What is your feeling about IU outliving IZ*One?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, famous for writing One Hundred Years of Solitude about a South American family's rise and fall, also wrote The Funeral of Mama Grande (Big Mama in some translations), in 1962.

Set in the same space with "Solitude", it tells a woman, simply called Mama Grande, who rules a town with an iron fist, destroying any rivals in her watch.

She ruled the town for as long as anyone could remember, and she outlived all of the Buendias (the family in 'Solitude'). All of the town's important posts were filled by her relatives, and everyone in there feared her.

However, as the title of the story says, she dies after ruling the town for 92 years and a new future, whatever that might be, awaits the town in the end, although her relatives still control the power structure so the lot for the people is unlikely to improve too much.

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When MAMA awarded 21-years-old IU the Lifetime Achievement Award back in Dec 03, 2014 (I remember the date to this day, and probably to my deathbed; there are several dates I do not forget, like May 16, 1993 or Nov 09, 2012(which I will tell you if someone asks me)).

it inadvertently created a Senior Singer, which is quite big in Asian country where honoring the old is still kinda important.

Because she is a Senior Singer , her voice cannot be ignored, and she could, and did, use her influence to shift KPop's future to her advantage and only BTS standing firm stopped her ambition.

The history of IZOne's cheating scandal does not have to be told again. However, if the scandal broke just two weeks later, Fiesta would have killed Blueming, and it is possible that IZOne, instead of IU, would have won the Grand Prize in this year's Golden Disk Award.

These two weeks were decisive for the futures of IZOne and IU; instead of IZOne burying IU, the latter got to rule the rest of 2019, and IU's OST buried Fiesta in Feb 2020.

And IU gets to outlive another act now.

As KPop progresses farther, IU will get to outlive more and more groups. Even Shinhwa, which lasted for more than 20 years, is in crisis because Eric and Kim Dongwan are quarreling now. All groups disband eventually, or change members; the only act which might not disband is AKMU, because the members are siblings. And who knows - Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis fought and went their own ways.

Since IU is the only notable soloist of the 2nd Generation, even back in 2011 and now, the singer who had played a 30,000 years old (in My MIster where the center character Jian says she was re-incarnated 600 times and is like 30,000 years old) and 1,300 years old (in Hotel DeLuna when she plays someone born in T'ang China, circa 680) is likely to become Mama Grande of KPop, outliving everyone. That is ironical because it was at MAMA that she was given the title of Senior Singer by receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award.

If IZOne failed with that much support, who will stop the Senior Singer? I won't leave KPop until that question is answered. (Brave Girls' victory over her appears to be temporary so I am not going to discuss their triumph over the Senior Singer, who is younger than all of the BG members but is nevertheless Senior because none of their 4 members even debuted when Lee Jieun had received the Lifetime Achievement Award.)

Quote from nehdali

i'm curious as to why you say she got a lifetime achievement award, i thought she got most popular vocalist or something like that

Because in this clip all of her career up to 2014 has been catalogued, and she received the award for what she did for all of her career and not for what she did in 2014, everyone in Korea calls it the Lifetime Achievement Award, like those given to sixty plus year old trot singers.

Quote from itiswhatitisss

What an interesting article. I think IU would've outlived IZ*ONE either way, since they were always a temporary group and were never going to be permanent. Similar to IOI back then, they were basically competing against TWICE but they were going to disband eventually so it didn't matter.

I remember you made a thread about IU hating IOI, so what do you think IU thinks about the possible IOI reunion?

What about BTS?

IF IZOne had broken the backbone of IU in Nov 2019, it would probably have been extended and IU would have been buried as a has been. In fact, because IZOne did not get to check IU back then, IU's fame still continues.

IOI reunion now is impossible since Pinky Zhou is now firmly in Chinese entertainment and won't return. Chungha had met IU and Sejeong is an IU fan so IU does not care now. (Lim Nayoung and Kim Sohye are now actresses and won't sing again either)

BTS is undoubtly over IU now, but who knows what will happen in 5 years.

Quote from crystalblues

It is not IU's fault that the companies behind the girls of IZ*One were greedy and wanted them to return ASAP instead of continuing to let them be successful alone. Please do not try to villanize IU.

It is not IU's fault since she did nothing. The moment of the revelation of the schedule was decisive on saving her career after late 2019. The company (most likely Starship)'s position is understandable - they did not want to share the profits with CJ and wanted to use their idols' incomes.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

Most of kpop outlives izone/produce it’s not saying much.

Actually, without the scandal being revealed, IZOne and X1 would be in full steam now and they would have outlived other acts.

IZOne almost drove IU to the ground at Nov 2019, but because of the way the scandal revealed, instead IU, without having to fight IZOne, had the rest of year for herself which led to her Grand Prize in

which would not have been possible if IZOne had crushed her without the scandal in Nov 19

Quote from crystalblues

Why do you hate domestic Korea so much? It does not matter if K-Pop goes international, Korea deserves to pick and enjoy music that might not be international too. There is nothing wrong with domestic Korean artists.

That's because unlike most countries, in Korea everyone, pop, rock, r&b, hip hop, trot, ballad, whatnot are all thrown into one single vat and everyone is against each other, and when IU and other domesticists were prevalent they worked to deprive KPop their blood, oxygen, life force or what you can call.

Koreans tend to support singers who mostly promote in Korea, including Brave Girls who will probably never perform outside of Korea other than a brief appearance like KCon. In other words, Korea cannot support KPop and the domesticists at the same time and if one is strong the other has to be weak

Quote from crystalblues

Her career did not need saving though, she has always sold amazingly well and has an massive active fanbase still in Korea. Her concerts never go without selling out within hours

Without the scandal being revealed at the nick of time, IZOne would have outsold IU easily and would have blocked her from winning at music shows with ease. IT would have shown that she had declined to a point where she was no longer relevant

Quote from atropos

What? Izone was a temporary group. And fiesta was no where near the mega hit blueming is.

In the timeline where Fiesta was revealed just before Blueming was, Fiesta would have given a hard fight as Wizones would have found a golden opportunity to jump to a higher dimension.

Instead, Blueming , without a competition, owned Nov and Dec 2019. If IZone could have checked it, Blueming would have done like Lilac did this year when Brave Girls humiliated her to some degree

Quote from atropos

Complete

iu was not humiliated. Lilac got so many paks and is a huge hit.

And no fiesta wouldn't have done better than blueming even if it was released before. Izone was never strong on charts.

Fans of Brave Girls became more aggressive as they found IU as their foe to vanquish.

A similar thing would have taken place. Fiesta would have started at around #10 in Melon, and would be around #7 when Blueming would have come out.

A huge move was checked when IZOne's album could not be released. Later, Wizones fought Uaenas like hell and briefly put Fiesta at #1 in Melon just before BTS came out. In this scenario, IZOne-IU fight burns like hellfire, consuming one of them, more likely the Senior Singer who fades away to history

It is like the movie Chariots of Fire, where a Jewish athlete and a would-be missionary are to race for a Gold Medal, and the religious runner weaseling out of the race citing some religious reason. (It is a real story and the missionary later got himself killed in China.)

Quote from workingclass

OP, you need to write a script for this IU narrative. I would absolutely watch a K drama about this. Maybe IU can star in it too.

Many years later, there will be a longish Kdrama kind of telling the story of KPop. IU is likely to be the heroine of the drama since only she has a career going through the major phases of Kpop. A younger actress will play her and she might get a cameo role playing a real Senior Singer like Lee Mija or Kim Yeonja making a small appearance

Quote from NotOnceNorThrice

Ehh, Izone is supposed to disband after some times

Without the scandal and Covid, it would have gone to many more concerts and would have promoted more so it would have been extended. But, because of Covid it could not promote in Japan, which was to be its home ground, so the companies decided to bring back their trainnes.

Quote from bumble-bunny

You should get into fiction writing. Wasting your talent being a troll on a kpop forum, really.

KPop is the greatest genre of pop culture now so I am now in the main arena, which I like.