LOONA Line Distribution

If you've read this blog any, you would be aware that I'm a big (even huge) fan of the k-pop girl group LOONA, also known as Girl Of The Month, which is a group under the helm of the corporate evil known as BlockBerry Creative, whose parent company is Polaris Entertainment (whom Ladies' Code were under before the tragic incident) and it appears to be their only group. I'm gonna be calling BlockBerry Creative "BBC" so it can be easier to type in the long run. LOONA is a great group, the members have personalities that can get you hooked on to ANY of their vlog series, and their appearances on random variety shows throughout Korea, and their music tends to be very good too, as BBC seem to get the best producers in the game to make music for the group. There's a lot that can be said about the group in a positive way, and trust me, I can be here all day to talk about it, but there's one downside to the group. Their line distribution. If you're not aware, from my knowledge, BBC gives the girls lines, which is where the company's flaw begin to really shine, that and a whole plethora of reasons, most recently being the fact they announced member Chuu won't be participating in the new world tour due to scheduling conficts 30 minutes before the tickets for the US leg, and Chuu saying something in line to fans that they'll see her soon. BBC seem to have a bias towards some of the members with lines, and giving upwards of 50% of a song to a few members, and not to all of the group. While yes, on surface it would make sense for songs to have certain members on it, since there's 12 of them, but that's why the sub-units exist. BBC somehow find a way to fit all 12 members on each song, which is already impressive at first, but once you realize it's actually easy, the full picture begins to tear, and you begin seeing the flaws in their ways. With that introduction out of the way, let's start with some ground rules. First, ad-libs will be counted as lines, this makes it easier for me to count up how many lines, as most songs, some members only have a ad-lib, and nothing more. Second, lines that have no specified member, or a full group, will not be counted, it'd be pointless to immediately take it to the group, or anyone I figured it would be, so for that, I'm not counting it. Third, there's some disadvantages for some members, but you'll see that coming up. With that out of the way, let's start shall we? This has been on the back burner since April so I am happy to finally get it done. I have included the charts I have made so that you can take a closer look as well, as the write-ups will include the highest and lowest percentage. Please note that all percentages are rounded to the nearest tenth, when the charts shown show otherwise. 

[+ +]

After everyone has been announced, it's no surprise that they quickly debuted as a 12 member group, after having about 15 debuts before hand (12 solo debuts for the members, and 3 sub-units), they have a guided idea of what to do, so that was good to know. This first mini-album immediately shows the flaws within the distribution. As you can tell from the chart provided below, the ones with the most lines are HeeJin, Kim Lip, JinSoul, Choerry, Yves, and Chuu. Be weary of those names because they're gonna be prevalent throughout the next few mini-albums in terms of lines, BBC seem to love those specific members. It's interesting to see that right off the bat the treatment of these members in terms of lines. It seems like they were planning on it from the beginning, which wouldn't be surprising, unfortunately. The member with the highest percentage is HeeJin with a whopping 11.7%, and the lowest being HaSeul with 2.7%.

[X X]

This one is a weird one. In 2019, they decided to repackage the [+ +] mini with 6 new songs, so this'll go over those 6 new songs. What caught me by surprise, is that out of all the 6 songs, the distribution seem to be the most fair. A lot of the songs on here seem to have the members with the same amount of lines, perfect example being the track Colors, where 8/12 of the members only got 4 lines, while the others got somewhere near there, with the biggest surprise being that Vivi, who gets the least lines overall, coming out with a staggering 7 lines, which is the most on the song by the members, and even the lines where they all sing. It makes me wonder why, but a lot of these songs are more slow paced and all that, so that's my guess as in why. The member with the highest percentage is tied between Choerry and HeeJin, who both have 8.2% on the mini, while the one with the lowest is Hyunjin with 5.1%. 

[#]

After a long time, LOONA has come back with a comeback. Unfortunately, BBC seem to have gone back to their [+ +] ways, unfortunately. Of course, to no surprise that the members mentioned in the first mini hasn't changed, with HeeJin and Chuu taking the prize for the most lines, HeeJin having 51 lines while Chuu has 57. It's really unfortunate that they immediately went back to their olden ways of distribution, as the last mini was full of great songs with a fair amount of lines, and it doesn't get better in the next mini. The member with the highest percentage is Chuu with 14.5% and the lowest, is actually the group itself! The group lines round up to a 2.5%, this might be the only time this happens.

[12:00]

I didn't mention this but during the promotions of [#], HaSeul unfortunately had to pull from the group for the rest of the year for mental health purposes, and she didn't record anything for this mini-album during that time off. To make this completely fair, I will be counting her as a member of the group during this time, although she was absent. I hope this seems understandable, and also I can't find a way to flex around this so I am going to have to include her a member during this time. As that said, it's still no surprise BBC is STILL being the way they are with lines, same situation as the last mini. Not much more to say there. The member with the highest percentage appears to be, the whole group actually. The group lines take up 16.6% of the mini, which is surprising. The member with the lowest percentage, is, of course, HaSeul with a 0.0%. The second lowest being Vivi with a 4.1%. Sigh, I feel so bad for her.

[&]

HaSeul is back, and the line distribution is just as bad, as always! BBC really doesn't know how to change. This mini caught me by surprise mostly because it's a lot more fair than people make it out to be, and that's probably because of the title track, Paint The Town (PTT). Vivi only got a few lines, of course, but people make it seem like she only had an ad-lib, but in my opinion she had the most important part of the track, the "you want it" bit. I'm beginning to get sick of her lack of lines. I was shocked to see the track U R have the most fair distribution in a song since Colors, dating back to 2019 though. In reality I think the member that got the short end of the stick was YeoJin on this mini, she has a total of 21 lines on the mini in comparison to Vivi who had 24 lines. I feel really bad, and surprised for YeoJin, I figured since YeoJin is the youngest of the group, or the maknae if you will, they would use her more for the cute factor, but she was 19 at this point, so I guess they wanted to stop that type of stuff, although they absolutely should've given her more lines. What's the most strange is that this is also the most fair the distribution has been since 2019, of course HeeJin and Chuu have more lines, but mostly everyone else has around the same amount for the most part. I'm fairly surprised. Vivi, YeoJin and HaSeul deserve much better though. Gowon has 31 lines actually, which amazed me because she's so underused. The member with the most percentage, is of course, Chuu with 12.3%, and the lowest being the group lines with 1.3%, and the second lowest being Olivia Hye (surprisingly) with a solid 6%. 

Conclusion

I went into this with Vivi and Gowon getting the worst ends of the sticks, and I was right, but I was surprised to see HaSeul and YeoJin get underused too considering, to my knowledge, their popular than Vivi or Gowon. It's unfortunate to know this information though, and I want BBC to choose better. There's not much more to say other than those things I just stated. Unfortunate. I know BBC can do better, and considering their line distrubution for their newest song Pose for Queendom 2, something tells me it's not going to be better. Ugh. For the record, I will be doing Flip That as well in an updated post, so stay on the look out for that.

Final Thoughts

BlockBerry Creative is a terrible company.

Wow, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did making it. I began around April and eventually forgot about it, so I figured I get it done now because I have the time. I skipped a Godzilla movie for this by the way, which was hard to do. I also want to say that the amount of in-depth posts about how my days went are gonna be minimum, for more posts like this as I have a lot of time to cover the stuff I really want to do. Also it's summer, and there's not much to do during that time outside of this type of stuff. I'll see you guys in the next post, whenever that maybe is.