Little Pink Starfish

Yeom Seong-hoon was an ordinary man in his fifties.

Oppressed by incompetent bosses, pushed around by capable juniors, constantly imagining quitting his job…

“Sigh.”

He soothed his day with samgyeopsal and soju while thinking of his family, like any other ordinary father.

In his youth, he was a young man full of dreams, trying various things with his friends, but those were all memories now.

The man in the mirror was slowly balding and growing a belly—a middle-aged man.

Yeom Seong-hoon, feeling strange about his sudden thoughts, entered his home.

Though he regretted the decreasing conversations with his teenage daughter, his wife and daughter were still his everything.

“You’re home?”

“Where’s Juhee?”

“She’s in her room listening to music.”

“Really?”

He thought about stopping by his daughter’s room, but decided to shower first.

When he came out, his daughter was waiting for him in the living room.

“Dad.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know these people?”

“These people?”

She handed him a CD case.

“An album?”

“Be careful with it!”

“What’s there to be careful about? But who do you mean?”

“The people listed here.”

Inside the CD case she carefully opened, there was a booklet with the credits written.

“Huh?”

The names listed on the credits looked strange.

Eric Scott, Yankos Greenwood, Moscos…

The names of heroes who colored his youth were all densely written there.

Of course, there were names he didn’t know, but most of them were incredibly famous musicians.

At first, he thought they just wrote down the names of musicians they admired, but thinking about it, that wasn’t possible.

These were credits.

‘Is it that? Borrowing melodies?’

Though he didn’t know the word ‘sampling’, he understood the concept and thought along those lines. But his daughter added more.

“The musicians who co-composed this are supposedly really famous old-timers, so I was wondering if you knew them.”

“This is co-composed?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“Huh?”

One might be possible.

Yeom Seong-hoon knew that these days, idol agencies invested a lot of money.

So a company could pay a huge amount to hire one great artist.

But not one — eight.

And four of them were legendary musicians who shook American pop music when Yeom Seong-hoon was in his twenties.

He was familiar with two of the other four names too.

“Who’s Sedalbaekil?”

“You know them, Dad. Under the streetlamp.”

“Oh, those kids?”

“Yeah.”

“What are they? Sons of politicians? No, that wouldn’t be enough. Maybe chaebol heirs?”

His meager imagination could only reach this far, but there was no need to imagine.

His daughter, seeing her dad wide-eyed in surprise, eagerly began explaining.

Yeom Seong-hoon was astonished as he listened.

Everyone has a youthful period.

Now his eyes had grown dim with age, but he too once shone brightly.

Before joining the army, Yeom Seong-hoon had played in a band.

It wasn’t a profession, just a hobby.

At that time, they called them group sounds, not bands, and Korean music was always minor.

How envious he had been when Japanese bands entered Billboard, spreading Tokyo-themed city pop.

After returning from the army, he distanced from music while job hunting, and after marriage, completely forgot about it.

But seeing the names of the heroes who filled his youth made him curious.

“How do I listen to this? On the computer?”

They didn’t have a CD player at home, so he asked. His daughter brought one from her room.

“What’s this?”

“It came as part of the album goods.”

“Goods?”

“They give it when you buy the album.”

“This? How much was the album?”

“Thirty-five thousand won.”

That seemed expensive for just an album, but cheap if it included a CD player.

Yeom Seong-hoon didn’t know the details, but the standard edition of Sedalbaekil’s first full album was 13,000 won.

The standard version included a booklet, the album, two photo cards, and a lyric book.

The limited edition cost 35,000 won and added unreleased photo cards, a photo album, and even a CD player.

So not only fans but even non-fan buyers all bought the limited edition.

Even those uninterested in the extra goods wanted the CD player.

At first, people thought they’d offer some cheap Chinese-made machine, but after Sedalbaekil uploaded an unboxing video, those doubts vanished.

It had a clean deep-blue design and was made by a well-known Korean audio device company.

People wondered whether Sedalbaekil even cared about making money, but for Han Siwon, it was more like fulfilling a long-held dream.

He was someone obsessed with putting a CD player in every household nationwide.

If the government allowed it, he’d gladly fund a national welfare project to provide one CDP per household out of his own pocket.

But Yeom Seong-hoon didn’t know any of this and started listening to Sedalbaekil’s album early that evening with the CDP his daughter gave him.

And he was moved.

He could feel traces of the heroes he loved scattered throughout the music.

Track 1, titled the same as the album, <The First Day>.

The moment the brilliant guitar sound announcing the intro played, he envisioned a curly-haired white man with a cigarette in his mouth.

Eric Scott.

A man whose name always came up when talking about the top 3 or top 5 guitarists.

An idol of guitarists, praised for taking solo guitar performance to a whole new level.

He might be in his 60s now, but in Yeom Seong-hoon’s mind, Eric Scott was forever in his 30s.

But Yeom Seong-hoon was just as surprised when hearing the next song.

It was the intro by Gu Taehwan, praised as reaching his peak in this album.

‘What the heck?’

At his age, Yeom Seong-hoon had no particular prejudice against idols.

Claims that idols were factory-made products with formulaic vocals from repetitive training were things only certain people said.

He didn’t even know that much, so he had no prejudice.

But he did hold prejudice about the level of Korean music.

When Led Zeppelin performed <Stairway to Heaven>, Korea was still stuck in karaoke sound.

When Eric Scott paralyzed Wembley Stadium with his guitar solo, Korean guitars and basses were still limited to rhythmic accompaniment.

Of course, this was a slightly biased personal view.

There were brilliant musical geniuses in Korea too.

This prejudice may have stemmed from the nostalgic correction that made his youth shine so brightly.

Because music had filled his twenties.

That’s why it was even more surprising.

Eric Scott, Moscos, Yankos Greenwood…

They were all being used as devices.

They weren’t the center of the music.

The center was the idol group Sedalbaekil.

Yeom Seong-hoon listened to Sedalbaekil’s album like that, and tried to listen again but got scolded by his wife.

She asked how he planned to go to work tomorrow.

In his dream, he was in his twenties, standing on stage.

The next morning.

Borrowing the CDP from his daughter, he listened to the album again on the subway while commuting.

At work, he somehow ended up talking about it.

And he was surprised again.

“I liked Keith Richards better than Eric Scott.”

“Didn’t Keith Richards benefit a lot from Rolling Stones’ fame?”

“Come on, boss. That’s nonsense. Keith Richards is a genius.”

“But still, for guitar, it’s Eric Scott.”

“Eric Clapton is the true master of the art of slowness, right?”

“Ah, brings back memories. There used to be a coffee shop near Dongmyo that played bootleg Billboard chart records…”

It wasn’t just him who idolized musicians from that era.

His colleagues of similar age were all the same.

They had long since distanced from cultural life, but had simply forgotten.

“I should ask my son.”

“You can listen on YouTube.”

“How do I do that?”

Lunch break ended.

The next day, most left it at talk, but the manager actually listened to the album.

And he couldn’t stop praising it.

What is company life?

When your superior does something, it’s best to join in.

Unless you strongly dislike it.

Yeom Seong-hoon witnessed some colleagues purchasing the album.

And saw some excited about having something to talk about with their kids.

To Han Siwon, the Billboard legends weren’t anything special.

They were people he’d met countless times across numerous regressions and worked with endlessly.

So arranging co-compositions with these legends for <The First Day> was merely for buzz.

At the time of production, Sedalbaekil still needed a big issue to break through Choi Taeho’s pressure.

But these legends familiar to Han Siwon were fragments of someone else’s brightest moments.

They brought vividly to life a time that could never return.

Like time travel in Sedalbaekil’s universe.

Thus, the album quietly began to sell.

There was no hot buzz.

The 40–60 generation acted but didn’t speak much.

But it was recorded.

Sedalbaekil’s first week sales were 220,000 copies.

In week 2, thanks to the Billboard legends’ review rush, sales didn’t drop.

Many in Korea belatedly bought the album, and group buys exploded overseas too.

Week 2 sales hit 340,000 copies.

It was rare for second-week sales to exceed first-week numbers.

So people expected a dramatic drop in week 3.

But no.

Late overseas buyers and the silent purchasing power of the 40–60 generation kept it going.

Week 3 sales reached 220,000 again.

Total sales for 3 weeks: 780,000.

Not particularly impressive from Han Siwon’s perspective…

[The Pure Power of Music! Sedalbaekil’s 1st Full Album <The First Day>, closing in on 1 million sales?]

[Sedalbaekil’s 1st full album, becoming a family listening album.]

[Heroes from dads’ memories open up wallets.]

Meanwhile, Sedalbaekil had secured first place on music shows across all three major Korean networks.

As this happened, some agencies quickly began to move.

They couldn’t believe Han Siwon secured Billboard legends purely through music.

This industry isn’t so naive. There must be some behind-the-scenes deal.

But this was a misunderstanding by Korean agencies.

The legends weren’t pure by nature.

But they’d earned so much money and honor that they could afford to be pure when it came to choosing music.

The legends’ answer was simple.

[Send the music.]

But those who sent music received no replies.

Only Donald Magus responded.

[That melody progression’s worse than something I wrote when I was ten.]

All they got was a scolding.

---

No matter how the world changes, musicians must stay grounded.

The most important thing is a sense of reality.

Our music has moved Korea for 3 weeks, but we must not get drunk on it.

Once released, music lives on its own.

No matter what we do afterward, the music won’t improve.

There’s only one way to make better music.

Create the next album.

While thinking this, PD Kang Seok-woo spoke.

It was a meeting for M-Show’s variety segment, whose format was finally decided.

“The theme this time is a healing busking trip. We’ll likely go to Spain.”

“Okay.”

“But that’s part 2. Part 1 will be filmed domestically.”

Part 1?

“You’ll have to earn your travel funds in Korea. Depending on how much you make, the trip could be luxurious or super frugal.”

“You mean earn it through missions?”

“No. Aside from what the network gives, you have to earn real money. Hiding your identity as Sedalbaekil, purely through music.”