How SBS’ “The Fan” has made of my expectations a ride.
(Originally posted on Jan 7, 2019 at DCKSTYLE website)
With such a unique theme, SBS’ new variety show “The Fan” caught my attention immediately. A show where popular artists and celebrities would recommend unknown, or not-that-known artists was a refreshing concept for a Korean variety show and, as a huge fan of the underground and underrated scene, I told myself I had to watch it.
When I first heard of the show, two episodes had already been released, so I had the opportunity to watch almost all the participants’ introduction performances. It was a bit of a challenge for me to decide if the participants were the kind of artists I was expecting, or if they really deserved to be on the show, among so many other unknown artists I’ve heard of.
The answer, unfortunately, was that mostly all of them were the type of artists you found anywhere in South Korea.
I’ve had so many discussions about how Korea’s music industry and its fans are unfair to underground artists that alienate themselves from the mainstream Korean music that everybody knows and love nowadays. So the fact that I can only mention three acts from fifteen that can really show different sides from Korean music it’s kind of disappointing.
These three acts are BiBi, Car the Garden and Yura. All of them with unusual voices and styles of music, also all of them singer-songwriters, represent the indie music side of Korea in a big deal. I’m not going to lie, I still love other participants and performances like TWLV and the two 15 years-old boys, but with such an incredible opportunity to show the public the different shades and turns of Korean music with unknown artists, getting trainees, ballad singers and dancers feels to me like a missed chance.
That was at that point.
I kept watching the show and the second round came; I was beyond relieved when Car the Garden was saved by the fans, but not that excited to hear that Hyejin was coming back because, let’s be honest here, girl trainees that are pretty and can dance can be find in any Korean entertaining company.
At this point, and with the previous results, I was almost sure the program was going to turn into a mainstream variety show like any other, where the indie acts would be eliminated and the mainstream acts would remain, thanks to, like I said, the biased Korean music industry fans.
But then Car the Garden’s performance came, and let me tell you, Korea now knew what music was supposed to make you feel like.
I watched with immensely great pleasure how that performance was the most viewed from all the other contestants of the show. The Fan was taking an unpredictable turn I never saw coming, but enjoyed tremendously, as the fan masters and the public in general started to become fond of BiBi and Car the Garden.
Now that the 1 on 1 matches started, my expectations for the indie acts are kind of shaky and I feel somehow worried for the results, as the endless battle of mainstream acts versus underground acts seems to begin in this program, too.
Let’s hope that the people and the fan masters can realize the opportunity that SBS’ The Fan is giving to the audiences to know and listen to artists that make the Korean music industry as vast and diverse as it is.
I’ll post a second part to this review as performances and results keep going.
