Chapter 43
For the past several years, the Korean music charts have had two enormous mountain ranges that completely occupy the upper ranks whenever their respective seasons arrive.
One is the hip-hop audition program, and the other is none other than Singerstar. (The Produce series is centered around fandoms, so it is relatively minor in terms of broad public impact.)
Usually, Singerstar would pack songs into the very top of the charts around July or August, when the TOP 10 competition began. But this season was completely different.
A monstrous little kid whose origins no one knew had appeared and begun devouring the music-chart ecosystem itself.
Starting in May, her name had gradually begun appearing in the upper ranks, and by July, she had seized the very top like a fortress, with no sign of coming down.
The CEOs of the mid-sized agencies around him, who had happened to schedule their idols' comebacks at precisely this time, were groaning over the unusually brutal difficulty of climbing the charts, but……
“Not my problem.”
Lee Hajun, the head of BlueSky Entertainment, sank deep into the office sofa and muttered while watching the live Singerstar stage.
He had studied every stage Seo Siyeon had shown so far, but this one had made an especially strong impression on him.
Whether he liked it or not, BlueSky was a company built on idol production, and its future blueprint was drawn in that direction as well.
When he had spoken with Chairman Yoo Sanghun, who was effectively the head of BlueSky Entertainment, he had seen that the chairman understood the importance of nurturing idols perfectly.
Perhaps because he had a daughter who made music, his understanding of the market's inner workings was quite deep.
Until now, Seo Siyeon's stages had felt closer to those of a typical solo pop singer than an idol. But this Jellypop stage had a more distinctly idol-like flavor than any of her previous performances.
Of course, it was difficult to say that the dancing and direction were highly polished.
The preparation time had been far too short, so the result was only natural.
Even if they had been given more time, it would have been difficult to expect a dramatic leap in quality.
With Seo Siyeon, an ordinary person without professional training, handling the dancing, and a production crew unfamiliar with idol-style staging, this was probably the limit.
But when it came to music—the essence of it—the story was different.
The quality of a stage and a song's chart performance were clearly separate matters.
No matter how strong a song's live impact was—say, a song like Child of Waves, which Blooming had sung—it often failed to make much of an impression once it entered the charts.
That was because it either went against the public's general tastes or tired the ears when streamed repeatedly.
In that sense, Jellypop was not so much a performance song for the stage as a song designed purely to conquer the charts.
A moderate, well-blended synth sound that never became excessive, combined exquisitely with house and pluggnb, genres that might be somewhat unfamiliar to the Korean market.
While maintaining a soft, rounded texture overall, the bouncy bass sound popping along in the background created an incredibly addictive quality.
“It's simply too good a song to listen to casually. The balance is perfect from start to finish.”
This stage might have been somewhat underwhelming at eliciting an immediate response compared to her previous explosive high notes or flashy arrangements. But the moment this song landed on the charts……
“It might even begin a longer reign than Glassy Sky.”
The question Chairman Yoo Sanghun had once thrown at Lee Hajun suddenly flashed through his mind.
‘How far can you go?’
Could he truly control Blooming and Seo Siyeon, these two young geniuses, with his own abilities and produce the results Chairman Yoo wanted?
Frankly speaking, he thought it would be difficult. After running the company all this time, he had painfully confirmed that his own capabilities were nowhere near that level.
“If I manage to achieve the kind of success he wants, it won't be my achievement.”
It was far more likely to be a miracle brought about solely by the existence of Seo Siyeon.
But whose credit it was hardly mattered. If Seo Siyeon's songs brought the company its golden age, the wealth and honor he would gain would remain unchanged.
- All the performances are over! Now it is time to determine the three glorious contestants heading to the finals and the one unfortunate contestant who must end their journey here!
The host shouted at the television with a volume that struck the eardrums.
In truth, the identity of the eliminated contestant was practically decided by the atmosphere at the venue, so there was not much tension.
Even so, Lee Hajun turned his attention back to the screen because he was curious about how large the score gap between Seo Siyeon and Joo Jinwoo would be in this round.
In the early TOP 10 rounds, the gap between them had been negligible.
But after the full-scale live competition began, Seo Siyeon had left Joo Jinwoo behind by a huge margin every time.
That was because the public appeal Seo Siyeon drew was overwhelming in comparison to Joo Jinwoo's.
The single biggest contributor to bringing so-called Muggles—people who normally did not watch audition programs—to Singerstar was Seo Siyeon, and their votes naturally poured toward her.
Who wouldn't support a beautiful nine-year-old genius who wrote her own songs and performed them perfectly?
“Perhaps this round could change the story a little.”
In the regular rounds, viewer votes and judges' scores were combined, so the exact vote difference could not be known, but the gap between their converted scores had always been more than 100 points.
“……It's only this much?”
But the result revealed onscreen was shocking. The score gap between Joo Jinwoo and Seo Siyeon was a mere 13 points.
* * *
‘Just as I thought…… I had more or less expected it.’
Even if I tried to act unfazed, I could not stop my expression from subtly twisting.
At this very moment, the camera was surely capturing my face relentlessly, and this strange feeling would be broadcast live across the country.
To be honest, the fact that the gap between Joo Jinwoo and me had narrowed this much hurt my pride.
Jellypop was unquestionably an excellent song.
It was one of the songs I had produced in my previous life that had achieved top-tier results, so I was deeply attached to it and completely confident in its quality.
That was why I had brought it out as a semifinal card for this enormous stage, whose ratings had surpassed 30 percent.
‘Was this the wrong choice for the peculiar nature of a competition?’
It was a repeat of the “Fall for Me” fiasco that had occurred when Lee Hyejin sang it against me in the past.
Of course, the difference from back then was that I was still guaranteed a spot in the next round and had not surrendered the throne at No. 1.
When I turned my head, I saw Baek Yuyeon sobbing profusely, her expression caught between relief and regret.
Although she had ultimately been eliminated, she had brought out a song by an idol band she had always said she liked and put on an enjoyable stage in her own way.
I, too, was fairly surprised by this new side of her, so different from the historical-drama sensibility she had shown until now.
But a beautiful challenge and survival were separate matters. Frankly speaking, the stage on which she had voluntarily set aside her genre strengths—her han and deep emotionality—was ordinary.
In a competition where even a record-breaking stage might or might not be enough to advance, putting on an ordinary performance meant that there was no avoiding the end of her journey here.
But I knew.
I knew the potential she possessed, and I knew how much demand there would soon be in the market for genre singers.
This elimination would be a bitter pain for Baek Yuyeon, but through her appearance on Singerstar, she had certainly established her own territory and secured a foothold from which to leap forward.
“Waaah…….”
Baek Yuyeon wiped her tears with her sleeve and came toward me.
Then, without warning, she hoisted me into the air.
My light little body bobbed helplessly in the air when she merely grabbed me around the waist and lifted me.
At just over 20 kilograms, I must have been no more than a feather to an adult woman like her.
“Good work.”
“Sniff, you worked hard too, Siyeon…… Thank you so much.”
“What did I ever do for you…….”
If anything, I had only helped her lose points by giving a song to her rival, Blooming, and had not directly helped her at all.
She had made it this far solely through her own ability.
‘Honestly, Blooming did benefit quite a lot from me.’
‘Without the cheat code called ‘glassy sky,’ there would have been no guarantee that Blooming could even make the TOP 10.’
With that thought, I quietly wrapped my arms around her neck.
After being hugged by a girl of unparalleled beauty, Baek Yuyeon's sobbing gradually began to subside.
And at last, only two weeks remained until Singerstar would come to an end.