“Newton’s Apple” by Nell, Friday, November 17, 2023
In February of 2014, Nell released their album Newton’s Apple, which was a culmination of a theme the band had explored on two EPs starting in 2012. The band broke their conscription-imposed hiatus in 2012 with the album Slip Away, released in April. In December, the band was back with a four-song EP Holding onto Gravity, the first in their gravity series. Next, the band released the EP Escaping Gravity in 2013. Newton’s Apple was the band’s full-length follow up to 2012’s Slip Away. Released as a two-disc album, the first disc contained new songs, and the second disc contained the two EPs Holding onto Gravity and Escaping Gravity, making a total of 21 songs loosely based on gravity. The title track, was an electronic ballad in English, comparing falling for the subject of the song "like Newton's apple hit the ground."
IT WAS LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER OF NEVER ENDING QUESTIONS. formed in 1999 after the four members failed the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT or suneung/ 수능). The test, held on the third Thursday of November (yesterday in Korea) determines which university students can attend and what they are qualified to study in university. Many students who fail the exam study another year in order to qualify for a better university. Singer Kim Jong-wan, guitarist Lee Jae-kyung, bassist Lee Jung-hoon, and drummer Jung Jae-won, the members of Nell, however, decided to pursue music instead. The band started playing in the Sincheon’s indie music scene where groups like Busker Busker and Hyukoh would play years later. The band’s two 2001 independent albums Reflection of and Speechless helped to bring back emotional rock, a genre in Korea that had been present in the ballad of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but had started to shift mostly to idol music in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. The band was discovered by K-pop legend, Seo Taiji, who founded both a Korean metal band in the late ‘80s and the first idol group in 1994. Nell has been producing music successfully since signing on Seo’s label Goesoo Indigene in 2002, though they later signed to another company in 2006 and most recently Space Bohemian.
I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU. Billboard ranked Nell’s Newton’s Apple as the second best K-pop album of 2014 behind 2ne1’s Crush. The album took the band to America for the first time where they performed at SXSW’s K-pop Night Out showcase. While idol groups are certainly the focus of most critics and listeners alike, a band like Nell and other bands from Korea, though they belong in a different genre of music, have gained international listeners thanks to the growing interest in K-pop, especially since around 2013 when the SXSW K-pop Night Out showcase began. But today’s song isn’t even in Korean. Before BTS recorded their English language hits, becoming the first South Korean act to top Billboard’s Hot 100, Nell had been recording English songs on their early LPs. “Newton’s Apple” is one of the English tracks on their 2014 album. The heavily auto-tuned love ballad muses about love. It’s about being hit on the head by love, just as Newton was hit on the head when sitting beneath an apple tree.
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