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Some videos, 2009
I had an ongoing list of videos I liked, then back in May I forgot to keep up with it, so here are some vids from early '09. For further viewing pleasure visit Kat's tumblr.
Will Young "Let It Go": Superhero in his mind, life doesn't cooperate, he tries to adapt. The song hadn't hit me on the album: the chord changes seemed to acquiesce too easily, turned this into a "nice" song while the voice was trying to do something sadder. The video delivers what the music alone couldn't. Will is precisely accurate as the would-be boisterous drunk, flashes of jollity and rage, ultimate defeat, while the bouncers are giving him the old heave-ho.
Untouchable ft. Hwa Young "Tell Me Why":![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
petronia wrote, "What I'm getting is that the 'interrogation scene' takes place in the head of the male protagonist. His fiancée rejected him, fell into an obvious deep depression and attempted/committed suicide in such a way as to make it seem the relationship was the problem (tearing up photos, etc.), except the guy was basically blindsided - so the rest of the vid is a reification of his warring emotions of anger and confusion (TELL ME WHY YOU DID THIS TO ME) and helplessness at not being able to save the Korean Sylvia Plath from herself (stuck on the balcony watching the proceedings). Why he had to call in a pop group to aid him in the effort I don't know though - presumably Untouchable speak to his emotions during this difficult period in his life?"
The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain "I'm On A Boat"
Enrique Iglesias ft. Ciara "Takin' Back My Love": Modernist design elements become subject and object of "action painting" approach to rearranging apartment.
Nikki Awesome "You Say (It Was Supposed To Be)"
Timberlee f. Tosh "Heels"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Zero"
Britney Spears "If You Seek Amy"
Taylor Swift "White Horse"
Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
And here's a recent one, "Caesar" by I Blåme Coco ft. Robyn [EDIT: well, this was taken down, and if there's (another?) copy of the music video I can't find it so here's the track but no mv]:
Will Young "Let It Go": Superhero in his mind, life doesn't cooperate, he tries to adapt. The song hadn't hit me on the album: the chord changes seemed to acquiesce too easily, turned this into a "nice" song while the voice was trying to do something sadder. The video delivers what the music alone couldn't. Will is precisely accurate as the would-be boisterous drunk, flashes of jollity and rage, ultimate defeat, while the bouncers are giving him the old heave-ho.
Untouchable ft. Hwa Young "Tell Me Why":
petronia wrote, "What I'm getting is that the 'interrogation scene' takes place in the head of the male protagonist. His fiancée rejected him, fell into an obvious deep depression and attempted/committed suicide in such a way as to make it seem the relationship was the problem (tearing up photos, etc.), except the guy was basically blindsided - so the rest of the vid is a reification of his warring emotions of anger and confusion (TELL ME WHY YOU DID THIS TO ME) and helplessness at not being able to save the Korean Sylvia Plath from herself (stuck on the balcony watching the proceedings). Why he had to call in a pop group to aid him in the effort I don't know though - presumably Untouchable speak to his emotions during this difficult period in his life?"The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain "I'm On A Boat"
Enrique Iglesias ft. Ciara "Takin' Back My Love": Modernist design elements become subject and object of "action painting" approach to rearranging apartment.
Nikki Awesome "You Say (It Was Supposed To Be)"
Timberlee f. Tosh "Heels"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Zero"
Britney Spears "If You Seek Amy"
Taylor Swift "White Horse"
Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
And here's a recent one, "Caesar" by I Blåme Coco ft. Robyn [EDIT: well, this was taken down, and if there's (another?) copy of the music video I can't find it so here's the track but no mv]:
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Oh hmm, I like this one better, actually, and it makes the stylistic progression more apparent/natural.
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(Anonymous) 2010-01-02 05:34 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
And that is my knowledge in full.
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when you step back and think of the fact that these nine 19-20 year olds have been 'in training' for many years under the rule of their big scary company*, finally debuted with perfectly rehearsed dance steps, all live together in their flat and seem to be herded through seven tv performances each week (similar to many k-pop groups, though some of them have more than 9 members!), it's a wonder that they all seem so... relaxed, comfortable, personable and, dare I say it, even reflected. they do other things -- one is frequently seen acting in dramas, one djs a radio show, others have their own projects. not at all the doll characters they inhabit in Gee. I said once that SNSD were infinitely captivating as people, and that their music fell short of being as interesting, but lately I've come around to the music as well.
tl;dr version: my one year of being into korean pop, youtube-hopping subbed korean entertainment, reading and poring over every detail, has been an excercise in confronting prejudices, tearing many down, gaining a few new ones (mainly about fans).. and has probably left me as full of questions as before. The power of finding an odd, catchy pop tune. a highly recommended study, anyway.
(*in this case SM Entertainment, and I still haven't decided on whether they are scary or not. they're big, and there are differing opinions about them everywhere. speaking english, a lot of my info is based on fans translating. Here are the two SNSD diaspora members promoting a US event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEodX3-O8-c)
(Sorry for the digression)
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I wonder if you could tell me what you think is going on in the melodies. They seem Westernized to me, though I'm not schooled enough in Asian melody to really know what I'd mean by non-Westernized. But despite being Westernized, they don't seem to match with the melodies that actually hit in the U.S. and Britain and Europe, and the difference in melody... whatever it is... is a barrier to my engaging immediately with what I hear of Korean popular music. Of course, I realize that there is a range of melodies, just as there is in U.S. popular music. And I haven't heard enough of the Korean to even know what the range is. (And I wouldn't say I could explain what's going on in the melodies of Euro-American pop, even.)
Don't apologize for digressing, since I don't see where you're diverging from any established topic on this thread. I did post a K-Pop video, after all.
(By the way, is "K-Pop" the right term here? And is there some Korean pop music that's emphatically not K-Pop? I mean, not counting stuff that's emphatically metal and so on, some of which I'd bet is popular if not "pop," going by what happens in other countries.)
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More common than particular artists being particularly non-k-pop is particular tracks doing particularly non-k-pop things. Like how SNSD's 'Chocolate Love' will probably sound a lot more identifiable to you than any of their other singles.
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What I can say about the Korean pop 'sound' is that it threatened to be exceedingly plagued by J-pop bubblegum pop cloning, all familiar chords, but that it in recent years has developed its own flavour. The diaspora mix of genres in K-pop than J-pop might have something to do with it. 2009s biggest song was 'Gee', which sounds distinctly non-American, and yet also distinct on its own (and if I had to attempt to describe its appeal -- it's all in the chewy consonants dotting the verses and exploding in the chorus, less about melody). Korean pop is also getting less and less interested in ballads, and the rhythmical element is indeed often in the foreground, as with Billboard-flirting BoA:
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A couple of other good recent songs, although the melody may not be what eventually lures you over to their side:
"largest boy band in the world" (-Wikipedia:
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the eurodance angle
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I don't remember much of Exodus, except that nothing else on it reached me, and I was left with the impression that she was being artier than was good for her. A little before then I'd gotten "Flavor Of Life" (which actually came several years after Exodus), which I also like, and which isn't at all arty. Feels rather '80s, a bit like the sort of ballad that would appear as a third single on an Exposé album and outsell any of the actual freestyle tracks. I really should search out more.
(Looking at Wiki I see that Utada had another U.S. album out just last May. I'd not heard of it. I've just now streamed "Come Back To Me," and it makes me shrug. Her voice is strong and deep, and there's a later sectoin where she's singing quick syllables like nu-nonmelisma-Mariah, and it's not bad to listen to but nothing jumps out as having a distinctive personality that's going to make me think I'm hearing a specific person, rather than just a not-bad r&b track.)
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"Exodus" is her worst album IMO.
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(My friend Luc Sante, who moved to New Jersey from southeast Belgium when he was ten, wrote a book I like a lot called Factory Of Facts, fundamentally about having English layered on top of his original French, though the situation - and the book - are a lot more complicated than that, given that his part of Belgium had two different, though related, languages (French and Walloon) and Belgium itself is divided by language between Flemish and French and is apparently getting more so. In any event, for a while Luc found himself thinking in English and feeling in French, to put it too simplistically. I think you'd have a lot to say on such subjects. Also, are you familiar with Alex Ostroff, who posts on the Jukebox and on ilX (also has a livejournal that he doesn't use much)? He lives in your city; and among other languages he knows Spanish, and he's been telling us what is going on in "Loba" that's not going on in "She Wolf."
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Thanks for the book rec! I'll check it out. I was in Belgium in 2005 (my uncle's family is based in Antwerp) and in the Flemish regions it's way easier to find someone who speaks English than someone who speaks French. Which would have seemed weird to me if I didn't live in Quebec (Belgium is the only place in the world more hung up on language divides that's not actually engaged in civil war).
I do arithmetic and handle phone numbers in Chinese. But apparently there's a scientific reason for that: the human brain remembers syllables rather than digits, and the Mandarin Chinese 1-100 counting system is both perfectly regular and one syllable per digit, making it easier to do basic mental math.
I know who Alex is from ILM, and I think we've had exactly one exchange on LJ (and I've forgotten what his LJ name is XD;). I sometimes wonder if I've actually met him, though, since we go to a lot of the same shows, and often I'd actually check ILM for his opinion on something I'd missed.
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I haven't followed Wonder Girls attempt much, but #76 for 'Nobody' isn't THAT bad. If SNSD try to do the same I'd heavily suggest simply translating 'Gee' -- based on anecdotal evidence most people who I'd never thought would like it are fascinated and nothing really sounds remotely like it on US radio. With pop making a return to Billboard, it seems like a safer choice than rnb pandering.
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She can't go back to that sound, because it sounds irretrievably late 90s; and the sound that she moved toward in the 00s and that has been most artistically fruitful for her is definitely not a U.S. mainstream sort of thing. (Electronic, frequently two-steppy.)
She married the guy who directed these videos, and one sort of suspects the breakup songs on This Is The One are about their divorce, which lends stuff like "Come Back To Me" more interest (she never used to write breakup songs).
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Two Western pop songs that sound very "Asian pop":
Madonna, "Taka A Bow"
Lady Gaga, "Love Mail"
Oddly enough lots of African music (Malian folk for one) is pentatonic and sounds weirdly indistinguishable to me from Chinese folk music, allowing for instrumentation. When I listen to Amadou and Mariam I find it difficult not to start riffing lyrics in Chinese.
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The only Malian musician I know anything about is Ali Farka Touré, and interestingly he did go blues a bit, playing some John Lee Hooker boogie (though without the 12-bar progression); also recorded with Irish traditionalists the Chieftans, iirc.
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As a child I was exposed to much more traditional Western classical music than to blues, rock, or non-vocal jazz. Whatever it is, is also something a lot of "easy listening" pop doesn't do - 60s girl groups, Carpenters, Belle and Sebastian.
The chorus of "Love Mail" is very folk but the verse melody sounds a lot like contemporary C-pop as well. In fact the whole thing sounds so familiar it may be cribbed off some Cantopop hit - I even find it difficult to parse in English.
Amadou and Mariam also play blues guitar, although again without the 12-bar (that I've heard).
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I obviously don't know the relevant music theory, but that part (without the re or the la) does seem characteristically east Asian.
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What's happening in the left hand of "Love Mail" chord-wise is very similar to what's happening in this, which is the #1 track relevant to this discussion that makes me wish I had more theory so I can understand how it's made to work. But then again it's also what's going on in The Gossip's "Heavy Cross", as well as a billion other tracks. (And just by itself it doesn't sound "Asian" to me, it sounds "dubby".)
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Also, what I would not call K-pop: stuff by Clazziquai, Cherry Filter, My Aunt Mary, and getting more out into the "indie" zone, Tearliner, Casker. (Using "indie" less in the sense of genre and more in the sense of produced by independent labels.) Well, this is disputable because K-pop itself is a diasporan/non-Korean term, but none of the groups I named have the sound of the major bands and solo artist that dominate the industry. orienkorean's Youtube channel has a lot of Korean groups that deviate from the typical K-pop sound though in some ways, they may come across as sounding even more Western.
I actually consider most R&B-style Korean artists to fall under K-pop; it's not "of late" because it's been going back for a while and many of those artists have been quite influential on the major bands/artists of today. See Brown Eyes, who were incredibly popular while I was growing up; Se7en is also fairly "old-school K-pop" in my opinion. (He dates back to my high school/early college years.)
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Seo Taiji is really, really oldschool K-pop and he's been going in a completely different direction these days, but his later albums was what finally got me listening to K-pop after an adolescence of resisting it (I grew up in a Korean immigrant community, so I was surrounded by K-pop whether I liked it or not). Back then, what was popular was H.O.T., S.E.S., Brown Eyes, FinKL, and a little later, Bi and Fly to the Sky.
My latest favorite Korean groups are Apls (electronic group that can't make up its mind about what style it wants to be) and Bluedawn (which has already dissolved and become a new group)--I wouldn't call either of these K-pop though.
Oh and I just read the other referenced thread, and from my admittedly not-at-all representative experience, most of the differences in marketing the big SM groups is age. E.g. Super Junior is extremely popular among the elementary to middle school crowd, though obviously they have older fans too. I think SNSD also tends to be associated with younger female fans and Wonder Girls with older; not so sure if the age difference extends to male fans though. I would argue that the major class difference in listening preferences would be how much American/Western music you listen to, though sample size is too small to be positive on this.
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Are most people aware Taylor Swift is smart and complicated? Is her cleanliness excused or is it an appeal in itself? Although I suppose in the electro pop market personalities such as Lady Gaga set a certain tone for what's hot, which is the outrageous. SNSDs latest single 'Genie' is more in line with the dirty electropop, both sonically and in presentation, but again the question is if they'd want to copy the successes or try to stand out. The gimmick of having nine members combined with an almost gimmicky catchphrase of GEE GEE GEE BABY BABY BABY is in my opinion the best shot at grabbing headlines*. Not murky electro, not smooth rnb, and while their hip hop infused stuff is unique I don't see it catching on outside of their context.
I'm not sure if they ever should try, from a business perspective, or if it could ever work.. I just think it's interesting to speculate on what tricks Asian stars could potentially grab American/European listeners' attention with. And as an armchair pr pundit I don't think those who have tried have emptied all possibilities.
* I should note that it's possibly my favorite single of 2009, coloring my advice. But it's created pages long threads on various pop cynical forums (not in any way related to asian culture appreciation), which is the reason I started listening more closely to it anyway.
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(Anonymous) 2010-01-08 09:33 am (UTC)(link)This year there was much talk about the ‘girl group craze’. If there is no problem about it, I’m going to post a list with some of my favourite tracks (meaning repeated listenings, didn’t care much about ‘quality’ or anything and the order also didn’t mean anything, a favourite of mine is JQT) because, anyway if I try to expose my opinion I’m going to use them as examples, ‘Gee’, ‘Genie’ and ‘Wanna’ mentioned above so:
Kara “Mr.”
4 Minute “Muzik”
2NE1 “Fire”/ “I Don’t Care”
f(x) “La Cha Ta”
JQT “I Fell For You”
4Tomorrow “Tomorrow”
Brown Eyed Girls “Abracadabra”
T-ara "Bo peep Bo peep"
Rainbow “Gossip Girl”
HAM “T.T Dance”
After School “Because of You”
I’m not sure about the ‘asian sound’ or that it is just that thing alone. Obviously there are tons of local songwriters, but you always found foreign writers penning hits (or record companies licensing those tracks from song libraries to a specific world zone). That happens in South Korea, in Japan (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090314a1.html) or in Taiwanese pop (the first two tracks I listened this year (from Elva Hsiao and Yao Yao, were written by Sweden and Italian people). Some of the tracks mentioned upthread (‘Chocolate Love’ and ‘Eat You Up” are Bloodshy & Avant productions). But ‘Genie’ it is also (http://snsdkorean.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/sms-at-it-again). But when HAM (Heart and Mind) release their first single, which I found sound very close to europop, comments on YouTube talk about how they didn’t sound Korean enough, that they sound very J-Pop.
So the new single goes in the opposite direction.
I think the ‘strangeness’ of the sound is more a mixture of things: the language, melodies and harmonies, production trends and sound traditions (the thing I like very much about those tracks is how airy the production is without falling on the ‘real thing’ cliché, how tight the sounds and textures are but also how functional, the use of the space how minimal it sounds but how ornamented and stylish without falling either in the minimal beat or baroque sounds you will find on north American or European counterparts, much of this reasoning is taken from the ‘Genie’ link above, the Ukranian version doesn’t do anything for me and I like the Korean version because of the production, how sculpted it sounds, but also for other experiences (I always talk about the electric guitar sound on mainstream Spanish productions, how weak it sounds and how it appears it the only one that the producers thinks that is ‘right’, but you can compare it also with how J-Pop sounds, how the latter is much less ‘architectural’ and tries to define more a certain kind of ‘emotiveness’ with a different approach)) and probably song grammars and styles (talking about Utada, I always thought how after she published her first record there was a Copernican turn on the R&B sound in J-Pop, just because she showed how to do their thing in a new shape where they can play their strengths without trying to imitate the original sources).
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(Anonymous) 2010-01-08 09:34 am (UTC)(link)anhh