It's our old pal... Lee Hi! Haha, just kidding. I'd never heard of her before. But now she is screaming to be known! Lee Hi was the winner of this TV show called Kpop Star, in which Asian teens from Korea, China, the USA, Canada, and a few other places participate in a competition designed to pick up the next big hit on the Korean music market.
Only the top winner gets the prize, but the runner-ups are likely to have an extremely good chance of getting a recording deal with some company pretty soon.
The prize is like $10, 000, some cars, some other expensive junk, and a contract with the big company of your choice - SM Entertainment (Girls Generation), YG Entertainment (2NE1), or JYP (Miss A).
Pretty much a dream come true. You have to earn it though. On each round, the un-eliminated people sing a song that displays the best of their vocal abilities, and are judged by judges.
Lee Hi was such a person. Only sixteen, she won Kpop Star only about five months ago, signed with YG, and released her first single just less than a month ago.
Obviously the winner of such a contest has to be amazing, and there was a great flurry of excitement on Allkpop preceding her debut.
I have to say she lived up to almost everyone's opinions!
Let's start with the song itself. Lee Hi has an amazing throaty voice that's pretty powerful, and a remarkable voice range. She gets a lot of emotion in her voice, but it's not goopy 70s stuff, it's just epicness. The song was sort of a jazzy hip hop style that I've never heard in kpop before.
(Prophet Blog was hating on Lee Hi's song because it sounded stupid and old fashioned and lame or something. I think Prophet Blog was not nice.)
The music video was really cool. It's basically her walking around in some retro area making badassy glances at the camera and grooving around with some back-up dancers. A lot of comments have been made about her lack of acting skills. I don't think it's that bad, personally. I mean, she basically has three faces - a blank face, a badass face, and a happy face.
To me this didn't really lessen the overall coolness of the video, so I was fine with it. Nobody (besides Prophet Blog) seems to be causing any negativity over it, they'll just be like "That was sucky acting" and move on with worshipping her.
Also, her first live performance was seriously WORLDS better. I guess YG saw that people were unimpressed and decided to hype it up. Her live performances are really pretty spiffy.
This one song has been at the top of every chart and show for about three weeks straight, which has made a ton of shabbam about various records for rookies and stuff.
Her next single is scheduled to release in two days. I quote Allkpop quoting YG representatives
"There will be no impressive music video, dancers, or outfits with this comeback as the focus will be put entirely on her voice and vocal talent.”
I don't know if this means that there will be a music video at all. Maybe not. It's cool that they're really focusing on her vocal talent. Her last release really did have a lot of cool outfits and sets and stuff.
I hope this isn't a ballad. Ballads bug me.
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