I'm not sorry sorry
Backstreet Boys. N’Sync. 98 Degrees. Boyzone. 5ive. Blue. Westlife. And yes, O Town. As tweens, we listened to boy bands croon songs about love and sex, thinking they were so romantic and remaining pretty much none the wiser about what the lyrics were really talking about. “If you want it to be good, girl, get yourself a bad boy”? What?
Regardless, we were crazy for those guys. Real boys didn’t exist back then, just Brian, Kevin, AJ, Howie, and (my first love) Nick. Or JC, Justin, Joey, Lance, and Chris. When they sang “I’ll never break your heart / I’ll never make you cry / I’d rather die than live without you,” we believed them absolutely.
That era of boy bands has died down and paved the way for a new set of crushable guys… whose names I can’t even pronounce. That their songs are all in Korean, a language I don’t claim to speak or understand in the slightest, is irrelevant. I have no trouble listening to Sigur Rós, an Icelandic post-rock outfit. Their first two albums were in their native language. Then they made up an entirely new language for their third, and it sounded no different to me. I listened to “Svefn-g-englar” on loop for days; why should “Bonamana” be a problem? No, language is never a barrier.
My K-Pop boy band of choice, Super Junior, offers things few girls are capable of resisting: a good mix of sweet ballads and dance hits, smoothly choreographed moves, and many members to choose from (so you don’t have to fight with your BFF over who has rights to Ronan Keating; I call dibs on Siwon). As an added plus, they’re all handsome in a cute, clean-cut, wholesome, totally non-threatening, I’m-so-nice-and-I’ll-never-hurt-you, let’s-have-a-totally-twee-picnic way. What’s not to love?
Super Junior will be performing at the Araneta Coliseum tomorrow night. Their first concert in the Philippines, which happened just last year, was a smashing success. I wasn’t there. This time around, I figured I would come clean, toss whatever “indie cred” I might have up in the air, and just admit already that I really enjoy their specific brand of K-Pop. Being a complete SuJu newbie, though, I didn’t want to come too unprepared. I asked a Korea-crazed friend of mine to make me a list of songs that they might be performing on Saturday — she sent me 35. I asked her to tell me about her concert experience from last year, and she told me all about going to the airport to wait for their arrival — I saw the photos; it was madness. She discussed the intricacies of a Super Junior performance, talking about something called “fan service” that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. She explained why all the glow sticks were blue. Then she e-mailed me a PDF full of fan chants that were probably going to be used at the concert “for my reference.”
Fan chants?
Take our prepubescent devotion to our favorite ‘90s boy bands. Multiply that by a billion. That’s the kind of chaos I’m expecting on Saturday. “You know,” a friend tells me, “I was passing through the mall when they were having one of those promotional events and there were girls crying over the cardboard standees. Seriously.”
We’re not in Kansas anymore. No, this is Korea. And it’s going to be awesome.
