The Strong Winds of Seo Tae-ji in the Record Market

The Tower Record company in Shinchon, was crowded all day long with long lines of people awaiting in great anticipation and excitement to purchase Seo Tae-ji's newly-released record.

The manager of the agency Seo belongs to said that more than 700,000 CDs were sold on Sept. 8 and orders for the album have already topped 900,000 copies, surpassing his contemporary rival Cho Sung-mo's record by selling 20,000 more CDs so far.

Recently, this phenomenon of long lines of standing people has been easily witnessed in most of the record companies and book stores scattered throughout the country.

Seo Tae-ji, the most powerful and influential musician of the early nineties, made a comeback after four years and seven months of wondering and preparing new albums with an even greater musical vision.

His new album marks a trend in the heavy metal-rap genre, containing three different short musical instrument performances and six songs.

As often in his old songs, the lyrics of the new songs such as 'Ultraman' which goes something like "The crazy people in the crazy world..." or 'The Internet World,' attract a great number of the young generation, since they are demonstrating the strong resistance against the mainstream of stereotypical contents like love or separation, but are criticizing the social prejudice and the prevalence of illegality and corruption, dishonesty, and bribery in society.

Seo's popularity appears to be skyrocketing, despite some caustic comments from certain groups of critics who insist that Seo's new album focuses too much on one genre that is not as familiar as the dance or ballad genres and that it might not easily gain mass support.

According to the manager, Seo Tae-ji is planning to appear on a joint concert for youths, the 'In Empire Super Concert,' which will be held at the Olympic Main Stadium on September 16.

by Lee Eun-joo