The half-real half-virtual idol group has debuted. They are clearly trying to create some kind of plotline with a digital villain and such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeerrnuLi5E
Also AKMU’s new song came out yesterday. I am liking the song, but Chan-hyuk seems to take most of the song, and Suhyun only has like a verse or so. Also, not into Chan-hyuk’s current hairstyle.
I’m digging the Mamba track.
Guess who’s back?
The first music show stage for Bread was everything we could have hoped for.
https://www.soompi.com/article/1441242wpp/melon-reveals-top-100-songs-of-past-decade-2010-2019
Melon is basically the biggest, or one of the biggest, music streaming services in Korea. This list of the top songs of the decade is mostly not surprising. As expected, it’s IU.
They passed the BTS law.
Imagine being an artist so important to your country that they make a special law to make your life specifically easier. This would be like if the US didn’t suck and they had passed the “Mohammed Ali doesn’t have to dodge the draft law.”
KPop rounding out the year with a JYP X Rain collaboration. The song is just sort of an old school hip hop dance track. Not something that’s going on the playlist, but that classic drum machine really taking me back. The choreography, or what we can see of it, is what you would expect. Very powerful moves from talented veteran dancers.
But what really makes this is the music video. The song is about about a woman who already has a boyfriend, but JYP and Rain compete with each other in trying to convince her to dump him and switch to them. Hence, the title of the track. The lengths they go through in the video to impress her, and especially the end of the video are hilarious. Just watch it once all the way to the end.
I can tell I’m getting old because the camera moves in that video make me motion sick.
Don’t watch any KPop videos older than the late 2000s. They loved to do really ridiculous camera stuff, especially spinning it around really quickly. Makes you feel like you took a ride on the Round-Up.
I’m normally okay with spinning and zooming. But this one was tracking in and and out and bobbing up and down. It’s the bobbing that got me.
SM Entertainment held an free online concert featuring many/most of their active artists. It had 35.8 million viewers. That’s > 1/3 of a Super Bowl.
Oh boy, a lot of stuff is going on in KPop land.
GOT7 is leaving JYP, and probably just breaking up. GOT7 had 7 members, and I guess it lasted for 7 years. The only KPop group to put a number in the group name and not screw it up. With what information we have, it definitely seems like a messy breakup. The members were clearly not happy with the company. It’s kind of sad because it really seemed like the members were close with each other, and they were reasonably successful. They also had a few songs I really liked over the years. Looking forward to see what my boy Wang Jackson does next.
At the same time, legendary JYP boy group 2PM is coming back. The final member is going to finish their military service soon, and they’re just going to go for it. Put your hands up!
IZ*ONE’s contract is almost over, but there are rumors they might renew and go longer. That would be a first for Produce groups. Speaking of produce, that show is dead because of scandals. MNet promised they wouldn’t do more shows like that, but of course they lied.
Chungah is coming with a full album soon, so watch out for that.
IU is coming with a full album soon. The first pre-release single will come out in a couple weeks. Expect every other musical act in Korea to hide under the covers until IU gets out of the way.
To round it out, Yubin released a new single today called PERFUME. I don’t know if the track is technically synthwave, but it has that same feel and aesthetic. I can’t say I’m going to listen to it that much, I just think Yubin is really cool. She doesn’t care that she’s not as popular as Sunmi or other Wonder Girls members. Doesn’t care that none of her songs have been huge hits. But since Wonder Girls ended, she just keeps steadily releasing 1 or 2 songs a year, and now she even runs her own independent company.
What a big day in KPop.
I think I’ve talked about this before, but there’s a thing called VLive. The idea is this. You’re a KPop group. Sure, you have a large presence on social media like Twitter, Youtube, etc. to get the mass audience. But it’s hard to really closely interact with your actual fan club. People who are really really into you want more content than you can put out on the global platforms.
NAVER (the South Korean Google, effectively) made a site called VLive. It still exists, for now. On that site, the only people who can post content are approved KPop groups/stars/shows, etc. It’s sort of a YouTube/Twitch/Instagram kind of thing where they can either upload videos to their channel or stream live, and then the video becomes recorded. And they go hard on subtitling in several languages to hit that world audience. You can also pay money to get access to even more exclusive content from your fav group.
VLive is successful, and BTS was on there. Then one day BigHit (the BTS company) is like, nah, we gonna do our own thing. When you’re the number one game in town, you can do that sort of thing. They made a new site called WeVerse. WeVerse is even more. Imagine going to a site that is Instagram and Twitter and YouTube, but absolutely all the content is posted by members of your favorite group. Because this site had BTS, and features that VLive doesn’t, have they became successful. BigHit has also launched and purchased other KPop labels and added their artists to WeVerse. They’ve also made deals with other artists to get them on WeVerse, and it’s a thing.
Today, there were two huge newses. One is that Naver is basically giving VLive to BigHit and they’re probably going to just combine it all into WeVerse. That’s huge. Do you know any other record labels that are also tech companies making software? Like, imagine if Netflix signed some singer/songwriters to Netflix records. Or if Universal Music were the ones to invent Facebook.
The second related news is this.
For the time I was a KPop fan SM, YG, and JYP were the big three KPop companies, and then some mid-tier ones like Cube, and then all the rest. BigHit is now undisputed number one. JYP and SM are still extremely strong, although JYP has strengthened and SM has slightly weakened. YG has simultaneously strengthened and weakened. Their combination of success, with BLACKPINK, and dysfunction, with a lot of other things, makes it hard to figure out where they are at right now.
YG didn’t merge with or get bought by BigHit, but they are making a partnership with them, and that’s gotta be scary for SM/JYP. BLACKPINK going to WeVerse is just the start. At the very least, this could be a huge power grab. It’s one thing to be beholden to YouTube, a separate company that your competitors also have to deal with on the same footing. It’s another thing if your groups have to promote on this service that your competitors owns and their groups are on there as well.
So if all that wasn’t enough KPop news. IU is back to turn the music charts to cinders. This isn’t even her actual full album release. It’s just a pre-release single to get you hyped for the real deal. It’s already number 1 on every Korean chart. Honestly, it’s kinda meh, especially for IU. But that doesn’t matter. At least within South Korea, IU could hit record and just look at a microphone for 3 minutes without opening her mouth, and the track would be a hit. Still excited for the full album, though.
I know I talked about this several times, but seriously. IU is is really something else. Just look at this shit
The red line disappears because it is literally off the chart. 210 points, ALL KILL. The next most popular song has 103. It’s a song by 10CM if anyone is interested.
Something interesting has happened, though. Other people are actually releasing music right now even though they have little hope of charting well or getting a lot of play. Let’s take some time to highlight them.
First I want to mention a group I learned about recently. It’s a boy group named MCND. They aren’t actually new, they have several releases. It’s just that their release a few weeks back brought them to my attention. The title track “Crush” is a lot of fun and made me their fan. Looking forward to next time they come around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-4Z21Lar2Y
I’d be extremely remiss if I did not mention that Dreamcatcher has come back with a new song “Odd Eye”. It’s a bit different aesthetically than their previous songs, opting for more futuristic/cyberpunky visuals instead of the more fantasy stylings. It still features their signature hard rock/pop/metalish anime opener song style, but puts a pretty good spin on it to keep things interesting. They can just keep this up forever as far as I’m concerned, and I won’t tire of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QD0FeZyDtQ
Next let’s review, there was a legendary KPop group at SM named TVXQ(DBSK). It had 5 members and was a big deal. There was big drama with 3 of the members, leaving only Changmin and Yunho to carry the group on. Carry on they did releasing both group and solo work over the years. Since their military service ended they have been sporadically active. And now Yunho has released a solo track named “Eeny Meeny” and his label-mate Red Velvet’s Seulgi appears in the music video. It’s pretty good! That’s not something I can honestly say about all of TVXQ’s music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gvbKJYWaRA
Last, but most, we have the KPop legend Hyuna.
For those who haven’t paid attention. Hyuna’s career goes like this. First she was in Wonder Girls, but then left for reasons when the group was very new. Wonder Girls went on to become a legendary group without her. Later she came back as part of 4Minute, but also was a successful solo artist. During that time you may recognize her as the girl from the Gangnam style music video. Eventually 4Minute collapsed, and she was the only one to renew her contract with Cube. However, it was discovered that she was dating Dawn (named E’Dawn at the time) who was a member of Pentagon (another group at the same company). Cube ended up giving both of them the boot. So both of them ended up signing new contracts at Psy’s company PNation. Hyuna was going to release some music a little while ago, but had to delay it for health reasons. Well, now it’s here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yXEnhyOTQo
There’s not much to say about this song. It’s classic Hyuna. Definitely an older KPop sound, reminiscent of 5-10 years ago. I believe the technical term for it is banger.
Spotify went live in South Korea today.
Will it pose a real threat to their existing services like Melon?
Let’s talk about more KPop problems. This one was big enough to get mentioned on CNN.
It’s true that ignorance plays a big part in how this keeps happening, but that’s an explanation, not an excuse. KPop, especially boy groups, frequently use militaristic imagery and fashion in their concepts. Often the aesthetic leaves a bad taste in my mouth, even if it isn’t explicitly fascist.
Here the situation seems to be that they were doing an event in a German-themed cafe of some kind, and took a photo with a mannequin that was wearing a nazi uniform. You can see it on the Internet easily if you are curious.
This kind of inexcusable ignorance goes both ways as well. You can’t not draw a straight line between this incident and when Tiffany of Girl’s Generation (who is from California) used a snapchat filter reminiscent of the emperial Japanese flag.
In also somewhat related news, here’s a great piece from Seoul Beats, which is probably the best English language KPop site, discussing Hyuna’s new music video I posted above, and some its problematic orientalist aspects.
A lesson I’ve definitely learned over the past several years is that it’s fine to take in things from other cultures, if those people are dishing it out. If someone sets up a food stand from country X, go ahead and partake! Someone posts a recipe for food from culture Z? Go ahead and try to cook it at home!
But if you’re on the creative side, making artwork, producing content, stick to sharing your own culture. KPop often incorporates Korean culture very well, and does it a great service. But just as often, they appropriate other cultures, and it’s rarely to great effect.
What? MTV airing music?
Sorry to bring down the mood a bit, but it’s worth understanding the context of the conditions that created kpop and the state of it (circa 2017)
I know Scott already knows this but I didn’t know everything here, there’s a surprising amount of Korean history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8LxORztUWY&feature=youtu.be
This is generally accurate, but lots of it is exaggerated, out of date, or over-simplified. It also commits the common white guy crime of taking some facts, drawing conclusions that reasonably logically follow from those facts, and then presenting those conclusions as also facts when they may not be. There are also several important details that are left out because they are covering so much material in just one short video.
They did link to their sources and post some corrections in the comments, so that’s good. They’re trying.
If you are really interested in this topic, I do recommend reading the book that is referenced several times in the video.
I don’t remember a book from the video…
It’s called The History, Development, and Future of Kpop and the Korean Music Industry
By: Hannah Waitt
And I have no idea how to go about reading it.
