After School on Amnesty Week
Dec. 14th, 2010 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotThe Singles Jukebox, which is by far the best review site I see regularly,* has just started its second annual Amnesty Week: each of the regular writers nominates a favorite single that hasn't yet gotten a Jukebox review, and then we all review the nominees. Lots of good stuff; I've already awarded one 9, with two or three more to come, which surpasses the combined total from the rest of my Jukebox year.
Reviews of After School's "Bang!" are up, so you can see what I wrote there; but also I'd sent the reviewers an advance email to (in Will's words) "suggest to yr fellow writers why your nomination is worth a listen":
I nominated After School's "Bang!" which is a bunch of young idol-factory women playing toy soldier. This speaks for itself, if you know Korean and understand Korea. Or maybe Koreans are as baffled by it as I am and like being intrigued. The group are supposedly modeled after the Pussycat Dolls for their "matured and sexy concept," if you buy that. I wonder if this track sounds as violent to its prime K-pop audience as it does to me, violently bright - hip-hop and r&b shined up into an aggressively playful hardness. Then they go stunningly dreamy and gorgeous in the middle eight, and then shift right back to the violent shine.
Actually, for someone to write about, I'd have chosen E.via, who's from outside the idol factories and is deliberately trying to fuck with us and gets banned from TV and has many more good songs than After School does; but her best track isn't quite as good as their best track. If you want more context, there's DJ DOC, who like E.via are from "real" hip-hop, sometimes with a Latin tinge (also like E.via), and in their comeback vid run mocking parodies of K-pop attire, including After School's. And there's 2NE1, a tough-girl counterpart to After School, with a comprehensible four members rather than After School's crowded eight. But there's also Orange Caramel, three members of After School on a lark, with an immature and sexy concept, who among other things cover M2M. And finally there's teen heartthrob IU who sings the warm and sweet pop you'd expect, except when she's barnstorming TV and radio talk shows with her strong acoustic guitar and playing idol-factory songs with a naked forceful beauty the originals lack. She could become Korea's Taylor Swift, if she or her advisors weren't intent on her being nice.
*Also the only review site I see regularly, but there's good reason to look regularly.
Reviews of After School's "Bang!" are up, so you can see what I wrote there; but also I'd sent the reviewers an advance email to (in Will's words) "suggest to yr fellow writers why your nomination is worth a listen":
I nominated After School's "Bang!" which is a bunch of young idol-factory women playing toy soldier. This speaks for itself, if you know Korean and understand Korea. Or maybe Koreans are as baffled by it as I am and like being intrigued. The group are supposedly modeled after the Pussycat Dolls for their "matured and sexy concept," if you buy that. I wonder if this track sounds as violent to its prime K-pop audience as it does to me, violently bright - hip-hop and r&b shined up into an aggressively playful hardness. Then they go stunningly dreamy and gorgeous in the middle eight, and then shift right back to the violent shine.
Actually, for someone to write about, I'd have chosen E.via, who's from outside the idol factories and is deliberately trying to fuck with us and gets banned from TV and has many more good songs than After School does; but her best track isn't quite as good as their best track. If you want more context, there's DJ DOC, who like E.via are from "real" hip-hop, sometimes with a Latin tinge (also like E.via), and in their comeback vid run mocking parodies of K-pop attire, including After School's. And there's 2NE1, a tough-girl counterpart to After School, with a comprehensible four members rather than After School's crowded eight. But there's also Orange Caramel, three members of After School on a lark, with an immature and sexy concept, who among other things cover M2M. And finally there's teen heartthrob IU who sings the warm and sweet pop you'd expect, except when she's barnstorming TV and radio talk shows with her strong acoustic guitar and playing idol-factory songs with a naked forceful beauty the originals lack. She could become Korea's Taylor Swift, if she or her advisors weren't intent on her being nice.
*Also the only review site I see regularly, but there's good reason to look regularly.
