- Tiffany
SNSD in SPIN Magazine, Tiffany’s Interview
An article titled ‘Seoul
Trained’ was published in this month’s SPIN Magazine, a famous US music
magazine. It talks about YG, JYP, and SM, their training systems, and
some of the artists.
Tiffany answers a few questions, and there are a couple of things to keep in mind while reading her interview. The author implies that Tiffany wants to go solo after her contract expires, but I think he is reaching. We all know Tiffany has said she wants to try singing and acting in the states, and it seems like the author assumes she will do this after an expired contract. This is purely the author’s assumptions here, not necessarily what Tiffany explicitly said.
Lastly, she mentions how tired she is, but also remember that this interview takes place in the middle of a commercial shoot for a sports game where they were running around. The girls have often said that filming commercials and music videos are very strenuous.
Here is the transcript of the SNSD related sections, written by David Bevan:
…not long after this story goes to print, nine-membered girl group and S.M. standard-bearers Girls’ generation will parade their caffeinated choruses before David Letterman and Kelly Ripa.
…
I’m in a cab headed 45 minutes southeast of Seoul with S.M. Entertainment’s strategy and planning rep Sean Saw. There, the nine members of Girls’ Generation are holed up in two hangar-sized studios, shooting a commercial for the online game Freestyle Street Basketball. Saw, a Seoul native who is also a former classmate of T-Pain’s at James S. Rickards High School in Tallahassee, Florida, had requested I send questions in advance for the girls; one of the queries was rejected (“How much of what Girls’ Generation do could be considered distinctly Korean?”) for fear that its response might obscure the cultural singularity of S.M.’s product. Girls’ Generation, Saw tries to explain, is more S.M. than Korean.
…
Walking into the film studio, we’re swiftly met by Girls’ Generation’s squadron of handlers. Yoona, a Korean-born member of the group, makes her way through a series of crane shots and closeups along a thick strip of black gravel poured and combed across the width of the studio. Everyone else in the room is bundled up and huddled next to industrial space heaters. As she begins jogging from end to end, all arms and legs and milky right angles, Saw suggests we duck into a dressing-room area. The craft service is a marketing statement in its own right: bouquets of pink balloons and pink roses, pink ribbons and diamonds, pink lemonade and cupcakes and tarts and macaroons. We’re waiting on another member, Tiffany, a 22-year old Southern Califorinian who entered the S.M. training program in 2004.
She clip-clops into the room on a pair of Adidas high-top wedges, half-asleep until the second she realizes that there’s another American in the room. “I’m so at peace with myself when I can speak English,” she purrs. Despite the protests of her family, she came to Seoul alone when she was 15 in hopes of bypassing the general xenophobia that Asian performers confront in the States. “I thought they’d move here by now,” she says of her parents with a sigh. “It’s weird…but they just really love California. Once I got here, I had all these regrets about leaving. I didn’t even go to prom!” But Tiffany is only a few years away from the end of her contract with S.M., at which point she’d like to parlay her training and experience into a career as a singer or actress in the States.
For someone who grew up during that late 90’s teen-pop boom spearheaded by Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera, Tiffany has been witness to two strains of bubblegum phenomena. She’s keenly aware of their many differences, cultural and strategic. “It’s not that we’re not allowed to date,” she says. “But we have such a young fan base and the girls are going to look up to the boys as their boyfriends, and the guys are going to look up to the girls as their girlfriends. And if we said we have a boyfriend or we have a girlfriend, in Korean culture, it’d be kind of a shock.”
Social-media privileges, she explains, remain firmly in the control of S.M. “We are slowly revealing our personal issues and personalities through our music and through our concepts,” she says. “I think over time we’ll be able to express what we like and what we don’t like. I think it will happen - it’s just going to take a matter of time.”
…
As we wrap up, I ask Tiffany if there is any one way she likes to spend her rare bit of free time. “Sleep,” she shoots back. “I think right now my favorite thing to do is sleep, because we don’t get much. If I could just sleep without anyone waking me up, I could probably sleek for, like, 24 hours. I slept for 20 once.”
She scrunches her nose and smiles. “That’s pretty sad, huh?”
Tiffany answers a few questions, and there are a couple of things to keep in mind while reading her interview. The author implies that Tiffany wants to go solo after her contract expires, but I think he is reaching. We all know Tiffany has said she wants to try singing and acting in the states, and it seems like the author assumes she will do this after an expired contract. This is purely the author’s assumptions here, not necessarily what Tiffany explicitly said.
Lastly, she mentions how tired she is, but also remember that this interview takes place in the middle of a commercial shoot for a sports game where they were running around. The girls have often said that filming commercials and music videos are very strenuous.
Here is the transcript of the SNSD related sections, written by David Bevan:
…not long after this story goes to print, nine-membered girl group and S.M. standard-bearers Girls’ generation will parade their caffeinated choruses before David Letterman and Kelly Ripa.
…
I’m in a cab headed 45 minutes southeast of Seoul with S.M. Entertainment’s strategy and planning rep Sean Saw. There, the nine members of Girls’ Generation are holed up in two hangar-sized studios, shooting a commercial for the online game Freestyle Street Basketball. Saw, a Seoul native who is also a former classmate of T-Pain’s at James S. Rickards High School in Tallahassee, Florida, had requested I send questions in advance for the girls; one of the queries was rejected (“How much of what Girls’ Generation do could be considered distinctly Korean?”) for fear that its response might obscure the cultural singularity of S.M.’s product. Girls’ Generation, Saw tries to explain, is more S.M. than Korean.
…
Walking into the film studio, we’re swiftly met by Girls’ Generation’s squadron of handlers. Yoona, a Korean-born member of the group, makes her way through a series of crane shots and closeups along a thick strip of black gravel poured and combed across the width of the studio. Everyone else in the room is bundled up and huddled next to industrial space heaters. As she begins jogging from end to end, all arms and legs and milky right angles, Saw suggests we duck into a dressing-room area. The craft service is a marketing statement in its own right: bouquets of pink balloons and pink roses, pink ribbons and diamonds, pink lemonade and cupcakes and tarts and macaroons. We’re waiting on another member, Tiffany, a 22-year old Southern Califorinian who entered the S.M. training program in 2004.
She clip-clops into the room on a pair of Adidas high-top wedges, half-asleep until the second she realizes that there’s another American in the room. “I’m so at peace with myself when I can speak English,” she purrs. Despite the protests of her family, she came to Seoul alone when she was 15 in hopes of bypassing the general xenophobia that Asian performers confront in the States. “I thought they’d move here by now,” she says of her parents with a sigh. “It’s weird…but they just really love California. Once I got here, I had all these regrets about leaving. I didn’t even go to prom!” But Tiffany is only a few years away from the end of her contract with S.M., at which point she’d like to parlay her training and experience into a career as a singer or actress in the States.
For someone who grew up during that late 90’s teen-pop boom spearheaded by Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera, Tiffany has been witness to two strains of bubblegum phenomena. She’s keenly aware of their many differences, cultural and strategic. “It’s not that we’re not allowed to date,” she says. “But we have such a young fan base and the girls are going to look up to the boys as their boyfriends, and the guys are going to look up to the girls as their girlfriends. And if we said we have a boyfriend or we have a girlfriend, in Korean culture, it’d be kind of a shock.”
Social-media privileges, she explains, remain firmly in the control of S.M. “We are slowly revealing our personal issues and personalities through our music and through our concepts,” she says. “I think over time we’ll be able to express what we like and what we don’t like. I think it will happen - it’s just going to take a matter of time.”
…
As we wrap up, I ask Tiffany if there is any one way she likes to spend her rare bit of free time. “Sleep,” she shoots back. “I think right now my favorite thing to do is sleep, because we don’t get much. If I could just sleep without anyone waking me up, I could probably sleek for, like, 24 hours. I slept for 20 once.”
She scrunches her nose and smiles. “That’s pretty sad, huh?”
PS. I don't take it seriously I think she's speaking it in a hetero way.
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