This is your next era: the energy and storyline you are stepping into.
Choose the image you gravitate to.
Take a breath before choosing, your first pick is usually the message.
⋆｡°✩
For a deeper, more personal reading, you can book with me through DM. Go here for some of the readings currently available.
Pile 1: The solo debut
Your next era is quieter, but much more powerful.
You are getting tired of overexplaining yourself, giving people too many chances, or acting warm just so nobody can call you difficult. You are not really becoming cold, you are just becoming more aware that not everyone deserves access to you.
This feels like black lace, dark red lipstick, candlelight, expensive perfume, and saying less because you no longer need everyone to understand you.
There could be a physical glow-up in this era, but the bigger change is that you stop trying to convince people who you actually are.
Your title track:
“I do not chase. I decide.”
Your message:
You do not have to keep proving that you are a good person by being available to everyone.
⋆｡°✩
Pile 2: The main character
This is your power era.
You are starting to see that you are capable of much more than you have been allowing yourself to go after, you might feel more focused on your goals, appearance, money, career, creativity, or becoming more visible in general.
This is the era of carefully selected outfits, confidence, strong choreography, camera flashes, and finally taking yourself seriously.
You might still have moments where you doubt whether you are “ready,” but honestly, you do not need to feel perfectly ready before you start moving, a lot of your confidence will come after you take the first steps.
Your title track:
“Watch me become what you thought was impossible.”
Your message:
Do not make your dreams smaller just because other people cannot picture them for you.
⋆｡°✩
Pile 3: The concept
Your next era is soft, creative, romantic, and a little unreal.
You are reconnecting with parts of yourself that survival mode made you push aside: your imagination, your style, your sensitivity, your desire to create, your ability to enjoy things just because they are beautiful.
But this is not the same softness you had before, you are softer now because you have learned what happens when you ignore your own boundaries. You can be gentle without being easy to manipulate.
This feels like moonlight, silver jewellery, pastel blue, flowers, blurry camera edits, dreamy music, and something slightly otherworldly.
Your title track:
“I survived without losing my ability to feel.”
Your message:
You do not need to become hard to prove that you are strong.
⋆｡°✩
Comment your pile, or reblog with the concept you got.
Beyond how evil Hybe is, one of their worst qualities is the disgracefully ugly visuals they put out. They really don't give a flying fuck any more and they can't even pretend to do so. I truly believe they don't even have a creative department or anything of that kind anymore. Their stuff has been ugly for at least 5 years, some stuff looked better than other, but I just came across Jin's concept pictures on Twitter and my jaw legit dropped. As if the refried "rock concept" wasn't enough, the whole thing looks unbelievably cheap. It looks like a parody from a bad sitcom. I have never seen anything like this, not even from the smallest companies, which obviously have a fraction of Hybe's budget. To say I need Jimin and jungkook out of there is no longer just wishful thinking. Not to be dramatic but I will not be able to tolerate and pay for this kind of content. Golden and Muse were already a little... uninspired? I'd say. I cannot take worse than that. My love and money have their limits.
Adding a second message as it's more or less about the same topic.
Hybe might still have a creative department, but I find most of their work lazy and predictable, as you've pointed out as well. A lot of it comes across as unimaginative and a bit cheap overall and considering the prices and on a more macro level, the current economic situation, do we really want to pay for all of that? And I'm talking here about the lack of quality materials as well, not just at a conceptual level.
I do have the two versions of Muse and I'm fully aware of my participation in falling in the capitalist trap because of my position as a fan in this context, but looking at it as objectively as I can, it is not an album that I 100% like and I don't have any urge to open it up from time to time and look through it. The lack of quality is too obvious. It's the same with the AYS?! photobook. It's like they designed those pages with their eyes closed. A complete disgrace and what sucks is that it is so easy to come up with a better format. Do they not research photobooks? Or better yet, there's plenty of coffee table albums on fashion, photography, you name it, that can be used as inspiration. It's disappointing to say the least.
As to the actual concepts I too have an issue with using them without any sort of minimal connection to the idol or worse, the music itself. The first time I experienced this was through the Butter teasers which proved that it was just some aesthetic that had nothing to do with the actual mv. I'm mentioning Muse here again because I followed the promo closely. I can understand that the teasers are meant to be concepts for the overall album, but it can easily fall into a trap and become too generic or too vague. But what also happens is that fans immediately begin to theorize and look for symbolism in those 10 seconds clips and photoshoots, believing they'll find some clues to hidden messages. It's a futile exercise in meaningless interpretation.
Is Jin a rockstar? Is he releasing a rock album? Has he suddenly found his genre and now he's experimenting? Are bts a punk rock band because they appear dressed like that in a Seasons Greetings photoshoot? Is nothing but aesthetic and changing it all the time for every album without having an ounce of it in the actual music shows a lack of consistency.
It can be fun to experiment with various concepts. It allows idols to show their adaptability and it involves a bit of acting on top of it. It's like taking on a role. Perhaps framing it this way makes a bit more acceptable. But aesthetic concepts are not created from thin air. The more established ones are the result of subcultures (which do not exist anymore in this era of the internet, so it's not surprising that creatives are constantly looking back to the past for inspiration). But when there is a complete disconnection, it becomes too shallow and perhaps ridiculous as well. You can't sell an image if it has nothing to do with your own persona, music or your actual desire to experiment. Who actually believes Jin is the kind of idol with painted nails and, a guitar in hand, the classic outfit and eyes covered by messy hair? Not me because there hasn't been anything to indicate that there is something authentic. Perhaps there is, but there was no prior indication of that.
I used Jin as an example, but this is applied to other idols and groups. It will never be more than an aesthetic in the current use of the word by zoomers (the annoying lacking of meaning of "wow, that's so aesthetic!"). Perhaps we should think of it as modelling and idols as models made to express someone else's ideas as they become a canvas for concepts. Therefore, interpretation olympics should be reigned in.
I need a kpop girl group to do a Revolutionary Girl Utena inspired concept. Someone would have pink hair. There would be sword duels, a choir in the song, rose petals falling everywhere. It would be filmed in a love4eva/Twilight sort of setting. It would be the most elegant yet chaotic MV you can think of.
One of the most confusing things in kpop to me is how a group will have their title track be super dark with like harnesses and shit and then their side track performance is like super cute and colorful with soft sweaters and pink blush
Call me crazy but I really desire to see TVXQ! take on another type of retro concept. They’ve done the 30s-40s jazz sound, they’ve done some smooth jazz-pop....but I honestly believe if TVXQ! ever did like...a mid-80s concept maybe with a focus on synthwave or city pop, that they could pull it off and the concept would fit them really well. Now, do not get me wrong, I am not talking about a concept similar to Shinee had for View or 1on1...I am talking a little darker, a little more refined and sexier to fit their age range.
Example music:
This song is darker and moody but still has those 80s style synths and smooth vocals to set off a mysterious and romantic vibe. (Or maybe it’s just me...) This kind of song would be the title track.
This song is still somewhat 80s in its bombastic production and in the way the song flows. This could be a second single type of song...lighter and focused on love, passion and desire.
The Outfits:
We don’t want our aesthetic in the costuming and outfits to be too much or overdone. We want a vibe of the 80s but we don’t want to fall too deep down the rabbit hole of shoulder pads, bright colors and ill-fitting pants. My idea would be to give them touches of 80s fashion ideals, such as cuffed pants, mixed textiles and loud patterns, jewel and pastel tones, oversized blazers and loose button up shirts. We want Yunho and Changmin to give off a darkly sophisticated, 80s heartthrob with a mysterious side.
In the following pictures, the top purple suit for Yunho correlates with the pink suit for Changmin, and so on and so fourth through all the looks.
Purple and Pink Suits (perfect for stage performances)
Black and White textured looks
Relaxing, brighter looks that play on the same color set
Party outfits, still within the black and white color set (while Changmin adds interest and a younger feeling with the oversized blue, patterned blazer) - (These outfits would also be great for stage performances)
Cute/ Soft and dreamy, cleared my skin and watered my crops, loveydovey, bonus points if it's a ballad
Fantasy/ nature, otherworldly and mystic, white lace and black satin, folklore and magic, traditional
Chic/ bonus points if in nature or castle, maybe a hipthrust here and there
Dark/ kinda creepy and insane, sexy in a twisted way (looking at u, a.c.e), rebels and pirates I guess? adventure
Sexy/ hip thrusts and lace everywhere, wet shirts and leather pants, fire
Horror/ heavy makeup and contacts, scary and horny, what is natural haircolours?
Refreshing/ SUMMER, colourful and fun bonus when it's a school setting
Aesthetic™/ just visually pleasing
Tough/ Bad Boy, beaten and bruised, bros being bros, friendship, I still love her but I won't admit it (ikon👀)
Everthing else
Superheros/ I don't like marvel what makes u think I like this?
Swagger(?)/ cars and chains, look how rich I am, consumerism at it's finest, the colour orange, too many cuts and weird camera movements (looking at u, nct)
The last interesting concept BTS did was the rooms from BE. I'm stupid and can't explain this,but what do Spring Day,Young Forever,Black Swan,BS&T,Daechwita,etc have in common? The something that makes you want to draw fanart,makes you think about the MV long after you saw it,makes you feel fed. best BTS songs=stories,to me. What are Butter,PTD,Dynamite or even Telepathy about? Just "i want to do this" type of feeling. I'm hungry and I want something epic and overarching. Fuck "easy listening".
Well anon, sometimes we need ''easy listening'' as well. Not everything has to profound all the time, but I get where you're coming from.
The idea of a concept album is not something new. Western musicians have done it in the 20th century. We have Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Who's Tommy, Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, to name a few. But overall, it's not a common practice. But what do these albums have in common? The fact that they made a mark in music history, creating a bridge between music and other art forms.
In K-Pop and specifically BTS, it looks a bit different, because the conceptual album is the norm. They create a story, just as you said, and all the other elements are there to elevate it. It's not just lyrics, but the visuals around it, the narrative, costumes, all delivered through different types of media. That's what sets it apart. A complete artistic project that takes place over a period of time. This is something that BTS has done, up until the ''pandemic English trilogy''. I'm not surprised that there has been backlash as fans got used to a certain type of music/content. You can't really compare Blood Sweat and Tears, a music adaptation from a literary source, or Map of the Soul 7 inspired by Jungian psychology, to a message that it's more simple in terms of delivery/inspiration. Music can reflect society, it can be a mirror to current times, but in the end it depends on how artists want to express that. The BE rooms were not only a reflection of isolation during a pandemic, but also a self-expression of individuality. That's one of the reasons why it stands out, along with songs like Life Goes On (and the music video), Fly to My Room or Blue and Grey. The ''pandemic trilogy'' doesn't check any of these boxes.
