Quote:
November 20, 2009.

Also, JYP may not be flat-out stating that the Wonder Girls are better than Utada or Coco Lee, but the implications in his tone and word choice are the same; he's being pretentious. It's one thing to express satisfaction over his product's success, it's another thing to bring other artists into the mix and insinuate that they've "failed" at something. Although I don't know much about Coco Lee and her career here, I do know that Utada has come here of her own accord, stood on her own two feet, created her own ORIGINAL art and put it out to the public with the intent of sharing a piece of herself. Apparently, this is an act of "changing" her "color." Now let's see what the Wonder Girls did. They (being JYP, the Wonder Girls don't do anything except dance when he boots them up) released a translated version of a song that has already made it big in Korea, sold themselves right into the Jonas Brothers/Disney Mania group of tweens, and, big whoop, made it onto the Billboard charts at the 76 spot (Utada made it to number 69 on the 200 chart, what's the big deal?). Apparently this is "success" to rival Utada's "failure" at whatever it is "foreign" artists are supposed to be attempting to accomplish here. Aside from the inherent stupidity of a statement like that, how do you quantify that kind of success? Utada has stated repeatedly that she's not entirely sure she WANTS to make it big here, that her main goal in transitioning to an English-language audience is to challenge herself into growing and being more creative so that she isn't "stuck on her throne" in Japan. She wants to knock herself down a peg, be a bit humbled, and see what it's like to not have instant gold standard every time a single gets released with her name on it. Unlike the Wonder Girls, Utada is actually an artist unto herself that gets to make her own decisions about what direction she's going to take her work in without regard for an imperial force of order. The Wonder Girls, on the other hand, have JYP, and what does JYP want? To make money, to get the Wonder Girls splashed on every tabloid runaround he can manage and to sell as much of his product as he can before packing up and heading back to Korea where the group will probably die out anyway within the next decade, if not sooner. His aim is shallow materialism. If that works for him, good for him- but he doesn't have the standing to so much as compare what the Wonder Girls have "accomplished" to what Utada has "accomplished", because in terms of what's happened with both groups of people, their goals have been very different and thus the "success" they have reaped has been very different.

On another note, it isn't wise to tell an upset Hikki fan to "chill out." We're the reason she's so terrified to come back here, remember? ;D

Shuri/Eli