Can you hear me

The other day my brother asked me about the MSN display picture I used - an Oriental-looking girl with brownish hair smiling into the camera, presumably curious about her identity and if this were the face of a 'family potential'. Akhem, suffice to say it ended as a disappointment as I explained that it were that of a pretty talented member of a popular Korean girl group called Girls Generation (SNSD).

I don't quite remember how I came to know SNSD except that it was through another group, the even more popular Wonder Girls. My ex-colleague and I were then looking at a bunch of Youtube videos whilst waiting for time to pass before our weekly ritual of mamak-football and came upon a group of traffic policemen doing the famous 'Tell Me' dance with a kid. SNSD were part of the guests to the show and via some snippets of their music and video, I got curious and began searching for other videos.

As with most Korean girl groups they sang standard fare bubblegum pop with occassional sprinkles of R&B stuff (with the exception of the very talented SeeYa) but one voice from the nine of the members caught my attention: it was slightly huskier but a lot more powerful, standing out as a big contrast to the rest of the softer sounding ones.

A quick research on Google Images and Wikipedia revealed her to be Kim Taeyeon 김태연, the group leader. Further listening to the rest their music confirmed my opinion of her as the brightest star in the group of nine. Perhaps she's not the best looking of them all but is no way average by comparison and the talent in singing simply blew the rest of the competition away with perhaps two others coming close whom can sing pretty well themselves - American-born Jessica 정수연 and SeoHyun 서주현.

What actually impressed me the most was when she did two solos songs, both for Korean dramas that I've never bothered to watch. The first was If (만약에 Mananghe) made for the drama Hong Gil Dong 쾌도 홍길동. Read the comments at Youtube to see how impressed everybody was with her solo debut.

Then came a polished effort from the drama that is currently being shown on 8TV Malaysia - Beethoven Virus - a song called Can You Hear Me (들리나요 Deullinayo).

(Funnily enough I heard this song playing whilst my cousin and his girlfriend were watching next door, with me in the toilet doing some log export business...)

Here's looking forward to more in the future.