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So Long, My Xiami

January 6, 2021 — Leave a comment

Greetings, my fellow lurkers, if you are lurking still. Knowing that I haven’t updated anywhere and I’m hardly active on social media, I just wanted to say that I haven’t died and haven’t been swallowed by the Earth. I hope 2020 didn’t wreck you, and that 2021 finds you in a more… calm path.

As I sit here making plans of wanting to do a lot of things, and then getting nowhere, I reminisce the days of internet freedom when roaming through websites was like the wild west. And that’s when I discovered Xiami— according to WP word search find, the earliest mention of the music site on the blog dates back to 2010… with an even older mention of forgotten HaoTing. lol Since then, over a decade ago and many an indie Chinese music discovery, Xiami had been part of my daily life for thousands and thousands of days.

I took a screencap for posterity! My Xiami account was supposed to last until the end of the year, and then an extra 4 months.

So it is with great sadness, but hardly any surprise, that I report that Xiami will be no more… on February 5th this year, to mark my 35ths birthday, nonetheless. End of an era for my music streaming, end of the era… of my youth, I suppose. With my only consolation prize that a lot of Chinese music is already available on not only iTunes and Spotify, but also on YouTube. I just need to re-find them and subscribe to whatever their channels are. It will be, of course, a lot more difficult to discover brand new Chinese music.

Now this is what we can call a comeback COMEBACK, not a regular Kpop Comeback. xD Years since their last album, Basic back in 2015, Brown Eyed Girls went their personal projects way— GaIn and JeA with solo music, Miryo releasing singles and participating on Unpretty Rapstar, and Narsha with varieties as well as getting married~

It’s good to have them BACK!

If you want to support Brown Eyed Girls’ RE_vive album cover compilation, you can order it at Ktown4u where it counts for Hanteo Sales. Album comes out on the 30th. YesAsia also carries the album with the poster tube, and without it.

It’s been a LONG time since I shared anything here xD… but this sure is memorable. It’s also been a long time since I paid any attention to MTV or the VMAs. I have no idea who was doing what where, but since Missy Elliott just dropped Iconology [YT], there wasn’t a better time to catch up with news.

In a decade of forgettable American/Western mainstream music, and an even more forgettable MTV music era, it’s hard to come up with a magical moment that marked this decade… but this could be IT. It’s not the best in the history of VMAs, but it could be very well the best performance VMA has offered this decade.

Missy was, after all, at the top during the peak MTV performance years. Bless her soul. And bless her love for baby girl Aaliyah.

I never considered myself a Blackjack or bought a lightstick before I got my Moobong, but I had been a Kpop listener for a decade. 2NE1 and Big Bang were on constant rotation on my playlist, and Big Bang popped my Kpop concert cherry. And honestly, Bom’s Spring [MV] couldn’t have come at a better timing. It’s been on constant repeat since it came out.

I’ve also been enjoying Bom’s music show performances. and was astonished with her MR Removed clip. Her press has also been so emotional, but this short interview given to Melon got my feelings up in a bunch. Not only because she shades saying Melon is the only chart she didn’t top, LOL or that she still loves corn despite not eating it as much anymore because she’s trying to lose weight. LOL, imagine a field of corn and radishes at a performance~

But then she gets to 2NE1, and Sandara, and how YG felt so much like family that she didn’t see herself continuing her career after that. And how Teddy was the first person she thought of when showing Spring for the first time. It’s been a roller-coaster of emotions, I’m glad she’s managed to pull herself together to a point where she is happy making music again and seeing her fans. Bless her.

I haven’t been much of an active moomoo lately coz somebody gotta adult, but I got to watch Hwasa’s meaningful 2nd Win accompanied by her members, which was the most satisfying experience in probably all year watching Mamamoo go through their 4 Seasons 4 Colors project.

What a wonderful way to start promotion cycle for White Wind‘s title gogobebe, which I gotta admit have been replaying more in this M2 Relay Dance version, because it reminds me so much of their Girl Crush video mixed with their Dingo Music performance of Um Oh Ah Yeh. Bless these children.

Also, it may be historic seeing an active girl group member winning the day their group is making a comeback. Mam-moo only.

I’m shook. For some reason SBS Catch has just uploaded the September 2017 episode of Law of the Jungle (정글의 법칙) featuring GFriend’s Yerin. I wasn’t expecting to sit through the whole episode, but I was really impressed with Yerin’s survival skills.

I was even more surprised to see how she handled the Monitor lizard, killing it, skinning it, and preparing it. I can’t relate. LOL She reminded me of Savage Yejin on Family Outing.

Ah, good times.

Mad respect. Yerin, fighting! Yeoja Chingu, fighting! YeoMaChinMoo, fighting!

It’s unbelievable how quickly the year has come to an end. And though there’s still so many hours of un-watched films, we must all begin sharing our End of the Year lists.

As per tradition, here’s my 2018 music highlights. As Jocelle pointed out, might change drastically midway through 2019. LOL Remember when Su Yunying released an album on December 31st? Chinese people got no chills.

Happy listening!

I thought I might have bought my last Shiina bluray last time, but I guess not? It does look like I might add Shiina Ringo & The Others Dwell: The Air Pocket Zone (椎名林檎と彼奴等の居る真空地帯) [HMV JP] to my collection because I cannot resist.

Mamamoo has officially become the group with most albums in my music collection— officially 8 albums; but honestly it’s 9 albums (with a double Purple edition), plus a SolGam tape, a SolGam LP, two kihno kits, a DVD and a BR of Moosical. LOL

Once upon a time, there were five albums by P!nk, but there were also six albums by the BackStreet Boys, six Hanson albums, six Westlife albums, four turned to five Marit Larsen albums, five Salyu-related albums, five albums eventually turned to seven by BiBi [it became viral on Weibo xD], seven albums by Shiina Ringo, seven albums by Bjork— altogether, I have 6 Brown Eyed Girls-related albums but that’s three albums, a fancy collectible repackage and two GaIn minis. Phew.

Also~

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Zico’s Artist isn’t honestly my favorite track in Television, but damn! It’s probably my favorite live of the album, coz- duh! Live band~ I mean, it’s almost impossible to beat any You Hee-yeol’s Sketchbook (유희열의 스케치북) when competing with a live band, but not even the Sketchbook performance of Anti or the MAMA one top it, because that’s the type of song you listen to at home in the middle of the night at 3-4AM.