Hear me ramble about Girls' Generation

Here are some thoughts I've had while binge-watching Girls' Generation's music videos and live performances from 2009-2013 (mostly) during the last year. It's not primarily about their music this time, because now I instead want to talk about how the group performs, on stage and in general.

Elegance:
The members of Girls' Generation are definitely meant to look attractive on stage, but not necessarily "sexy". That would be a simple trick to get people to watch, but the way they appear is way more balanced and purposeful than that. Using simple tricks like that would ruin the elegant atmosphere around them. They're not there to make you drool, they're there to fulfill a higher ideal of beauty and elegance with their look, their clothes, the way they move and the way they behave. They stand up with a straight back, look into the camera with a reserved confidence and act like they're royalty. The viewer get what they want, but not too much of it. Other girl groups may have copied whatever was trendy at the time, or tried to act way too cute or way too shocking without having any interesting art underneath to back it up with. Those groups feel dated now, but we still watch Girls' Generation's performance of "The Boys" and think they look cool and elegant. It's a balanced aesthetics that never really goes out of style.

Charm:
Tiffany has undeniable charm (and eye smile) that is just hers and can't be manufactured, but charm can still be very manufactured, and we're very gullible when it comes to this. A confident smile and some good lighting and it feels like the members of the group are our friends. Then after having created this parasocial illusion, they're well-trained in not breaking the illusion. The girls always talk about their fans like we're their friends, and never say anything controversial that makes us doubt the illusion of them being those nice, friendly and unproblematic people who just as well could be your neighbours as world-famous pop stars. You rarely read headlines where the members are caught saying anything that breaks this kind of persona. In her book "Shine", Jessica Jung writes something like "Smile like the whole world is your best friend" about how they're trained to behave in front of a camera or an audience, and it isn't really more complicated than that. We see a smile that comes from the heart (even if it's also meticulously practiced) and we like that person. And it doesn't matter if we know that we don't really know that person in real life, because we feel like we do.

Stage presence:
When you don't think about how you look or what to do, and instead you're just present in the moment, that's what makes you look good on stage. Stage presence makes you fun to watch, because you believing in the performance makes the audience believe in it. I can't remember many vocal lines sung by Yuri, but I always like when she does something in a performance, because it looks believable and cool. That's because she has a great stage presence more than anything else. Stage presence is what makes a performance look good, even more than the technical ability to perform, which is a repetition of what I've said before.

Unique personal expression:
Even if it may feel like the members' personalities are washed down to fit a perfect ideal and to move together as a synchronized group, I still think it's the mix of this oiled machinery and the members' individual personalities that make Girls' Generation so good. They may wear the same costumes, but they all have their own unique charm. And when I say "unique", I don't mean some weird quirk that makes you stand out visually or anything superficial like that, I'm talking about that part of a personality you can't see, the part you can't manufacture. SM Entertainment can try their hardest to train the members to do everything right, but you can't turn someone who isn't Taeyeon into Taeyeon, because only she is herself. Some people have that look in their eye that no one else can copy. And here I think it all comes down to Lee Soo-man's personal intuition for finding charismatic and interesting people and seeing the potential in seemingly "normal" people (which is why it's such a shame he got kicked out of his own company... You can't replace Lee Soo-man's unique skills and vision even with 1000 smart people). He seems to be good at finding people who have something interesting about them that can't necessarily be put on paper and described with words. Girls' Generation differs from other girl groups in how every single member feels special in this way, and no one feels like a backup dancer or someone faking an interesting personality.

Singing voice:
The group's vocals are obviously meant to be listened to, but it's also something about being really good at singing which feels and looks cool in a performance. When I think about who are the "main" members of the group, I think of the ones who are the best at singing (Taeyeon, Jessica, Tiffany, but I may be biased here...), and I don't think that's a coincidence. Singing, especially really well, is a powerful human capability, even outside the musical purposes. Girls' Generation aren't a group with only perfect singers - their thing is more that they are all well-rounded in many different skills - but they have a special vocal sound and a special way to do melodies and harmonies, which combined with things like Taeyeon laying some nice adlibs during the last chorus of a song (and her vocal tone and delivery in general), is a big part of what makes their performances great.

Putting in the effort:
Girls' Generation feel like a more "definitive" group than other similar girl groups from the same time, but I can't point at any specific thing that makes it this way. All the early 2010s girl groups kind of did the same thing. Girls' Generation doesn't have a gimmick or "thing" (as in they're not the "vocal" group or anything like that), and they aren't really doing a specific genre. They're not the most extreme, the most interesting or the most innovative group (but probably the closest to this last one...). And when you can't put the finger on why something is really good, when you can't point to a specific attribute that makes it special, then no tricks have been used to make it appear good. It's good because real effort has been put in.

I think Girls' Generation's greatness comes from being just a bit more talented than the others, putting in a bit more effort into everything, having producers who are just a bit better and more daring with the sound, and so on, and so on... It's not one thing, it's all the things. They're really good at singing, and at performing, and they have interesting music, and their outfits are well thought-out and fashionable, and they look really good. They don't excel at one thing on the expense of something else, instead they try to make everything right. And they don't do anything in a sloppy way. When you see real all-around effort being put in like this, you immediately feel it's something special and you can't just wave them away like they're "just another group". This, combined with how Girls' Generation "came first" (you may also argue that they didn't) and defined the trend for the kind of girl group they are, is what makes them feel like that definitive K-pop girl group.

The power of many (9):
One thing about Girls' Generation is that it's just cool that they are so many. Like, the shock of seeing so many people at the same time on a stage. The weird formations they can do. How they're not just a group of individual people on a stage but a big organism moving in sync. Seeing 4-5 people do these kinds of things is cool, but when it's 9 of them it's a whole different thing.

Since they're a group, and not just individuals who happen to be on the same stage, you can't remove one member from the group and think the group will lose just 1/9 of its quality. Girls' Generation isn't just the sum of its members, it's also its own thing. It's the combination of the members, how they work together and how they sound together. If a big part of the group's sound was how Taeyeon's and Jessica's voices contrasted the others voices, removing Jessica from the group (which happened in 2014) doesn't remove only 1/9 of the group, it removes a third of the vocals and a big part of the overall group feeling, in some way. I can't explain it better right now than that Girls' Generation was a cultural moment, and it depended on them being those exact members, and now when they're not anymore it's like half of the group is lost (and it would be the same if any of the other members left as well).

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