KPop - aka Only Scott Cares - aka Not as Good as Metal

Music
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Hey, can you guess what was the most watched YouTube video in all of South Korean in 2021 (so far)?

The obvious guess might be the music video for Butter by BTS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMweEpGlu_U

As of right now it has over 640 million views. That’s a lot of views. It’s absolutely the most watched YouTube video produced by South Korea in 2021. However, what if we only count views that came from within South Korea? But is it still number one?

Obviously I wouldn’t be asking that question if the answer was yes. If you only count views that came from within South Korea, the most viewed YouTube video in 2021 was this. It’s just IU singing portions of songs from throughout her career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDfqXR_5yyQ

If you have been paying attention to this thread, you know the power of IU, but this is the starkest example I’ve come across. She is absolutely dominant. She just doesn’t have the international appeal. I think it’s largely a result of capitalism. There is a literally ARMY of BTS fans who shell out big money around the world to see them. Even if IU has fans around the world, there aren’t raving throngs that are going to give her a Beatles style welcome throwing money around and controlling all of Twitter to promote her. She’s just doing her thing.

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1996

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEWp29VaSA0

1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udTfbgydspY

2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H69tJmsgd9I

Apparently BoA had a hand on the production of this new one. I believe it because it absolutely sounds like her style.

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What’s the story here. How Nylon Beat got turned to a k-pop song. Which seemingly was popular enough for a cover in this year.

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The story is that the '90s hip hop style is big in KPop right now. Just look at this.

I also think it’s at least somewhat rare for a hit song to have multiple covers that are also all hits. Anecdotally the thing I see more often is an original recording of a song not being a hit, and then just one cover ends up becoming the definitive version everyone remembers, never to be replaced.

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Oh My Girl is a really good group. I like them a lot. They have a lot of talent, their discography ranges from ok to terrific, and their personalities are really entertaining.

After a sentence like that, you must know that something is coming. They have a new song out called “Shark.” This is one of the first KPop songs by a pretty big group that has actively repulsed me. If I had a worst enemy I would inflict this song upon them. It’s a boring sort of normal KPop song until you get to the chorus in which the vocals are nails on a chalkboard bad.

The entire song is out on the streaming services, but the music video isn’t ready yet. However, they did release a 2 minute music video preview (the full song runs for a terrifying 3:23). The preview is plenty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7wv1DIWBgs

You want a Christmas present? Here have some really really bad music.

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Big end of year stages and we are not disappointed with the amount of shenanigans.

First we had MNet Asian Music Awards (MAMA). Not many exciting stages, but they had Ed Sheeran? The only significance was the finale where the dancers from Street Woman Fighter (SWF) performed with Lee Hyori. SWF was really the highlight of the year for MNet, and perhaps all of KPop. It’s another trash MNet competition show, but it really shined a lot of attention on the dancers and choreographers who actually make KPop work. It also did a great job of showing that while idols can learn a dance and perform it well, this is what actual professional dancers are like (much better).

The KBS Song Festival was also kinda meh. The only really exciting special stage was this one where 9 current idols got together to perform a classic Girls Generation song. But it wasn’t even a remix or a rearrangement, just a straight cover. Not a lot of creativity from KBS.

Just yesterday we had the MBC Gayo Daejejeon. What they lacked in quality they made up for in quantity. Also, they were the only one to have NORAZO.

So after all the normal ones we got two new situations that are going into separate comments.

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First new situation, SMTOWN. For years SM has held special concerts and released special albums under the name SMTOWN. When all the SM artists come together to perform special group stages you won’t see anywhere else. Imagine if all the artists under like, UMG, got together for one mega concert every year.

This year the concert was digital, obviously. They decided to tie the concert into the lore they are building. Yes, that’s right, lore. Much like the Marvel Universe SM is going all in on the SM Culture Universe (SMCU). I can’t explain much of this lore, but it involves a separate world known as KWANGYA where the Aes are from. It all ties into the group Aespa and the Black Mamba is the bad guy or some shit?

Anyway, for this concert they actually went all in on this lore. All their artists boarded the SMCU express train to KWANGYA station. Then they posted a video of each group arriving at the station and unpacking their luggage. See example here:

Then the SMTOWN concert itself was performed in KWANGYA, which makes sense because it’s a cyberworld of sorts. It was a one shot live stream yesterday. They streamed it everywhere also, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, you could see it on every platform. It’s offline now, but lots of people recorded it. I’m sure there will be ways to see it for anyone who wants to see it. They also had a separate behind the scenes stream. Not leaving it up for infinite free rewatches was really the only thing they did wrong.

Lots of performances from every active SM artist in various combinations. But the biggest deal with the biggest hype was project Girls On Top. The new group in that project named GOT: the beat consisted of the top SM idol girls from across 4 generations. BoA, Tayeon, Hyoyeon, Wendy, Suelgi, Karine and Winter. This is basically the counterpart to SuperM, the SM All-Star boy lineup. They performed a new song called Step Back. The video of that one performance does have an official upload.

The talent and song are legendary. My first impression was that this did not disappoint at all.

But then I read the comments. Normally I don’t care about lyrics, but apparently the lyrics to this song are misogynist AF. That’ss really disappointing considering how KPop groups have been doing empowerment songs for at least the past decade. At this very same concert BoA performed WOMAN, so it’s a really stark contrast.

This also shines light on another problem in that this song was produced by Ryan Jhun. He’s made a lot of legendary KPop hits. Really amazing songwriter. But this isn’t his first brush with misogyny. This makes me worried for the group BugABoo which I may have talked about above? They’re the first girl group under Ryan’s company A Team Entertainment.

Hoping this isn’t the last we see of GOT: the beat and that their next song can just be a legendary banger without the problems.

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Last up, we have another situation. The DFESTA.

It’s the 10th anniversary of Dispatch. Dispatch is sort of like, the TMZ of KPop. An army of paparazzi that stalk and dig up all the dirt on KPop idols. As you might expect, they sit in this really questionable zone. On the one hand they publish news that KPop fans love to read as they have actual juicy gossip in the extremely tight-lipped world of KPop. On the other hand, they are often really dirty and underhanded. Stalking celebrities and having questionable journalistic ethics.

So for their 10th anniversary they are having a concert, the DFESTA. The lineup is NU’EST, BTS, SEVENTEEN, Twice, NCT 127, NCT DREAM, Stray Kids, TXT, ENHYPEN.

It’s notable that BTS is currently on vacation, but somehow recorded a performance for this? Twice and a few of these other groups did not perform at any of the other end of year concerts. But they came out for the Dispatch one???

This has a lot of fans stirring up the conspiracy theory pot. People are starting to make up lots of rumors such as “Does Dispatch have dirt on all these groups, and is therefore blackmailing them into performing at this?”

Obviously that’s all tabloid trash. But one thing is very true and that it is highly suspect when you see victims (KPop groups) cooperating with their abuser (Dispatch).

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Wow, NME published a feature on YUKIKA, who I believe I have mentioned before.

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Perusing the KPop releases I saw that this came out yesterday.

I had never heard of this person before. While not bad, there’s nothing particularly special going on here. It feels like someone is doing an impersonation of Rain (the KPop star, not the weather), only isn’t as good at dancing as Rain is.

But anyway, I did some research, and I’m glad I did. This person has the stage name of KOM. Apparently they are a member of a group known as N.O.M. That stands for Nature of Man. I never heard of the group before, so I looked up what their deal was.

OH BOY. N.O.M is incredible. This appears to be their best work.

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Over a decade ago at the Girls’ Generation 2011 tour, Kim Taeyeon had a solo stage with a song titled “Devil’s Cry”. I don’t know if it’s a cover or something. It was paired with the Girls’ Generation song “Run Devil Run” as they basically had the same lyrics about telling the devil to run. To my knowledge it was not released on a single or album other than the live concert recording.

Bonus: You can see just how packed a SNSD concert is in 2011.

Anyway, it was one of the few times Taeyeon was a vocalist for a hard rock song.

Until today with her new single “Can’t Control Myself” which doesn’t go nearly as hard as Devil’s Cry, but it still suits her very very well.

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I haven’t seen a boy group release of note in awhile. Some EXO member just got out of the military, maybe that will get them back into action? Also, there are some unbelievable rumblings coming from BIGBANG which could be very exciting. It’s basically been six years between the military and the Seungri scandal biz.

As for things that did get released, let’s talk about Produce 101 again. If you haven’t read anything previously in this thread, there was a competition/reality series where a large pool of trainees were narrowed down by rigged fan votes into a final group that got a limited contract. The second girl group from those shows was IZONE. Despite having a longer limited contract, it did come to an end last year. I wasn’t really into them. However, I got a surprise last month when one of the former IZONE members, Choi Yena debuted as a soloist. The first time I heard the song I thought it was fun, if formulaic. But it’s really grown on me. It’s also doing pretty well, considering the circumstances. Music video is fun as well.

Ok, what got released recently. First we’ve got VIVIZ, the “experienced rookies.” After GFriend ended, three of the members went their separate ways. The other three reformed under a newish company with seemingly deep pockets called “Big Planet Made” (BPM, get it?). So even though this is a debut, these are people with 7 years of idol experience. The first song is a fun one with some interesting quirks to it. Pretty strong. I think their future releases will be much more interesting to keep an eye on, though.

What’s this? Yep, even more releases from old groups. We had a long stretch where there was nothing but debuts every week. New groups just coming out of our ears. Now we have nothing but veterans.

Tayeon with the full album release.

And Apink, which is an 11 year old group already!, coming back as well.

Not huge on these title tracks, but the full albums have more going on. I appreciate even though one of the APink members (Naeun, who you may remember from PSY’s music video for “New Face”) left to another company, she still managed to participate in this release. I don’t think she is involved in all of the promotions, but she hasn’t left the group entirely, which is nice to see. I don’t think before a few years ago anyone had thought APink was going to be the group from their generation that lasted the longest.

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So JYP has a new group called NMIXX. They just debuted and…

This song is being almost universally panned. Some people are even saying it’s the worst they’ve heard.

I mean, what even is this? It’s like someone took a pile of songs, cut a small piece off of each one and pasted them together end to end. There’s no cohesion. Nothing to unify them in any way. Groups often release album teasers that contain a short clip of each song on the album. You could have told me this was an album teaser and not a music video, and I would believe it. The thing has a lot of views, but that’s because it’s from a big company and people can’t look away from a train wreck.

There is precedence for disjointed songs like this in KPop. The first time it was a big deal was SNSD’s “I Got a Boy” (IGAB), which has a legendary status despite not being hugely popular.

The difference here is that the seemingly unrelated parts of the song actually go together. IGAB introduces seemingly unrelated and disjointed musical themes, but at the end it brings all of them into the mix at once. Proving to the listener that what appeared to be a mess was indeed a song.

NMIXX O.O does no such thing.

In other news, Queendom season 2 is coming, and the groups have been announced. Brave Girls, Cosmic Girls (WJSN), Kep1er, LOONA, Hyolyn, and VIVIZ. Of course I’m in the VIVIZ (the half of GFriend that is left) camp, but I don’t know if they can win. Hyolyn has more talent in her pinky than all these groups combined. Also, Brave Girls, while not that good, are riding high on a popularity boom.

They released a teaser video with host Taeyeon.

Lastly, BTOB came back. It’s just one of those ballady songs that people like to fill up their albums with. I just like to see that these guys are still working together even though Ilhoon’s career got ended just because of some weed.

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That US Eurovision ripoff is happening, American Song Contest on NBC. I have no hopes for it preserving the spirit of Eurovision. However, there has been a very interesting development.

KPop start AleXa, mentioned previously in this thread, will be representing her home state of… Oklahoma??? I knew she was from the US, but I didn’t know that XD

I like her a lot, but I don’t know if I would support someone representing Oklahoma, no matter who they were. How will other KPop fans feel about it? Even more interesting, how will Oklahomans who become fans of this show feel about her? Will she perform her existing songs or new songs?

I can say this. If people vote based on talent I think she at least has a shot. I don’t know who is representing any other state, but I would expect some places, like maybe New York, to send someone with professional Broadway theater level of talent. AleXa can sing really well, but she’ll definitely lose to such a person in the vocal department. I don’t know how many states will be able to put forward an all around talent who has the stage presence, singing, dancing, and rapping of someone who received KPop training, and that’s to her advantage.

I’m almost definitely not going to watch this song contest, but I’m 100% sure I’ll learn from the Internet what the results are.

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The Eurovision Song Contest only allows for songs written for the contest, not previous hits from the performer.

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I know that, but like I said, the US version of anything can not be trusted.

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A new group has appeared! They are TEMPEST.

They have 7 members, which is a reasonable number. Many/most (all?) of them are contestants from various competition shows. They are from Yue Hua company, which is a Chinese company that also is the home of EVERGLOW and some others. The initial debut date for TEMPEST kept getting pushed back because the members got COVID. Thankfully they were able to debut in time, because so many big time acts are about to drop new music, and brand new groups will stand no chance of getting any attention.

Their debut album isn’t really anything super incredible. It’s all perfectly in line with the standard KPop formula. That said, it is really fun. It reminds me a lot of the music Seventeen was doing when they were new. Just some dudes having a ton of fun on stage. That particular exciting and energetic style has gone out of favor lately. MCND is the only other boy group I’ve seen doing it recently.

I can’t say I’m a TEMPEST fan yet, but I’ll definitely be paying attention to their future releases.

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Jay Park has a looong history in the KPop world. It’s so much I can’t even start to get into it. You can read his Wikipedia if you want to know too much.

But anyway, he’s got a new song out featuring, of course, IU. The song is ok. It’s not a song I would add to playlist, but of course it’s charting very well in SK.

What I do love is the official music video. A+ and also a great example of 2020s style meta storytelling.

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I found a Korean YouTube channel today. It’s been around for about a year. One of the video series they do is “find the phony”. They’ll have 5 people sit in a room separated by barriers. All 5 people presumably have something in common. They’re all gym rats, they’re all teenagers, they’re all rappers, etc. Everyone will have a phone and talk in a group chat. Various questions are asked and answered, but also free discussion. The goal is to vote and find the one person out of 5 who is faking it.

But more recently they have stepped up their game, with YouTube masterpieces like this.

Four fangirls who are specifically fans of SHINEE member Kim “Key” Kibum are in there along with, of course, Key himself. He pretends to be a fangirl of himself and yeah, this is top tier YouTube even if you don’t know or care about who he is.

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EMERGENCY SITUATION

BIGBANG is actually coming back. OMG.