The Problem with LE SSERAFIM's Sakura

the skills of Las seraphim Sakura have come to attention a few times during her career but the backlash against her has reached an all-time high after her performance at the Coachella Music Festival this escalated even further after her controversial statement which made many K-pop fans wonder whether the bar for Idols singing skills is set so low and if we should just blindly accept that prior to debuting in L seraphim Sakura had a long career as an artist which dates back to 2011 if you're familiar with J-pop there's a famous Idol group called akb48 and it has many sister groups like sk48 nmb48 sdn48 and more every year they basically have an election where all the group members compete to see who's the most popular out of them one of the sister groups hkt48 was announced in 2011 and in 2012 the members entered the contest for the first time only the top 64 members out of all the groups get to be part of the yearly single and in 2012 only one member from hkt48 made it you can probably guess who we're talking about since the entire video is about her a 13-year-old Sakura had her official debut as a member of hkt48 at a big National handshake event for the song flying get Sakura kept getting better in the contests reaching third place in 2018 in akb48's general elections but in 2019 the contest got discontinued and she never got another chance because she decided to move to Korea and participate in produce 48 in fact all the Japanese contestants on the show were from akb48 but Sakura still managed to become the most popular trainee amongst them due to her already established Japanese fan base the other Japanese contestants didn't do as well as Sakura throughout the show as she managed to get chosen for first center position of the Show's theme song pick me as for Sakura's final ranking there have been rumors that she was supposed to have the first place but was rigged out of it there's no proof of that but she had insane voting power that had a lot of people expecting her to come out on top but even then Sakura received a lot of criticism for her skills sure she was charismatic likable hardworking and she had a lot of stage presence but there were also things she was lacking in for example her vocals were considered to be weak and unstable her rapping was said to be less than impressive and there was still room for improvement when it came to her dancing Sakura herself said that she wasn't that confident and if you were to ask the viewers and the fans of the show it was obvious she was a great Center but in some performances people thought that she was a lot more underwhelming than her counterparts since she ranked in second place Sakura made it as a member of eyes one the group was very popular and Sakura was one of the most beloved members but once again there was a lot of backlash as people thought that she hadn't improved whatsoever her vocals were still unstable and shaky and her dancing was still considered subpar however back then there hadn't been any big scandals regarding her skills she did receive criticism from time to time but nothing that could have been career ruining most people attributed it to the training or lack thereof that she had during her time in hkt48 while it was true that she had spent most of her life in the music industry the J-pop and the K-pop industry have different standards and Training Systems in the J-pop industry particularly among the akb48 groups idols typically don't undergo the extensive vocal training that we're used to seeing in K-pop on produce 48 they even mentioned how they mostly practice independently and prioritize winning over their fans Hearts which Sakura excels at as we have seen Idols in the J-pop industry also tend to have a more nasal voice which is the case for Sakura too despite everything many wondered why she didn't start taking more vocal lessons during her time in eyes one she had all the necessary resources and since she was one of the most popular members the company wouldn't have denied her anything but a lot of people assumed that she wasn't interested in improving her skills once eyes one disbanded she ended up debuting again with L seraphim this time under Hy labels the group made their debut in May of 2022 but they had their own problems even without Sakura's skills coming into the conversation starting with the gam scandle they also received backlash for inappropriate outfits and choreographies which basically overshadowed their entire debut era however since this was her third time debuting Sakura started to acknowledge what people thought were her shortcomings actually she said that she became very insecure after seeing the comments about her vocals as she stated a lot of people tell me that I can't sing so after seeing this it became hard for me to enter the recording room I even started thinking it would be better for me to get less Parts neon's opinions on this were divided some thought that she had improved a lot from when she first joined produce 48 especially in her dancing after all she had been in Korea for a few years at that point and during that time she had only received 3 months of training before she debuted with L seraphim as for her time in eyes w chayan said that the members only had limited training due to their hectic schedules so they couldn't train as much as they wanted to on the other hand others thought that she hadn't done enough to practice and makeup for the years she hadn't trained they argued that because Sakura was basically lucky up to her debut with Lera fee she had never bothered to be better at her job a commenter said always praised for improvement and effort never results never having to realize it works like that for nobody but her the criticism against her reached an all-time high after Las seraphim released easy it was during this time that the site panoa translated an article in which Sakura allegedly revealed that she started taking vocal lessons for the first time according to the translation she explained that bong shiuk told them the vocals for the easy mini album turned out well but recording might take a while so she felt more determined and worked extra hard on re-recording since it was her first time taking lessons she put in a lot of effort some people were shocked that Sakura who was in her 13th year of being an idol was just starting to take vocal lessons since being an artist is technically her job they expected that she had taken this a lot more seriously to take constant vocal lessons so she could improve people brought up other Idols like bts's junk cook who trained in his free time either by watching videos and imitating the singers he likes or by paying a vocal coach with his own money just so he could get better at singing however others argued that the article was mistranslated on purpose so Sakura would receive hate and there are three different interpretations of what the article originally meant one of them is that the article is actually talking about how Sakura stated that she started taking rap lessons for the first time not vocal ones ones the second interpretation is that easy was written in 2021 which is when Sakura also joined hybe so she could have been talking about that this makes sense because Sakura talks about taking vocal lessons in the group's documentary the world's my oyster another way to see it is that Sakura mentioned she's been taking singing lessons but only to hit certain notes she wanted to hit whatever the case is fans brought in plenty of evidence that this wasn't her first time taking lessons like it was widely believed even performance director Park soyon talked about Sakura training as she said Kura practiced and trained individually through video calls with Korean teachers or vocal trainers day and night to develop her Korean pronunciation that didn't matter though as everything got a lot worse for Sakura there was of course the infamous Encore that the members had after winning first place on M countdown Sakura wasn't the only member who received criticism but it seems like every nzen collectively agreed that out of all the members Sakura's vocals were the worst not only that but she seemed very uncomfortable singing live in the first place whether that was because of her lack of training or because the idols of her generation weren't exactly used to singing without a backtrack nison said that she looked terrified to be holding a mic then Coachella came around and the girls especially Sakura received even more backlash for their live performance to give you some context laraim performed at the festival on April 13th just a year and a half after they debuted they put on a show for about 40 minutes and performed 10 songs in total due to the lack of backtrack and the intense choreography that the girls did for almost each of their songs their vocals were far from praiseworthy there were thousands of tweets as well as posts online about their performance and they weren't positive at all while some said that Sakura had improved significantly from The Encore stage she still needed a lot of work to sound good in a live performance comments on online communities were pretty severe on her though with one user saying Sakura really sounds toned deaf her voice production is fundamentally flawed even her speaking voice trembles like a goat another one wrote Sakura has been criticized for her vocal skills more than once does she not have the will to improve some people claimed she yelled to avoid singing While others argued that if she couldn't keep her vocals stable on an encore stage the company shouldn't have sent her to perform at a huge Festival like Coachella neens also expressed their disapproval over the lack of preparation from the members which was highly offensive to them since people had paid a lot of money to be there their performance became such a big deal that it even reached the national news seeing how much a simple performance blew up and in such a negative way Sakura had no choice but to address everything she wrote a long post on Weavers saying that she understood that people have different expectations especially depending on the stage still her goal was to create a fun experience for everyone even those unfamiliar with the group she believes their efforts paid off resulting in a good performance Sakura also acknowledged that some may see the members as inexperienced but she thinks they did their best for her What mattered most was that people enjoyed themselves she expressed her belief in herself and her journey despite the criticism however despite Sakura's best attempts at damage control this statement only put her in more hot Waters whatever her intentions were people thought that she came off as really arrogant in her statement as if she was brushing off all the valid criticism that she was getting over the performance and making excuses for it some even said that she was trying to make it seem like it's people's fault for not liking the way they sang atisan wrote a long and scathing comment part of which read instead of stubbornly praising yourself over your bad talents and acting like you did wrong look back at yourself sincerely don't brush off the criticisms as malicious hate fans of other groups saw this as an opportunity to bring up other Idols who had a ized for lacking in their performances and used them as opportunities to improve their craft yon Jun from txt just recently wrote an apology for a bad Encore stage which fans appreciated since it showed them that he was considering the criticism they were giving him espa's Gizelle also came up quite often as she used to be criticized a lot for allegedly falling behind the other members when it came to performing but as a fan put it the way Jazelle took the nasty criticism K-pop stands gave her and actually improved in less than a year she didn't make excuses and worked way harder while important to give criticism where it's due what neens and K-pop fans are doing to Sakura and the rest of the members is now leaning more towards harassment their accounts are filled with hate comments they're getting threats and disgusting remarks thrown at them as people are acting like they're the first and the last K-Pop group to have a bad performance there were also circumstances that made it harder for them to give a better performance on a recent episode of Radio Star BB who also performed at the festival mentioned the challenges like strong winds dust storms dirt and secondhand smoke which they call Coachella cough this is making us question do people really care about vocals that much or do they just like to hate for the sake of hating whether you like Sakura's singing voice or not that's up to you what we can hope for is that the members will take constructive criticism and work harder on their vocal skills

Channel: KOOKIELIT

Views: 128,151

Keywords: kpop, k-pop, kpop news, kpop opinions, KOOKIELIT, kookielit, kpop idols, react to k-pop

Id: PvF9sB1HV0g

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024