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81 What groups and musicians inspire your sound? The Kim Sisters, the Andrews Sisters, the Chordettes, the Ronettes and most of the harmony-based girl groups from that era — especially the Kim Sisters, because they were three talented Korean singers who didn’t have much recognition in Korea until recently. They were signed with Motown before the Supremes and they performed on “The Ed Sullivan Show” over 22 times. We discovered them on YouTube and we were stunned by their performances. They have had a huge effect on us and are our biggest idols. You have just fnished recording an album. Tell us about it. This album introduces us to the audience for the first time, so we tried to be true to ourselves and our sound. It was a fascinating experi- ence to make the album. Through the process of recording the songs one by one, we felt a different sense of achievement that we couldn’t get from playing shows. It was an awesome thing to see the incredible session musicians elevating our album’s sound to a new level. Also, we cannot miss mentioning our two great sound engineers, B.A. Wheeler and BK! of Astro Bits. We were so honored and blessed to have them work with us because they’re such talented and passionate musicians. They helped to make our sound so much richer and fuller. What has been your most memorable moment as a group? At the end of last summer, we went on a “woodshed” trip by our- selves to get away in nature. We stayed in a cabin at a flower farm where we practiced, cooked, wrote songs and sang for the local peo- ple. It became an unforgettable memory. On the last night of the trip, there was a local festival going on. When we spontaneously went on stage, all of the local people gathered to sing along and dance with us. We were the only young people in the whole town, but age didn’t matter at all. It was so much fun. Have you faced any challenges as an all-girl group in Seoul? Kim: There are definitely some challenges and expectations being a girl group in Korea. There are some people who expect the same thing from us that they see from typical K-pop girl groups at first, and then they get disappointed because we’re different. But some people do like us for that same reason. It is pretty interesting for us to see peo- ple’s reactions in contrast. But we’re ha ving fun with it mostly. An Wheeler: Too much male attention! WE LOVE IT. What types of things do you sing about? Are there any recurring themes? We have many different things to sing about, such as love, seasons, loneliness, comfort, harmony and friendship. Recently we’ve been singing songs about spring quite a lot, because we love the spring season. We usually like to make the song set list right before the gig, depending on the occasion, the audience and the weather that day. Do you get nervous before performing? If we practice enough before the gig, we feel very comfortable before the show. But if we feel like we didn’t practice enough or if there’s a new number in our repertoire, we get nervous. Since teamwork is really important in our style of music, we really have to focus on our personal parts to ensure we don’t break the balance. The harmony only sounds the way it should when the individual parts are right. So it takes a lot of work. What do you have planned for the future? We want to keep the joy of harmony in every part of our lives, by helping and loving each other. We truly believe that the energy that we share in everyday life goes straight into our music and people can hear it directly. Good feelings are contagious. We want to be “happy germs” to our music fans — in a hygienic way. MoRE INFo Website: facebook.com/TheBarberettesKorea ‘ g o o d f e e l i n g s A R e C o n t A g i o u s . w e w A n t t o b e “ h A p p y g e R m s ” t o o u R m u s i C f A n s — i n A h y g i e n i C w A y. ’ t h e b A R b e R e t t e s