Doing it Up with Doo-Wop – Interview With The Barberettes

You’ve had a whirlwind year, releasing two albums in 2014, performing at events and on television, how do you manage your time? Has the transition been difficult?

Sohee: Everything in our basis of life right now is focused on this. Everything that’s happening is unbelievable.

Shinae: Two years ago we never thought of THIS. We’re really grateful for what’s happening. Sometimes there’s constant schedules flowing, and sometimes one day it just stops and we just have nothing for a few days. It’s very confusing sometimes.

We’re musicians and what we’re doing is what other young people who dream to be musicians dream of doing. We’re not superstars, but this is our dream job. Like this is the greatest game of the world it was said by that guy… uh… Noel Gallagher. Yeah, Noel Gallagher once said in one of his interviews that “this is the greatest game” like some artists around the world, the complain like “I don’t want to take this flight,” or like some artists… (break into side tangent about Oasis and Noel Gallagher) “if you don’t want to do it, don’t bother doing it.” He was saying that some superstars are complaining and how hard it is to you know have a musicians life and tour here, there and everywhere, which we never had before [this]. And it’s just so cool to be able to say that, you know. And he was saying that right now all over the world there are young musicians and talented kids that really wish to have a gig in some small club or bar with their guitar and we get to play in all these countries and they pay for your flight.

You have to be REALLY grateful for what you’re doing, it’s the greatest game of the world. I watched that interview like two years ago and it really helped me. It helped me go through all this, take everything and be really grateful and be really happy. And we have amazing staff with us and everything is organized so finely and we just came from Toronto, and there were people who helped us around Toronto they treated us so gold, just so nice. I would say right now is the happiest time for me. I would say there’s no, absolutely zero complaint.

Living the dream.

Shinae: Yeah, living the dream! But we’re not superstars yet.

No, but you get to make money off of your passion and that’s really one of the greatest gifts.

Shinae: Yeah. It’s really, really awesome.

You were nominated for the Korean Music Awards after just debuting, what was that experience like? Was it a surprise?

Shinae: Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean we were surprised from the beginning of our release. I didn’t believe that many people would, you know, notice what we were doing. We just released a record because we have to. You know been together one and half years and we didn’t have any. So we just made an album. But music critics and journalists came to interview us, which never happened before. So we thought, “Oh, we must have done something right.” And when we heard about the nomination it was freaking cool.

Also just a year ago, at last year’s Korean Music Awards our really good friend called Sunwoo Jung-Ah won Artist of the Year [Officially, Musician of the Year] and Best Pop Album of the Year. And she’s a friend of mine from high school. And she’s one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever known, and she’s SUCH a hard worker, SO talented, SUPER nice, and VERY modest. So I was watching her winning the awards, and I was SO happy to watch her winning the awards, and then I was releasing my record. I was thinking not even like I want the record (award), I just felt like I was awarded just by watching my friend win the award because I know what she went through for that. And she really influenced me to have this band and go through all this process in making an album and stuff.

So yeah, I guess I was just really honored to be nominated for those awards after her. And she was present for the nomination for the awards. We didn’t win any awards, but we were so surprised to be in the same category as, like, HUGE acts. Who were they? Sistar? You know Sistar? One of the singers did a collaboration with an R&B singer, and it became the BIGGEST song last year in Korea. It’s actually a really cool song it’s called Some, and THAT song was in the same part of the nominations. Its’ freaking cool, it’s really unreal.