Even for IU, this new track is legendary.
Awhile ago PSY (wisely) got the hell out of YG (the company of BIGBANG, BLACKPINK, etc.) He formed his own company PNATION. Lots of KPop stars form their own companies, like when Beast left CUBE they changed their name to HIGHLIGHT and created a company named Around Us. But these companies usually only exist for that one group. They rarely, if ever, sign or train other artists.
Not so for P Nation. PSY is signing and working with great stars who were without a home. After much waiting, P Nation is finally releasing music.
Jessi has always just been too powerful for most Koreans, but she embraces that and gives no fucks. She says what people in a very conservative society are unwilling to say. She’s also really open like “yeah, I go fake boobs” “yeah, I got lots of plastic surgery, and have some regrets.” And despite the really strong and scary vibe in her art, she is always a nice and sweet person whenever you see her off the stage.
She’s already released two songs under P Nation. Extremely important to note is that the second track features Jay Park, who is an entire topic into himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaYqW9s9Aok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy4-gePx5xU
Meanwhile you’ve also got HyunA, you may remember her from the Gagnam Style MV and DAWN (formerly EDawn). HyunA worked at CUBE as a solo artist and also member of 4Minute. EDawn was ate CUBE as a member of Pentagon. 4Minute broke down, but HyunA stayed on at CUBE, the rest left. Not a lot of details, but it looked messy. At some point HyunA and Dawn were caught dating each other and CUBE kicked them out. P Nation picked them right up, and their first tracks just came out.
Exciting to see that P Nation is really living up to being an entertainment company that isn’t trash. Can’t wait for PSY to release his own music under his own label. The rest of the world has gotten over him mostly, but in Korea he can still fill a stadium and have everyone dancing.
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So with all that about Monsta X losing Wonho, I completely missed that they released a new song and were promoting it without him. Also, the song is a banger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa7hl8A0tAY
But more important than even that KPop is over. Shut it down. They’ll never do better than MAMAMOO, so just stop trying.
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Oh yeah, IUs full album came out, and got another PERFECT ALL KILL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1PvIWdJ8xo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3Fwdnij49o
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BTS has all this international attention, and they do also top the charts in Korea, but I think IU is definitely number one domestically. She just has basically no international fame. Even among US KPop fans IU is somewhere in middling popularity.
EXO is back, but I’m not into it. I think that they are lacking since they only have 6 available members right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmP4b2a0uY
BOL4 is also back, but I’m also not into the song. I really like the video, though.
There’s some KPOP biz going down right now, but I want to make a post about olden times. I was recently watching a variety show and was reminded of the existence of a song. The song is “Tears” by So Chan-whee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toHeLIphvTU
It is a legendary song within South Korea. It came out in the year 2000/2001 ish. The synths sound exactly like every other electronic dance track from that era. Every time the song starts, I reflexively look around to see if someone put quarters into a Dance Dance Revolution machine I didn’t know about.
But the real key of this song is the vocals. I don’t know much about vocals or singing, but it doesn’t take any special knowledge to recognize this song is extremely hard to sing. It’s all extremely high notes, with an even higher notes at the climax. The song also has no quiet parts. Volume all the way up, the whole time.
The only western musicians I can imagine singing this are all metal vocalists with a high pitched screaming style like King Diamond, Bruce Dickinson, or Rob Halford. It’s really insane.
The backing track makes me want to jump up and down and pump my fist in the air. The vocal track makes me clench my teeth so hard it hurts. It’s just some crazy combination.
Here’s a video of her singing it in 2016. It’s really funny because BIG BANG is in the audience and GD is filming it on his phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dajQiMdCCmk
And here is a compilation video of various times KPop idols tried to sing the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPHt-AYRono
If you search YouTube you will find many more videos of people singing the song on Korean television while everyone is extremely amazed and impressed whenever anyone hits the notes. It’s really something.
Technically there aren’t any particularly high notes. What makes it hard to sing is that the whole thing is performed with the “chest voice”, or you could say it’s being “belted” all the way through. That puts way too much strain on lost peoples’ voices. At no point does she use her “head voice”, or go falsetto.
It would be trivial for anyone to sing those high notes, and many singers go way higher in their head voice… but as you said, how much strain she’s using is almost heavy-metal-esque.
So many years ago I saw the 16 year old BoA live in NYC.
Now I see the 33 year old BoA release a music video set in NYC.
Haven’t posted here in awhile because KPop was a bad place for awhile. There was everything from groups mysteriously losing members, groups being eliminated from scandals, stalking situations that were even worse than usual for KPop, and literal suicides. I also haven’t added any new KPop to my playlist during that time.
Well, let’s forget January and make February a fresh start for KPop 2020.
Of course BTS is coming soon, and they debuted the first song (not the title track, though?) from their upcoming album on one of those western late night talk shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSNd02kVv8o
My girls GFriend just came back this morning with a new album. They’ve been away for awhile touring in other countries making money. This is their first new release since getting bought out by BigHit, the BTS company. The title track and MV are really interesting choices. The album itself has good songs that could be hits with more wide appeal, especially Labyrinth, the track that the album is named after. They always have some good B-sides. But instead they chose Crossroads for the MV. The track is very GFriend. Even moreso, the music video is full of fanservice. They’ve always had some sort of interconnected lore in their music videos, but this takes it to another level. They are not subtly at all suggesting that the group is at a crossroads in all aspects of business, music, life, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx5TWKPE5sU
But the real story is that EVERGLOW dropped their third ever release today, and it is, as they say, the banger.
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Like Moses parting the Red Sea, all the other idol groups got the hell out of the way.
https://twitter.com/soyrev/status/1230796258563854337
The rumor is that the remainder of the Girls’ Generation discography are being added to Spotify. Up until now, only “The Boys” and newer albums were available. They say the remaining albums become available in each country as soon as it becomes 00:00 on Feburary 26th in the easternmost time zone of that country.
Some of the Japanese albums briefly appeared and disappeared recently as well. As of now only LOVE&PEACE is still on there for me. We’ll see what changes tomorrow.
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So this isn’t about new KPop. But today I had an itch scratched that had been needing scratching for… years.
So a few years ago. My partner and I used to go to an arcade in New Rochelle exclusively to use their DDR machines. (only had one working metal pad at home and neither of us like using the slippy soft plastic ones, plus I’m a big baby who doesn’t like playing without a bar, also it was an excuse to get out of the house and have supper together plus it’s right near a movie theater.)
Anyway one of the other reasons I prefer ITG is because every wild ITG machine in existence has extra songs on it because it’s way easier to do that with ITG. It’s also tradition on the fourth song (last song on a credit) in ITG you do one you’re not sure you can do.
So once on there I found a KPop megamix (multiple kpop songs back to bac as one song you can play) and it was too hard for me and I thought it was a perfect 4th song. So I started it.
We failed at the first really hard part but the beginning of the song got stuck in my head. It’s basically been in there ever since. The megamix had no references to WHICH songs were in there. Nor did it have a background or any clues. So I had no leads other than what the song sounded like.
Well today, just using like youtube recommendations and clicking through while looking for background music. I finally came across it.
Behold, the resolution to my multiple year ear worm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqoZTnnjyPo
Honestly the song isn’ like the best song ever. But that first 30 seconds or so has really been in my head something deep. It’s nice to finally have some closure.
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Seems like you STANNED LOONA, but didn’t even know it.
It seems that way… Well Maybe if I’d STANNED LOONA I’d not have had this problem
Y’all know I don’t really vibe on K-pop too heavy but…
While engaged in a conversation in which it was shared that two significant characters from The Expanse shared initials, and in trying to find a different song that seemed to have the lyrics “jam jam” (that I heard in some kind of mashup mixtape) I came across this:
Might be old hat to some of y’all but, it’s probably one of the best k-pop (or adjacent) things I’ve heard by this point. It’s a jaaaam.
IU is an extremely famous singer, songwriter, and actress in South Korea, but mostly unknown elsewhere. If she released an album the same time as BTS, she would probably beat them on their domestic charts, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to Koreans. You should listen to all her work.
Her career started out sad. Then she did some cute KPop girly stuff. Then she became a broadway musical. Then she grew up, even though she’s still only 26, and was big enough to take creative control into her own hands.
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KPop companies running out of content to post. JYP dug into his archives to post this one showing how he wrote the legendary Wonder Girls song, “So Hot”.
And here’s the finished product.