Happy Birthday to a friend on the other side of the world

It’s the birthday of one of my best friends. She was one of the first to introduce me to K-pop and for that I’m forever grateful. One day, now quite a few years ago, she posted a recently released MV on my Facebook wall, and I fell madly and deeply in love with it, the group in it and a lot of other things within the K-pop scene/world. This is the epic MV:

Since then we have experienced so much together, connected both to K-pop and to life in general. She is one of the smartest and coolest people I know. She is at the moment a resident in Seoul so I can’t be with her for this day of celebration. Elin, here’s another epic oldie for you:

Happy birthday and I love you! This changed everything.

The Future is Idol – Lars

Sunday Evening Angst

I am going back to work tomorrow after a rather long vacation and the feeling is perhaps not the greatest. When you are gloomy as I have been for parts of this evening and the Sunday angst is spreading, it happens week after week for me, you can always have a chat with a friend and listen to your favourite tracks and get some strength back out of it. Thats what I did.

The Future is Idol  – L

 

 

End of the year, K-pop 2012.Top three Search Engine Terms

The Top Three among search engine terms to find our blog has been interesting indeed. Summarizing 2012, and all top three being favourite topics of mine. As follows:

1. Super Junior

2. Seo In Guk plastic surgery

3. SHINee Key gay

We might post the complete search engine term list later on, with comments.

Check out our other End of the year, K-pop 2012 summaries by pressing here: The List, Live Performance and Things that should not be forgotten/Queer of the year.

The Future is Idol – L

End of the year, K-pop 2012. Live Performance.

The meaning of the term Live Performance should be understood for what it is. A live performance of course does not have to be something you have experienced live, but rather a recording of a live performance seen on YouTube. For most of the international K-pop fanbase it has up until quite recently been impossible (or almost, depending on if you have the guts or/and the money to travel to South Korea) to see your idols live. But as YouTube and internet have been exploding over the last few years, the South Korean music industry is not that far away, even if you live in the other side of the globe. Where I want to get with this is that this moment, live performance of 2012 just as well could have been something seen on YouTube, not experienced by me irl. It could have been something like this, Key of SHINee doing Lady Gaga songs Hair and Judas as his solo performances in Japan. One of the most epic live performances in every category 2012.

On the other hand, these last few years, perhaps the last two years, K-pop and Hallyu have spread enormously and now it’s not completely unusual for K-pop groups to actually hold concerts in Europe. And if they do come to Europe, Paris seems to be a popular goal, and so, that is were Super Junior held their European Super Show 4 concert.

I went to Paris with my friend Johanna, Paris is less then a two hour flight away from Stockholm so the journey itself is not that big a deal. We lived at a hostel very close to the concert arena and the weekend was a complete success with Super Show as the highlight of course. I remember how we were walking in the park area surrounding the arena the hours before the concert started and watching other fans as they were watching us while gathering to enter the arena. That evening, to see almost all of them so very close performing all of my favourite songs and running around the arena like the crazy people they are, I will never forget that evening.

Super Junior was the reason I got in to K-pop from the beginning and since then, the thought of once seeing them perform live have been present in my mind. While writing this evening I had to search the blog a bit and I ended up reading the posts I wrote about Paris and is still watching clips from Super Show and suddenly a few tears started dripping. So many emotions conserved from back then and from this years, for ever greatful for Johanna for going there with me that time. Thank you Johanna.

This was truly an epic moment in my fandom, more important then the music shows I saw while visiting Elin and Johanna in Seoul in the summer of 2011, even if that also was a dream coming true.

Live Performance of 2012 is Super Junior, Super Show 4 in Paris.

Check out the previous End of the year, K-pop 2012, The List. 80 tracks from 2012 that you have to have heard. All K-pop of course.

The Future is Idol – L

End of the year, K-pop 2012. The List

I have been away. In thought and body caught up with the life outside. The writing and the blog left behind with many other things. Listening and fanboying constantly though. As the year is coming to a close I want to share some thoughts of the crazy K-pop year 2012 and see it as a return to writing about the love of my life. K-pop. I won’t make a list of the best tracks of the year because I don’t work that way. (can’t decide etc.) But as a first post I want to share what was listened to and then for a couple of days I will try to give you some hints of what I really liked in K-pop during 2012.

I spent last weekend and also a few hours almost every day this week working on a list of tracks I like or atleast listened to and were released in 2012. It’s a messy compilation of genres, old groups and new ones, some expected, some not so, not all of them are brilliant but of course worth listening to a second time. NOT EVERYTHING IS INCLUDED. This equals K-pop as the love affair it is.

So, here is K-pop 2012, 80 tracks, not in any other specific order then how I put them in my Itunes library to make a nice mix. At the bottom of the post there’s a link to the list on YouTube.

The tracks from 2012 that you have to hear.

Only One – BoA

Imma New Thang(Intro) – U-Kiss

What Is Love(Korean Version) – Exo-K

Sexy, Free & Single – Super Junior

Catch Me – TVXQ/DBSK

Note – SHINee

Time To Go – U-Kiss

I Don’t Need a Man – Miss A

Machine – Exo-K

Have/Don’t Have – Dal Shabet

Style – Rania

We Are a Bit Different – EvoL

Bubble Bath – Orange Caramel

Nu, Establish, Style, Tempo –  Nu’est

Face – Nu’est

Be Ma Girl – Teen Top

Crayon – G-Dragon

Oh! My God – Girls Day

Know Your Name (feat Dok2) – Jay Park

Sherlock – SHINee

Like This – Wonder Girls

MAMA – Exo-K

Dripping Tears – Son Dam Bi

Anymore – Seo In Young

Clue -SHINee

Time’s Up – Miss A

Shine – Kim Sunggyu

Lipstick – Orange Caramel

Stop Girl – U-Kiss

Animal – Jo Kwon

I love You – 2NE1

Baby Good Night – B1A4

Beautiful – Park Jung Min

History – Exo-K

Electric Shock – f(x)

Emergency Call – Son Dam Bi

One Of a Kind –  G-Dragon

NalinA – Block B

To You – Teen Top

Two Moons – Exo-K

Love Is Energy – Chi Chi

Lol – Block B

Up and Down (feat Dok2) – Jay Park

Hypnotize – Andamiro

걸어 본다 (Tried To Walk) – B1A4

Volume Up – Miss A

Rock Ur Body – VIXX

Let’s Dance – Seo In Young

Get Your Swag On – Tony & Smash

You Know Me –  Tasty

Fantastic Baby – BigBang

Touch – Miss A

SPY – Super Junior

Musiche – Crayzyno

Sexy Love  T-ara

Like Money (feat Akon) -Wonder Girls

Doradora – U-Kiss

Bad Boy – 100%

Bloom – Ga In

Nillili Mambo – Block B

Tarantallegra – Xiah Junsu

Flashback – After School

Bad Boy – Big Bang

The Chaser – Infinite

I Love You (feat Dynamic Duo) – Jay Park

Fire It Up – Dal Shabet

In The Air – B1A4

Te Amo – B1A4

Stranger – SHINee

Clap (feat Tiger JK & Yoon Mi Rae) – Jay Park

Ice Cream – Hyuna Kim

Maxstep – Younique Unit

Humanoids – TVXQ/DBSK

Love Style – Boyfriend

Baby i’m Sorry – B1A4

Wasted (feat Bizzy) – Jay Park

Day By Day – T-ara

The Shadow – BoA

Party(XXO) – GLAM

Get On The Floor – 4minute

That’s it!

If you want to LISTEN to the tracks, press here to get to our YouTube channel.

The Future is Idol – L

While watching

I just got back to Stockholm after the weekend at my parents up north. I discovered that my improved playlist “the best of Super Junior” lasts more then the train ride (two and a half hours) and that while picking mushrooms out in the wilderness I randomly think a lot about Key and also, surprise surprise about Hoya…

Now I’m back home, Sunday evening, the kitchen table filled with mushrooms (picture) to clean. While doing so I’m going to watch another episode of Reply 1997. ♥

/The Future is Idol

Kim Heechul, my hero (alt. title: Kim Heechul and Hero)

When I came home last night, I had decided to refrain from turning on my computer and just check my phone before going to bed. However, when I did so, I found that Elin over at Dancing on Our Own had sent a link to this tumblr post, asking Lars and me if we knew anything more about the photo.

Yes. That is Kim Heechul of Super Junior, a band under SM Entertainment, and Kim “Hero” Jaejoong of JYJ, currently in conflict with said company.

Naturally, I had to turn on the computer to go online and do some investigation work, and before long, I found this post saying it’s real and recent, taken sometime during the last year. I almost started crying.

I was already beyond thrilled when Heechul and Jaejoong started following each other on Twitter in April, and I wondered a lot about what was going on, why they could do this, how it had happened. I imagined them bumping into each other at some bar, slightly drunk, and just laughing at it all and deciding to follow each other on Twitter, starting right there on the spot. I have no idea if this is actually what happened, but what is Fandom if not daydreams and fantasies? In any case it reminded me of why Heechul is my original (though not at the moment most prominent) bias: The prettiness might have drawn me in, but what made me stay was his originality and courage beyond words, the personality that always keeps me guessing. Yes, the courage. How he continued to support Hangeng even after he left SME, and now appearently Jaejoong, even though Heechul himself has stayed in the company and even renewed his contract not that long ago. (And considering the well-known close friendship between Heechul and Yunho of DBSK, I can’t even begin to think about how this may affect all the YunJae shippers out there…)

I think what these kinds of acts and pictures do to me is that they give me hope that the idols actually are more than what they are made into, and that they can to a certain extent escape the hands of their companies. And if someone is to go against his company, it’s Kim Heechul.

I wonder if I’ll ever get wtf is going on in the Idol World. I don’t think so. But maybe some day it will become at least a little clearer to us at least what happened just now. Until then: Heechul and Jaejoong, stay strong!

/Mis

I forgot!

Hey, I was so busy with my big birthday and being drunk that week early in July that I forgot to make it clear that I love this MV, nipples, colours, Kangin and all.

LOVES IT

/The Future is Idol

Sexy, Free & Single

Just listen and be as happy as now appropriate =D

/The Future is Idol

Any other Saturday

This Saturday, I’m tired, all alone and probably a bit hungover, don’t have to do anything. Tomorrow on the 1st of July is Leeteuks birthday and the day after I turn 30. The next Super Junior album is only a couple of hours away and that is the focus of my mind at the moment.

I should be practising my dance cover of Get Your Swag On for my friends danceproject, but find myself doing almost everything else instead. I took some random photos at home in my bedroom earlier, mostly of my K-pop cds. Funny what strange things you get yourself into, and what records you decide to buy. I love it all though.

and to go with it the track of the day:

Oh, and you know that you can find us on facebook, if you want closer interaction with us and to get more k-pop updates from our perspective.

/The Future is Idol