This is quite a difficult and emotionally charged topic, and I’m interested what people here, particularly other Shawols think/feel.
In celebration of their 30th anniversary, it seems that SM will be releasing a commemorative album. As part of this, they have announced that one of the songs that will be remade/covered by another artist will be a Jonghyun song. This has upset a lot of Shawols. From what I have seen, many are upset because they feel like SM purposefully ignores Jonghyun’s existence except for his birthday and the anniversary of his passing. They feel as though this is now just a cash grab and is disrespectful to his legacy when SM doesn’t often honor his legacy in other ways.
This is not a new controversy, I see complaints like this from Shawols often, particularly when Jonghyun is left off of certain merch (though he’s included in other merch) or regarding the fact that SM won’t reprint his albums (or Shinee’s older albums in general).
I feel like I’m in a difficult position to make a judgment on this. I am a big Shinee fan, but was not a fan during Jonghyun’s life. I feel like it’s a really complicated situation, even more so because (at least to my knowledge) we do not really know how his family or the other members feel about the song or other issues in a similar vein. I know Key has talked about hating feeling like he was a forbidden topic and that he wants to be able to talk about him, but we don’t necessarily know how they feel about every decision made regarding his legacy.
Personally, I feel torn. I am happy his song is going to be covered and that SM artists continue to remember and honor him. I also understand potentially feeling like SM is just using this as a cash grab. But again, I think it’s hard to say anything either way. For instance, I would assume his family has to give an ok for his song to be used. It’s also possible that the artist covering the song requested to cover it as opposed to SM coming up with the idea.
For the other issues such as merch and mentioning him other than twice a year, I feel like again it is quite complicated. He is included in some group merch, which I think is good because of course he is and will always remain a member of the group. But I’m not sure he necessarily needs to be included in everything. At what point would fans decide making too much merch for him would also be disrespectful and a cash grab? I do understand wanting rereleases of albums and releasing old concerts and unreleased footage, but I also just think there’s a difficult balance at play and I’m not sure how SM should handle it.
I don’t want to come off as defending SM, they’re a horrible company (as every big company in the world basically is) but I also genuinely am not sure what would make people happy. Does anyone have a way they’d prefer for the company to remember Jonghyun?
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