Welcome to another Comments of the Week!
This week in music and idol news, we talked about the past, recent, or upcoming works of Kim Hyun-joong, A-jax, A Pink, John Park, 2NE1, B.A.P, and Lim Kim. We also took a look at the news of the most recent changes to the T-ara lineup.
For fashion and tv topics, we covered the best of last week’s music shows, as well as fashionable stars decked out in black.
For socio-cultural topics, we talked about why Dara shouldn’t be wearing a Bindi, idols getting passive-aggressive, the current status of Henry and Zhou Mi, what (if anything) would make us break up with K-pop, and a writer’s experiences with attending the recent TVXQ concert in L.A..
Let’s see what some of our readers had to say on articles this week:
On “Zhou Mi and Hentry Are Not Official Super Junior Members”:
tasialiu:
The thing that I find strange about this is that Super Junior hasn’t been only 13 in a while. It would make sense for SM to add Henry and Zhoumi into Super Junior at this point in time especially since the members are getting older and military service is inevitable.
Kunstpause:
This!
I mean, there are 4 members that are due for military service in the next 1-2 years. If there rotation system continues at some point they’ll be missing more members then they will still be having on stage…
Eunji is perfect in my eyes. She sings and acts really well and has a personality that seems genuine and unaffected. Everything she does is legit. I hope that she gets a huge solo musical career outside A-Pink. Her voice does not sound like it belongs to a cute girl group anyway. The group can get another talented member or two and it will not take away much from the group because their concept is not really difficult to carry out in kpop. And given they already have recognition, they can get away with it easy. But then, that’s just my wishful thinking.
For me, there’s a difference between being an active fan and just being a casual listener. An active fan is one who follows KPop news, looks up photos/videos when they are released, posts on on forums, and waits impatiently for “___________ eng sub” to appear on YouTube.
A casual listener, on the other hand, will maybe watch a new music video that’s been released, but otherwise just listens to old favorites while updating the library every so often.
I used to be a very active fan, but as I’ve gotten older, it no longer makes sense for me to oogle pictures of guys the age of my younger siblings. So I keep an eye out for SHINee and other groups where I can still follow the members safely, but now I tend to judge the music more based on quality and less on the group that it originated from.
Does being a only casual listener mean I’ve broken up with KPop? It’s hard to say. I’m not a “fan” anymore in the purest sense, but I still enjoy the MVs and the music and the dances…
I guess it’s sort of like being Wendy. Maybe one day I’ll be too old to return to Neverland, but that won’t keep me from thinking fondly about it. And I’ll always keep the window open, just in case.
As always, thanks for being the great readers that you are! Feel free to leave additional comments below.
(Images via SM Entertainment, Jellyfish Entertainment)
