Zinni and crew hilariously not innocent on Music Bank

[koganbot]

The ever-literal and doltish allkpop.com sees the teaser photos for the GLAM comeback and opines:

The hip-hop group seems to have taken a radical image change for this comeback, choosing girly and innocent over sexy and fierce. Instead of the all-black clothes they had for "I Like That" they've opted for white, lacy clothes instead.

I'm not sure in what universe lacy opposes itself to sexy, but it's sure not GLAM's. In any event, yesterday on M! Countdown Zinni stuck her hip-hop cap right atop all this whiteness while Dahee was in a suit jacket but was missing most of the suit's bottom half; today on Music Bank Park Jiyeon's got the cap and Zinni's barely covering herself in scraps she seems to have retrieved from Courtney Love's "Doll Parts" dumpster. Everybody in sneakers. Pretty funny.

[UPDATE: Well, the Music Bank performance has disappeared from the Internet. Maybe my description is the only account we will have of it.]:
(Miso wearing the S; Park Jiyeon in cap, braids, and dollar sign; Dahee in jacket
and quasi-nightie; Zinni in the barely skirt thing and saying she's not okay at 1m47s)
(The lyrics are intended seriously, female insecurities, apparently written by a man. Says Hitman Bang, "Through this song, I wanted to express the honest feelings of young women living in this generation." Doesn't stop the GLAMsters from having all sorts of fun on stage, presumably also at the Hitman's instigation. Allkpop calls the track "a mix of trot, Euro pop, and hip hop," though I can't tell what's supposed to be trot about it. Seems French, if anything.)

Comments

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

Earlier this month the Sydney Morning Herald published an article about K-Pop (found via omona). The reporter got some face time with GLAM; Miso wasn't entirely on-message, and it seems that Stephanie Wood and the Sydney Morning Herald will now be on Big Hit's shitlist:

But if K-pop is highly contrived, it's also catchy. Listen to girl group GLAM's new I Like That, about a girl eating alone at a Korean barbecue restaurant after a breakup, and you might agree. I meet GLAM's four members - Miso, 17, Dahee, 18, Zinni, 26, and Park Jiyeon, 21 - at a Gangnam cafe, each sitting crowbar straight and declining coffee or food ("We're on a diet"). Their dream, says Miso, a bubbly redhead with black nail polish, is to be as popular as Girls' Generation.

GLAM's minders sit in on the interview: a manager/chaperone who lives with the girls in their apartment glass bubble, a public relations woman, plus two other unidentified staff from their entertainment group, a JYP subsidiary called Big Hit Entertainment. The size of the entourage seems to suggest that GLAM are serious stars but, in fact, they're little known and have only had two song releases in their year together.

The girls were brought together after a series of auditions. In the way of the K-pop world, it seems management puppeteers mapped out a blueprint for the new group: GLAM would eschew the sexbomb girl-group prototype and instead develop a feisty, casual, sporty and friendly image. "We're not afraid of being sweaty, it's cool," says Miso, who brings her hands elegantly to her mouth each time she giggles as though to conceal such an indiscretion.

...

The matter of plastic surgery wasn't on my list of questions I was asked to submit to GLAM's management ahead of our interview but, ever so sweetly, I ask the girls if any of them have gone under the knife. Miso raises a hand and wiggles it, smiling broadly. My question, and Miso's frank answer, apparently causes a kerfuffle; my interpreter later relays to me that if I choose to mention Miso's new nose in my article the group's management will refuse to help me with further interviews I've requested.

There's surely a contradiction between singing about imagined body image insecurities and not being allowed to talk about real plastic surgery. Does hitman Bang's empathy for young women extend beyond lyric sheets, or is he the guy who's telling trainees to go and get their face fixed already?

[koganbot]

Of course you're right about the contradiction, though we don't know when or why Miso got the surgery.

But the agencies: it's as if they're determined to learn nothing from all their failed attempts at spin and information control in the last several years. --Okay, so one doesn't always tell the truth to the world. But if you're concealing an easily available truth, it becomes your enemy. Truth may not always be your friend, but here the agencies needlessly set it up as an adversary. And the story becomes the coverup, not the music.

But maybe truth is Miso's friend. Maybe the interpreter simply panicked.

Of the four (or five) GLAMsters, Miso seems to have the least conventional "pretty face" anyway. Not a standard-issue cutie-pie.

(The reporter is too loose with the word puppeteer, though. It's not as if music journalism is a brimming fount of original thinking.)

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

And the story becomes the coverup, not the music.

Those crazy kids on the interwebs call that the Streisand effect.

[koganbot]

Of course, we don't know how often coverups are quite successful. I assume that many are. It's hard enough for something to become well-known even when its proponents want it to become well-known. But trying to cover up something once it's being uncovered seems futile.

But then, on a slightly different subject, one never knows what to do about nasty, false attacks. If you rebut or counter them with what you think is accurate information, you nonetheless may be giving them attention they'd not have had otherwise. On the other hand, if you let them go unrefuted, the lie may become accepted as true.