What would be the expectation on the "Bylac" album of IU, who is not getting any younger?

  • In the KPop sphere, I am somewhat known as having written at least 10,000 posts to tell the harm Lee Jieun had caused to KPop. I stopped counting after around 5,000.


    But when I saw this photo


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    Of Lee Jieun with a boy,


    Whyknock thought about Jang Nara, who was the image of an innocent girl, but she now plays a jilted wife, a queen to an evil king and things like that. She had played a mother in Confession Couple with a lesser known actor.


    It appears Lee Jieun, while famous for all these ears, appears to realize that she now has to play a different role because of the change of times.


    Kim Eana had commented that the new album will be "very spicy", and since Lee Jieun probably consulted Kim Eana while writing the lyrics, it seems Lee Jieun will probably be firing her last shots before moving on to more 'adult like' music.


    Whyknock thinks this might be the final year Whyknock will be writing about Kpop, since if Lee Jieun moves on to the more adultlike style of music, she is no longer in the mainstream of Kpop so Whyknock has no more reason to write about her.


    In fact the moment almost came on Nov 2019 when IZOne almost collided with Lee Jieun. If the rigging scandal was revealed just a few days later, IZOne would have revealed its album and would have buried Lee Jieun. Instead, Lee Jieun got to own the December , extending her dominance into the 2020s.


    What would be the expectation on her album, which appears to be quite experimental?

  • Disregarding everything u said and to answer the question


    The main title track will achieve PAK, all bsides will chart high on every local charts, prob it would have the highest accumulated digital points for an album, national hit song tracks and queen IU just getting richer. Calling all this to happen :cursing:

    And it looks like her last hurrah since it appears she will probably have to alter her song styles to suit her age

  • And it looks like her last hurrah since it appears she will probably have to alter her song styles to suit her age

    Well now we definitely know it was a fantastic 'hurrah', whether it will be the last, only time will tell.


    As to 'altering styles', every artist should do that, both because they themselves are changing - age being one of the factors and because the market tastes are also constantly changing.

    Yet the alteration should not be so drastic in case of established acts like 'IU', that it discomfits those who are comfortable with the artist's perceived style. And Lilac seems to have achieved that balance reasonably well.

    If they don't and keep reproducing the same style again and again, they won't last. And 'lasting' is what IU has been doing perfectly for a decade now.


    I do hope she produces 'mature' music, it will be irritating to see her sing Boo or Marshmallow kind of songs and she knows that, has retired them.

    The Overton window of Kpop itself might slowly move to older ages, acts like BTS, IU, Brave girls all will cause that. If it was teenagers who drove Kpop in 1990s-2000s - they are now in their 30s and 40s and IU anyway already has built her audience far broader than the teens.


    Like fashion, musical tastes are often cyclic, you have already noted the rise of trottists, that is a moving away from the visual dazzle business of K-pop, and among K-pops IU's genre is far close to trot than others, so if at all she might adapt better to the cyclic shift.


    It all depends on what you define as "K-pop", after all "pop" stands for "popular", so anything popular which can't be distinctly categorized as a genre, is pop.


    So Whyknock should not retire, but continue the threads with historical analogies. Though I don't share your sentiments regarding IU, I thoroughly enjoy the posts.

    And I hope IU as well continues to 'inspire;' you.

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