Tag: Kim Jonghyun

Music video SHINee

Happy birthday Kim Jonghyun!

By Nadine Kam I

Couldn’t let the occasion of Jonghyun’s birthday (4.8.1990-12.18.2017) pass, and this year was a special one because April 7 (the 8th in South Korea) was the evening of a pink Super Moon.

Shawol associate Jonghyun with the Super Moon because he wrote the song “Selene 6.23” about the beautiful unreachable Super Moon he saw that evening in 2013.

I made a couple short music videos to celebrate Jonghyun’s life and music. The first one for a general audience is intended to provide a moment of calm, beauty and relaxation in these stressful times of self-isolation and worries about Covid-19.

I used his song, “Blinking Games,” as a backdrop to a travelog of Hawaii scenery, plus one from Portugal. I originally wanted to use my footage from Spain and Portugal, but for some reason while I was there I uncharacteristically shot video in vertical formats that don’t transfer well to YouTube!

The second video for his fans has the same song plus imagery of Jonghyun over the years. The song “Blinking Game” is from his “The Collection: Story Op. 2.” He created Op. 1 and 2 specifically to comfort people after hearing from so many of the walking wounded who called in to his late-night radio show “Blue Night” to commiserate, knowing that he was a kindred, compassionate spirit who suffered from depression.

I credit these two albums with curing my insomnia after my husband died, because Jonghyun’s voice was so soothing. Before discovering his music, I tried to listen to meditation apps, some an hour long. After the hour I would start up another hour, getting more worked up and stressed out as 4 a.m. became 5 a.m. and I knew I had to wake in two or three hours. It was the stress that led to even greater inability to sleep.

When I played Jonghyun’s music, I felt awash in calm and because his voice is so transportive and riveting, I could focus on it completely, quieting my own circular thoughts. I’d fall asleep in about 20 minutes, never making it to the end of the disc.

If you look up the English translation for “Blinking Game,” it probably won’t make much sense because it’s based on Korean idiom meaning “to not hurt, even if you place it in your eyes,” meaning to love someone so much that to draw that person so close as to have him/her in your eye doesn’t hurt, whereas even the tiniest speck of dust would hurt. There really isn’t an English equivalent. The closest might be “apple of my eye.”

I hope you enjoy the snippet of song and the videos. The whole song can be heard here:

Music video SHINee SM Entertainment

… and then there was one, SHINee off to serve its country

By Nadine Kam I

April 15 is a miserable day anyway, the day in the United States when our income tax returns are due, and I ended up sending $8,500 away, just like that, blip, gone. It almost didn’t hurt that much when I was working a full-time job in the newsroom, but now that I’m free-lancing, it all feels like blood money.

It was extra miserable for me, as a fan of SHINee, the day that Choi Min-ho reported for service in the Korean Marine Corps. I knew this day was coming, and as the others left prior to him, first Onew (Lee Jin-ki) in December, and Key (Kim Ki-bum) in March, I just accepted it as part of life in South Korea, where men must enlist in the military, the latest at age 28.

One by one, Shawol have watched the members of SHINee depart for the military. Bottom, left to right, Key, Onew, Taemin and Minho at Onew’s send-off, followed by Key in March and on April 15, Minho.

But it hit me really hard when I woke up the previous morning to check my IG feed and saw the photos of Minho in the barber’s chair. It made me so sad to think this was the end of an era for Shawol, SHINee’s fandom who had grown up with the band over a decade. I couldn’t help thinking about all they had gone through in that crazy, whirlwind decade that whisked them from their small towns to stadiums around the globe.

I still cry when I think of them in the words they reference in their song, “Our Page,” as those green boys of May 2008, debuting into a world of unimaginable success, only to be touched by tragedy just before their 10th anniversary with Jonghyun’s suicide.

It seems like yesterday when the newly formed SHINee still walked Taemin to middle school

I only got to know them over the past year, learning about them only after the news of Jonghyun’s death. With YouTube, it was so easy to follow their career through variety and music shows. As Jonghyun once said of their relationship, SHINee started as a business but they became a family. He spoke of them as five strangers sharing a common destiny that they all thought would never come to an end. Moreso than many of the K-pop groups, they were funny, savage, but loving brothers. Today, only BTS seems to fit that template set by SHINee five years before them.

From boys to exceptional young men.

Korean military service generally lasts 21 months, so it will be about two years before we see their return. At that time, they will have four years remaining on the contract they renewed with SM Entertainment last year. What they plan to do is anyone’s guess. It’s often hard for K-pop groups to make a comeback after their military service because their fans move on. By then they will likely also be in their 30s, settled into careers and starting families. Younger music lovers seek out their contemporaries. Even before Onew left for the military, people were calling him “old man Jinki.” If senior citizens would like to think 50 is the new 30 in the United States, 30 is the new 60 in South Korea, which is even more ageist than America.

A big difference from colored hair and trendy stage apparel.

All this leaves one member, Taemin (Lee Tae-min), the youngest at 26 (25 in the United States) to carry on his solo career. It will be two more years before he needs to enlist, and although fans would have liked to see him go at the same time so that all of SHINee can come back sooner, I don’t think SM would have allowed him to go because he is one of the company’s money makers. As a dancer, too, he undoubtedly feels the pressure physically. In three years, he may not be able to execute moves as smoothly as he does now.

Taemin, out there on his own.

It makes me sad to think that as little as two years ago he was saying that it’s lonely to promote solo when he grew accustomed to sharing the stage with four others over nine years. As glamorous as their lives appear to outsiders, they live very lonely lives after being cast as pre-teens and made to live together for years. Because of busy schedules, they aren’t given much time to visit family or meet with friends so they become very isolated, with only each other for company. Taemin has said that since he was about 12, he never spent one Christmas with his family.

We must support him now. I’m sure he’ll do well. He’s very ambitious, but this maknae is no Seungri.

? ? SHINee appreciation over the years. ‘Replay’ was its first MV. Babies!? To men seven years later.

This MV was sung in Japanese language because SHINee
was actually created for the Japanese market. I love the stylishness of this video. There is also a white version with a storyline, and Korean language performance versions.
Taemin is on the road promoting his latest mini album “Want,” now.
Dance diary Music video SHINee

Dance Diary: Happy birthday Jonghyun!

April 8 is Jonghyun’s birthday and I was hoping that one of my K-pop dance teachers would be able to teach me how to dance his “Hallelujah” in recognition of the occasion.

Alas, one teacher left the studio, and another doesn’t feel as comfortable dancing to male songs as female, so as I catch up on updating our past practices, the next one to pop up was SHINee’s “Ring Ding Dong” from Feb. 2, 2019.

It was a little bit of serendipity to come up with SHINee, though at the same time it’s probably my least favorite song of their catalog.

As always with SHINee, there are sharp hand movements used in combination with precise leg movements that bring the knees together and out. It takes a lot of coordination, and none of us are doing particularly well at getting all the movements in.

I hope I will be able to dance “Hallelujah” to mark his birthday next year … and make it look good.

? ? Here’s a look at “Hallelujah,” which he wrote about a beautiful woman, but for me might was well be about him.

Music video SHINee

SHINee’s next phase: service to country

By Nadine Kam I

Last year was a triumphant, bittersweet year for SHINee, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary while still trying to heal from Jonghyun’s suicide on Dec. 18, 2017.

This year has also been one of exhilaration and change, bittersweet for Shawol—the group’s fandom—who on top of losing Jonghyun has seen the departures of leader Onew and rapper Key for their mandatory military service in December and March respectively, and rapper Choi Minho will also be joining the Republic of Korea Marine Corps in mid-April. This leaves only the group’s maknae Taemin to solo music pursuits.

Last month, Taemin, left, and Minho, right, sent a shaved Key off to the military.
At top of page, the members said goodbye to Onew in December.

In light of their 21-month absence, they’ve been hard at work to present their individual gifts of music to fans to keep them in our hearts while they’re away. It’s been great to hear the first solo recordings by Onew, Key and now Minho, but there is also a sadness associated with the end of an era.

For myself, new to the works of K-pop, it’s sad that they are gone just after I got to know them. I don’t know how 10-year Shawols feel, the fans who grew up with SHINee ever since they were unpolished teens.

It’s a lonely time for the members as well. They seemed to have become more reflective after the death of Jonghyun and last year’s anniversary gave them reason to look back at their whirlwind career.

After their anniversary events ended last summer, their group activities slowed down considerably. Although I was happy to see them pursuing other interests, it saddened me to see them spending significant time apart.
I imagine they must have felt somewhat unmoored to be apart from the people they once spent 24/7 cohabiting, working and training together. Minho, who along with Taemin, is one the more stalwart members of the group, is only now beginning to feel the loneliness that consumed Jonghyun, and talks about it here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BvTYUANnmXa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

No doubt their time in the military will give them even more time to reflect, and think about what they really want in life. Everything up until now has been thrown at them, and almost every decision made for them. It’s said that joining any military outfit turns boys into men. It will be interesting to see how they emerge and what life they will create for themselves when they emerge nearly two years from now.

Onew in his Korean army uniform.

The boys were really sweet in the naming of their albums. It started with Taemin’s first mini album released in 2014, “Ace.”

Jonghyun’s answer to that was “Base” in 2015. Key released “Face” on Nov. 26, 2018, and following in that somewhat rhyming tradition, Onew released “Voice” on Dec. 5, 2018, just five days before joining the Korea army.

I wasn’t expecting to hear something from Minho, a rapper who arguably has the weakest singing voice in SHINee. I mean, it’s pleasant, but not as defined as the others. Two years ago he talked about wanting to put out a solo album but worried that his flaws would show during solo promotions. He surprised fans with a solo song, “I’m Home,” released on March 28. It’s about seeking comfort in light of the loneliness of day-to-day life.

? ? Watch and listen to the solo songs

Key”s song “I Wanna Be” might be taken as a love song, but the lyrics suggest it is about Jonghyun. A lot of SHINee’s “Story of Light” songs were also about Jonghyun.

The lyrics in part:

“Because I will raise this earth straight up and give it to you (give to you!)
On top of your palm (shiny!)
I put that star (bling bling!)
While everyone’s asleep, only we’re awake on top of this universe.”

Bling bling was Jonghyun’s nickname upon their debut. They came to be embarrassed by their nicknames, but they stuck over time.

Key’s video also seems to echo Jonghyun’s last video in color and set design, his red suit and blond hair.