My KPop Playlist: Super Junior - Evanesce
Last edited Tue Jan 7, 2020, 04:48 PM - Edit history (1)
Warning: Very long post ahead, because this is one of the most important and acclaimed groups in KPop.
Super Junior debuted in 2005 with SM Entertainment, and they have since become one of the biggest groups in all of KPop—and far beyond Korea’s borders. Their list of achievements is long and impressive:
* Most awards and nominations of all time on the Golden Disc and Melon Music Awards, the equivalents of Grammys and American Music Awards in Korea.
* Their 2009 megahit, “Sorry, Sorry,” was #1 on Taiwan’s music chart for 121 weeks. No, that is not a typo. “Bonamana” would top the same chart for 63 weeks, while “Mr. Simple” would stay at the top for 46 weeks.
* They are the group credited with starting the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in the West with the international success of their smash hit, “Sorry, Sorry” in 2009. The reason you know about BTS now is thanks to Super Junior.
* First Korean group to win an award competing against Western artists at a US awards show, the Teen Choice Awards. And then they did it again for the next three years as well.
* The first KPop group to reach 100 million online views for a music video (“Mr. Simple”).
* First Korean group to have a Korean gold single (250,000 units sold).
* First KPop group to have sub-units. So far, they’ve had five. I’ll cover some of them in later posts.
* The first Korean group to tour South America.
* First group to have 100 tours around the world.
* The first KPop group to collaborate with Latin artists: Dominican-American Leslie Grace for “Lo Siento,” and Mexico’s Reik for “Otra Vez.”
* The first KPop group to top charts in multiple countries outside of Asia. “Otra Vez” took the #1 position in 25 international charts after its release, from South America to the Middle East.
And that’s not going into the massive numbers of chart-topping hits and albums they’ve had in Korea and Japan.
All of this is why Super Junior, or SuJu as millions of fans call them, are known as the “Kings of Hallyu.”
While SM Entertainment probably had high hopes for the group, they had no idea Super Junior would turn out as huge as they became. They certainly never expected that it would be with the same core of members who started with the group.
That’s because SM didn’t envision Super Junior having a permanent roster. Instead, they wanted a group sort of like Menudo in Puerto Rico, where there would be a rotating membership with younger members replacing older ones who needed to be let go or chose to move on to other projects. They thought this would give the company not only more control of the product, but also keep the band fresh for years to come.
But it didn’t work out that way, because the fans fell in love with the initial lineup—and fell hard. Those original 12 members were:
LeeTeuk, AKA “Teukie” (Park Jung Soo): Leader and vocalist.
HeeChul (Kim HeeChul): Rapper and vocalist.
HanKyung, AKA “Hank” (Han Geng): Lead dancer and vocalist.
YeSung (Kim JongHoon): Main vocalist.
KangIn (Kim YoungWoon): Vocalist.
ShinDong (Shin DongHee): Rapper, choreographer.
SungMin (Lee SungMin): Lead vocalist.
Eunhyuk, AKA “Anchovie” (Lee HyukJae): Main rapper, main dancer, rap lyricist.
SiWon (Choi SiWon): Vocalist and visual.
DongHae (Lee DongHae): Vocalist and songwriter.
RyeoWook, AKA “Wookie” (Kim RyeoWook): Main vocalist
KiBum (Kim KiBum): Main rapper and former maknae.
And for better or worse, here’s what they looked like then (WARNING: Ugly 2000s fashion and hairdos ahead!):
Standing (l-r): YeSung, KangIn, Hank, SiWon, SungMin, LeeTeuk, ShinDong. Sitting: DongHae, KiBum, HeeChul, RyeoWook and EunHyuk.
My poor eyes! But that was considered smoking hot in 2005.
In keeping with the idea of a rotating membership, SM added another member to the group in 2006: my birthday twin, KyuHyun (Choi KyuHyun), as the new maknae and vocalist extraordinaire:
And that’s when the Super Junior fandom, known as ELFs (for Ever Loving Fandom) lost their ever-loving minds. Sure, it’s only a little crazy that thousands of them protested outside of SM Entertainment headquarters to try to get SM to give KyuHyun the boot. But that was nothing. When SM refused to budge on that decision, the fandom came up with the idea of buying stock in the company to have a say in what went on with “their” band. And they really did start buying massive shares of SM.
This is how insane the SuJu fandom was, only one year in. Imagine how psycho they became when the band grew even more popular. No, don’t. Because you have zero idea how nuts they can get, even now.
Anyway, by the time the KyuHyun brouhaha all shook out, the fans got over him being in the group, and a good thing, since he is now recognized as the greatest KPop male vocalist alive today. Then again, one of the reasons they got over it was a wakeup call about what was really important in this world.
Remember what happened to Ladies Code, with the horrific car accident that killed two members and badly injured the rest? Well, it came damned close to happening to Super Junior on 7 April 2007. Same bad driving in bad weather from a manager, only this time, there were no fatalities, but it was close. ShinDong suffered minor injuries (which means he wasn’t hurt enough to die, but needed a long recovery period). LeeTeuk almost got scalped in the accident, and required over 100 stitches to put his skin back on his head. But KyuHyun…
Poor KyuHyun was thrown some 50 yards from the backseat of the vehicle, and wound up with a shattered hip, broken ribs, and collapsed lungs. He was given only a 20% chance to live, and zero percent chance of singing again, even with the operation the medical team recommended. It took a doctor performing a pioneering surgery to save his life—and his voice. And then it took months of hospitalization and rehab to get him healthy again.
After that close call, even the most rabid anti-KyuHyun ELFs quieted down and accepted him at last. But SM had learned their lesson: Don’t mess with Super Junior’s lineup, ever again.
And that was after another serious automotive disaster had already left the fandom reeling. Eight months earlier, HeeChul was in an accident while returning from the funeral of DongHae’s father, and his leg was shattered. He required surgery to have pins put his bones back together, and then a prolonged recuperation. But at least he was “only” injured.
Of course, that didn’t mean that the group’s roster troubles were over, or that they were through with the drama. Not in the least. First of all, this is Super Junior, where multiple ongoing dramas are now the norm. Second, this is an SM group we’re talking about, and if there’s one thing that SM does as well as finding world-class vocal talent, it’s pissing off that same talent into filing lawsuits against them.
Take 2009, when Hank filed a lawsuit against SM for much the same reason that the JYJ members of TVXQ filed theirs: For unfair pay distribution and holding him to a slave contract. But wait—there was more!—enough that Hank made the TVXQ lawsuit look like a kindergarten production.
What made it bad—really fricking bad—started with how Hank was the only Super Junior member who was a Chinese national. Is it any surprise that he claimed SM Entertainment had discriminated against him because he wasn’t Korean? Among his claims was that, unlike the other members, SM refused to let him take time off, never mind getting a vacation to see his family. He also alleged that SM was rude and discriminatory toward his family when they came to the country to see him at all. Most terrifying of all was an incident where he was deemed sick enough to go to the ER, but one of the SM staff thought the treatment was taking too long. That staff member pulled an IV out of Hank’s arm to make him go to work again. Another SuJu member who was also there getting treated for a similar condition confirmed that it had happened.
Not long after the release of “Sorry, Sorry,” Hank stopped taking part in all Super Junior activities while the litigation worked its way through the court system. In 2011, a Korean judge ruled in his favor, and he and SM reached an undisclosed settlement that ended his association with the company and with Super Junior. He returned to China, where he has since had a successful singing and acting career.
While the Hank drama was rocking the KPop world in 2009, KiBum quietly decided to hold SM to their original concept of members getting to rotate out of the group, and chose to leave Super Junior to focus on acting. He was still part of the SM family until 2015, when he left for good.
And then there’s KangIn. In 2009, he was not only involved in an altercation with two men outside of a bar, but also had a DUI hit and run accident. For both of these reasons, he had to take an extended hiatus to “reflect on his behavior.” Which seems to be KPop agency code for “get your ass to rehab.” Then he repeated the hit and run in 2016 and got into another public fight in 2017. Was he done? Of course not! He had to make everything worse while he was still on hiatus for the second infractions when he became implicated in an offshoot of the Burning Sun scandal in 2019. I’ll go into that horror show in a later post, but KangIn’s role in that is for belonging to a private online chat group with other KPop stars where they moaned and groaned about the hardships of fame, and, for shits and grins, some of them shared videos made of women in various states of undress, often under the influence of some chemical. And some of the videos involved these pigs having sex with or even raping said women. Of course, few or none of the women knew about these videos. But it all came out last year. Korea is still rocking from these revelations.
While police cleared KangIn of harming any women or of filming or sharing videos, his association with the chat group was the final straw for SM. KangIn “announced” that he was retiring from the music industry, and good riddance. I loved his voice, but he should have been booted after the second hit-and-run.
2014 was another nasty year for Super Junior. First my SuJu bae, SungMin, made the fatal mistake of falling in love, and, worse, being goofy with his public declarations of his devotion to his soulmate. This pissed off a loud, obnoxious and spiteful contingent of ELFs, who began to find offense in everything he did or said, especially in response to their outrage, and they grew ever angrier at him. Cowards that they are, SM sent SungMin packing on a hiatus that has yet to end, all these years later, and the fandom raises a stink anytime a Super Junior comeback is in the works, to keep him out. At this point, he’s effectively out of the group, but at least he married the love of his life before signing up for his required military service in 2015. So I’d say he got the better end of the deal.
Also in 2014, LeeTeuk’s father was in dire financial straits. He went to see his own parents, and all three of them ended up dead after dear old Dad went the murder-suicide route. So another SuJu member had to go on hiatus for an extended period. Poor Teukie…
But we’re not done with the drama!
2017 brought another round of crazy to the group. I mentioned KangIn's troubles that year above, but that wasn't all that hit Super Junior. Remember HeeChul’s 2007 car accident? With each passing year, his pain from that has gotten worse. He’s had a corrective surgery once, and it didn’t help. The pain has become so bad he had to announce that he would take part in few promotions anymore because he can’t handle the wear and tear of the dance routines. He makes appearances sometimes, but rarely to dance. At this point, it looks like he can’t come back for that, although he continues to provide vocals and appear in videos.
And as always, where there’s one tragedy, another comes along: SiWon’s family dog bit a woman and she died from complications of the incident. He took a break from promotions to avoid making her family’s pain worse.
But enough of the drama. Everything seems to have settled down with the group membership (for now), so perhaps SuJu can look forward to some much needed stability. It helps that the remaining nine members of the group have completed their military requirement. That means the roster for the foreseeable future will look like this:
Standing, left to right: ShinDong, SiWon, HeeChul, YeSung, DongHae, EunHyuk. Sitting, left to right: RyeoWook, LeeTeuk, KyuHyun.
When it comes to music, Super Junior justifies their insane fan support, record-breaking sales and the arena-filling tours around the world with some of the greatest group vocals in KPop. That gets a big boost from KyuHyun and RyeoWook being the most potent 1-2 vocal punch in the industry. It's not a close contest, and probably never will be (although TVXQ and the ONew-late JongHyun combo in SHINee gave it a try). That YeSung is there to pitch in makes them one of the premiere vocal groups not only in Korea, but in the world. Better yet, even their “average” singers are still quite good, enough to lead other groups. Even their main rapper is a good singer, and you don't do rap if you can sing. You're usually around for the fans either to get some lulz or gape at the gorgeous. So it says something that even their rapper can sing well.
That's why, despite all their flaws, their endless dramas and their psychotic fans, Super Junior has always been one of my favorite KPop bands.
Their music tends toward big, bouncy and dance-oriented, because when you have monster vocalists like KyuHyun, RyeoWook and YeSung, you can put the pedal to the medal for your sound. The list of their insanely catchy and danceable bops that are flat-out great music, executed to perfection on top of it all, could fill this page.
That’s why it may surprise people that I’ve chosen their atmospheric power ballad “Evanesce” from 2014 as today’s KPop tune. Super Junior doesn’t do ballads all that often for chart releases, at least not outside of their numerous sub-units and solo projects; however, when they get around to them, they invariably do them well. But how could they fail with such outstanding talent in their lineup?
After seeing it for yourself, you may understand why it’s not only one of my favorite Super Junior tracks, but also one of my favorite power ballads, ever:
Of course, the live performance sounds terrific—enough to give you the bonus of “This is Love,” which “Evanesce” is sort of a sequel song to (the official MVs explain what I mean):
Note: The lineup for Super Junior in the MV is LeeTeuk, HeeChul, KangIn, ShinDong, SungMin, EunHyuk, SiWon, DongHae, RyeoWook and KyuHyun. YeSung was serving in the military at that time. In the live video, ShinDong is missing because he had joined the military by then as well.
-- -- -- --
Trivia:
Lightstick color: Pearl Sapphire Blue.
KyuHyun and SiWon come from wealthy families. KyuHyun’s father owns a chain of private schools, while SiWon’s family owns a supermarket company that is the second largest retail chain in South Korea. His father was also CEO of the largest pharmaceutical company in Korea. Super Junior members joke that he could buy any of the television stations where they appear from his pocket change, and have enough left over to buy SM as well.
KyuHyun is the quintessential Evil Maknae that all other Evil Maknaes are compared to. Do not cross verbal swords with him. You will lose.
SiWon is the drama king of Super Junior, and has appeared in multiple Korean TV series. Then again, what a surprise, given his looks. Since Super Junior is so huge in Taiwan, he and DongHae appeared in a romantic comedy series there called Skip Beat!, based on the Japanese manga of the same name.
HeeChul is the variety show king, and he often works on multiple shows. These days, he’s on Knowing Brothers, a long-running celebrity talk show with a school theme, and Matching Survival 1+1, a dating reality show that he hosts with SoYou of the defunct band Sistar.
LeeTeuk joked so much about HeeChul being gay, to tease him for being so pretty, that people started believing he really was gay. Rather than getting mad about it, HeeChul embraced the rumor, started dressing up as a girl on TV often enough to make Monty Python do a double-take, and then he weaponized the rumor to make others uncomfortable with it, particularly in bouts of dangyunhaji (AKA the "of course" game). HeeChul is a master of this Korean party contest where two people insult each other and you lose if you get mad, laugh too hard or yield to a superior insult. He had never been defeated…until 2017, when Wanna One's DaeHwi, now in AB6ix, turned the gay table on his hyung (older brother).
And because it’s funny, I’m including the video of that epic KPop moment here:
