huayangnianhua: (Default)
all my youth: a needlessly detailed close reading of txt’s discography

i want to talk about boybands and I want to talk about youth. i want to talk about the same thing that boy groups have been obsessed with circling around since time immemorial—because boy bands are about boyhood, whether we are embodying or chasing or subverting it. i want to talk about tomorrow by together, whose discography has been clearly preoccupied with this since debut, and how i think they’ve hit on something real and true of youth-and-boyband-dom with the latest release (The Name Chapter: Freefall, which is a goofy title, but is also thematically resonant as we will find)

this started out initially because i wanted to write about the latest album and why i think it really clarifies sooooooooooo many themes & brings the txt discography back to a more familiar space all the while building/complicating meaning, but then i started talking about the context behind a specific sort of archetype i think we’re seeing more of in kpop and the topic got away from me, so here is an essay.

the most beautiful moment in life
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