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Review: Secret's Song Jieun, False Hope/Torturous Hope (희망고문)
With Secret's Hyosung stealing all the attention with her democratization scandal and the massive amount of CFs she receives for her "bagel girl" body, the other members haven't had much of a light shined on them at all. Sure, there was YooHoo earlier in the year but the majority vote on that one was that it was a huge disappointment (I mean how can you go from the sexy concept right back to aegyo?!). TS Entertainment is here to fix that problem by giving main vocalist, Song Jieun another solo single by the name of False Hope/Torturous Hope (looks like the translators had a hard time making up their mind). If you haven't seen the music video yet, check it out below!
The Video
Story/Theme: God damn if this video isn't the most beautiful thing I don't know what is. There is so much symbolism to be found in this video that I don't even know where to begin. The whole video focuses on a theme of an endless cycle of torturous pain that never ceases to end. Everything in the video from the grey and reddish color scheme to the simple sly smile of the main male character in the video all have some kind of significance. This is not one of your usual superfluous Kpop videos filled with nothing but fluff and meaningless props.
Let's move on to the elephant in the room: the crucifixion scenes in the video. Some of you might be thinking this is for the shock value (though part of it might be) but there is really no religious significance to it. The main reason it is there is to illustrate that she is painfully attached to this abusive relationship and trapped to the point where she can't ever leave no matter how hard she tries because she is literally nailed to him. This is perhaps the most powerful image portraying what it is like to be in an abusive relationship in the video and there's more too it than that. There's the pomegranate being drained of its juices like one would be drained of their energy, Jieun's finger touching the thorn and bleeding because the relationship hurts to the touch, the Newton's cradle to show the perpetual and endless cycle of abuse, and so on.
I could go on about this for days but let's just move on to the visuals.
Visuals: Jieun looks damn fine in this video if I do say so myself. TS Entertainment sure spent a good bit of money on this video from the hair, to the props accentuating her beauty, to the make up, to the designer clothes (and there are plenty of outfits to choose from throughout the video). Even though I'm not a fan of super close up shots, there was an acceptable amount dispersed throughout the video that made it easy for me not to get tired of seeing her gorgeous face.
The Song
This is one of those rare and unique ballads that has managed to capture my attention. You're doing something right if I'm interested enough to listen to it let alone right a review about it. The song is soft and emotional but not your usual boring ballad. What's also interesting is that Jieun doesn't have the type of voice you would typically hear in a ballad. It's not polished and perfected but they did such a good job with blending it with the instrumentals that I found the imperfections all the more endearing, making me like the song and Jieun more.
Part of it could be that I'm a sucker for instrumentals that involve well... real instruments (don't get me wrong, I do like other types of sounds too). The guitar instrumentals at the beginning piqued my interest slightly but I already knew that many ballads go for that type of sound at the beginning so that isn't what pulled me in. I think part of it was that I got to watch the music video along with the song which, as you can probably already tell, I am in love with. Another reason I like the song is that it properly portrays what it is like to be in an abusive relationship. Overall, it's a great song and the video compliments it greatly and makes it more interesting than your typical ballad.
So what do you think? Was there anything in the video that held great significance to you? Comment below!
Part of it could be that I'm a sucker for instrumentals that involve well... real instruments (don't get me wrong, I do like other types of sounds too). The guitar instrumentals at the beginning piqued my interest slightly but I already knew that many ballads go for that type of sound at the beginning so that isn't what pulled me in. I think part of it was that I got to watch the music video along with the song which, as you can probably already tell, I am in love with. Another reason I like the song is that it properly portrays what it is like to be in an abusive relationship. Overall, it's a great song and the video compliments it greatly and makes it more interesting than your typical ballad.
So what do you think? Was there anything in the video that held great significance to you? Comment below!
Hyosung's misuses 'democratization'; all hell breaks loose
Not even a week ago, the only conflict that SECRET's Hyosung was in was the netizen and uncle fan vs. Hyosung battle on her weight loss, her loving her weight loss whilst others hating it. However, on May 14th, Hyosung (aka Ilbe Girl) has dug herself in a huge, gaping hole with just the use of one single, misleading word on SBS Power FM's "Choi Hwa Jung's Power Time", and adding SECRET to the forever-growing line of hated female idols.
Hyosung stated, “Our team respects each other’s individuality so our group doesn’t utilize democratization.”
Though the average human-being would just stare at the screen thinking "What the actual fuck is wrong?", the no-life netizens have another side of the story to say:
The word ‘democratization’ is used to indicate when a country or society transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy. However, Hyosung seems to have misunderstood what the word meant and misused the phrase.Even worse, some have pointed out that the website full of conservatives Ilgan Best uses the phrase ‘민주화시키다 / democratization’ not for its original meaning, but as something to mean ‘the citizens create chaos’, ‘to destroy’, or ‘to make disappear’, meanings which seem to suit Hyosung’s use more. Because the way she phrased it, there are people who believe that she could possibly be a member of the site as the site’s user are notorious for phrasing it that way (‘민주화시키다’ with ‘시키다’ part being the key part), which is different from how it would be normally used. The website is full of many extremists and is the target of much criticism, there are some posts on the site which make fun of people’s deaths and is generally thought to be a negative place.
Honestly, I can see both sides to this story.
The pro-Hyosung side: Hyosung used a word, trying to sound 'smarticles' and instead of being the meaning that she wanted it to mean, the instead used a whole different meaning. It was just a mistake and, hey!, get over it. We all have misused words before.
The anti-Hyosung side: Hyosung used a word, trying to sound 'smarticles' and instead of being the meaning that she wanted it to mean, the instead used a whole different meaning. Hyosung should have either just used a smaller word, trying to be smart isn't worth the struggle of even trying to spit out that long word or known better because she's in her 20's and should use words that she knows the meaning to rather than words that she hears once and just guesses the meaning.
In my point of view, Hyosung shouldn't be getting all that shit. Demanding Hyosung being edited out of 'Yes', being called 'Ilbe Girl'.... for what? Just not knowing a word? Yet, she should still be sort of held accountable for her actions, her being old enough and can now differentiate the right and the wrong, should have known better than to have spit out the word 'democratization'.
Dear Diary: Hyosung and her weight
Dear Diary,
For years, Secret's Hyosung has been getting shit about her weight.
Back when she was 50kg (110lbs), she was hounded with the word "fat" by netizens, but now that she weighs 45kg (99lbs), she's being hounded with a new word--ugly.
Translated by allkpop, a few weeks ago, when she was questioned about her new body, she answered:
“I was personally happy that I lost a lot of weight,” she said. “But people around me say that I looked better before. Don’t you think I look better now?”
Only to be met with male members exclaiming
"You were prettier before"
Not only that, on May 11th, while appearing on MBC's Quiz to Change the World, Hyosung admitted
“I had an unintended one-year hiatus, and I got depressed because I feared that the fans would forget me,” she revealed. “I was shocked by the comments that said I became ugly after I lost weight.”
And the only person who had a brain, former member of H.O.T Moon Hee Jun commented
“I think it might be better if you don’t look at internet comments... Compared with your debut days, you’re 40 times prettier right now.”
Am I the only one who remembers her UNFtastic Crazy in Love solo performance where she still had the tits that everyone is worrying about intact? What about her 'Yes' model pictures where she looked amazing despite the shitty photoshop? Though, it's inarguable that one of her charms before her weight loss was in fact her weight, Hyosung is still pretty UNFtastic if you ask me. And as long as she's happy, then I'm happy.
While everyone does have varying opinions, it's completely vile and uncalled for to more or less force her to lose weight and then bitch at her when she finally does reach her weight loss goal, making her feel guilty about her weight loss and want to gain it back. To be honest, I really sympathize Hyosung. I bet basically every single person in the world has their own self-esteem problems and their own flaws they'd like to change... flaws people have been pointing out since basically the beginning of time and flaws they would like to change, Hyosung not being an exception to this and changing her weight, only to get a shit load of backlash back. And I really wish people would just stop giving Hyosung shit and instead of just focusing on her body just take a damn seat.
Sincerely,
- T
P.S. I'll just leave this here
And this
Maybe this, too
April 12th, 2013
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