BEHIND THE CALLA
Welcome to the fourth instalment of Behind the CALLA. In this behind the CALLA we have a lot to discuss. So, please enjoy this Behind the CALLA!
LILY
Before we get to I Love Me, we must discuss Lily. Though, there isn’t much to say.
So, fun fact, if you’ll recall to early in CALLA’s career, there were two fandom names given for people to vote on. Lily and Callaful. Now, I actually hoped that CALLA’s fans would be called Callaful, as the song I originally wanted to be the fan song was ‘Color Me’ by Weki Meki. So when Lily won I was initially quite annoyed as I had no idea what I’d use as a fan song. And if you Google “Lily Kpop” all that comes up is the lovely NMIXX member.
So, one day, I randomly remembered an AOA song I hadn’t listened to in ages. And that song was Lily.
For the concept photos, I wanted to use actual photos of each CALLA member’s face claim, as it felt more authentic and direct for the fans. Furthermore, since it wasn’t actually a comeback, there were no promotions, nor much build up to the comeback.
Originally, Yejoon had the most lines in Lily, with over a minute, a massive difference to the other members. I was able to fix this though, with her now falling in second, slightly behind Hyunjoo.
I Love Me
I Love Me is the third release of CALLA, and their second mini album with 6 main songs and 1 special release.
If you remember the Behind the CALLA for Pink.Aura, I said I have a formula for the perfect debut period. The first song should represent the colours of the group, the second should expand on the concept debuted with… so what’s the third? Have you figured it out?
The third song should be similar to the first two, but slightly different. Or, in the words of My Teenage Girl… SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT.
The best example of a group that’s done this that I can give is IVE. Eleven and Love Dive have similar elegant concepts while After Like also has an elegant concept, but with a disco spin. For CALLA, Love Dive and Eung Eung also have similar elegant concepts, whereas No has a more girl crush concept, though still mixed with elegance.
No is a bit of a special song to me. CLC was my ult group at a point and No was my favourite song of theirs. So of course, I just had to give it to CALLA too.
As for the rest of I Love Me, some of their bsides are quite different to what I’d usually give them. You.zip is the intro song, and nothing that much different from CALLA’s previous songs. My Way also isn’t that much different from some of the songs from Shoot Your Shot. Checkmate and Love Is Dead however are a lot more girl crush than what CALLA would do previously. Done is a bit more similar to more classic CALLA songs. I wanted to experiment with CALLA's sound a bit more, and expand it, add a few more colours to their palette and show a variety of things CALLA could do instead of just plain elegant. I hope my song selection did the trick!
The line distributions for these songs were initially very different to how they look now. The songs were mostly all initially in favour of Yejoon and Sophia, with Emma having a fair amount of lines too, while Hyunjoo and Juni were quite neglected, in particular Juni.
However, one person inspired me to create the distribution videos for CALLA, and that was
@LostInTheDream . She was the only person who participated in the pre-comeback guessing (meaning I won’t be doing it again). Her prize was two distributions, and after making them I felt guilty for only giving two pictures. So, I did some experimenting and voila, I was able to create them. So as I was remaking all the I Love Me distributions, I tried to tidy the distributions as well. I think I initially got too caught up in the fact Juni was a rapper, and so I tried to give her more deeper vocal parts similar to how Sophia would sing. I also switched about some of the parts sung by Emma, Yejoon and Hyunjoo and now I think the distributions are a lot better.
My goal for this album was for it to be Sophia’s era. She has a beautiful deep voice and so I thought all the girl crush songs would be perfect for her. I think, however, this era could also be a bit of an Emma and Juni era too. To me, the members who “own” each song are:
You.zip - Emma, No - Sophia, My Way - Sophia, Checkmate - Juni, Love Is Dead - Juni and Done - Yejoon.
CALLA got their first win for this comeback! Everyone say well done. As I mentioned previously, I never wanted CALLA to debut famous, but instead build up momentum over time. CALLA still haven’t reached peak popularity yet, but the members have slowly been going viral online and now their song, No, has been noticed well enough to get them a win. One thing I really like about CALLA receiving their first win with No is it was also the song CLC got their first win with. Though it doesn’t feel like long since CALLA debuted, in this timeline it would’ve been quite a bit of time, so I think now is appropriate. I'm excited to take you all through CALLA's journey as they gain more popularity.
What Do Lily Think?
I ran a poll to get feedback on CALLA, and I got a whole 7 responses. Wowowow thank you everyone. No but seriously thank you, as I really wasn't expecting this many people to vote. Thought I'd get like 3 max and have to work from only that.
Here are the results of some of the questions!
The most popular title track is… Love Dive with 71.4% of the votes.
However, there are two most popular albums. Both Shoot Your Shot and I Love Me have the same amount of votes, with 42.9% each.
The bsides were multi choice, so there’s no percentages, however we do have a top 3. Shoot! is in first, with 6 votes (meaning only one person didn’t vote for it). Clearly I made a good choice there. In second we have Love Is Dead, with 4 total votes, which surprises me due to a result that will come later. And finally, in 3rd we have Espresso. Two bsides didn’t get any votes, and those were You.zip and My Way. This does make me a little sad as I love these two songs a lot, but alas, that’s just how it is.
The most biased CALLA member is Hyunjoo, with Emma being most people’s bias wrecker. Though we also have plenty of OT5 stans, so don’t worry, all of our girls get plenty of love.
As for the duos, two got the same number of votes, and those would be… Sophia and Emma… and Juni and Emma. Seems everyone wants to see an Emma unit. Perhaps I’ll have to deliver your wishes some time…
The remaining questions were mostly about how I’m running CALLA. But I thought one question in particular would be interesting to everyone, and that’s what concepts should CALLA do.
My vision for CALLA was to be a more mature yet elegant girl group, hence why the idols I chose were older and my current song choices. However, the most popular concept people want to see from CALLA is… cute elegant. Sighs. YOU GUYS?! You were suppose to see my vision. Smh! Oh well… if that’s what you want to see I suppose I shall make sure I deliver.
Ballad wasn’t very popular, but I suppose ballad songs never are. I will be dropping a few here and there but don’t panic, it won't be too much. Elegant and mature elegant were voted for plenty. Girl Crush however received no votes at all… understood. Though what I don’t understand is how the second most popular bside was a girl crush one??? You guys?! Was this some sort of “this was good but never do it again”. But to be fair, perhaps girl crush is a little un-CALLA. I doubt I’ll do much girl crush in the future, but I might have to do a little… tiny bit…
What’s Next?
Well. That concludes the Behind the CALLA for I Love Me era. I won’t give too much away for what’s coming, but I won’t leave you in the dark either.
What I will say right now is a warning:
The next CALLA release will likely be the last until the Summer of 2023.
As some of you might be aware, I live in the UK and also recently turned 18. Unfortunately for me, this means I will have eXams this Spring. Mocks begin around March-April and the exams take place between May-June. During this time I will need to focus on revision… or at least have minimal distraction of other commitments. If I did promote CALLA during this time, it won’t be a full group, as making all the content for it is time consuming and I can’t have something else looming over me during this time. But I will tell you, CALLA will go on their hiatus after a bang. Be sure to keep your eyes out for it.
The next comeback may arrive sooner than I want? I don’t really know. The feedback form said the current timeline is fine, so perhaps I’m overthinking. I’ll try to release it at an appropriate time. But it’ll depend on how college is going.
The only other thing I will say is that, I’ve actually told you guys before what is coming next. The question is… when did I tell you… and what did I tell you…
I’ll leave you to solve that puzzle.
Thanks for reading!
Was gonna post this tomorrow but meh, I wrote it, so here it is.