TAEYONG’s Purposeful Playfulness
How SHALALA and TAP excel at balancing exuberance with emotional impacts.
Many tendencies in the mind of a child are worth never parting with: the ability to see old and new sights as if both are new again, an unrestricted sense of wonder, a lack of cynicism, a willingness to not color in between the lines, and a permission structure to keep on forming and re-molding one’s identity. These traits are all incorporated into TAEYONG’s solo discography. Real-time story construction, unfiltered lyrics, and a seemingly endless array of characters and settings keep his songs, videos, and even teaser images engaging and playful. There is literal playfulness, too: The theme of playing a computer game or video game is part of both the SHALALA and TAP eras. In the former, TAEYONG goes between 4D and 2D worlds in the teaser videos and likens himself to a game character in the song “Virtual Insanity.” In the latter, TAEYONG spends time on a website in a teaser video that has “Choose Your Own Adventure” outcomes (more on that later), and he ends the mini-album with the words “Press the button,” followed by repeating “Let’s start” four times. Similar to how SHALALA ends with the song “Back to the Past,” TAP ends with a “Let’s just start over” message. This treatment of his circumstances as having infinite do-overs reinforces the gameplay theme that aligns with TAEYONG’s refreshing, childlike optimism. His solo discography highlights the joys of seeing the world through the lens of one’s inner child: as just one big game. This might sound trivializing, but it can actually allow struggles to be coped with more effectively, since they then seem less daunting.
Wearing Many Hats in His Music Videos
As detailed previously on the 17 Carat K-Pop podcast and in this piece:
“TAEYONG creatively brings to life his highs and lows and adds silver linings to all his memories, having fun with hypotheticals. What keeps this release so fun and listenable are those ‘What if?’ aspects… He considers the ways things would have or could turn out differently by traveling through space and time while framing uncertainties as possibilities. He asks himself, ‘Who was I?,’ ‘Who am I?,’ and ‘Who do I want to be?,’ making SHALALA and its visual components feel like not just his diary brought to life, but his vision board too.”
This inclination to play around with personas remains a prominent source of appeal and narrative strength in his solo sophomore mini-album, TAP. He shows an admirable willingness to give his process of self-discovery zero constraints. He does not care what others have to say about his process, insisting he “Don’t need manuals” in “TAP” and that he is “old enough to make decisions” in “APE.”
Giving himself permission to change at his own pace allows him to take a confident, chameleonic approach visually as well. He plays a hacker, a knight, and other quirky characters in “SHALALA,” and he wears several hair colors and goes to many locations in “TAP.” His teaser content also has an “Expect the unexpected” theme that keeps his style interesting.
Wearing Many Hats in His Teasers
A go-to formula for teaser releases in K-pop is to reveal increasingly clearer looks at a comeback’s concept. TAEYONG takes a different approach: Rather than lead fans farther and farther down a clear, singular conceptual path, he keeps changing lanes. Life zigs when expected to zag and vice versa, something he taps (no pun intended) into by hinting at a candy-colored concept one day and a dark, serious concept the next. Teaser images include both colorful, relatively cluttered rooms and relatively empty and boring ones; brightly-lit and dark rooms; and constant hair and outfit makeovers. However, there is also a notable through-line: playful finishing touches. Colorful plastic balls, twinkle lights, arcade games, and balloons in fun shapes imbue the teaser pictures with bits of whimsy. While life is hard to predict, there are some sources of continuity, and TAEYONG holding onto his inner child is one of them.
Another cross between the surprising and the reliable are TAEYONG’s “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style teaser videos. The SHALALA era’s “T or Y” videos allow viewers to choose between getting advice for moving past regret and pain (“T”) and being offered some perspectives on love (“Y”).
As for the TAP era, clicking on one of the video options at the end of an initial video means viewers choose to have a dance practice session with TAEYONG, canceling an appointment to do so, and clicking the other video option means viewers keep the appointment and decline TAEYONG’s tutorial offer.
Regardless of which choices they make, both video series keep viewers in on the action. Both “T” and “Y” prompt listeners to listen to the same narrator’s advice as TAEYONG does, and both video options after the initial TAP one lead to TAEYONG talking to and staring into the camera. Regardless of the format, the main characters remain both TAEYONG and “you.” This means of connection is present in TAEYONG’s lyrics too, with his songs directly referencing “you” countless times, as if he is venting to just one person.
While TAEYONG’s storytelling remains personalized and focused on first-person and second-person voices over third-person ones, his ways of engaging viewers and listeners keep the story unfinished. Instead of just closure to past life chapters, TAEYONG invites the audience to join him in future ones, giving songs that would otherwise have an air of finality to them airs of unpredictability and possibility. His “The best might still be yet to come” outlook is as contagious as his desire to connect.
Lyrics About Making Lemonade out of Lemons
TAEYONG has a “The sky’s the limit” mentality towards self-expression, and that takes on a second meaning with his sky and outer space analogies! In “404 Loading,” he says, “I’ll pick that star and then / I will circle around us… So that we keep shining… Swimming in the sea of stars…” He also promises to show a loved one the whole galaxy in “Moon Tour.” An eagerness to see the world and to do so with “you” by his side, along with a preference for literally out-of-this-world references, are even present outside of his two mini-albums, including in his single “Long Flight” and his not-yet-officially-released “Moonlight.”
Multiple childlike traits sometimes appear in the same TAP lyrics, like in “404 Loading.” The song mixes the desire to ignore norms with a ready-for-anything spirit: “I’m driving too fast to stop / So all these signs, never mind.” It also shows an ability to see opportunities where jaded adults might see only failures from which one could never turn back. As Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”1 Indeed, when one is at rock bottom, the only way to go next is up!
“404 File Not Found,” a song on SHALALA, compares loneliness and despair to being a “File Not Found” message on a computer screen. However, it also mentions reloading (“You have to move forward”), a thread that is pulled on more in the sequel song, “404 Loading.” “Meet me in a 404,” TAEYONG says. “It’s 404 gravity.” He re-conceptualizes a “404” web page as a new location, an exciting blank canvas.
Comparing real-life situations to games is not always positive. In “Run Away,” TAEYONG describes a Groundhog Day-type scenario: “It’s obvious that everything will repeat itself again… You only leave me with pain.” Likewise, he frets in “Ups & Downs,” “Every day I’m afraid that you’ll leave me again.” That song also touches on experiencing a feeling for the first time, when it cuts the deepest: “My legs have lost all strength / My hands are shaking… Is this pain?” On the other hand, in “APE,” he references the ability to hold tight to his intuition, rather than have his views molded by outside figures or social pressures: “My instincts don’t go astray / I don’t corrupt / It’s the same.” He does go on to say things that go wrong “Must be someone else’s fault,” a testament to the downsides of immaturity, but the determination to stay true to himself arguably outweighs the cons of a childlike outlook.
Final Thoughts
It might be the most exciting to play a game for the first time, since one has not yet gotten familiar with the game’s visuals and narrative arcs, but it might be the most fun to play the game on the second or third try, since the game can seem easier after learning its tricks and twists. In that sense, life is like a game. Kids who experience everything for the very first time might seem to be more emotionally impacted by those situations than adults are, but age also has the benefits of hindsight and wisdom that can make those situations more fruitful. TAEYONG’s musical storytelling involves pressing “Rewind” repeatedly, so that he can both relive the joys of first-time sensations and approach situations in more mature ways. Ironically, by putting scenarios in the context of a game, TAEYONG makes the “real world” seem easier to maneuver.
By embracing the ability to keep reinventing himself, encouraging others to do the same, and focusing on what could go right more than what could go wrong, TAEYONG proves that purposeful and playful music are not mutually exclusive. His creative musical instincts and ways of making people feel better guarantee that his music will remain can’t-miss material!
Stay tuned for more thoughts on TAEYONG’s new album in an upcoming newsletter edition and an upcoming episode of 17 Carat K-Pop!
There is actually some disagreement as to where this quote originally comes from, and it is often misattributed to the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. Nevertheless, it is associated with Wonderland and is a fitting summary of the “seeing possibilities instead of roadblocks” outlook!