Chapter 21
Put the children's wishes into the lyrics.
In truth, that was much easier said than done.
On top of that, I didn't have much time, so I had to write the lyrics as quickly as possible...
“Should I have said I would do it?”
Well, if that didn't work, I could always alter the original lyrics a little and sing them. It was a song I liked, so I remembered all the lyrics, and removing the inappropriate words would be easy enough.
People would just wonder why the lyrics written by an elementary school student sounded like that.
I had a rough outline.
Lyrics about becoming famous, making lots of money, and granting the wishes of my younger siblings at the orphanage.
It was the kind of lyric commonly seen on hip-hop audition shows.
That was because wanting to succeed and repay one's family was an excellent sympathy-card theme that worked anywhere.
‘I’m actually going to make money and donate to the orphanage, after all.’
In that case, it should be okay for me to play the sympathy card a little, right?
Besides, playing the sympathy card wasn't inherently bad; from the perspective of sharing one's emotions with others, it was actually a pretty good subject for song lyrics.
I decided to just give it a shot and ask the younger children who usually followed me around the orphanage, as well as my same-age friends, what they wanted to do if they became rich.
“Me? I want to buy a house. Preferably in Gangnam.”
“No, give me an answer more befitting a kid.”
“Tsk. These days, money's king!”
My head throbbed at the answer from my world-weary peer. He wanted to buy a house in Gangnam? Did kids these days listen to real-estate news as prenatal education?
How did he even know Gangnam real estate was expensive?
I shook my head and headed toward the playroom, where some younger children were gathered.
‘They haven't even started elementary school. Surely they'll give me answers more appropriate for kids.’
“Hey, guys, your unni has a question for you.”
At my voice, seven-year-old Minji, who had been building with blocks, and five-year-old Sohee, who had been playing with dolls, approached me with sparkling eyes.
“Unni, why? Are you going to buy us something tasty again?”
“No, that can wait. If you had a truly, truly huge amount of money, what would you want to do?”
The children's expressions as they pondered for a moment were unusually serious. Since I had phrased my question at a nine-year-old's level, Minji carefully began to speak.
“Um... I want to pick the snacks I actually like at the convenience store, not the ones marked 1+1. We always have to choose the cheap ones.”
“Me!”
Five-year-old Sohee, who had been listening beside her, shot her hand into the air.
“I want shoes that don't make my feet hurt! These are hand-me-downs from the older girls, so they're too big and I keep tripping. I want to wear new shoes that fit my feet perfectly and light up!”
It felt like I'd been hit over the head. Maybe it was because I'd just come from hearing someone shout for a Gangnam apartment, but these little kids giving such innocent answers seemed incredibly adorable.
“Unni, there's one more thing.”
Minji lightly tugged on my clothes and added,
“If I had lots of money, I’d buy our teacher a robot vacuum cleaner so she wouldn’t have to work so hard. She says her back hurts from cleaning up after us every day.”
I hugged the children without saying a word.
Then, before I forgot what I'd just heard, I jotted it down in my notebook.
Such modest yet endearing wishes.
To be honest, I got a little choked up listening to them too, but what would other people who didn't live in an orphanage think when they heard them?
I opened my notebook right there and began writing down the lyrics.
The basic structure was already roughly laid out.
The original song's lyrics had been about ‘succeeding, getting revenge on the people who looked down on me, and dating women like crazy!’ So all I had to do was replace the revenge and the women with something else.
Over the beat of a hit song from my past life, the children's rough-hewn sincerity began to settle over it as a melody.
As I wrote down the lyrics, sang through the song based on them, and repeatedly revised them, the camera captured every bit of the process.
* * *
As the rounds went by, the number of contestants visibly dwindled.
But the amount of time allotted to the broadcast remained the same. What did that mean?
“It meant they had more than enough airtime to devote to each individual contestant.”
Until now, Singerstar hadn't been able to give each contestant a deep, meaningful backstory.
No, more precisely, they hadn't had the time.
Two hours of airtime was nowhere near enough to fit in the stages and judges' comments for all those formidable contestants.
But now, the situation was different. Only twenty contestants remained.
Among them, the ones who would monopolize the spotlight had already been identified.
Usually, by around Round 4, even the judges had a rough idea of who would wear the Top 10 crown.
This wasn't a matter of manipulation; it was simply because the gap in talent as seen through professionals' eyes was that clear.
From head PD Kang Jun-hyung's perspective, there were about five people whose stories needed the most focus, and at the very top were Joo Jin-woo and Seo Si-yeon.
The two of them lacked nothing in either skill or star quality.
Since the judges were already drooling over bringing them to their own agencies, it was obvious they would sail into the finals without a fight.
“Hmm... Of all things, she had to draw hip-hop.”
Kang Jun-hyung furrowed his brow. Hip-hop was a fairly tricky genre for an audition program like this.
The enormous genre show Show Me the Money already dominated the market, so genuinely talented rappers naturally flocked there.
“Besides, how much could a nine-year-old brat possibly do with rap?”
Kang Jun-hyung was certain. Seo Si-yeon wouldn't be able to show the same explosive power in this round as before.
Seo Si-yeon's weapons were her clear tone and genius composing ability, but there was no way her range also included such an alien genre as hip-hop.
Even if she came up with a killer track, it was anyone's guess whether her live performance could back it up.
Of course, Si-yeon wouldn't be eliminated right away just because she stumbled a little during the live performance or the song turned out to be terrible.
She had the overwhelming metrics she had built up so far, and above all, the sympathy votes from viewers who saw the genre draw as a blatant setup against her, so it was obvious the judges would show some flexibility and push her through by the skin of her teeth.
In fact, from PD Kang Jun-hyung's perspective, that wasn't a bad story either. ‘The perfect genius Seo Si-yeon's first crisis! And her spectacular comeback.’ What better narrative could there be to stimulate the ratings?
“Heh heh...”
He did feel a little pang seeing the child cry so bitterly in the previous round, but what could he do?
He was a television producer, and he had a duty to provide viewers with the ultimate dopamine rush.
Just as Kang Jun-hyung was planning the editing direction around Seo Si-yeon's setback and triumph, the footage sent from the set appeared on his monitor.
And after watching the video, Kang Jun-hyung had no choice but to revise his entire plan.
“Ah... Good grief. Why am I getting all weepy and sentimental at my age?”
Before he was a PD, he was a father and a middle-aged man past forty.
He was also a softhearted man who would secretly send donations whenever he saw advertisements about children starving in Africa.
Watching the video containing the wishes of the orphanage children, he ended up shedding a steady stream of tears, as if some button had been pressed.
“But the song is what matters most. Sympathy alone can only take you so far.”
If the song was lousy or the live performance a mess, then no matter how much the editing milked the tears, its value as an audition program would fall. Kang Jun-hyung moved the mouse with a trembling hand.
“There’s a recording? Let’s hear it.”
The track opened with narration alongside a low piano melody.
A soft-spoken narration began over background music with a fairy-tale-like atmosphere.
The voice was so sweet that it sounded good enough to make him wonder if they had asked a professional voice actor.
-Once upon a time, there was a girl at Neulneul Orphanage who loved to sing.
-But singing alone wasn't enough to grant her younger siblings' wishes.
-So the girl prayed to the heavens.
Then, alongside a brief “Szzzt—” noise, a polished 808 bass and chilly guitar riff pierced his ears. And then came the first line, calmly exhaled like a sigh.
-when I pray for the sky
The moment he heard those words, Kang Jun-hyung knew. He didn't need to hear any more.
Live? Had Seo Si-yeon ever made a mistake onstage before? Not once.
This was guaranteed to blow up.
A sweet singing rap that pierced straight through Korean sensibilities, along with the wishes of orphanage children who were more like family than their actual family.
“This... If we push it a little harder in the editing, we could have an all-time classic.”
Plans for a spectacular production flashed through Kang Jun-hyung's mind.
Seo Si-yeon's interactions with the orphanage kids that he'd seen in the footage earlier.
If they added just the right amount of staging to that, then contacted the orphanage to film the footage needed for the concept and edited it together...
“This is going to look incredible.”
There were a few stage videos in the history of Korean music shows that had gone down as legends.
Masterpieces that had racked up millions or tens of millions of views and still brought tears to people's eyes years later.
This stage might become the pinnacle that carried on that lineage.
Kang Jun-hyung rubbed his goosebump-covered arms and chuckled.
Singerstar was preparing this season with the resolve that it would be its last anyway. He couldn't imagine a more perfect protagonist for ending things on a high note.