SNSD To Attend This Year’s ‘Red and White Song Battle'

The annual ‘Kōhaku Uta Gassen‘ (Red and White Song Battle) is Japan’s most prestigious New Year’s Eve music festival. The honour of performing on Kohaku is strictly by invitation only, songs and performers are are examined and chosen by a selection committee put together by NHK based on record sales and adaptability to the year’s theme.

As mentioned in the title, Girls’ Generation/So Nyuh Shi Dae/ Shoujo Jidai has been invited to 62nd edition of NHK’s Kōhaku! *insert applause here* Being invited to such a prestigious event is just another testament to their enormous popularity in Japan.

Sooyoung, Taeyeon, Jessica, Tiffany, Yuri and Seohyun attended the announcement event held by NHK on the30th of November. (Yoona, Hyoyeon and Sunny were unable to attend due to conflicting schedules)

At the event, Sooyoung spoke about the upcoming event saying,She also mentioned that like their senior labelmates TVXQ and BoA who have attended this event before, Girls’ Generation would also like to put on a wonderful performance.

In wake of the devastating events that plagued Japan in 2011, this years “Kōhaku” will have an added theme of “Singing of Tomorrow“. The meaning behind the theme is to “connect everyone through the strength of music” and that “no matter the difficulty it can be overcome and tomorrow will arrive”.

Being the “Red and White song battle“, the music festival will divide participating artists into the “red” team (akagumi) and “white” team (shirogumi). Girls’ Generation will be part of the Red team composed of all female artists. Joining them will be fellow South Korean girl group KARA who will likewise be in attendance for their first time. Conversely, the White team will be composed of all male artists, with one of them being SM town seniorsTVXQ where it will be their 3rd time participating in the prestigious event. The winning team is decided by a combined system of audience voting and scoring from a panel of judges.

Why SM Changed The Plan and Stick To One Large Group Of Nine Girls

So I watched Ellie’s vlog about how ‘SNSD should be 4 not 9‘. I love Ellie and her K-pop vlog, as Cindy said, she always has interesting take on K-pop — this one is no exception. I obviously love all the nine girls as one group, but even I once thought about how… ridiculous, for lack of better words, it was for having nine girls on one group. I mean, really, nine girls. Back then, all I can imagine was cat-fights, lots of it.

Ellie said about making a smaller group, actually that was SM Entertainment initial plan. On Ya Shim Man Man,Sooyoung revealed how they were supposed to debut under smaller group, but under a collective group of some sort — namely Yeoja Danchae. I guess it’s like how 2AM and 2PM are under OneDay. Or rather, like howSuper Junior has sub-units of Super Junior-M, Super Junior-Happy, Super Junior-T, and Super Junior-KRY.

I don’t know why SM changed the plan and stick to one large group of nine girls. People might say how SNSD would do better if they’re a smaller group and what not. But I have to disagree. I think one of their main charms is that they have nine members, with nine distinct charms and personalities. Plus, it’s not like SM put nine random girl-trainees into the group… these girls went through a lot of audition and performed in a lot of showcases to be a part of So Nyuh Shi Dae.

You guys might have heard how some celebrities said that they were supposed to be in SNSD. The most notable ones are prolly actress Lee Yeon-hee and girl-group member Park So-yeon of T-ara. Well, for Yeonhee and Soyeon’s case, apparently they really were a part of SNSD, sort of. I read this post about SNSD’s roster historyat SSF awhile ago, and I think today would be a nice time to look back at how SM Ent came up with the final line up of nine girls.

“The Boys” on ‘Music Bank’

After a long year away, SNSD is finally back with a new song called “The Boys” and they’ve brought a fierce new image with them!
The girls dished out a confident swagger in their performance that drew full-out screams from the audience. In an earlier interview, Sooyoung explained the key point in their choreography, saying,“We tried hard to make [the dance] match the song, however, it’s not as aggressive or powerful as we thought initially. The ‘going down’ movement during the rap portion came about because there needed to be an impact at that point. The choreography team was trying to decide whether or not to include that move, but we insisted that we’d do it. They asked if it would be okay to just have 4 of the members do it, but all the members stated that they wanted to do it.”
Looks like the girls managed to bring down the house with them. Check out SNSD’s comeback stage below, which also includes a performance of “Mr. Taxi“!

SNSD is comeback

On September 23rd, DJ/choreographer Shim Jaewon shared an update about SNSD‘s comeback next month!
He tweeted, “The kids told me to deliver this to you. Coming Soon! Let’s go! Soshi! Let’s go!”
In the accompanying picture, SNSD’s arms can be seen thrown high to the sky with victory, peace, and heart signs. Their slender arms stand out against the interesting ceiling, and fans were excited to see some physical proof of the girls’ return.
Netizens commented, “Are we finally counting down to SNSD’s comeback?”, “Looking forward to what they’ll be showing us this time”, and “Please update us with more news!”
Source + Photos: Everyday Economy via Naver