Oh yeah, I’m making this thread even if nobody reads it. Deal with it.
During the final week of each year, the three major TV networks in South Korea have special broadcasts known as Gayo Daejun. These are basically music festivals with special remixed or mashed-up performances featuring that year’s most popular artists.
This year, Girls’ Generation (SNSD) of Gee fame did not release any albums or singles as a group. Their absence resulted in an onslaught of groups filling that power vacuum. Four groups stood on top: TWICE, GFriend, Red Velvet, and I.O.I. At the KBS festival they all paid their respects to the their masters on this very crowded stage.
It’s not Gee. It’s SNSD’s debut song, Into the New World. This song is also notable because it is played frequently by political protesters in South Korea. If you look up a translation of the lyrics, you can see why. It’s about not giving up and following a difficult road into the new world together.
Here is the best performance of it by SNSD that I can find.
Scott, I have a kpop scandal question. I remember hearing a story on a podcast, about 2 things.
1: The first paparazzi photographs in Korea, where a person from a girl group was holding hands with a person from a boy group, big no no as at least at the time, not being single meant you weren’t as desirable to your bosses.
2: A story where a sleezeball went to the press with topless photos of a single artist, the first “tabloid” (the story went into detail on how there was no such thing as a tabloid in Korea at the time) he went to rightfully told him to fuck off, but a less reputable one ran with it. She was set to win an award the next day, but, ya know, scandal.
The actual story here is that the entire kpop industry suffered for this. The public voted with their wallets and said they didn’t want any of this garbage. As a result of the fact that the fans didn’t care for the scandal she actually received her award on stage.
As you’re the person I know who knows the most about kpop, I was wondering if your knowledge extended into the scandals and the history thereof.
The only scandal I know about that sounds similar to that is something involving Ailee, who is amazing. Don’t know if it’s the specific one you are talking about, though.
After years of waiting, the time has arrived. A truly legendary event has come to pass.
G-Dragon has fulfilled his promise from 2013. All five members of BIGBANG, the greatest boy band in the history of the world, have appeared together on the funniest program on Korean television. Weekly Idol. Someone should have the english subtitles compete within a few days.
In other news, CUBE Entertainment is falling apart. They had two top groups 4Minute and BEAST. They let 4Minute disband and only kept Hyuna, making all the fans pretty mad. One member of BEAST left the group and the rest let their contracts expire and formed their own company.
The only good group they have left is BTOB. Word to my bald bro Peniel.
They only other groups they have left are CLC and PENTAGON. They are newbies nobody cares about. CLC actually had a couple catchy songs, but they’re not extraordinarily talented or unique. They are the most generic KPop that exists.
Well, just today CLC came out with their new song “Hobgoblin.” It’s not bad, but suddenly CLC changed from their original concept and are now a straight-up 4Minute clone. This is coming from the same company that let 4Minute disband. Fans are mad. It doesn’t help that it’s not nearly as good as the original.
This is one of those situations where your favorite food changes its recipe and doesn’t taste the same anymore. It would almost be better to just take it off the shelves entirely. That new flavor might taste good, but it gets overpowered by the reminder you can never taste the original ever again.
[quote=“Kate_Monster, post:9, topic:250, full:true”]
That Hobgoblin song and video could have come straight from a generic 90’s girl band.
[/quote]You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I’ll admit that I’m not that familiar with KPop, but just watching these videos, what I find interesting is the juxtaposition between female pop stars in Japan versus Korea. In Japan, most female pop stars fall much more towards “cute” as opposed to “sexy” on the spectrum, with some exceptions of course, but Korean female pop stars are definitely at the opposite end from most of their Japanese counterparts.
[quote=“jabrams007, post:12, topic:250, full:true”]
I’ll admit that I’m not that familiar with KPop, but just watching these videos, what I find interesting is the juxtaposition between female pop stars in Japan versus Korea. In Japan, most female pop stars fall much more towards “cute” as opposed to “sexy” on the spectrum, with some exceptions of course, but Korean female pop stars are definitely at the opposite end from most of their Japanese counterparts.
[/quote]Trust me. The cute concept is dominant in KPop as well. It’s just flavored slightly differently than the JPop kawaii lolicon style.
Since Orange Caramel is MIA and Crayon Pop is not successful anymore, they are really carrying the torch for the pop-art concept. Dumb Dumb and Russian Roulette are the best music videos I’ve seen since a-ha Take on Me and Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer. I really wish all music videos for all music would be like that.
2NE1 is really done now. At least for once we get a group that breaks up and actually provides closure and acknowledgement. The Beatles couldn’t even manage that.
I’ve really liked almost all of Red Velvet’s previous releases, but this isn’t working for me. The song isn’t catchy. The music video has a colorful artsy concept, but isn’t interesting and creative like Dumb Dumb or Russian Roulette MVs.
It really doesn’t help that they are saying “rookie” and it sounds like “looky looky.”
I’m hoping that the choreography is good at least. You can’t see much of it in the video. Also, even though I think it is a mini-album, it definitely has at least one b-side track, and their b-sides are usually better than their title tracks.