J-Pop #1: Younha

To balance out all that K-Pop here's a dose of J-Pop for you. Some of you may recognize this song as one of the ending songs for Bleach (back when it was good). It was so good they made it the opening theme song for a while, too.

I love the piano in here. (^___^)

Younha - ほうき星
====OR====
Grooveshark link

Oh snaps, I didn't realize she sang a Korean version, too! Uhh... does this mean I just maintained the imbalance? (___- -)7 Woops.



She's actually Korean by birth. How interesting. I didn't know her at all! (^_^)

K-Pop #6: Covers

Remember what I said about the dances being a big part of the 'songs' as a whole? It's pretty amazing how far and wide K-Pop has spread. People in countries way out, far from S. Korea show their love with dance covers like these:



Speaking of dance covers, check out some of this talent for Rainism.

It makes me smile to see the fun go beyond borders and even language barriers.
Case in point! => There was actually a dance cover contest for the 2NE1's single "I AM THE BEST" and the submissions came from all over the world. If you have some time to kill, take a look at these videos.

France. Vietnam (the contest winners). Singapore. USA. Thailand. Japan.

K-Pop #5: Legendary Dances

The videos wouldn't embed so I had to use all links instead. (T_T)

Speaking of K-Pop dances and popularity, here's a very nice video from one of the YouTube channels I'm subscribed to, Simon and Martina.

At the time of this post the most popular comment, with 317 (O_O)-b's:
"seriously 2008 was the best kpop year....all the legendary songs were out then".
Not wrong. That statement is not wrong.

For ease of access, here's the list of songs they reference:

Jewelry - One More Time

TVXQ - Mirotic (See last post for this vid (O_<))

Rain - Rainism This is one of the most famous K-Pop performances, even today.

Uhm Jung Hwa feat. T.O.P. - D.I.S.C.O

Big Bang - Lies (One of my personal favorites)

Wonder Girls - Nobody


Wonder Girls - So Hot

Lee Hyori - U-Go-Girl

And the song over the credits is Sunset Glow by the way. Just so you know.

Enjoy the musics.

K-Pop #4: Dance

Remember what I said about K-Pop being unabashedly commercial? The spirit of the genre is to entertain and this is something they do very well. One consequence of this is the prevalence of Singles over Albums. Every year dozens of new groups debut and/or disband, making so-called 'one-hit wonders' de rigueur. It is what it is though, I for one don't lament the realities of the industry as they are and I don't have a contemptuous attitude towards the different way they do things. The continuously changing field of artists makes it extremely interesting to watch and read about, something I used to do often.

You remember such classic hits as this and this? The catchy tunes in conjunction with the music video and dance routine doubtless helped to cement them as classics of the pop genre. I call them classics of pop because that is what they are, regardless of whether you actually like the songs or not. For K-Pop artists the dances and/or music videos of their singles are considered almost as important as the songs themselves. A lot of the staying power for these songs comes from the memorable dances and this isn't lost on the creative minds behind the music. That's one thing I miss about those pop days. You don't get a lot of those intricate dance numbers making the videos anymore. This is one reason I think Beyonce's Single Ladies got so much attention. Alongside "...Baby One More Time" I don't think it would have stuck out so much because it wouldn't have been the only video to be comprised of dance routine. To be sure there are still dance routines in MVs but they don't make the videos. For example, take Lady Gaga's Telephone. It has a dance routine, sure, but it didn't draw specific attention. No one talks about it, praises it, or associates the dance with the song. It's just...there.
Not so with many of the hit K-Pop songs. Years later, these movements still evoke the song they came out with. Not to mention the hordes of talented fans you'll find on YouTube who upload dance covers for them. It's really quite awe inspiring to see so much fun coming out of this. And if you have a problem with fun... well, I don't know that we can be friends any more.... ~~(/>▂<)/

Observe, for your viewing pleasure, one of the best to have graced the stage:

Of particular note is the sway @2:00.


That group right there is TVXQ, the very same group that sang "'O' Jung Ban Hap", my first touch with K-Pop. In retrospect it makes perfect sense that this be so; TVXQ's fanbase is massive. Fun fact: the group has made the Guinness Book of Records twice, first in 2008 for having the largest official fan club in the world and subsequently in 2009 for being the world's most photographed celebrity group.

K-Pop #3: Sold

So the LCD on my Sansa broke and I've pulled out my Zen X-FI. Man, that Sansa's been with me since 1st year of uni. Check out the commercial that sold me hahahaha.



(⌐ ⌐◡)7

The Zen has a lot of K-Pop I didn't put on the Sansa though, so there's been a lot of rediscovery going on today.

K-Pop #2: Favorite

And I've returned to the present!! Yeah, that's five posts in one day but don't cry for me, Bloggertopia. That's a weekend of posts I couldn't write due to lack of computer access. (^____^)7

Here's my favorite K-Pop song of them all. I happened to find it shortly after I really got into this musical genre:



It just sounds so happy. Incidentally, Big Bang was the second group I encountered, after TVXQ, but they became and remained my favorite.

As you know, I don't understand the lyrics but, while this may be a blight (or a slight) on pop music in general, that really isn't important for enjoying it.

K-Pop #1: The Beginning

Posting for Wednesday, 8/17. Yep, I'm on a roll here, chasing the gap!
~~( O__O)>"

Speaking of chasing, here's one of my favorite poems.

I saw a man pursuing the horizon
By Stephen Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never — "

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.
_________________________________________

There it is. Man, short and soo poignant. I've actually shown this to some people and they say something to the effect of, "I admire him, chasing after his dreams no matter what." To this I just stare like so. (⌐⌐_) They completely missed the point about blindness and close-mindedness.

ANYHOO, that really didn't have anything to do with this post but I didn't want to make a separate one.

On to the main point: Korean pop music, or, as I call it: K-Pop. Unless your circle of interest is stubbornly regional you will have heard something about this. The spread of Korean entertainment, otherwise known as the Korean wave or Hallyu, didn't stop in Asia. While it's still burgeoning in North America it has a definite hold. K-Pop has a plethora of detractors and they're entitled to their opinions. One of their complaints is that K-Pop is extremely manufactured. This is true. And this is one thing I do not begrudge the genre. It is unabashedly and openly commercial. You know how you hear music fans, and not just hipsters, bemoan their idols "selling out"? Throwing away their deep musical hearts and selling their complex musical souls for mainstream success and fat stacks?
Yeah, well, catchy music sells and nobody embraces that like K-Pop. You know how Lady Gaga songs are catchy? I'm one of those people who scoff at her fans' talk of 'pioneering' and 'revolutionary' musicality. I know what she looked like before her mainstream success and I'll tell you now, she wasn't born this way. Google search [lady gaga pre-fame] and you'll find it.
At this point you might be cringing in horror thinking, "A genre of Lady Gaga-esque music?" *reaches for noose*
I'd say stay your hand good sir! The good thing about K-Pop is that it is so prolific. There's bound to be a track in there that is so damn catchy you'll like it. I mean, really, LOOK AT IT'S FANBASE! It's spread all over the world and I'll be damned- no, you'll be damned if you really think all those fans actually understand Korean hahahaha. K-Pop is so catchy it's gotten everywhere based on that quality alone.

Admittedly, I don't check allkpop.com everyday anymore like I used to, but I still listen to some good tracks that came out a few years back. I'll go about giving out doses of my favorites here in subsequent K-Pop #X posts.

If you're new to K-Pop, well hahahaha. I hate to do this, but I have to warn you to that the industry- No wait, this applies to the American pop scene too. Anyway, auto-tune has gotten out of hand. It's in almost everything. But if you can look past that then you should give it a chance. No, really. Look past it. As in, look up older songs. Hallyu hasn't passed it's "heyday" or anything like that, it's just that if you are like me, you prefer not to have every syllable auto-tuned.

What better song to put in the inaugural K-Pop post than the song that actually got me into the genre in the first place! Actually, that is a story in itself. My first taste of K-Pop passed me by. I wasn't even aware of it when I heard the song. I just knew I liked the sound. (That actually perfectly describes the mechanism by which K-Pop spreads lol) It was at the end of a particularly well-made Anime Music Video. The original has since been deleted but here's a lower quality copy I found:



The snippet of the song comes after the credits.

The creator of the original video is still around and here's a stand-alone copy of that signature sequence:



As you can hear, that segment didn't actually contain any lyrics so I couldn't know its origin. I dug a little bit and, once again, like-minded weirdos like me posted questions about the clip, against all odds of being answered, and we were rewarded. The snippet came from a Korean song called "O 正.反.合" (a.k.a. "O - Jung Ban Hap") by a group called DBSK (a.k.a. TVXQ). Hehe. Not to be a hipster or anything but I encountered this song before the Korean Wave really hit the U.S.

Here is the music video for the song itself:



I don't know if any of you guys out there (⌐⌐_) (_¬¬) are the type to scrutinize this closely but this song IS a lot older than 2009. I won't go into the messy details but the company S.M. Entertainment reuploaded all the videos between Nov. 23-25 of that year.

Memories gone by

Speaking of memories got me thinking back to some earlier times with an earlier person....

I lent my camera to a friend but he really sucked at taking pics. They all turned out blurry. I liked this one though. It breaks us down into mere shapes of colors.