‘Ballad idols’ 2AM have been dominating a handful of charts with their newly released album, “Saint O’Clock“, catching many K-pop fans by surprise as SNSD’s 3rd mini-album “Hoot” was expected to reign supreme. As of November 1st, 2AM’s “You Wouldn’t Answer my Calls” ranked 1st on many major music sites including Melon, Cyworld, and Mnet. Their other A-side, ”Like Crazy“, also ranked highly, attesting to the strength of 2AM’s appeal and vocal prowess.
Fans have been closely observing the neck-to-neck race between SNSD and 2AM. SNSD made a comeback last weekend with an engaging dance, and bested 2AM in the daily charts. However, 2AM took back their throne by Sunday afternoon.
At the showcase for their first album, leader Jo Kwon stated, “2AM’s positives are not visuals nor performances, but our individual personality and unique voices.”
An interesting competition, to say the least – although the two groups don’t necessarily fall into the same branches of pop music.
2AM will be going up against SNSD for the third time this year with their first official album, “Saint O’Clock,” due for release on October 26th, and SNSD’s “Hoot” due for release the next day on the 27th. This is the third time their promotion cycles have overlapped, the first cycle being 2AM’s “Can’t Let You Go Even If I Die” going up against SNSD’s “Oh!,” both released just four days apart.
2AM’s follow-up track, “I Did Wrong,” was released on March 16th, and again, SNSD followed with “Run Devil Run” on March 22nd.
Although both of 2AM’s tracks were recorded as big hits, the majority of industry representatives believe that 2AM could have fared better if they weren’t up against SNSD during both promotion cycles.
They’ll be facing each other off once more, this time with SNSD’s guerrilla style release, already dominating portal sites and search rankings with just their teasers alone. But 2AM has been showing themselves as strong competitors as well. This being their first official album release, the anticipation for the album has remained consistently high, with their official homepage already crashing with just audio teasers.
Both groups have done fantastic thus far, with 2AM showing their power on digital music charts while SNSD dominating album sales charts. SNSD hit a home run right off the bat while 2AM steadily and consistently worked their way up. Each face-off has brought more changes in the styles of each group, from dance, to ballad, to mature concepts, and to cute concepts, furthering the anticipation of music fans as to what they’ll show off next, and how they’ll fare this time around.
Today’s episode of Music Bank was sure jam-packed with various special stages! It looks like we have another one to add to the list comprising of a Music Bank band.
Idol group members came together for a special stage of American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson’s My Life Would Suck Without You. SNSD’s Taeyeon and CNBLUE’s Jung Yonghwa led the performance with their vocals while the other members like Super Junior’s Sungmin, SNSD’s Seohyun, KARA’s Gyuri and Hara, 2AM’s Jinwoon, CNBLUE’s Jungshin and Minhyuk formed a band.
Check out the performance which is full of cute pairings/fantasies!
Vocals – Yong Hwa(C.N Blue) and Tae Yeon(SNSD)
Keyboard – Seo Hyun(SNSD) and Gyuri(Kara)
Guitar – Yong Hwa(C.N Blue) and Sung Min(Super Junior)
Bongos – Min Hyuk(C.N Blue) and Hara(Kara)
Drums – Jin Woon(2AM)
Bass – Jung Shin(C.N Blue)
Despite the widespread criticisms last week, it looks like they are continuing down the same path judging from the footage from the June 13th episode of Family Outing 2.
This episode welcomed Brown Eyed Girls’ Ga-In and KARA’s Nicole on the show as family guests, and with one of their filming locations at Damyang Bamboo Park. With the bamboo trees as backdrops, the make-believe couple of Jo Kwon and Ga-In were encouraged to take a romantic walk.
But the spotlight soon fell on Taecyeon and Yoona as they held hands and did the same romantic walk, which ended with Taecyeon copying the same ending move from the Cabi MV with Yoona, as he said, “You are the best bamboo shoot” instead of best Cabi. Yoona also teased Taecyeon with 2PM’s Without U dance while he was cutting bamboo. Taecyeon then helped Yoona to beat Heechul in a game.
The idol members and maknaes of Family Outing 2, SNSD’s Yoona, 2AM’s Jo Kwon and 2PM’s Taecyeon almost touched lips on the March 14th episode. The Pepero game is traditionally played with a cookie called Pepero. The cookie is thin and very long so one person puts their mouth at each end of the cookie. They eat it until they get to the middle and see how much they can eat without touching each other’s lips. On the Family Outing 2 episode yesterday, they played the game with noodle strands in place of pepero.
They were making noodles for breakfast and to get more water, they started to play the Pepero game with noodles. First up was Jo Kwon and Yoona. The two were playing to earn 500ml of water. They started to get very close to each others’ lips but ended before they could start another scandal.
Shin Bong Sun then ordered Yoona and Taecyeon to play a second round. Yoona whined, “Why are you only doing this to me?” But we all know Yoona was happy inside.
Yoona and Taecyeon succeeded on the second try and earned 1L of water. These two complain day and night about their scandal yet they go on and almost touch lips.
Come on!
On the other hand, ratings for Family Outing 2 continue to plunge as they got just 8.6% according to AGB Nielsen. KBS’s Happy Sunday is now the undisputed runaway leader as they got 25.9% while MBC’s Sunday Sunday remained last with 7.0%.
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