The Mysterious Joy of Kpop

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14 year-old me would likely arrange to have present-day me quietly thrown into a gorge. My brittle teenage mind that had just begun to cultivate a personality oscillating between discomfort and revulsion with American consumer culture as experienced by my fellow upper middle-classmates didn’t have the mental tools to process the idea of an adult me who would get true happiness from mass-produced consumer pop music. From Korea.

It took almost a year after my boyfriend first showed me a music video, “Nobody” by Wonder Girls, before I took the bait. I was a serious person, after all, with serious taste in designer earhole stimulants. Fast-forward to me trawling the Gaon top 30 every week and spreading the gospel of Girls Generation (make you feel the heat) to my friends. While I’ve been haunting the periphery of the American fandom devoted to Japanese comics, cartoons, food, history, toys, etc. I haven’t found a scene of any analogous size and scope for Korean culture. What a shame! I admit to a touch of troubling exoticism in my enthusiasm. When I use the power of the internet to ask them, plenty of Koreans have told me they find K-pop just as annoying as the Backstreet Boys. I am a white American fan who speaks maybe six words of Korean and can’t decipher Hangul yet, so I don’t understand any of the lyrics as they are sung to me (I’m also a death metal fan, so this is not unusual). I do get a funny feeling when I hear those ebullient diphthongs “niga dagaogi maneul barae / eoseo naege / wa nal deryeo ga jebal (wishing that you would come close / come to me now / please take me with you)*.”

To me, much of Kpop resembles an off-kilter version of music I rejected in the early 2000s, maybe what could have been. Korean music was mostly either traditional or Trot until 1992 when Seo Taiji Boys puzzled a panel of judges on a televised talent program with the concepts of hip hop and the boy band. Much of K-pop today is performed by large prefabricated groups of sometimes more than a dozen fussily styled members. Often one of them is designated to contribute various rap breakdowns scattered throughout each song. Difficult choreographed dancing is a really, really, big deal. Music videos always look very expensive and involve rapid costume changes in a weird empty white room, or rapid costume changes in a multi-colored Missy Elliot-style nightmarish puzzle dimension. Not every member is chosen for their singing ability, and people are refreshingly candid about this.

Like I said, this all sounds like a twisted throwback to the boy and girl groups no one in their heart of hearts truly misses. The thing is, Kpop is blowing up. It’s a global phenomenon, and Korean producers like JY Park (Wonder Girls, Miss A) are taking bold aim at insular American pop charts. The Wonder Girls’ “Nobody” was the first Korean single to crack the Billboard top 100 ever, bolstered by their opening slot on a Jonas Bros. tour in 2009. They have their own made for TV movie on Teen Nick. Competing powerhouse Girls’ Generation, who have two American members, recently performed on Letterman promoting their new single with (asinine) English lyrics.  There’s no telling whether American audiences will bite in large numbers.

In speculating about Korean music’s prospects in the US, I wrestle with my hip instinct to crow about how I knew about all of this K-pop business before it was on the tastemaker blogs’ radar. Also present and accounted for is the urge to contrast Korean aspirations  with those of the Japanese, whose biggest hit in the American market was Kyu Sakamoto’s “Ue O Muite Aruko” at a fluke #1 for three weeks in 1963. I’m not remotely qualified to comment with authority on any of the above. I will briefly note that Korean groups are working with Diplo (the producer miraculously capable of coaxing good music out of Usher), while a new sensation in Japan is Hatsune Miku, a holographic projection, which I should have seen coming a mile away (let’s be honest, I did see it coming. I first saw Macross Plus a decade ago, but that was cartoons, people). If different markets ask different things from their pop performers, or their pop moe holograms then it’s not my place to pass judgment.

Korean producers have proven rapidly adaptable in appropriating the bells and whistles of American and European pop music – autotune, dubstep-style bass drops, that stupid chirping square-wave noise LMFAO has been using – into their artists’ repertoire. The tone of the charts ricochets between hyper-cutesy bubblegum, hard-edge sex danger and syrupy ballads. Lots and lots and lots of goddamned ballads.

I’ve fallen hard for the boisterously feminine groove of Girls’ Generation’s “Gee” and the demented tonal shifts wedged into Davichi’s “8282” and “Time Please Stop.” IU is capable of twee grandeur. 2NE1 provided the anthem for my inner bad bitch. Boyfriend is cute. Super Junior is hot. Wonder Girls’ “Be my Baby” is pure, unrestrained bliss. The music triggers involuntary nostalgia and packages familiar hip hop and R&B melodies to a sophisticated, hopped-up electronic dance beat, but still the music is fresh, playful, at a slight remove from dreary American pop, which prattles on about the club, invoking an hour-long line for the washroom.

K-pop artists go through rigorous training for years while I mime along to the dancing at home in my spare time. The cadence of Korean is pleasant and unfamiliar, but most of all, so is the world of these confident, insanely stylish, physically fit performers. There is a transparent element of escapism in my appreciation for the dancing, which is more often than not stunning. Sometimes I want to watch a group dance, other times I want to be the one dancing like that. Am I going through some creepy quarter-life crisis, reliving my teen years as if I were worshiping Miss A instead of the devil? Loving K-pop is helping me sort out how I experience my own gender queering, and I’m healthier and happier now than I ever was before I tried the green eggs. It’s a dismal world that asks people to logically explain why a certain music makes them feel good. There’s just something special about it. Probably the visors.

 

 

*That translation/romanization comes from youtube users Ffusionnz and TheKpopSubber3.

21 thoughts on “The Mysterious Joy of Kpop”

  1. This is an almost perfect articulation of my own recent fascination with and enjoyment of K (and J) pop. The teenage self that would have firmly rejected it, the admitted underlying (and somewhat troubling) exoticism, etc…I identify with your views very strongly.

  2. Kpop has this kind of driving, frantic pulse to it… personally I think it’s because censorship laws in Korea forbid mentions of sex or drugs in the lyrics, and the performers are rigidly sex-segregated and policed for any kind of inappropriate behavior (or perhaps their companies just have really good image control). Mania is pretty much the only kind of euphoria left to pop music on those circumstances, LOL, and it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy with the groups in competition to see who can make the most energetic music.

    I like these kind of subversive kpop groups, like Brown Eyed Girls, e.via and Big Bang, who try to sneak a little bit (or a lot) of sex in with their euphoric beats, personally XD. This is pretty much a group ecstatic experience. (I apologize for subjecting you all to that with no warning. Here’s the warning: 30,000 hysteric fans and orgasm shouting on the chorus.) (I had to close the window because I still have work to do today.)

    My enjoyment of groups like these, also T-ara and Super Junior who take the “manic” concept just that bit further until it doesn’t look like it’s that much fun anymore, lol, is complicated by the fact that you can see the performers suffering for their art… although, at the same time, it is a path they have chosen. Hmmm. Well, my enjoyment is complicated, we’ll just say.

    Anyway, this is not so different from US pop lol, but it does lack the cynicism of US pop. Whether that’s because the image is tailored to only present the upside (a fantasy of love without heartbreak), or because, as a friend of mine said, Korea hasn’t become cynical about corporations or corporate products yet (considering even a couple generations ago, lots of Korean people were starving and the corporations are responsible for the economic boom), I don’t know… I will point out that there’s a lot of money in kpop in the moment, as it’s the pop music for all of Southeast Asia. Lots of kpop bands working with top name American producers etc. US pop music is just emerging from a period of being quite lazy/low budget, but the level of everything in Kpop is high, from the styling to the production to the talent (it’s expensive to groom people for years who might not even catch on with the audience, after all…) I really like that kpop doesn’t hide the strings – there’s this myth in the US of artists emerging with fully formed personas from the earth – in kpop, if you aren’t told the names of all the stylists and songwriters, it’s in the interests of not introducing too many “characters”, not because there is anything to hide. Also, the indie scene is kinda anemic in Korea (or so I have heard – there is an underground rap scene though) so a lot of genuine talent goes into pop, or such is my understanding.

    Anyway, there’s my kpop 2 cents. A lot of it is excellently produced but quite simple musically, though… here’s some music I like recently:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M896Pgq421E Brown Eyed Girls solo projects all great
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my1TUuprnog Cover of a TVXQ song, also a “real” band
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JS6j10x-QM#! Girls declaring dominance. With Big Bang winning some international awards and SHINee back in the charts, we’re in the era of Angsty Boy Bands now, but I kinda miss this phase of kpop. Speaking of…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=202hiiMHGl4 LOL this is EXACTLY what I thought of when I heard this song! There are a lot of really good kpop mashup and cover acts on YTube. Let me know if you are interested, I could drop links all day >_>
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIizbOf2A28 Forever the best summer jam
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgIG4sbxBaM Funny thing about this song is that it has that relaxed reggae sound, but the strings are still full of tension – it’s like this weird hybrid of reggae and kpop

    And on the simple but effective side:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ4O_2AATlk People make fun of the English in this song but it is so sticky! >_> Literally, this has been stuck in my head all day
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8VRaGe3Cqs It’s not that I think this is a good song, it’s that I admire how syncronized they are with their dancing and singing… also, it’s rare for kpop groups to do any vocal harmony with each other – generally it’s just the same voice doubled or tripled up – so I really appreciate the groups that do this. (as for why they don’t, it’s probably because most kpop groups aren’t songwriters and you need to understand music to do harmony right.)

  4. subdee: i should have taken an opportunity to shoehorn a link to the new Shinee song. That shit is next level. I’m glad you included a link to the dance version of the video too. I’ve been listening to it on repreattttttt

  5. XD No problem!

    Looking over my first comment, that fourth paragraph is way too clunky. If I could redo the comment, I’d break it up into one paragraph talking about production values/attention to detail (particularly visuals) compared to the US; and one paragraph talking about what I like about the Kpop fandom, which is that it

    1) There’s lots of really good mashups, covers, remixes, and MV reenactments on Ytube alongside the original videos – in fact kpop itself does MV reenactments when they do “stages” or carefully staged TV performances to promote the single;

    2) Fans openly discuss the machine that promotes the music at the same time as they discuss the idols who perform it (and sometimes the songwriters that make it);

    3) Fans say they have a “bias” for a certain group or singer, e.g. “Key from SHINee is my bias” (he is not, for the record). There’s an open acknowledgment that music taste is subjective and that different groups are created to appeal to different segments of the pop audience (following the observation of a friend of mine, that you have to want, want to be, or identify with an artist in order to really like him/her).

    Anyway maybe it’s just because it’s foreign music you can only find if you look for it on the internet, but the level of discussion is actually pretty high XD.

  6. Pingback: Recommended Reading – April 6th, 2012 | Idolminded

  8. And may I ask why it is particularly insane compared to the rest of the videos.

    Michael: In speculating about Korean music’s prospects in the US, I wrestle with my hip instinct to crow about how I knew about all of this K-pop business before it was on the tastemaker blogs’ radar.

    I can’t see K-Pop succeeding in the U.S.. The market is really too insular for this kind of thing. K-Pop has made some headway in easier markets in Asia but it’s probably still not as big as American music or Chinese music (in the local markets). From my distant perspective, I don’t even think it’s as huge as the Japanese invasion of the 80s to 90s (Momoe to Seiko to Akina etc.). But the numbers may tell a different story.

    Korean drama, on the other hand, is huge. A true phenomenon that has seeped through much of middle-class Asian society. Virtually killed off Japanese drama in foreign markets. And there’s lots of similarities in marketing – recycled stories, medium to low budget, interchangeable stars, very female friendly and yet truly chauvinistic in parts etc.

  9. Suat: I agree that K-pop has little chance of broad success in the US, and will probably remain in the thrall of the small and devoted fandom it already has, with reliable shows in the cities with large-ish Korean enclaves of LA, New York, Chicago and Atlanta.

    K drama does nothing for me.

  10. Noah: “I am the best” is THE K-pop song for people who don’t really like k-pop. Everybody likes that one.

  11. K drama does little for me as well but in this instance I must be counted among the heathens. My Name is Kim Sam Soon is sort of entertaining though.

    The Mnet Asian Music Awards (a Korean thing) were held in Macau (China) in 2010 and Singapore in 2011. So they’re definitely trying to work their way through Asia.

  12. The thing kdramas and kpop songs have in common is that they are often transparently – but often nevertheless effectively – emotionally manipulative. They don’t really make any bones about the fact that they are out to make you feel a certain way.

  15. You want to crow about how “hip” you are because you discovered K-pop? Really? You just discovered french fries, pal. Korean french fries, sure. But they’re still french fries.

  18. Erp… meant to write “rock, folk, and funk heritage”. Although I am sure it was fun, too.

  19. Norm: Always looking for a more details about Korean music, especially indie music. Thanks for the links!

    Steve: pfffffffft.

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