The K-pop boy group TAN deserves more attention
I’ll admit I’m not ever on the cutting edge of K-pop – far from it! I mean, it took almost 4 months for me to get into IVE’s Love Dive. But sometimes I’m way too early to something, and that’s what I feel about the K-pop boy group, TAN.
TAN stands for To All Nations. I know, I know, another shoe-horned name to fit an acronym. Personally, I thought the name Wild Stars would be more appropriate (you’ll see why later). Yeah, it is close to the name of a video game, but it is a video game from NCSoft, a Korean company. They might’ve worked something out. Anyways, huge tangent, but somehow I knew about these guys before they received their official group name. How is that possible?
As usual, most of my music picks come from K-variety shows. If you don’t know what a Korean variety show is, well it’s kind of like a cross between a reality show and a game show. I generally don’t like American reality TV, unless you consider the stuff on HGTV as reality TV (which we don’t). However, K-variety shows are different enough that I actually enjoy them. And yes, they sometimes do a variety of stuff – some of it is funny stuff, some of it is kind of slice-of-life stuff, and sometimes it’s just a way to incorporate the Korean music industry into the TV medium. And I watch quite a bit of it. I’ll get into that another time though.
So before these guys became the group TAN, they were… numbers. In fact, they were nameless numbers. And they had to prove themselves if they wanted their names to be known. Dump them in a remote area and into physically and mentally straining situations, and you basically got the premise of the show called Wild Idol (야생돌). Oh, and don’t forget the singing, dancing, etc. talent part.
Having contestants join a show to see if they can outlast the competition and become a group with the other finalists is not a new thing. For example, a little-know girl group called Twice was part of one such show. These shows fall under the category of Survival shows. Unlike most of the other survival shows, this one takes that idea a bit more literally.
So after suffering through not only the competition of talent but also suffering the hot (and sometimes wet) environment, they formed the group TAN. Was it the best way to make a group? Most certainly not, but it was entertaining. Most of the guys I had predicted would get in ended up in the group though, so no complaints on the final members, despite the crazy process to get there.
So after the show ended, I knew it would take some time for a song to come out. I eventually found their YouTube channel and subbed with my personal account. It’s a big deal! I’m really selective of who I sub to. I think their channel had about 3.5k subs at the time, maybe a bit more. They eventually released some songs. Not all were to my taste, but there were some really good ones in the mix. They also work hard on the content front, pushing out extra videos for their music and even dance covers, constantly and consistently. But it has been several months (about 7 or 8 months since I subbed, about 8 months after channel launch) and at the time of this writing it sits at only about 147k subs. Granted that is better than the 125k subs I saw about a month ago, but this is painfully slow for how talented these guys are and the level that their music is at. I’m obviously not expecting BLACKPINK level fandom, but with all that they’ve gone through to form this group and all that they’ve done after formation, you’d think they deserve more attention, right?
Maybe it’s just me.
Anyways, I’m including a few more of their videos below (it's a playlist) so you can judge for yourself. And a sub would be nice? Not our channel, though that’ll be nice too, but their channel.
A link to the entire playlist.
