Kpop has a penchant for retro concepts, but LOONA 1/3 took 90s nostalgia to the extreme with "Rain 51db," releasing a song and video that looks straight out of the decade (and this was BEFORE "Lady" folks !!).
Kpop girl groups of the 90s typically had an image of innocence and purity, both on stage and off. And the video for "Rain 51db" only emphasizes that trend, with the girls dressed in white and pale pink pastels. They pass lines from girl to girl like a baton, featuring an aesthetic also used in CLC's throwback ballad "Where Are You?". Along with its light R&B sound, "Rain 51db" is like a caricature of a girl group music video released in the 90s.
However, or rather, in consequence, there is also a curious, uncomfortable tone to the video. In its attempt to encapsulate only the purest essence of the decade, it perhaps goes to far and begins to toe the line to surreal; it very deliberately sabotages itself. Something released in this millennium should not be this low-quality, it feels wrong to the audience.
The beginning montage immediately feels like a horror film: the already melancholic piano in "Around You" is disturbingly distorted, we see an abandoned airplane while Haseul faces to turn the camera wordlessly and finally the unsatisfied Heejin stares at us on a throne, like a displeased queen. These quick clips from each video are taken out of context, leaving the audience with whiplash.
Related: EXCLUSIVE on Hanavbara, the artists behind "Kpop as 90s Anime"!
(Actually one of the things it first reminded me of, rather than say Fin.K.L. or SES was "White" from the horror film White: Curse of the Melody featuring T-ARA's Eunjung. We love a good girl group horror! Shout out to Dreamcatcher)
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| Where are they? Is it 3am? Why are three of them holding hands in the back are they going to kill me?? |
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. [...] The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.Brian Eno's Diary
While the video for "Rain 51db" encapsulates the innocent feel of 90s girl groups, it also captures the "ugliness" of 90s kpop cinematography. More specifically, that contrast!! That contrast, these elements of first generation girl groups are aspects that were "cherished and emulation as soon as they [could] be avoided." Because nostalgia is such a powerful emotion, we now celebrate and even imitate obsolete methods of recording, filming and producing music.
The title "51db" also refers to the volume of sound; LOONA 1/3 is giving us a decibel threshold. As this person explains on reddit, 51 is a loudness the soft, calming sound of rain falls into to. Rain is white noise (insert your theory on how White: The Curse of the Melody is loonaverse cannon). Is this rain simply meant to dramatize a sad love story, or is there more?
Um, its Looner folks!! There's always more...
White Noise is also a novel by postmodern author Don DeLillo that conflates the white noise of modern life (television, static, etc.) with death. (It's also commentary on how white people make a lot of useless chatter)
"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise."
"What if death is nothing but sound?"
"Electrical noise."
"You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful."
"Uniform, white."I do not think Loona is referencing this novel specifically lol. I bring it in because it is another work that illustrates how we romanticize the point at which old technology breaks down. And, in Loona's case, we turn it into music. DeLillo says it is "awful," Eno claims it is "crap noise," but, as Oprah said, "What is the truth?"
For LOONA, I believe white noise is the unknown. As I covered in previous articles, BBC refers to the girls as "lost in a forest" or looking for each other in some way. This means that the girls have felt a loss and are compelled to start an adventure to find what they are missing. And, any good narrative knows that an adventure means a transformation of consciousness.
As Campbell explains, the very first heroes were monster slayers:
There is a typical early-culture hero who goes around slaying monsters. Now, that is in the period of history when man is shaping his world out of a wild, savage, unshaped world. Well, it has another shape, but it’s not the shape for man. He goes around killing monsters.Joseph Campbell
The white noise of rain is the unknown that Loona must shape their world against; to find out what they are, they need to find out what they are not. This is why, in past videos, they compared themselves to nature (Heejin), other people (relationships), the ego (Haseul) and society (The Carol) to create the world. And this is why, in "Sonatine," LOONA 1/3 called even more heroes to the threshold, to open up another, more expansive world.
And yes, if the the white noise of rain is the unconscious, there may be a someone who... wait for it... sings through the rain... to be continued...
"Everyday I Love You" & Everyday I Need You"
"Rain 51db" is a nod to older girl groups that paved the way for new ones, but also proves that Loona is following an established path. They are placing themselves into girl group discourse, in order to build up on old theories and narratives. And hey, if we're talking moments in girl pop history, let's talk "Gee"!
In "'Gee,' Female Subjectivity, and the Male Gaze," Trevor Link makes the argument that love stories in Kpop lyrics are not meant to be literal. On the song "Gee," he writes:
It hardly matters that the song is a love song either: if anything, this affirms Girls’ Generation as the ones narratively in control here. In fact, Girls’ Generation often sing about love in somewhat odd ways. Think of the song “My J,” and ask yourself, why is an entire group of nine girls singing a love song to a single man called “J”? Are they all going to be dating him? Love is just a pretext for foregrounding female subjectivity, which is a reaffirmation, of course, that these women are not dolls.Girls' Generation is a group that began with an innocent image and slowly matured, a model which many groups try to follow today. A love story is not always about a girl meets boy, but it is an excuse for a girl to be put in narrative control, in order to express how she feels. And expression and vulnerability are things that LOONA 1/3 have shown to be key values of their universe through their solo releases.
According to word of god, god being digipedi both in context and out, "Everyday I Love You" is Vivi's story before she was robotized. It is a sweet love story that emphasizes desire for meaningful relationship during youth. The lyrics emphasize Vivi's longing.
Vivi takes on the role of Cinderella during her piteous time as a worker. Vivi is a day (after school?) laborer working at a roller rink. However, the excitement in her life comes from a man of his times, who works his distinctive hair style and holds the bar while playing DDR. But, if he is a man of his times, a Vivi is a woman of hers: she pines after him like a forlorn manhwa protagonist who has meet her rich, suave, unapproachable love interest. She is going to be unexpectedly forced into his life because of some crazy situation any day now, I just know it.
In "Love&Live," Vivi wanted to understand how humans broke down and felt excitement. In her former life, she also was interested in broken down technology as well; the video is charming because it romanticizes things like wait times for computers, the high contrast that makes the video almost unwatchable, manhwa as opposed to webcomics, the ugly fashions of the time and cassette tapes, one of the vestiges of analog sound.
The song seems happy and nostalgic. But, similar to like nostalgia, can we be sure these days were actually happy? "The day passed again," she sings sadly after each chorus, upset at her passive nature that cannot speak to her object of affection. She can only be honest in the song, in which she boldly sings, "I want you / I need you." There is dissonance between her feelings and actions.
Vivi describes all-encompassing longing in the lyrics, and the only one who talks of actual happiness is Haseul, a member of LOONA 1/3 who is not an outsider and may or may not be a member of a Utopian police state. But, we are watching Vivi's memories, not the actual occurrence of events. Vivi is the one in narrative control here, so if she pretends to be happy, we can at least pretend to believe her.
The video for "Everyday I Need You" emphases happiness much more assertively, creepily even. Vivi kind of looks like a serial killer.
Related: OHMYSHITPOSTS thinks "Gugudan are definitely serial killers," confirms hatred for member Binnie
The whole video enters slow motion as Vivi smiles widly. The fountain in the back slows and we can see the water drops more clearly. Even nature has stopped to revel in Vivi's bright nature.
Maybe this is what imitations of 10s music videos will caricature-ize.
This video also associates Vivi with nature, which may be a strange association, considering her character in "Love &Live." But perhaps the events meant that she went through her transformation of consciousness, in which she found and accepted her humanness. She is surrounded by flowers, water and her her animal guide, a deer. Deers are timid by nature, and they only come to the innocent and pure. They are pretty, modelesque, graceful and gentle, like the persona Vivi has.
However, deer can also represent something darker. And Digipedi knows this. They live deep in the forest, where the white noise unknown is. They represent our delve into the unconscious, neither good nor bad. Deer are fascinating symbols, because they represent symbolism itself and the metaphors we use to try to make sense of what makes no sense by nature, the things we do not know. Like the good horned god, deer have antlers, but like the devil, deer have antlers. Like Vivi's association with both the stoic mechanic of robots and the pretty, gracefulness of nature, they have a dual nature. In this way, we can see that Vivi's role is very complicated. An angel or devil?
Interestingly, this version features Jinsoul instead of Haseul, suggesting that happiness and honestly correlates with Jinsoul rather than Haseul. As an outsider, Vivi is connected to Jinsoul somehow, but, of course, in the loonaverse, everyone is connected to everyone somehow, its not a circle for no reason lol oops eclipse spoiler stay tuned
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