How the Kpop Thing happened: from Shinee to BTS

OK so in Part Le Un I talked about Sherlock by Shinee, but what I didn't tell you was that it sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole through every damned Shinee video and performance ever and then landed on BTS, priming me for the discovery of my favourite boy band of all time, EXO.

One of the big differences between NA pop acts and Kpop acts is that you can find EVERYTHING about a Kpop act online. Fans post concerts, variety shows, crack videos, whatever and they never get taken down. Fans will subtitle shows, provide lyrics, and give background all out of the love of their favourites.

On top of this, the entertainment companies will happily provide piles of high-def content for free on YouTube. These companies still make money from ticket and concert sales, so putting concert footage online for free is basically just advertising costs.

All this to say that I eventually ended up watching videos of Shinee live, and that's how I came to find my favourite Shinee song, Beautiful.



This is the exact video I watched lo so many years ago, and Beautiful is one of the songs in the set:



Aside: Until this point, I had no idea whatsoever that Kpop was an international phenomenon. I didn't realize there was an entire Kpop community that brought people together. The Shinee fandom in particular is very nice. They're sweeties who appear to have no beef with anyone. [Hopefully that line won't somehow summon their enemies to come look for me.]

Back to our story: If you look at the suggested videos that go with that Shinee video, one of them is of BTS doing Save Me at the same con.

There was a big difference between BTS and Shinee. While Shinee looked like pros, BTS looked like a bunch of kids who were really digging girls yelling after them. (Of course at this point Shinee had been doing their thing for a good 7 years, and BTS was only a couple of years old, so, you know, not really surprising.)

Anyways, I'm not a big fan of Save Me by BTS anymore, but I NEED U is still a bop and a half and still on at least one of my many playlists.

Here's the Kcon video of I NEED U



Oh, and here's a video of Shinee doing Beautiful with all 5 of their original members

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