On January 17, Miss A's Suzy released her warm-up single for her first ever solo album, while Girls' Generation's Seohyun also made a solo debut by releasing her first solo album on the day. As I've posted before, it was the k-pop queens' war, and extra attention was focused on who's going to be the winner of the war because Suzy and Seohyun are two of the most popular female k-pop idols.
Well, as you may know, Suzy became the winner of the war because her song "Pretending to be happy" has reached the top of various online music charts, while Seohyun's "Don't say no" was not that popular on the charts. However, there is a reason why you can't just say Suzy won a complete victory over Seohyun. Do you know why?
After "Pretending to be happy" became a big hit, Suzy finally released her first ever solo mini album "Yes? No?" on January 24. No doubt, people expected that she will achieve a huge success with the album because you know, she's already achieved a success with "Pretending to be happy" even though the song was just a warm-up single. However, the result was below expectations. Her title track "Yes No Maybe" couldn't gain popularity with the public.
Reason why "Pretending to be happy" became a big hit was, yeah, first, because Suzy is a popular k-pop star. But that's not all. She could arouse sympathy from many people by singing the song which has a lyrical melody and emotional lyrics. The lyrics are about her own life story, while singers should put their sincere hearts into their songs to win sympathy from k-pop fans. I'm sure "Pretending to be happy" is the best k-pop song of 2017 so far.
Well, however, people don't like "Yes No Maybe" because the song is not very catchy, and not fresh either. The dance track is written by Park Jin Young, who is one of the most famous k-pop composer, but I doubt if he is still competent as a k-pop composer because the song has no popular appeal, while it doesn't really suit Suzy either. Park Jin Young took part in writing the title track of Miss A Fei's first ever solo album that was released in July 2016 too, and you know, the album was a big failure. I'm worried if he is losing his sense of writing popular songs.
Then, how about Seohyun? Actually, she failed for a similar reason. Her title track "Don't say no" couldn't gain popularity with people because the song is not very catchy, and not fresh either. However, the notable thing is that the song was not the title track at first but she even persuaded Lee Soo Man because she really wanted to choose the song as the title track of her first ever solo album. (Frankly speaking, I think she should've listened to him) Anyway, as she said, she took much part in producing the album because she I wanted to show herself as a solo singer. And even though her song was not a commercial success, it can be said that she's achieved the intended goal because she picked her title track herself and showed new aspects of herself on the stage.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to take sides with Seohyun against Suzy. Both of the female idol stars did a good job and I'm happy to see the talented idols' solo debut.
