Been a long time since I posted in this thread. There have been quite a few KPop releases in June, but nothing that really caught my attention that much. The biggest was probably the years in the making return of my boys 2PM. But their new song just isn’t a banger, and their choreography isn’t even that exciting. That said, the music video is excellent. See for yourself.
The Aespa song from May is still high up on the charts, but it does nothing for me musically speaking. I do still love their cyber concept, though.
Everyone’s fav MAMAMOO came back, but it’s a ballad song that didn’t excite. There’s some confusion as to whether this is a sort of goodbye song since 3 of the members re-upped their contracts, but one is going elsewhere. They do say she’ll still continue to participate in some MAMAMOO activities like concerts, MVs, etc.
Tayeon came back with a new single today. It’s ok. Music video has nice colors. She’s supposedly going to be on music shows for the first time in many years, so that’s exciting.
There’s apparently a small time group I only heard of recently called Pink Fantasy. It seems like they are doing the same hard rock anime opener stylings you see from Dreamcatcher. The only reason I mention them is because they have a hidden member who always wears a mask. It’s eerily reminiscent of the anime ODDTAXI that we will talk about on the next Wednesday show of GeekNights.
We already talked about how Brave Girls were saved from the brink of disbandment in EXID fashion by the sudden virality of their hit song Rollin’. Well, they released a new song to keep things, well, rolling. It has a very summer styling. It’s ok, but it doesn’t grab me.
Instead, the summer vibes of this song just give me nostalgia for the days of SISTAR. It’s been four years already. It’s just not summer without SISTAR. Let’s just go back and listen to SISTAR.
AKMU’s next album is coming in a couple weeks. It’s a collaboration album. Each track is “with” (perhaps different from featuring?) another artist.
IU on the title track alone is already an absolute game over. Even BTS probably couldn’t chart #1 against such a song, and I can safely say this having not heard a single note of the song.
But on top of that, you’ve got Lee Sunhee, Zion.T, Beenzino, Jannabi, Crush, and Sam Kim. It’s absolutely stacked. This is like, KPop dream team here. It won’t be surprising if all 7 tracks take the top 7 spots on the chart and stay there until autumn.
What a video. I don’t know if it’s a song you put in your playlist and put on repeat, but it’s a music video that’s going to have long term staying power.
If anyone doesn’t know Lee Sunhee, since she isn’t exactly a huge deal KPop wise, she is a HUGE deal in South Korea just as a singer. That said, despite the “with” designation, she really does just feature on this song with a few lines in the middle verse.
#2 is Aespa’s Next Level. How is that song so popular? I don’t get this song at all. In case I didn’t link it above already, here it is (possibly again).
More shocking, after 8 years CL appeared on a Korean music show. Check the fancam view.
Overall, not an exciting episode. Lots of comebacks, but most were meh. Red Velvet won. Did I forget to mention they came back? This is their first for real comeback since Wendy’s injury.
Also of note, Girls Planet 999 is on. It’s the new Produce 101, without calling it Produce. I’m mostly interested because Tiffany and Sunmi are on it as “KPop Masters”
Another show also started on MNet called “Street Woman Fighter” which is a dance competition show. Might check that out.
aespa is back again. They are really pushing it with the cyber concept. I love cyber shit, but this is just so campy and corny that it really turns me off. They’re just so in your face with all kinds of lore and bad CG.
As for the music, yet again this does nothing for me. What kind of song is this? Their other song Next Level hit me the same way, but this is even worse somehow. Of course, that song was a hit, and this probably will be too?
EVERGLOW is much better at having a cyber-ish aesthetic and also having music I will intentionally add to my playlist.
Meanwhile my boy WOODZ is out with a new song, and it’s terrific. Don’t sleep on this guy. I really think he’s going places.
HUGE CW on this music video: lots of suicidal imagery and such. If that’s a problem, I still encourage you to go listen to the song without the video. Or maybe even wait for him to perform on a music show. I doubt his dance performance will need a CW.
There’s a long history of KPop songs and music videos that are also advertisements. Girls Generation with the jeans and the Intel processors, Orange Caramel with the bingsu, and more.
Just now Sunmi dropped a new music video that is definitely a KIA commercial, and possibly a League of Legends thing also. Wow, what a department store music banger. I think this is the highest bpm song she’s ever done.
CL is back for real this time. Look at how much she can deliver when she finally got out of YG. Her former companies really were holding her back for all those years.
Every year the KPop reddit does a very well run demographic survey of its members. Obviously you have to remember that this data is representative of only a self-selected sample of the KPop fandom, and that it’s just a Google form. But it does get a fairly large response rate, and that subsample is one of the largest KPop fan communities outside of South Korea. Even if you are aware of the data’s flaws, the results are definitely eye-opening.
A new group just appeared named bugAboo with a debut and title track of the same name. Though well executed, the song, dance, and aesthetic are very standard KPop for 2021. I don’t see anything to make them stand out from any other group. So why were they worth posting about in this thread?
First off, the leader of this group is Kim Choyeon. The fire eyeball Kim Choyeon from Produce 48, who I was rooting for, but did not even come close to winning. Though we do know that the vote was literally rigged, it’s unlikely she would have won with a legitimate vote. What I can say is that if you watch the show, you can clearly see that even years ago she was more talented than many of her peers. You can see on the show the other girls coming to her for help, because they can recognize she knows what she’s doing even if the voting audience does not.
You’ll also notice she comes alone from A Team entertainment, which was, and still is, a very small company. They have a handful of artists, including the boy group VAV, but bugAboo is their first girl group. What’s notable is that the CEO of that company is Ryan Jhun. Ryan is a producer who has written a very large number of top hit KPop songs over the past decade. The dude is an absolute hit machine.
The last thing that caught my attention is that despite the forgettable song, the mixing on the audio track is unbelievable. They did something very unusual for 2021. The vocals are extremely clear and way way forward. At least to my ear it’s even to a greater extent than with other vocal-centric acts like MAMAMOO. Not only that, but the chorus is very old style. None of that 2021 pure instrumental chorus here. They sing the whole chorus and sing a good portion of it in unison.
For now they’re still a small unpopular group, and are likely to remain that way. But if Ryan gives them a hit song, and they get the necessary luck, they could suddenly become a big deal at any moment. That’s true for just about any group, but I think they pretty much have everything but luck and money stacked in their favor, and they just started.
What’s most interesting is that, at a glance, that data seems to line up with every (or even any) large “very online” community. At least several demographic parts do.
Adele is very popular in South Korea, and a lot of the world for that matter. MBC, one of the three major broadcasters in Korea released this teaser image.
Suddenly a rumor spread that Adele would appear on MBC Show! Music Core. Sadly, it turned out to be false. The teaser is for some other Adele thing. If it had been true, that would have been a huge deal. There have been non-Korean people performing on music shows, but they were always part of groups or acts that were actively promoting in Korea. The only time a worldwide famous act appears on those shows is if they are a KPop act like BTS.
The other exception would be be the special end of year shows where occasionally they might pay to bring in just one huge star. I’m always reminded of the time we were supposed to see Wiz Khalifa and Tayeon duet stage, but it failed in a pool of drama.
Anyway, what I really want to share is that this Adele rumor unearthed a legend. The obvious questions started getting asked. I’ve never seen a mega-star on a KPop music show, but did it ever happen and I just missed it? If it did happen, who was it? When?
The answer is:
Lady Gaga was on M Countdown in 2009, before I knew anything about KPop. Enjoy.
