Oh shiiiii
This song has been available for a little while because they performed it at a concert, but the music video and album came out today.
Making these all-start groups and having them actually come back regularly is a pretty strong move. They say that Super M is going to come back soonish also.
Yena also had a new release. She has changeda way from her usual concept to do another one of those typical KPop duet deals.
I don’t know if it counts as a genre, but the KPop makes these kinds of songs a lot. Chill songs that almost always have a woman vocalist with a man performing a featured rap on the bridge. Granted, this new entry from Yena is sonically chill, but not lyrically.
While waiting around in the mall I noticed that Barnes and nobles now has a small end cap to j and k pop artists and their cds.
The New Jeans song “Hype Boy” now has the most total streams on Spotify in South Korea. More total streams than any other song period. I have to repeat this. The song was released in July 2022, and its total stream count in the country of South Korea is higher than that of any other song, period. “Butter” by BTS is in second place, and it is an older song that has had more time to accumulate streams.
Granted, Spotify is not the number one streaming service in that country. That would be Genie, and also Melon.
However, their songs currently occupy the first, second, third, fifth, and fifteenth spots on the aggregated / real-time music charts.
I have never seen this happen before. Groups that have had sudden explosions like this were typically one hit wonders. This group isn’t even a year old, but they have pulled so far ahead of the pack. Every single track they put out is at the IU/BTS level, and perhaps even beyond.
I just found out about a group called FIFTY FIFTY. They debuted back in November. They have one album with four songs. They are one of those insignificant “nugu” groups from a tiny company with not many fans and not much money. Their choreography and music video is average good enough. Their music is exceptional.
The four tracks are four different styles of KPop. “Tell Me” has City Pop vibes. “Log In” is very dark.
Some of them sound like they were meant for soloists, and some of the members have voices that sound like they were meant to be soloists. This is not a bad thing. I think this group has a lot in common with f(x) and The Ark. They are playlist worthy, and I hope they somehow keep existing to make another release in the future.
In other news, VIVIZ came back, and WOW. A very exciting new concept. These three former GFriend members haven’t really seen as much success since going out on their own. I hope this hits, because it deserves to.
I saw Dreamcatcher live in concert recently and talked about it in the concert thread. Cross-post.
This is maybe the best most candid and honest interview of any KPop artist I have ever read. Real questions, real answers. Still not yet thirty years old, RM has lived a truly unique life and has clearly gained some wisdom. Exciting to see where he goes from here.
This is such a wild story, and I love it. It’s really simple to explain, also.
Joe Biden is going to visit South Korea. During preparations for the visit, Dr. Jill Biden suggested that they arrange to have a joint performance of Lady Gaga and BLACKPINK at the state dinner. The people on the Korean side simply didn’t give a response even after the US side was like “hey, did you get my message?” TL;DR: a national security advisor was forced to resign for not replying to e-mail quickly enough.
GOOD. Let that be a lesson to you all. Do not leave people on read, especially when it comes to your job. At least reply with something in a prompt manner, always.
HEIZE has a new song and music video.
The music video is very interesting indeed. It’s both vertical and horizontal. The video starts with some instructions and then there are little notices that tell you when to rotate your phone to view the video as intended.
I wonder how timeless this will be. It’s already annoying trying to watch it on a PC. YouTube should add a button to the player that lets you rotate the view on PC.
For quite awhile SM has been remastering old music videos and uploading them to their official YouTube channel. It’s really cool because a lot of old MVs were very low resolution. Fans trying to upscale them on their own can not get great results. SM has the original master recordings and do a great job.
But today something shocking happened. They uploaded a remastered version of f(x) debut track, LA chA TA.
Since the passing of Sulli (RIP), SM has basically pretended that f(x) never existed. They almost never mentioned them. The members all moved on to do other things years ago. A legendary group with a discography that stands the test of time. Their own company gave them a raw deal, but now in 2023, they at least acknowledge that f(x) existed and has a music video worth remastering.
I swear, if this group debuted today with these exact same songs, they would be #1 by a landslide.
Too bad this is just the music video. One time they famously performed this song out in the pouring rain. That video is harder to find these days.
R.I.P. Moonbin
For the first time in my decade+ of KPop fandom, I got a light stick. It’s the MAMAMOO “moobong”.
It’s the official one, since I ordered it from Bizent, their official store. It’s version 2.5. Yes, these things have versions.
I got this for a few reasons. First, IMO, this is still the number one s-tier lightstick of all KPop groups. The word for radish in Korean is “moo”. People who are members of the Mamamoo fan club are known as moomoos. And that’s how come the group mamamoo has a radish for a light stick.
Mamamoo is also one of my favorite KPop groups. Not number one, but they’re up there. The thing is, the groups I like more than MAMAMOO are either disbanded, or dormant. They also have really weak light sticks. Let’s be honest, the Girls’ Generation light stick sucks. D-tier at best. Do not want.
Lastly, after waiting for 9 years, Mamamoo is finaly on tour in the US. They’ve done a few small performances here before. They were at SXSW one time. They also were at KCon a few times. But this is their first full headlining concert here. It could also very well be the last. It might not be possible to get the light stick at the show due to short supply, but I managed to order one from the limited run they did just to get sticks over here before the concert in two weeks.
Now, depending on which city you are in, the venue capacities differ. None of them are completely sold out yet, but they are getting close. Some, like NY are in arenas with almost 14k seats. Chicago and Nashville are in smaller places with fewer than 7k seats.
Should you go see this show? If it’s one of the smaller venues 100% yes. Even if you don’t like or care about KPop. I promise you, MAMAMOO is an incredible live performance for anyone who likes music of any kind. Go to YouTube and see if you don’t believe me. If it’s a larger venue, I can’t say yes so easily. Even though I am confident the performance will be top notch, it might not be worth it to sit far away and watch from so far away. Depends on the price, your budget, and how you feel about arena shows.
Personally I don’t like arena shows. I feel like there’s no point in going to see a concert if you are going to be looking at a screen the whole time. Better to get the concert video and watch it at home.
That said, I have been waiting to see this group live a long time. I know from watching tons of YouTube that their live shows are unbelievable. Maybe the best in KPop for many years now.And we also dished out big money to get seats in the 12th row. So even if there’s a bunch of people sitting behind me, maybe it will feel more like a smaller show since I’m close. I’ve never sat that close for a big arena concert before. I figure this is the time to do it and see if it’s worthwhile. Not going to be a regular occurrence.
So what about the stick itself? It’s very light and made of cheap plastic. I guess that’s a good thing since you are going to be waving it for several hours. The wristband seems silly, but some people wave these things pretty fiercely, and you don’t want one flying in the crowd. Especially not when it’s hard to get a new one.
In terms of the light part, it’s ridiculously simple. You press the button to cycle through colors. Then you can double tap the button to cycle through light modes. They’re pretty simple like solid, blinking, fading in and out, etc. One of them is a very fast blink that needs some sort of seizure warning. It’s not as fast as a strobe light, but still.
When you are at the concert, they will have a device that sends out an RF signal to control the sticks. You don’t have to do anything. The presence of the RF signal will disable the manual controls and the lightstick will be controlled by the lighting crew.
I think it would be pretty cool to figure out that RF protocol and control the light myself, but that seems more trouble than it’s worth.
It takes 3x AAA batteries. The LED is significantly bright to be seen, but not good enough to be a flashlight. Even with the brighest possible setting, it doesn’t hurt to look at it. The plastic is pretty thick and frosted, and that keeps the lighting mostly even and pleasant. It says that the batteries should last 4 hours, which is long enough for the concert for sure. I’m bringing extra batteries just in case.
Lastly, the light came with stickers? There are 8 stickers in total, 2 for each member of the group. 4 of the stickers are just eyes, presumably matching the eyes of the members. The others are identical, but also include mouths. Are you supposed to put these stickers on the light? I can see how that kind of works. Not doing it. That’s a weird KPop thing for sure.
Should you buy a KPop light stick? I’ll let you know after the concert in two weeks.
If only they worked at MSG if you happened to have one.
A generic standard here would go a long way.
It’s entirely possible that all the different RF powered light sticks work on the same system. Of course, not every stick will have the same colors and patterns available. Those patterns and colors might not be keyed to the same RF signals. But there are probably only a few vendors all using the same system. I’ll put a new battery in a rangers wristband and bring it to the KPop concert to see if it does anything.
One thing I forgot to mention. The light stick vibrates when you turn it on and off. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to make it vibrate. I wonder if they will make it vibrate using the RF signals at the concert.
“Light stick”
I guess I’m not the only one who’s mind is in the gutter!
At the end of January I made a whole post about this new group FIFTY FIFTY.
TL;DR: They are an incredibly small group from one of the myriad of tiny KPop labels that wallows in obscurity, but I really like their sound. It’s refreshing to hear something I like when all the big companies are putting out stuff that isn’t my style these days.
Well, guess what.
This is the Billboard Hot 100
IN THE USA
apowijfpeioahvl;kanvayuiefpihe
A few smaller news items.
A smaller group named E’LAST attempted to have a North American tour. This can often go pretty well. It’s not uncommon for smaller unknown groups in Korea to have a lot of International fans that they can make money from if they can actually execute a tour.
The problem is that these small groups from small companies don’t have the resources to actually pull off a tour on their own, much less in foreign countries. They need help from some other promotion company that is local to the place they are touring.
It just so happens that that industry is full of ultra shady fail companies. Those companies basically make the same money no matter how well the events are actually executed. The less they do, the more profit they get due to reduced costs. Everything is prepaid. If people pay for some special VIP event, what does it matter to the tour promoter if that VIP event doesn’t happen, or doesn’t happen well? Do they even care if the concert itself doesn’t happen?
And that’s what happened to E’LAST.
I just feel bad for fans in these situations. The group you like from a foreign country is actually going to perform live where you live, likely once ever. Even if the promotion company is known to be shady, what can you do? If you don’t buy tickets you miss this once in a lifetime opportunity. If you do, you might just lose all your money and receive nothing.
Another news. Mystic Story once produced a short film anthology series called Persona. No relation to the video games. Four different directors each made a short film, all of them starring IU. They then started production of Persona 2. Another anthology film series, only the star of all the films was Sulli. Filming did not finish because Sulli committed suicide. RIP.
Somehow Persona: Sulli has been scheduled for release on Brazilian Netflix in June. They say they are discussing whether to release it elsewhere as well.
I, for one, hope they do. Sometimes it’s somewhat hard to watch art in which someone appears who passed away tragically. But if their art lives on, then in a way that person also lives on. Keeping their art from the world after their passing feels like killing them a second time.
This is really a new one as far as I’ve seen in KPop. I already talked about how FIFTYFIFTY was a nothing group from a nothing company that somehow became a global sensation due to good music. Well, it seems like since their company is so small, another mysterious company was able to come in and try to entice the members away.
If they can successfully get away, that could be good. Go from a small company to a presumably bigger one with more resources.
But getting away will prove legally difficult. They almost definitely have exclusive contracts, and they can’t leave until they are over. Also, isn’t their success largely due to the current tiny company’s good music producing? You have to be pretty confident that the new company will be able to deliver hit music like the previous one did, or at least poach your producers and songwriters as well.
Most one-hit-wonders fail because they can’t come back with another hit song. If this group fails to even come back due to this drama… This is going to be a very interesting story to watch.