Love Letter To A Record: Venice Quin On BIGBANG's 'MADE'

Music Feeds’ Love Letter To A Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Auckland/Aotearoa-born, Sydney/Eora-based pop rising star Venice Qin pens a loving tribute to BIGBANG’s 2016 album ‘MADE’.

It comes as Qin celebrates the release of her own debut album ‘奔月 MOONLANDING’, a record built from contradictions – East meets West, Erhu meets hyper-pop, heartbreak meets turbo BPM. “I’ve always struggled with identity and questioned where I sit among cultures, social groups and especially in music,” Venice says of the freshly minted LP. “However, in ‘奔月 MOONLANDING’, I’ve found my footing. This album has such a wild mixture of energy, sonics and topics, but all of it is deeply me. Ultimately, it is the journey of me wrestling between multiple parts of myself, and finally accepting that it is the combination of all of these things that makes me who I am.”

Venice Qin – 奔月 MOONLANDING

From Venice Qin: Dear MADE by BIGBANG,

When I first came across you, I wasn’t sure if you knew your demographic included 13-year-old Chinese girls from New Zealand — or if I was even supposed to be part of it. Ten years later, I now know I wasn’t in the target audience (I mean, have you seen the ‘BAE BAE’ MV…), and I still don’t speak Korean. But I don’t care.

Because you completely changed my world.

Confession time: at thirteen and fourteen, I felt deeply uncool. But when I heard the effortless swag and confidence of ‘FXXK IT’ and ‘ZUTTER’, I suddenly felt rad as hell, by association. There was so much personality baked into every track, every vocal, every beat, and it gave me permission to imagine becoming someone bold, creative, and proudly different.

Obviously, I’d never been to a club at that age, but ‘BANG BANG BANG’ took me there anyway. Before you, I barely noticed synths — but how could I ignore those synths? Harsh, blazing, in-your-face. You lit something in me. The kick, the 808, the drop… it was electricity in my chest. And yes, I absolutely recreated all the iconic choreo in the bathroom mirror.

And then there’s ‘IF YOU’ and ‘LAST DANCE’. Oh. My. GOD. Taeyang and Daesung’s vocals ripped into my soul, and I am not exaggerating. The toplines? Exquisite. I still don’t fully know what the lyrics mean — but it didn’t matter. I felt everything you were feeling, through the performances alone. And T.O.P’s gentle rap at the end of ‘LAST DANCE’? Still one of the most genius choices I’ve ever heard.
I know this is a lot to say at once, but here’s the truth: because of you, I’m now an artist too. And what blows my mind the most is how you built an entire world with this album. Visual, surreal, colourful, cinematic — you gave us a music video for almost every track, and every single one was chef’s kiss perfection. They made me feel free.

I’m still so inspired by you every day. I hope my work makes you proud, and that I can pass on even a fraction of that feeling to someone else.

With love and forever admiration,
Venice