Another Unconventional Beauty

[+ quoththeraven]

Clips of Daesung of Big Bang, Kpop's equivalent of the Beatles in terms of popularity, and the sexy dance he performed during their 2015 North American tour, body rolls and all. All audio is in English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b48OFru0YY

Just watching makes my abs hurt. BTW, he apologized for omitting the sexy dance during their Anaheim gig because his mother was in the audience.

 

In South Korea, Daesung is often described as ugly -- in fact, it's well-known that some bandmates' reaction upon first meeting him was that he must have an amazing voice, the unspoken premise being that only that would make up for his looks -- making his and labelmate Seungyoon of WINNER's cover of girl group 2NE1's song "Ugly" even more emotional:

There's a lengthy glimpse of a bare-chested, chained Daesung starting around 1:33 in this video of "Fantastic Baby," the unofficial anthem of Kpop, although bandmate Taeyang (the one with the mostly fake tats) spends more time topless:

[+ Truereview]

Who is the guy with the cane in the first video? I know that he is traditionally beautiful, but wow! I want another look!

[+ quoththeraven]

That's T.O.P. (real name: Choi Seunghyun), one of Big Bang's rappers and the heartthrob of the group. The CEO of their record label/agency suggested the name Mark, but labelmate Se7en suggested T.O.P. instead, and that's what he went with.

 

Ironically, he was not always good-looking. In fact, at his first audition, he was told he had to lose weight to have any chance of acceptance as a trainee even though he was there at the suggestion of group leader G-Dragon, who had known him from school before G-Dragon's family moved away. This video shows childhood photos of him:

His past as an overweight kid is also the reason he doesn't perform topless and usually wears long sleeves.

 

FYI, he's the one sporting blue/aqua hair in the "Fantastic Baby" video.