Battle of the B-Sides:: S#arp: Secret Seduction

 If you've never heard of this group, don't worry. You're not alone in this because they're a first gen group that hasn't released an album since 2003 and they're not one of the names you regularly hear about as being a representative of the first gen line-up. Although, to be fair, even when you do run into one of the big names of first gen, I've found that many people outside of Korea don't know them as well as they should since they're foundational to what we have now. Our second and third gen (and fourth gen now) favorites got to run and be global superstars on the paths that first gen walked down first. You may also have noticed that when it comes to first gen coverage here, I've been focusing on the B-Sides. Part of that is because out of all of the generations of K-Pop that we have so far, first gen has the greatest wealth of b-sides as they were before the mini albums and singles were popularized, so they released full albums. The other part of that is I'm deliberately choosing the b-sides to stand side-by-side with the title tracks and hits of the later generations because if people in general don't know the first gen songs, then you might as well get to know the 90s through the less obvious paths before the bigger hits.

S#arp debuted in 1998 as a five-member group and, as is typical for a first Gen group, had a very messy line-up history, including the reason why they disbanded. Two of the members literally had a brawl shortly before they disbanded and that was not the final reason why the group disbanded (and this is also another case of a garbage company not taking care of the members as people and only looking at the group as a profit-maker, which is actually why the company went bankrupt and they nearly ended up at SM). (You get the most interesting stories out of the first gen groups that remind me a bit of watching a train wreck, and I feel so bad for the people involved in most cases). Besides, the two members involved are apparently on good terms now and a couple of years ago, Seo Jiyoung went on Lee Jihye's YouTube channel and they talked about how tiresome the discord conversation is. So, if they've settled whatever issue there was, I'm happy to treat it as a closed chapter. As is also typical of the first gen groups, they had a very specific, intense rivalry with one of the other groups that fill their demographic. In this case, as a co-ed group, they were rivals with KOYOTE, who are active still and I've done regular reviews for them as well as a BBS post. So it fits that I'm circling around the rivals here with first gen. Also, fun fact, apparently one of the songs in this album is actually a remake of an ABBA song. And the line-up for this album was Seokhyun, Jihye, Jiyoung, Sori, and Chris.

Secret Seduction was the sixth track of their second album, The S#arp+2, released in 1999. There is a name in the writing credits that y'all will definitely recognize because even if you don't listen to any of the groups under the company he founded, you know their names. The only composer for this song was Bang Sihyuk (AKA Hitman Bang) (BTS, Seventeen, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, g.o.d, LE SSERAFIM, Cortis, fromis_9, &TEAM, Enhypen, Santos Bravos, ILLIT, 2AM, GLAM, Lee Seunggi, Teen Top, Beast, T-ARA, Baek Ji Young, Gan Mi Yeon, K.WILL, 8eight, JYP, Wonder Girls, Uhm Jung Hwa, Ivy, Rain, Black Bat, BoA, Park Ji Yoon, Tiny, Lee Ji Hoon, and A4). The lyricist I had a hard time finding songs for and eventually ended up on KOMCA, but that was Kim Jongsook (BoA, Shinhwa, Baby V.O.X, Park Jiyoon, Eye to Eye, UN, and Suzy). I've got another goal now for learning Korean and that's to understand it well enough to be able to navigate KOMCA because that will make my life a lot easier.

I will also say, again, that the worst part of listening to first gen songs is that you have people of the wrong demographic saying words that they should not be saying, especially with regards to rapping. I heavily disagree with them doing that. For the record. And since I can't ask Chris about it and he obviously didn't write his lines, I'm willing to move some of that off him. But good news! This was the last album he used that word in so something obviously was happening behind the scenes here. Again, the mini essay on the relationship between black music and K-Pop is coming with the DEUX post.

No performance. Sorry, y'all. Although probably for the best considering.

If you'd prefer to just skip the problematic word, you'll want to skip the line at :14 to :18, or you can just skip to :18. I didn't realize it had that word until I took a look at the lyrics. My eyebrows went up and I went "Surely not." Alas. And then you'll also want to skip 3:11 to 3:13. Chris has some very, very interesting parts. 

Alternatively, if you'd rather use a color coded lyrics video I found so you can just skip his parts, feel free.

Apparently the Fullerton Boyz are a group of Korean-American gang members that live in Fullerton, California, which is a very specific reference from Kim Jongsook, considering Chris says that and apparently he went to high school in Fullerton (LA area over by Anaheim).

The more you learn.

Which also means that this song was written specifically for this group. 

Alright. Problem lines over. Moving on.

So, in case you were thinking that K-Pop is tame, this song is about seducing someone who's already taken. And, I'm going to be honest, the intensity of Chris's lyrics, which are all in English, had my eyebrows creeping up my forehead. They're an interesting combination of incomprehensibility, slang, and hood talk that flipped my brain back to living in Vegas. Again, it's that first gen charm that you just don't find these days except for very specific groups that are known to be more explicit. When was the last time you heard a K-Pop song talking about bumping and grinding? 

Exactly. 

Not that Seokhyun gets to be completely off the hook. As far as the translation goes, his lines aren't nearly as bold, but the intensity with which he delivers them has me feeling like he's staring at me without blinking. His lyrics could almost be sweet, you know? If I didn't suspect that the guys might be representing the ones in the relationship and the girls were the ones seducing them, and even then, I'm also fairly on board with it all being about seducing taken people and that none of them are representing the taken part. Not that I agree with that behavior, but if you were to make the argument on the points of view, I could be convinced easily. 

And the girls don't get to hide behind subtlety either. We've got lines like "Don't think about your girlfriend right now" and "Why do you keep hesitating?", which make me laugh a little. This is full-on villain era in a song that sounds so soft and nice if you're just listening to the sound of the melody, with a very strong contrast between the girls' singing and the boys' rapping. Unapologetic. We are unapologetically in our villain era with this song. And even though we don't get any really big vocals or fun, tumbling ad-libs, you can hear the vibrato and the belt-potential here, so if the song was about fifty percent more sinister sounding and about twenty percent more dramatic, we'd be looking at villains in a musical right now. I'm so here for that though. 

And like, sometimes you just want a song where you can pretend to be bad, you know? I know I'm probably never going to key a guy's car because he cheated on me, or soak his house in kerosene and then watch it burn. It's not my style. But that doesn't mean it's not fun to sing.

Also, the sound of the instrumental is very much like 70s disco filtered through 90s hip-hop and flavored with a little bit of grunge guitar thrown in there just to break up how smooth everything else is. It's an amazing blend that honestly holds up really well against even modern K-Pop because this sound in the instrumental is starting to come back. 

Thanks for sticking with the song, Champions! I know there were probably a few of you who may have skipped to the very end of this because you're disinclined towards to listening to music that has certain words in it, and that's perfectly acceptable. There are also a number of you who don't care, and a number of you who compartmentalize well. As long as no one starts fighting in the comments, which I haven't had an issue with yet, I don't care what side you sit on. The music is here to be enjoyed, whatever form that takes for you, and I'm certainly going to be the last one to side-eye you for having boundaries considering I've got the Underage Protocol. And I do think that, interesting lyrics aside, S#arp is valuable in the conversation of K-Pop and their music is still enjoyable.

The song I originally planned to go next will not be next, because I got a request in The Form to celebrate Sangyeon's discharge! So we're going to take a bit of a detour over to The Boyz, and then get back to my plan. Soon it will be the time of the Spookening, so I need to have my September posts done by then.

Thanks for reading! Or, thanks for showing up here at the end to see what kookiness I come up with even if you didn't look at the song!

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