Long time ago, a man had loved a woman.
She had married another man and had a daughter, and the man either died, disappeared , divorced, whatever, and disappeared from the scene
the man loved the woman so much that he took the daughter as his own
but the latter, for whatever reason, NEVER took the man as the father. Why, who knows. Maybe that was the nature of her.
He became quite successful, and he treated his stepdaughter like his own, allowing her to learn the busines.
The parents died. They had several children.
However, because the stepdaughter was the oldest and the first to reach adulthood,
she kicked all of her half siblings to the street. They ended up with nothing. Some were killed, some went to prison, some became homeless. They cursed their father who loved someone who could NEVER become his child.
While she reverted her surname back to her real father's and had nothing to do with her half siblings for the rest of her life.
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With the absence of both BTS and BlackPink, and Twice mostly operating out of Korea, the mistake of the KPop world tolerating IU is now bearing a bad fruit which increasingly dooms it.
IU's song, which did NOT make the Billboard Hot 100 or the Spotify rankings, was succeeded by Bibi's Night Yokan (sometimes also called Chestnut Yokan - "Bam" can either mean "Night" or "Chestnut") , which was even LESS palatable to the world, Yanggang (Yokan) being an alien snack in the West and the Jang Kiha written song containing no English words (Bibi herself said the "Gang" in Yanggang is still a 'Gang', trying to not forget her hip hop origins) and then,
Gidle's Fate, a B-side song which sounds like a 2010s Japanese girl rock band.
Because Bibi's company pulled a Fifty Fifty on her, despite of the fact that she did not have a Siahn and did not show trouble with the company, Bibi's song lost traction and is now replaced by GIdle's B-side, which was NOT intended to be palatable for the global audience. It might do a bit better in its Japanese concert, with Japanese lyrics added for it, but that will be the extent of how it will affect the world.
It appears that the Korean audience has lost the lessons of KPop in the last 17 years, and are very happy to negate all of its gains in a short order, promoting easy-to-the-ears, irrelevant-for-the-world style of songs.
IT is the fault of Lee Hyori, who had revived IU who had been crushed by Laboum and then Suran (ft. Suga of BTS) back in 2017, who revived this B-side and harmed KPop further.
IU herself showed earlier this year that songs palatable for concerts tend not to do well at Melon.
New Jeans has released listener-friendly songs but that is now creating a quandary since the money is on concerts and their songs are not exactly concert friendly, something Min Heejin should really consider in their do-or-die next album.
With the venues of the 4th Gen acts getting smaller because companies want sure profits, not adventures, and the gutting of SM which was always willing to try bigger venues with the risk of they becoming empty, the decline of KPop would become more rapid as songs palatable for the year but not relevant to foreign fans will proliferate even more.
The KPop experts all underestimated the unlimited malice IU had on KPop, and now it is showing its effect here and there. I predicted this from 12 years ago and I feel a bit vindicated.