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After School on Amnesty Week
The 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.
Lyrics to Bang!
http://thegrandnarrative.com/2010/06/08/bang-after-school-lyrics-translation/
Cheers!
Re: Lyrics to Bang!
I tried to link you over in the Singles Jukebox comments, but for some reason the Jukebox won't take your links. Here's what I wrote (but I've added links here for anyone who wants to look, and I urge everyone to):
A fellow named James Turnbull (an ESL teacher living in Korea) googled onto my livejournal and linked me his very detailed and fascinating translation and explanation of the lyrics to "Bang!" His blog, The Grand Narrative, looks to be a treasure trove: "Korean Sociology Through Gender, Advertising and Popular Culture." Two points he makes on his about page: (1) he says that South Korea has a virtual gender apartheid: "the largest wage gap between men and women in the OECD; the lowest percentage of working women in the OECD; and actresses being sued by companies they endorse for coming public about being beaten by their husbands"; (2) he considers generational markers in South Korea as being as important as racial markers are in the U.S., and "not only do [advertising and popular culture] best represent and capture the uniquely fleeting Korean zeitgeist that I'm so in love with, but with young Koreans' parents' experiences often being so irrelevant to their own then they provide a source of identity for them that shouldn't be underestimated either." [Me: I don't see how generational markers can work like racial markers, but I don't live in Korea.]
As for After School, he says that he originally translated line three, which literally goes "prettiness-only-(having)-you-more-more-(than) No! No! No!," as "you have no more than your prettiness," then found a better attempt at an NME (!) site, "All you do is being pretty, no more No! No! No!," and finally came up with "You only being pretty, no longer." I don't see how you can leave out the "No! No! No!" so I'd go with the second, though maybe make it, "All you do is look pretty, nothing more. No! No! No!" - i.e., the "No! No! No! telling you that now's the time to do more than just be pretty, with the next line suggesting that throwing yourself into the music is a path to being more; though I do like the second site's suggestion that being pretty is something you do. And looking at the literal translation, maybe it's in effect saying, "Prettiness only? You're more than that, so No! No! No!"
I also recommend that you scroll down Turnbull's thread to Miso's comments: "CL the leader and main rapper of 2NE1 is the self proclaimed 'baddest female'. I've witnessed on Korean websites the absurdity of some polls and most of the time she doesn't even make the top 3 in terms of 'badassity'. 4 Minute is a good example of how the audience expects this type of groups to put in the leader position the member with 'baddest.'" So I gather that After School is also playing with being bad. Miso thinks that After School's spinoff group Orange Caramel allows the younger members (late teens and early twenties) to dance around in cat ears and stuff without the members in their older twenties being implicated. (I myself emphatically do not know how to make sense of Orange Caramel.)
Re: Lyrics to Bang!
Re: Lyrics to Bang!
Here's what I wrote (emphasis added, and so is a missing quotation mark):
I don't see how you can leave out the "No! No! No!" so I'd go with the second, though maybe make it, "All you do is look pretty, nothing more. No! No! No!" - i.e., the "No! No! No!" telling you that now's the time to do more than just be pretty, with the next line suggesting that throwing yourself into the music is a path to being more; though I do like the second site's suggestion that being pretty is something you do. And looking at the literal translation, maybe it's in effect saying, "Prettiness only? You're more than that, so No! No! No!"
Btw, my guess is that one reason Turnbull is doing all this translating (he translates many songs) is to strengthen his understanding of Korean, so the translation posts are explorations in such understanding.
Re: Lyrics to Bang!
"All you do is be pretty" would work just as well, and keep the being concept in there, I think.
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but the physical edition is nicely done and can be bought on YesAsia or other stores.
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0042J64YG/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&qid=1292436457&sr=1-1&condition=new
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Why they need another member is beyond me, but when they do - why not get a show-off?
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