MUSIC

HOW A K-POP BOY BAND BECAME A MAN BAND

over 20 years of Shinhwa and counting

By Grace Ko

Shinhwa in action

When you think of K-pop boybands, you don’t think of men. Yet, Shinhwa is the world's oldest and longest-standing K-Pop boy band in the world and its members are all men, almost all them over 40. That is except for baby Andy who is a relatively youthful 39. Since their debut in 1998, the members have remained constant and committed to the band and have released 13 full-length albums, seven ep’s, and for some of the members a number of solo albums. They have been quite a busy group of boys who are now without doubt men.

On March 24, 1998, they debuted on KMTV's "Show Music Tank" with the title song “Resolver (해결사)”, which was followed by “Eusha! Eusha! (으쌰! 으쌰! : meaning ‘cheer up’)” These songs were upbeat anthems that would have gone over two years earlier. Unfortunately, in 1998, the economy was tanking and IMF loans were putting a serious damper on any hope of a quick recovery. These singles were out of step with what people were feeling, and as a result, Shinhwa’s debut album was not successful and they seemed to be on their way to irrelevance, a quick and fast teenage demise.

Shinhwa during their T.O.P. moment

At the time, the members were anywhere between 16 and 18 years old; in other words, pretty young. Since the debut album performed so poorly, they decided to try something different and to work harder. Maybe because of the failure, they were also given some leeway to write and produce some of their own songs. The title track of the second album “T.O.P.” stands for twinkling of paradise. The piece samples Tchaiksky’s Swan Lake Suite, Op.20 and is the first time Shinhwa won best song of the week in all three broadcaster’s music programs: “Music Bank,” “Music Camp,” and “Ingigayo (인기가요/Popular K-Pop). The song shows Shinhwa’s dual and competing qualities: they are at one and the same time, defiant and rebellious, but also easy to listen to and have a very inviting manner.

The song is really a concept piece. It begins with orchestral strings. After the melody is established, Eric, Shinhwa’s lead rapper, lays out a mellow English-language rap that merges with the strings. Afterwards, Minwoo, taking on the role of lead singer, delivers a series of rough, sharp, and catchy notes. He has a sweet voice that has the power of a man’s and the smoothness of a boy’s. Their coexistence in the same body is charming. So, even though the main concept of Shinhwa at this point is pretty cute boys, they’re also connoting a real masculinity as well. It’s as if they knew because of their initial failure that they would have to be more than just your standard K-pop boy band.

Tougher now

That self-awareness differentiated them from other boy bands and it also gave them a way to think about themselves as artists. For their third album Shinhwa embraced masculinity in a way no other boy band had done before. Some of the members took up body building. The choreography for the video of the title song is deliberately very male. This is the aesthetic that BTS and EXO would eventually take on to great success.

The main song "Only One" is a stylish and cool bit that in the video stressed a sexual quality that just wasn’t common in K-pop in the year 2000. If you look at their costumes, I mean what’s left of them, you know exactly what these boys are selling. What they are wearing is carefully calibrated to create a sensation: Eric wore headscarves and painted a delicate harmony symbol around one of his eyes in imitation of American rappers. And Dong-wan wore colored lenses that were more than a little bit spooky. They were a boy band, but each boy was quite different and pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable behavior for a K-pop star.

Even in the song itself is strange and out of the ordinary. “Only One” is about a man who falls in love with a woman in a dream and gets rejected by her in the dream. It’s definitely a boy’s fantasy gone wrong, but seen through the eyes of the most jaded of men. Again, Shinwha plays it both ways and over the last twenty-one years the results have been a new and different kind of K-pop stardom.

©Grace Ko and the CCA Arts Review