and July 2010 (when Taecyeon and Wooyoung were replaced as hosts) and on some program affiliated with SBS that I think was Inkigayo. But I could be wrong.

And the entirety of the performance, we've got pictures and videos of young Kwon Jiyong playing on the LED screen behind him and his dancers, which really drives home the point of the song. He was in the spotlight since he was six. By the time he'd debuted, he'd spent more time in the entertainment industry in some aspect or another than he had being able to be a normal kid.

Having largely experienced G-Dragon only as "an old man" (I'm watching Wimbledon right now and Djokovic is only a year older than him, but is also the oldest person left in the tournament now, I think, and the term "old man in a young man's game" now applies) coming back out of retirement from his seven-year hiatus, seeing him doing proper choreography rather than just vibe based movin' and groovin' is a little bit startling. We do get a little bit of that at 2:13, and I'm going to be watching that part with eagle eyes to see if that's actually choreographed movin' and groovin' or if that's properly vibe-based.

And the fact that he's dressed as Mozart, complete with that curly, blond wig? What a choice. Using criticisms leveled against him by turning it into the concept kind of reminds me of the AI allegations raised against Woozi, and Seventeen responding by having that be the concept for their MAMA 2024 stage, or Suga being accused of not actually playing so he clanging on the piano during a concert, or the leader of Sechskies being annoyed with the lip syncing allegations so he decided to prove the mics are live by pulling out the wildest combinations of words in the English language I've ever heard. It's a grand tradition for artists to respond like this when they're accused of something. G-Dragon just seems to have made a career out of it. 

2:24 starts the most replayed part of the video with his Michael Jackson dance. I know that I'm not the World's Leading Expert in many types of dances, but G-Dragon's got himself some smooth moves, y'all.

And that's nice. That's really nice. He's very smooth and fluid when he wants to be. 

And can we just appreciate how supportive he is of his bestie? He ends it with the heartfelt messages and love to the fans, and then in what is very clearly a different hand and possibly a last minute decision, he shows another page that says "다음주 '태양' 컴백", which means that if I'm correct that this was Inkigayo, that puts this performance on the last Sunday of June in 2010.

This one is from his first solo tour, One of a Kind, from 2013.

...I've been watching quite a few performances of this song, trying to figure out which ones to include in this post, and I was struck by a thought at 2:23 watching him do the bridge with such steadiness and ease, that the G-Dragon we got back after his seven-year hiatus was not the same one that went into the military. I know I'm late on that realization, and I recognize that seven years can make a huge difference in a person's development anyway, but I just feel so bad for him for the things we know about, and for everything that we don't know about.

I hope he's got someone that will give him regular hugs of sufficient length.

Anyway, he looks so good during the bridge. That's almost the thumbnail, by the way. His hair has that very distinct sweat-clumping at his undercut, his lower throat and upper chest as exposed by the neckline of his black shirt are a little shiny and glittery, the little nose scrunch at 2:37. And I love the gold dragon microphone stand he's got. That's fantastic.

This performance would have been one of the last he did pre-military since this was his solo tour in 2017.

I love how you can hear the audio doubling from his live vocals and the backtrack. I don't even need to take a look at his neck, and at 1:00, you can very clearly see that he's got one of his in-ears out. Between when he drops out and isn't singing or rapping, and when he's got the mic up to his mouth, there is a very clear difference, and, not only that, but the start of the second verse at 1:12 has a difference in the rapping rhythm, so you can very clearly hear that.

I initially thought that the overlay shirt was made of lace, but getting a closer look (2:20 gives us a nice close-up), it's not lace and simply sheer. And I really like that his mic, in-ears, and his outfit all match in basically the same shade as red. It's very elegant, very flowy. The contrast with the light purple scarf looks amazing. And then he's got white sneakers on. Naturally.

2:36 is my favorite part of the performance, for the record. I adore how he sings "Remember back in the day" right there. He's got a tiny bit of a growl there while bending the notes. It sounds so good. I'm a tiny bit in love. And then he harmonizes with the backtrack during the outro, so you've actually got three different layers of vocals going on.

And as a side note, I know I joke a lot about Hongjoong being a clone of G-Dragon from the cloning machine in KQ's basement, but I don't think I've ever seen a stronger resemblance than with this performance. If that mullet was brown instead of black, I could be looking at Hongjoong. And actually, I showed my mom a picture of Brown Mullet Hongjoong, and then 2:13 of this video. I told her this was G-Dragon, and she said "No, no. That's still Hongjoong." And protested again when I repeated who this actually was.

I realized that I kind of wanted a performance from his most recent tour, UBERMENSCH, but then I had to decide which of the fancams I wanted to include. Looking at the set list, it's part of the encore, the first song in fact, but he only did about 45 seconds for most of the stops. And while I liked several of the fancams, they weren't the right one to include here. And then I saw what he did for Vegas. Putting it in VCR form with pictures and videos of Young Kwon Jiyong, it feels a lot like he was being gentle with his past self in a way that stepped away from G-Dragon on stage, where he has to be big and a performer, and let Jiyong actually be present and soft.

And I really liked that.

The idols all have to sacrifice so much just to debut, and they continue having to sacrifice more than the average musician (noting a certain fellow '88 American pop singer who got married this month with much gaiety, hoopla, and merrymaking, and I'm so happy for her that she found her person). And the fact that he allowed this song to be shown this way, sixteen years after it was originally released and twenty-four after he became a YG trainee, it implies a lot about how he views this song now. It was written for Jiyong to let himself talk about his struggles during those years as a trainee through the safety of G-Dragon, and now, it's got the time and distance for him to look back at the child he was, however he views Young Kwon Jiyong. In the other fancams I watched, he's no longer strutting around the stage with it and he doesn't sing much of what is performed. But the way he did it in Vegas doesn't require him to perform it.

Thanks for reading, everyone! I wasn't expecting to get as soft there at the end as I did, but that's just what happens sometimes. I like this song, even if I've got a bit of an ache in my chest now after spending this much time with him and this song. Pesky emotions and leader attachment. Ugh.

If you've got any songs you'd like me to cover, even if you think I'd absolutely hate it, feel free to tell me to do it. It may take me some time to set the mood for me, but I will absolutely cover it. B-sides for July (especially with artists I haven't covered yet), nugudom for September, the spookening for October, that's what I'm currently looking for. Haven't decided on what to do for August, but I know I've got three songs confirmed. Drop a comment, submit to The Form. Do what you gotta do.

I'm excited to see where my b-side roulette wheel goes.

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