When Fin.K.L first came out, I didn’t know which member did what onstage. I just passed it by, giving it just enough interest to know that Fin.K.L is a group of four people who sing and dance together.But as time passed, girl groups became the trend, and at about the same time programs began to recruit not one, but a group of MCs at once. In the past, solo singers were all the rage and the MC spots for programs were usually taken up by a male and female pair at the most, but now the age of groups has come.
I tried to think of why this happened, and I came up with two reasons. The first is something I like to call the ‘Fin.K.L effect’, and it means that when viewers watch Fin.K.L, they unconsciously mix together the strengths of each member. For one member they notice her vocal skills, for another, her pretty face, and for yet another, her cuteness and so on, and combine the traits as if the group was itself one person.
So as a result, when you think of Fin.K.L, you think that it’s a group that can sing, is pretty and is cute. Back when Fin.K.L was popular, specialization of the members wasn’t very prevalent among groups.
But now, if you look at Girls’ Generation, you can see that every member has taken up a specific role. The number of members has also increased significantly, giving viewers much more combinations to play with and never grow tired of. The same goes for MCs. Because every member has a specific role, now some viewers even watch the shows to check whether the members play up to each of their roles.
With the coming of this phenomenon, solo MCs naturally became hard to find, because it’s hard for one person to cover many roles. But why did everything change to be this way? That’s where we come to my second reason.
They say the present is all about multi-tasking. If you look at machines, you can see that most of the time, one machine has so many different functions; there aren’t many machines that can only do one thing. Your mobile phone is the most common example. It lets you make calls, send text messages, listen to music, take pictures, look something up on the internet, etc. It’s so busy. And it means if you can’t do all these things at once, it’s going to be hard for you to make it in the world of today.
People these days have to work in two jobs at once, or change professions a few times. You can’t do anything with just one trait. In an environment like this, it’s therefore natural that a team of singers sustains itself by having one person act, another do talk show variety, have another be a friendlier, off-the-wall type on variety and so on.
Male and female groups will continue to pop up in the future, and programs will continue on with its group MC structure. After this trend passes, however, the age of the lonely solos will probably come as a reaction to the groups.
So as a result, when you think of Fin.K.L, you think that it’s a group that can sing, is pretty and is cute. Back when Fin.K.L was popular, specialization of the members wasn’t very prevalent among groups.
But now, if you look at Girls’ Generation, you can see that every member has taken up a specific role. The number of members has also increased significantly, giving viewers much more combinations to play with and never grow tired of. The same goes for MCs. Because every member has a specific role, now some viewers even watch the shows to check whether the members play up to each of their roles.
With the coming of this phenomenon, solo MCs naturally became hard to find, because it’s hard for one person to cover many roles. But why did everything change to be this way? That’s where we come to my second reason.
They say the present is all about multi-tasking. If you look at machines, you can see that most of the time, one machine has so many different functions; there aren’t many machines that can only do one thing. Your mobile phone is the most common example. It lets you make calls, send text messages, listen to music, take pictures, look something up on the internet, etc. It’s so busy. And it means if you can’t do all these things at once, it’s going to be hard for you to make it in the world of today.
People these days have to work in two jobs at once, or change professions a few times. You can’t do anything with just one trait. In an environment like this, it’s therefore natural that a team of singers sustains itself by having one person act, another do talk show variety, have another be a friendlier, off-the-wall type on variety and so on.
Male and female groups will continue to pop up in the future, and programs will continue on with its group MC structure. After this trend passes, however, the age of the lonely solos will probably come as a reaction to the groups.
Source:eNewsWorld