 Day 22, shiny world, the best 2018 from now on, suggested by Get Lost Photo Club and seconded by 10 people. This one's a fuckin' minefield. The last time I talked about K-pop on this channel was May of 2019, after seeing Blackpink perform at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. At the time, I was obviously aware of what K-pop was, had a sense of the uniquely corporate and exploitative nature of the industry and enjoyed songs from individual artists, but Blackpink was the first group I really liked beyond just the singles. I didn't know the YG drama of it all, how weird it was that they'd released so little music and the way that whole thing was going down behind the scenes. I also didn't understand the fandoms, which means at that point, I'd have been conceptually open to making a video about BTS. I cannot think of a dumber thing someone could do than make a video about BTS. If you like K-pop, you should subscribe to Mara. She's one of my favorite YouTubers and is the person who got me deeper into the music and culture of the industry than I ever thought I'd want to since 2019, so much so that I have turned several of her best ofs into Spotify Playlists for myself. But despite how clearly great she is, she made the mistake of putting two sentences in an hour-long video about the writing styles of BTS that were misunderstood as slightly critical of one of the members, and the army came for her. Sending genuine death threats, despite being fully anonymous, she was getting messages with her current address and had to leave school while it died down. So that's what the BTS army is like. I don't know much about Shaol. I don't know what they're gonna say when I say right now that I think Chinese music is good and that's about where it stops for me. I watched a two and a half hour long performance and I didn't dislike any of the songs but I also didn't fall in love with any. I really enjoyed what I saw as with everyone in the industry, literally by design, they are all absurdly talented performers. The show itself is unlike anything that I've ever seen. It had much in common with the Blackpink performance but like extra, extra, extra to the point where fake hot air balloons started flying two members of the group around the arena and it was amazing, but it didn't convert me. Then again, that's not really the point of talking about this particular performance, is it? There are many shiny world tours and I could have been asked to review any of them. Heck in 2021, they did it as a big virtual performance and I'm sure that would have been interesting to discuss though probably more last year than this one. But the absolute mouthful that is shiny world best of 2018 from now on is entirely unique because it came just two months after one of the group's members died. In December of 2017, one of the original five Jonghyun committed suicide. Mental health is basically a forbidden subject in Korea. I remember when looking into teaching abroad over there that all of the mentally ill ESL teachers on the forums were hiding their issues and getting medication shipped in from back home because if they went to see a local doctor, that information would be shared with their employers who would then fire them for it. Jonghyun's suicide note was posted on Instagram by a friend of his apparently at his request and he specifically called out among other things, doctors who just blame suffering on personality instead of doing anything to help. You can see how that culture almost inevitably leads to something like this. 2018 was the band's 10 year anniversary. They were formed during the so-called second generation of K-pop after its success had spread beyond the borders of Korea but remained generally confined to Asia. It was still years away from becoming the true global sensation, largely ushered in by third generation groups like BTS and Blackpink. 10 years is a big milestone for anyone and to lose someone who had been there since the beginning and to lose them in that way at that moment is crushing. How could it not be? But they decided to keep performing as a way to honor his legacy and that's what this show is. The recording which is available in its entirety on YouTube has no subtitles which makes the talking bits and sections where there are words on screen a little odd for me but someone in the comments translated a few of the key moments and all of them were obviously about Jung Hyun. They emphasized over and over again that he would stay with them. They kept his voice on the track. They rarely adjusted the choreography to account for the missing member letting the dances be kind of lopsided rather than filling the gap with the backup dancer. I imagine it must have been strange for this group of Korean boys to mourn the loss of their friend and partner in a language that wasn't theirs. They played the Japanese versions of their songs and spoke Japanese in the interludes as well. This is pretty common. Many K-pop artists have Japanese specific releases with translated lyrics and even new albeit much less elaborate music videos. And I understand the value from a marketing perspective. But doing it like that really emphasizes the show of it all. According to that commenter I mentioned before there was actually a bit towards the end where someone broke into Korean and at times throughout you can see on their faces how painful it is. And you can also see the joy, the love of performance and the appreciation of tens of thousands of screaming fans. But I didn't really feel it until the very end when they played From Now On, which was their first release after Jung Hyun's death and which featured him prominently on vocals. The four remaining members came out on stage in white suits with roses in their best pockets. In the center a fifth mic with a rose in the stand and when each person sings the spotlight comes on them and when Jung Hyun's recorded vocals come on the empty mic is lit up as well. In the midst of the live performance the more heavily processed recording is actually kind of unsettling, which hurts the song musically but makes it more captivating experientially. It emphasizes what who has been lost? By the end one of the four has completely broken down into sobs while the others are clearly on the verge and it got me too. I cried both times I watched it. And when I tried to explain to my girlfriend why I was crying I couldn't. I was too choked up. And that speaks to the power of that particular performance but also everything that came before it. I didn't know SHINee before this but over the two and a half hours of this concert I became invested enough in their work to see how beautiful and sincere this tribute was. It's so easy to be cynical about K-pop honestly you probably should be but underneath all of that corporate machinery these are four guys who lost someone incredibly close to them. And while the suits and the roses and even the lighting is all still pageantry it feels like in that moment the artifice has finally fallen away. That this is something they are doing rather than something they're being told to do and it doesn't matter who actually designed the sequence they just don't seem like idols anymore. They're people mourning the loss of a friend and in this heartbreaking. I'm not fucking scoring this. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you particularly to my patrons. My mom, Hammer and Marco, Kat Saracota, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Elliot Fowler, Greg Lucina, Kojo, Phil Bates, Willow, I am the sword, Riley's and Claire Bear, Taylor Lindy's, Andrew Madison Design and the folks who'd rather be read than said. If you like this video it's great. If not, oh well. If you wanna see more you can suggest what we're gonna talk about in three days in the comments. Whew. All right.