How did you find Day6?
Today Day6 won their first daesang and it made me sentimental about the journey we took to get to this point. So if you don't mind I'll share my story here and encourage you to do the same.
I first saw Day6 as a 5 second clip on JRE'S best of 2015 wrap up video in December 2015. The clip was of Congratulations, specifically Young K in the train headbanging and playing the bass and I was hooked (still my bias to this day). I figured they were a well established band bc the song was so polished but to my great surprise, when I searched them up they only had one music video, one mini album, a very unfortunate wardrobe on WIN, and a handful of non-subtitled interviews. At that time I was a very poor college student so I couldn't buy their albums (didn't even know how) so I made burned cds of The Day album and any and all covers I could find. Started my first Tumblr to follow their activities and waited anxiously for their next release. I was there when Junhyeok was let go and all of their social media got scrubbed, when Jae started doing ASC and "beefing" with 5SOS on Twitter. I knew every instruments' name, lost my mind when Everyday6 was announced, made even more burnt cds to blast in the car, and tried to vote as much as I could for awards which were very few and far between. I Smile was released the day after my grandfather died. That year was hard but I knew that I always had another Day6 song to look forward to next month. I was there when Sungjin shaved his own damn head just for fun, when The Demon was released and their hiatus announced, when EOD formed, Bryan started DJing, Jae started struggling and tensions started rising, and when Sungjin shaved his head again…only this time to enlist. As soon as he was gone I felt the dread of "this is it. They won't renew their contracts and this is how it ends".
Day6 had given me so much over the years and I wasn't ready to let them go so I clung on even tighter. When Jae left it seemed like the writing was surely on the wall. It was so uncertain at that time if Sungjin would ever sing again and normally enlistment was the sword hanging above idols' heads, just waiting to drop. If you'd asked me three years ago if a daesang was possible for Day6 I would've said probably not but that's okay because good music is good music and as long as they keep singing I'll keep listening. I really do love those boys and I'm so immensely proud of them. I didn't think a huge turnaround like this was in the cards for them at this stage of their career and I've never been so happy to be wrong.
Congratulations Day6!🩵🩵🩵 What a fitting name for the song that started "The Nation's Band"