My KPop Playlist: SHINee - Replay (Bonus: This is when KPop intersects with US Politics)

[Aquaria]

SHINee (pronounced “shiny”) is an SM group that started out with five members in 2008, but now has only four after the 18 December 2017 suicide of their lead vocalist (and frequent songwriter) Jonghyun, who was the subject of my very first post about KPop here.

Even though he’s passed away, I include a picture of them when Jonghyun was still with the group, because once SHINee, always SHINee:



From left to right: ONew, MinHo, TaeMin, the late JongHyun and Key

Who does (or did) what:

ONew (Lee JinKi): Leader and main vocalist

JongHyun (Kim JongHyun): Former lead vocalist extraordinaire and songwriter.

Key (Kim KiBum): Vocalist, rapper.

MinHo (Choi MinHo): Rapper, visual of the group

Taemin (Lee TaeMin): Lead Dancer, (now) lead vocalist and maknae

So what's the political tie-in? It's a small one but it does exist. Take a look at who name-checked them at an international conference in 2017 while discussing how globalization was making young people more aware of each other’s cultures:

I have a feeling, though, that the actual SHINee fan in the Obama household is Malia or Sasha. Or both. It's that, or Obama did his homework before speaking at the conference. You just know that the disgusting traitor trash pig pretending to be Obama's replacement has not one fucking clue that KPop exists, never mind who SHINee is, and wouldn't bother to find out anything about it, even if someone told him about it.

Anyway, SHINee members were in awe that Obama even knew who they were. English-speaking Key thanked the former President for his kind words, and vowed to continue working hard for the growth of global culture:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWE_rxpjdZT/?utm_source=ig_embed

Imagine them taking pride in hearing something like that from Dolt45.

In another intersection between SHINee and American politics, a video went viral of MinHo upstaging the treasonous racist HOTUS:

I would have refused to appear with that filthy tramp, but KPop stars don't always get a say in what publicity stunts they have to play along with.

Well, enough about that. Back to the music.

SHINee was the group that got me into KPop, in a big way. Granted, I didn’t get there through a typical route. My path was from being a fan of the Japanese manga, Hana Yori Dango, and the Koreans (among many others) did a live-action version of it in 2009 called Boys Over Flowers, which is what ‘hana yori dango’ means. The show was meh, but SHINee had one of the songs on the soundtrack called “Stand By Me,” which is not the same as the BB King version we all know. No, theirs was a sweet and pleasant pop song, not all that interesting, musically…except for the vocals, which were so good that I couldn’t get the song out of my head.

Well before Boys Over Flowers aired, SHINee was famous for their first release, “Replay,” which most KPop fans and critics consider the greatest debut from a Korean group, ever. The song is about a guy in love with an older woman, as the repeated references to "noona" makes clear. For those who don't know, "noona" is the honorific that males use for women senior to them. Technically, it means (a guy's) "older sister," but it's used as an endearment outside of sibling relationships. Anyway, the song being about guys in love with an older woman had SHINee appealing to a market with far more buying power than teenagers, something most labels struggle to appeal to. Ever since "Replay," SHINee has had the most diverse fan base, age-wise, of any KPop group.

Musically, "Replay" has a definite Boys II Men type of vibe that may not suit every taste; however, when SHINee released this song, the age range of the group was 14 (Taemin) to 18 (Onew). For guys that young to release a song with so much vocal prowess and sophistication was remarkable, and a mere taste of what was to come with the band. Starting with their debut, SHINee established a reputation as one of the best vocal groups in all of KPop, and even beyond Korea’s borders. Four of their singers could have easily been lead vocalists in other groups. They are that good, and “Replay” told us from the beginning that they would be:

If you think the dense harmonies and raw talent demonstrated in Replay had to be a fluke or studio wizardry, well, here’s the live performance:

Like Mamamoo, SHINee has the kind of vocal chops that encourages them to take risks with their music, but they can be even more experimental, when it suits them. Example: Tucked into the Everybody "mini"-album (when did 7 songs = a mini-album?) is a strange tune called "One Minute Back" that plays with sounds and tempos moving backward and forward through time. Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper's, it isn't, but it's not all that far off from fitting into one of those albums, either. You never know when you put on a new SHINee album what decidedly non-KPop type of tune will come out of your speakers. They can be surprising that way.

I’ll come back to SHINee more often later, after other groups get their time in the spotlight. I can’t ignore them beyond that because their catalogue of brilliant pop gems could easily take a month or more of daily posts to cover them all.

Still, I wanted to start with where they began, because “Replay” remains an iconic song to this day. It also has a special place in the hearts of all Shawols, as the fandom of SHINee is known. When JongHyun died, tens of thousands of mourners sang this song at impromptu memorial gatherings in his honor that took place around the world, because “Replay” is and always will be the ultimate SHINee song. Plus, JongHyun is the one who made this song (and thus SHINee) famous with the amazing ad-libs he lays down throughout the track. That he was only 17 when he recorded it makes the achievement all the more remarkable.

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Trivia:

The Shawol fandom name is a portmanteau derived from SHINee World, the title of their first album. SHINee World is also the name of their subsequent major concert tours.

Fandom colors: Green and white

Key got his stage name not only because it's a clever take on the way the first syllable of his given name sounds (KiBum), but because Kim KiBum of Super Junior was already performing under that name. And that's not counting the Kim KiBum in U-Kiss, who goes by the stage name Allen Kim, to avoid confusion with the other two KPop Kim KiBums.

SHINee has long had a wardrobe consultant who created what became known as the “SHINee look,” of skinny pants and colorful shirts or jackets. While they don't always wear that look anymore, the innovative look made them fashion leaders on the KPop scene upon their debut.

At one time, SHINee had the most costly choreography ever arranged in KPop for their 2011 hit single, “Sherlock.” The price tag came from SM acquiring the services of Tony Testa, former choreographer for Michael Jackson. He taught them a “Cossack”-style maneuver that made the video an instant classic. He also did the choreography for their subsequent hits, "Dream Girl" and "Everybody."

There’s a video online of ONew holding a note for over 40 seconds without losing any power or clarity. In fact, the video quits before he does.

ONew is also notorious for his finger-slap, a move where he puts a hand against a surface—usually a forehead, pulls back his middle finger, and lets it go to hit something. His finger-slap is so strong that he can break walnuts with it.

A woman filed sexual harassment charges against ONew for groping her while he was out partying in 2017. The charges were later dropped and declared a misunderstanding from his drunkenness at the time. He apparently didn’t grope her boobs or pull a Dolt45, only touched her leg or ankle when he was falling down. I don't know what to believe, so I'll only go with the one thing that was clear from all reports: He was drunk out of his mind, even before he got to the club, so bad, bad ONew for getting that shit-faced.

SHINee had to make the heartbreaking choice to continue after the suicide of their lead vocalist and songwriter JongHyun in 2017. Their first concerts were tearfests, and they left blatant references to him in their first major MV release after his death, “Good Evening.” The reason they had to put out something—anything—was because most of the surviving members had to join the military soon, and they didn’t want to leave their fans with only a tragic memory to sustain them until the group could return.

Since the three eldest members are in the military now, maknae TaeMin is carrying the SHINee torch alone. The others will pick it up when they have completed their tours of duty (MinHo should be out by 2022). And that will be right when TaeMin will have to join up himself. I understand the group will do one final comeback as a quartet before he enlists.

It's still weird to me to think of them as having only four members, not five. It seems...wrong, somehow. But the reality is that JongHyun is gone now, and he won't ever come back.

RIP, JongHyun. You did well, and are still my KPop bias. Always will be.



Now excuse me while I go cry for a while. Two years later, and my heart can still break over his death.