Which year of IU's assault against KPop would have been the most dangerous? 6
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2010 (0) 0%
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2011 (0) 0%
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2014 (0) 0%
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2017 (4) 67%
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2021 (2) 33%
Although Michael Jordan officially retired from NBA in 2003 from Washington Wizards, few people remember his Wizard days.
For all practical purposes, he retired from NBA on the 1998 NBA finals Game 6, where his Bulls trounced Utah Jazz.
Michael Jordan is not someone easy to like. He has few friends, and he is quite arrogant. However, he did dominate, which is he is still remembered 24 years after he retired for all practical purposes.
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KPop's domination was almost complete near the end of 2010 when every other genre of Korean Pop, even trot, had been decimated, and there was one remaining non-KPop singer who was still competition - IU.
She began her lone war against KPop on Dec 09, 2010, when she released Good Day. At first directed by Cho Youngchul, who now leads Mystic where he is trying to make Fukutomi Tsuki the next IU, she gradually took the directing power for herself and had a full control over her affairs by 2015.
IU was a staunch supporter of the vocalist tradition of Korean Pop, and maintained an undying hostility against everything KPop stood for, namely performance, music videos, international promotion, pandering for foreign fandom, etc.
She advocated isolationism, reactionarism and stasis of Korean Pop, trying to make it return to early 1990s when the balladists reigned supreme.
And, now, she is entering a semi-retirement from singing. She said she will have her next concert 'within 3 years', which means probably 2024 at the earliest, which means no new albums for the rest of year and probably 2023 as well. She cited her ear problems.
She will probably be concentrating on acting for the foreseeable future, making the 4th Gen of KPop gain the time to establish huge spheres of influence without having to worry about her attacking from the back.
She made five major assaults against KPop. I will omit the smaller ones.
1. 2010
Released on Dec 9, 2010, Good Day suddenly brought the vocalists , whom everyone thought to be down and out, back to the map. Suddenly KPop had to worry about the specter of the past, where the Korea-only balladists suffocated the newer waves which introduced new styles of Pop.
By the end of the year (i.e. around 22 days after Good Day's release), IU defeated Sistar, Kara and Big Bang, and was considered to be in the same league with the top KPop acts, a very unpleasant addition since her music , to this day, does not appeal to a big portion of i-fans.
2. 2011
"You & I" knocked down SNSD, which was planning for something huge in USA (although that didn't pan out eventually).
IU was now ranked in the same league with SNSD.
A domesticist being ranked with the biggest act KPop produced to the day. Enough said.
3. 2014
After a bunch of things I won't recall here, in 2014 she released Flower Bookmark, on the wake of the infamous ferry accident which closed KPop down for almost a couple of months. Given the changed ethos, her music appealed to the general public, and for the first time since 2007 when KPop began on earnest, she had a very good chance of ending it and ending the KPop boom.
She even obtained a collaboration with Seotaiji, who started it all.
It was probably the greatest crisis of KPop, and if SM and Mnet didn't fight IU and Loen like hell and eventually gave her the Lifetime Achievement Award , making her ineligible for the MAMA grand prizes for the rest of life, a big fracture would have occurred in KPop from which it would have never recovered.
4. 2017
Hyori's bedstay revived IU's career, and on Sep 18, 2017, her Autumn Morning ( a remake of a 1991 song of Yang Heeeun; Yang would later sing it with Chaeunwoo in a year end show) defeated BTS' DNA. It is BTS' final defeat to this day, and IU's record of being the last person to have beaten BTS will probably stand for ever.
That catapulted her back to contention, and she eventually reached her greatest glory to the date when she finally received the Digital Grand Prize from Golden Disk on Jan 10, 2018.
5. 2021
With BTS' worldwide domination nobody thought it would be possible to challenge BTS by anyone, but she did challenge it and actually managed to wrest Korea from the Hybe act. She also defeated aespa on the way with Strawberry Moon.
So, while everywhere else on earth BTS dominated, she wrested Korea from it. She maintained such pace, culminating at the concert at the Olympic Stadium, even though she never had anything bigger than a smaller arena tour outside of K-O-R-E-A.
All five assaults against KPop were major, with a big dent on how KPop was done, but unlike United Kingdom in the Napoleonic era which eventually spent its way to buy all of the European Kingdoms to become its ally, IU was unable to garner the support of KPop's rivals who hardly noticed her greatest triumph, and did not recognize the years of fight she conducted to undermine KPop.
So, does kind of end the singing career of probably the most formidable foe KPop ever had. If she could have garnered the support of at least one foreign ally things might have become different, but after 12 years of fighting KPop, it seems even she is getting tired of it.
It is unlikely that Korean Pop will have someone like her who would have an iron determination to undermine Kpop whenever possible. Trot has become a league of its own with the trottists rarely fighting against KPop figures, and KPop will now evolve into a new direction, without having to fight its greatest foe who won't be showing up for quite a long time.
