koganbot | Korean freestyle Friday part 2: KARA and SOOLj

I don't really know, either, but then I've never knowingly listened for it.

Have you kept up with new releases during April? It seems like all the best and/or most high-profile k-pop has come this month.

Not much up on new releases at all, though I did listen to several numbers you and Maddie linked on the ilX thread; and the new After School album is playing as I type (thoughts about tracks 1 --> 5: "Let's Step Up" is a good percussive dance track, "Shampoo" is more like conditioner (i.e., too smooth), "Virgin" is an excellent moody track w/ a Mideast sound we might have gotten from Storch in the mid-'00s (I'll look for an Eng Sub version so as to find out what the words are about, though I'll do so with trepidation), "Bang!" is supposed to be a new recording, though I can't say I hear any difference right off, is still a powerhouse, and "Play Ur Love" is an r&b sex dream that seems a lot less dreamy and sexy than equivalents by, say, Ciara). Also have tried to catch up with recent Big Bang: "Tonight" is the giant of the bunch, combines the punch of GD&TOP and the group's boyband prettiness; rest are pretty disappointing on first hearing, esp. given that so many of 'em are G-Dragon's babies.

Also heard the new Lee Hyori single, which was ballad mush. But for most current music, I've basically fallen off the planet. Any suggestions?

Hyori's single is probably mush because it's a tie-in for an animal rights affair. Mostly agree about Big Bang. Disappointingly pleasant.

I disagree about Shampoo, it's sweet summer poetry. I expected something else for a lead single, took some time for it to settle. I think what's not apparent at first is how danceable it is.

I also expressed admiration for the lyrics' loyalty to its metaphor:
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The laid-back groove of it reminded me of Jessica's underrated 'Sweet Delight'

Then there's f(x), who still sound very much like f(x), and enjoyment of the song depends on how you like their character. I love it, they've got a style of delivery all of their own.
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Rainbow - To Me
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Then there's the juxtaposition of in-your-face-sexy Rania and the sickly sweet A Pink.

Went and forgot SNSD - they released their first original Japanese single. One of their safest single choices so far, but I like the bridge and the dance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN5v61brFKk

Both sides of The Rania-A Pink dichotomy seem pretty retro. Whereas I assume that for most of the girl-group women - Ga-In for instance - the either/or thing is pretty thoroughly confounded. Well, "assume" is too strong, since I still don't really know the lay of the land. E.g., I don't know what to make of the fact that IU is in the video for "The Story Only I Didn't Know" as the singer but not the protagonist; even so, IU is implicated in the video's story, in which there's a relationship between a teen or immediately post-teen girl and an older man. The video gives us no opinion as to how far the relationship went sexually, but even my typing the word "sexually" in this sentence indicates the possibility that the sex was there. Unless I'm really misreading what I'm seeing.

The point I'm making about IU isn't that she's now left the category Nice Girl, but that what "Nice Girl" means isn't determined by an old virgin-whore dichotomy that's on the ropes. (I'd say in regard to the U.S. it's well beyond being on the ropes; it's long gone. But what it's been replaced by is a lot of confusion, e.g., "slut" still being a potent insult. As for Korea, I don't know anything about its old rural culture and its old traditionalist culture, whether virgin-whore and nice girl–slut were ever the norm; and I'd wager that any country that's been occupied and batted around as much as Korea's been in the last century and a half may not simply be said to have had A Set Of Traditions. So the country may be moving from There to Here at lightning speed, but part of that may be owing to There and Here not really being clear anyway.)

And not that the Rania–A Pink dichotomy is necessarily whore-virgin. It's more like sophisticated-innocent or risky-safe or some shit - is still a conventional and unimaginative dichotomy, and an unsophisticated view of sophistication, to my mind.

Sure. I think some producers are banking on the either/or still being accepted as an interesting, though: In some article about A Pink the expressed motivation for their style was a throwback to the first k-pop girl-groups (so you're spot-on with it being retro), who were very much all innocent, all soft (in K-entertainment they've got made-up names for everything - in this case, an 'elf-like' group.) Pretty sure they talked about launching it as an opposite to the more 'provocative' groups.

Regardless of what norms and dichotomies exist in Korean society, I'd say it's pretty outdated as far as k-pop goes as well. It's Ga-In and 2NE1 the kids want, anyway. Even Orange Caramel dropped the kindergarten-angle (but what to call that? was it more complicated?) and got their biggest hit yet.

Neither A Pink nor Rania have burned up the charts so far, but these are their debut singles. Rania is actually a Teddy Riley project, and if we're to believe the PR he's had a hand in both the music and the image.

Just as an apropos to nice girl norms- "Bad Girl, Good Girl" was the biggest hit in Korea last year.

I'm sure Mr Anonymous would have a few paragraphs to say about all this.

"Bangkok City" is pure Italodisco - which is appropriate, since Orange Caramel aren't particularly expressive singers (their version of "The Day You Went Away" convinced me of that), and Italodisco is the genre that seems to flourish with ordinary voices, somehow. Still wish they were able to put a little more into the chorus, but it's a fine track.

And After School's "Virgin" gives us no answers on this, if you haven't checked the translation yet. "Now on the stage again, it feels like the first time"

I'm sure Mr Anonymous would have a few paragraphs to say about all this.

Haven't heard from annh in quite a while, unfortunately. I just now asked Iván over at http://laincreibleverdad.wordpress.com whether he's heard anything; I'll see if I get a response. I've made my livejournal settings as loose as possible to make sure that people can post anonymously, but there was a while right around the peak of the spam and DOS attacks where Livejournal's new, tight default settings were in place, so perhaps anhh tried and failed to post before I figured out that I needed to ease the settings.

(Also don't know if anhh is a Mr. or a Ms.)

Whatever Orange Caramel were doing - I don't know if we ever figured it out, really - it wasn't simple "innocence," that's for sure.

Maybe trying to understand the source they were looking themselves into could help us to understand how they misunderstood it, and then see what they were doing. This is a journal submission about maid cafes:

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue25/galbraith.htm

Maid cafes and idols are different spheres but they share common ground and lately they tend to overlap on the way practices develop in certain patterns. If “Despite the mediocre quality, prices are notably inflated. This is said to reflect the value of service. One hallmark is 'non-ability' (hijitsuryoku), the aesthetic of innocence, inexperience and imperfection. Service is taken to be personal, heartfelt and irreproducible. The narrative (or fictional context) of the café is that the maids make the dishes for their masters. The food and drink are thus said to 'have heart' (kokoro wo kometa) or be 'filled with love' (aijō wo tsumatta)”, then you can check how in this Idoling!!! MV to see how those values can be translated into an industrial model.

Not to say that groups as Passpo or Affilia Saga East sometimes had their own maid cafés in the past.

Idols are older than this, but if we accept that hypothesis that they were based on idealizations of American teenage idols from the 50’s or French singers from the 60’s, emptying those singers of their more controversial features for an inflation of their affective powers, making them approachable but not reachable, I don’t know, Justin Bieber fans can memorize every bit of data about their lives, they build knowledge (that is they create a in-built narrative that could encompass all the multiple media appearances in a meaningful way) but is always asymptotic, it never materializes in a full knowledge of the adored singer, he or she is always affecting but unknown in the end, and in this way making them distant from everyday life, the trend right now is closeness. AKB48’s motto is “Idols that you can meet”. Many of the less known groups use blogs and stream services if they lack radio or TV shows to generate some fictional space they can share with their fans to interact in closeness in a different way that they could do with CDs, MVs, cards, picture books, mobile applications, etc., or they become hyper-specific (always doing shows in determinate Tokyo districts) at the same time that they become hyper-diffuse in the way they present themselves (Momoiro Clover MVs always happen on fictional spaces or at least in those that show their artifice like a photographic studio), etc.

And is good to remember that idol music is a subculture, and that there are other “serious”(= real?) girlgroups (is just that in this moment, or since half a decade or so (since SPEED and ZONE quit), there is no one in this camp being a chart topper).

The Momoiro Clover example I cut above to fit the restrictions (the last two minutes of it are amazing by the way...)

Are Perfume counted as idols in Japan? They would be in Korea, but you introduce 'serious' girl groups as an alternative to idol groups, while in Korea all girl groups will be called idols. And Perfume come off as more 'serious' than Idoling!!! above (even if they didn't eleven years ago).

I know there's a lot more history and connotations to the term 'idol' in Japan than Korea, but I'm not sure where the line is drawn between who are and who aren't.

Several thoughts here: (1) You've moved the discussion from Korea to Japan, which among other things moves us from r&b/hip-hop-based pop to rock-based power-pop. (2) I assume until I learn otherwise that the audience for a Korean idol, whether it's a boy band or a girl group, is overwhelmingly female; of course, I'm making this assumption on the basis of the American experience, so I don't know, and of course there are fans in America who don't fall into that category (e.g., me). (3) It's hard for me to see the analogy between (i) role-playing by "maids" for customers at a maid cafe and (ii) Idols and stars making videos and songs to sell to consumers, giving concert performances, etc. (even if the performers take imagery from the maid cafes, which I doubt that Orange Caramel is doing); of course, as you say there can be online interactions between performers and fans and live events for fans. But fundamentally, music consumers use music in their own lives rather than in a special space created by the performer. And the vast majority of social interaction - or even or especially role-playing - related to music that might take people away from the rest of their social lives (as supposedly happens to the men who frequent the maid cafes) is going to be with other members of the music audience (for example, me and you and

askbask conversing online about K-pop!)* or people writing and reading fanfic or people playing stars in role-playing games online etc. And the teen who gets involved with fan clubs and such is still basically interacting with other members of the fan club, not with the Idols. So (4) neither the interaction between fan and Idol nor the interaction between fan and other fan that I've been talking about matches up with the maid cafe, which is still modeled on the basic one between male customer and bar maid, or restaurant patron and waitress, or john and prostitute. Even if there were to be a music video where the Idol performers played maids in a maid cafe, this wouldn't be at all like being a maid in an actual maid cafe. (5) It might be that the video imagery and the maid imagery have a common source (maybe in anime); I'm still guessing that the audience for the Japanese girl groups is primarily female (but as I said, that's a guess), and that the fans are not getting their feelings of intimacy from their relationship with the Idols (would be easier to get a sense of closeness with a character in a novel, I'd think). It's a difficult leap for me to draw a parallel between master (customer) and maid (waitress) on the one hand and fan (consumer) and Idol (star) on the other. I can't imagine Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber thinking of their fans as their masters. (And Taylor is someone who's worked really hard at giving the teens in her audience a sense of personal connection with her.) (6) Hard not to assume an element of comedy in a video of young women packing up hearts on an assembly line. Of course, there might be similar comedy and satire in what some of the maids at maid cafes do, but I'm guessing not. (7) Nonetheless, Japan is a place I know little about, and have never visited.

*There's a Woody Allen story where prostitutes hire themselves out not to have sex with men but to talk philosophy with them.

Let’s take Wikipedia’s crappy definition for “South Korean Idol” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_idol):

“In South Korean culture, idol(Hangul: 아이돌) are media personalities in their teens and early twenties who are considered particularly handsome or cute and who will, for a period ranging from several months to a few years, regularly appear in the mass media, e.g. as singers forK-pop groups, bit-part actors, TV personalities, models in photo spreads published in magazines, advertisements, etc”.

That is, that the only common thread for their body of work (recorded songs, movies, dramas, TV appearances, pictures, gossips, newsreels, websites, fanclubs bulletins, etc.) is themselves (or what people prefer to call it: their image, their charisma, their bodies and personalities, their essence or substance, etc.). They only become an ‘oeuvre’ for their fans, the ones trying to make any sense from a disperse array of media materials. Galbraith tries to extend the word “moe” to signify the affection that one feels for fictional characters (http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2009/Galbraith.html), is more difficult than that, but the thing that makes that one image worked by hundreds of different artists (original author, professional illustrators, fans, etc.) still have something that make you feel something for it. An idol is, depending on how concrete your definition is, an ‘image’ (you don’t interact with the real person, maybe he or she is really like that, but that doesn’t matter at all in this sense, just with their media appearances). Maybe would be better to call those zones of interaction, and say that they are not “places” just engagements with your favourite idol, but I call it like that… (Sorry if I use so much AKB as example, is where I'm wasting my time...)

Right now I’m trying to see “Documentary of AKB48 To Be Continued”, a documentary that the group released as a movie. The idea behind it was to show what happened in the life of the group, behind their public image, for a year. It starts when they worked with Shunji Iwai (he directed “Sakura no Shiori”’s MV). (This year they worked with Kore-Eda, not popular for this movie:
http://youtu.be/R2T3YkiazkM )His most famous movie is “All About Lily Chou-Chou” that turns around the fascination of teenagers for a singer.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_About_Lily_Chou-Chou):

“On April 1, 2000, Shunji Iwai went live with his internet novel, in the form of a website called Lilyholic, where he posted messages as several characters on the BBS. Readers of the novel were free to post alongside Iwai's characters and interact with each other, indeed this BBS is where some of the content from the movie comes from. After the main incident in the novel took place, posting was closed and the second phase of the novel started, about the lives of 14 year olds. (The novel is available on CD-ROM, but only in Japanese.)”

So the movie comes from the fictional website, and then they create the music of the fictional singer with some singer taking her personality to record their songs (after that she started her own career as Salyu). So the fiction made their way into reality.

The documentary itself turns around 16 interviews with some girls from the group, with some material filmed about ‘events’ (live shows, etc.) and behind those ‘events’ (rehersals, girls interacting between them, etc.). To be honest they don’t show nothing really ‘new’ because already their releases include that type of material. But there are two DVD editions: retail one (2 DVD) and special edition (4 DVD). Retail one includes the documentary itself, trailers for it and a second documentary made for NHK from the same team (almost an hour long) and a MV with the ending theme, that includes more footage with the girls working, having fun, eating and sleeping (again the routine that every fan knows they are doing everyday). The special edition contains extended versions of the interviews that were the core of the documentary (but they are not the raw materials, they share the same music and they are beautifully edited and filmed) and a couple of things more (the press conference and five girls talking and eating for 21 minutes). In a sense they are like extensions in videogames and tools for collectors. What I suppose I want to say is that there is no “inside” or “outside”, everything the idol is in is another material worthy to be sold or to be consumed by their fans. And I say the idol, not the girl or the boy who embodies it. All Aya Hirano’s fans probe me wrong, but people less or more understand that they are only interested in the fiction and how it keeps going on.

“Hard not to assume an element of comedy in a video of young women packing up hearts on an assembly line”.

That is considering it as something that is not plausible, something that doesn’t represent the real world by making it something ridicule. Making it explicit as a fiction. So then, another assembly line:

With this single, Watarirouka Hashirita became image for a campaing that include from cookies to clothes to be bought from a retail chain for Valentine’s Day. Allegedly there is a ‘tradition’ in Japan where girls make chocolate gifts for their valentines. You see that endlessly in doramas, anime, movies, etc. In reality, girls are shyer or are less interested in that so they give them to friends (usually other girls). So the girls in the video make gifts for their beloved ones (their fans) and they had to do it in an industrial scale. But then they personalize those gifts. Handwriting or drawings is a way to make them valuable (some of the typographies on AKB releases are handwritten by the girls themselves, there are also t-shirts and other gifts that they ‘design’ themselves from real collectibles to things you can buy on virtual worlds). And that is also the function of handshake events and signing events. And there are people already in jail for forging tickets for those events, so in that sense they are no joke. (http://youtu.be/y81vQfGFizk)

You can check some collectibles in this video (there are new editions of cards like those (but not those ones) almost every week…), that I always use because it has the virtue of making it not much creepy.

One of topics associated with idols is the trust relationship they make explicit with their language, messages that include “I’ll do my best” so at the end they will support his or her or look after their idols. That is another way of saying that without you, I’m nothing. Sometimes this is codified as platonic love, like in “Enkyori Poster” (http://www.kiwi-musume.com/lyrics/akb48/sakuranoshiori/enkyoriposter.html)

And the music video is as self-reflective about that as it gets:

The peaking moment is around 1:16, and then you have the POV aesthetic, the different clothes the girls show as synthesis of the consumption of different commodities (like a fashion magazine, a song or a MV) and the playful game of references about the screen space (like the ending where you see the back of the guy watching the screen as you are doing). But how other fans appropriate themselves fictions, music, images?

Taylor Swift mixing “The Scarlett Letter” with “Romeo and Juliet” to convey her inner feelings in the same way that their fans use ‘her’ to do the same.

This is an “Nobody Here” by (?) Oneohtrix Point Never. It uses a portion of “Lady in Red” by Chris de Burgh to create a new musical piece, and twist the meaning of the original song, or strip it until it shows is mere function (nobody is here because this is a recording). The entire process is quoted in the images: loops, edits, feedback, and appropriation of other visual materials. The process itself is not that far, at least in the formal side of it, to make a gif from a MV that ‘represents’ how you are feeling and posting it in a LiveJournal community.

In the wonderful “Shampoo” posted above, fiction is used to convey information about the group: that they have graduations and new generations and that there is a new girl (but is not the girl who is joining in the video) and her struggle to become a full member of the group is the dramatic start point (just easy to check the gazes that the full member gave us (full with closeness and care) to the ones that they give her) to start doing themes around anxiety and desire and fears of everyday life and how to cross the abysm between reality and how you think about yourself and what you should receive (all is full of people envisioning things, a proper dancer, love, the inside drama of a friend or how she is taking the right path to her future and also there are let’s say transcendental appearances of member in situations giving us the sensation of full knowledge, that the story is something shared and not something private, that the different facets of life, this conversation that ended bad, a new job, relationships with other people that is not your friend, could be overcome and become a new superior (to give the correct religious overtones) thing). The dance routine that she have to master to get her photo in the hall with the rest, a mere excuse over there becoming this…

“A-ing” in that sense is just about that, to become that little girl that achieves being together with those other girls in disjointed worlds that ‘magically’ (or via reification) doesn’t look like disjointed for them.

And I’m not sure where I’m now, but the way that I see it, the maid relationship is more a series of gestures and norms that make you get into a, let’s sound ridiculous, “space of possibilities”. Like listening and watching South Korean MVs make us have these conversations (I hope), or careful listening give you the chance to fully understand lyrics or musical motifs in a song from which you can extract resemblances with your own life, and things like that. Think I’m going to cut it here (I’m already on the fourth page on Word and the problem with this is that always goes on and on…), but I don’t know if this fits here (with all this dubious thing that I call “narrative”): http://gamestudies.org/1001/articles/wanenchak
To say that Perfume were idols, but right now probable are more a tecnopop unit and linking these videos from a TV show happening in a maid café (a sure choice to get a headache, starts at 4:32):

Anhh, it'll probably take me several more days before I read all of this much less get a chance to discuss it, but thank you for these posts. If you have more to post I suggest you post it by clicking "comment" rather than "reply," since our replies are now so far over to the right border that your embedded videos are getting their right halves cut off!

RnB growers from Jay Park and (2 out of 4 of) Sistar.

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Starts out gentle, finds pace with the help of heavy bass thumps, takes it down again. Pretty thrilling.

His mini-album is highly recommended.
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A slinky beat, a sexy song. I don't know to what extent I've been manipulated by the video, but like the pelvic swing in Ciara's 'Promise', once you've seen the moves they become inextricably linked with the song.

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This is even better than Abandoned

To comment on Kara, since I derailed discussion so badly - I put 'Jumping' on my 2010 list, and said that it's the kind of song Kara should release. 'Bright and lite' is what the group is, and even though they've been around since 2007 they've always come off as anonymous, without particular strong points or unique features.

Somehow they've become mega-popular in Japan. Perhaps because they've spent so much time there and feel fully Japanese to the public, more so than SNSD, but probably also because of pure crowd-pleasers like this. They're not explosive enough as performers to sell anything less bright.

For all four of the girl group tracks/groups that made my first third singles top twenty (Girl2School, Kara, Rainbow, T-ara) I'd rate their attributes as: excellent songs, excellent style, good dancing (except for Girl2School), passable singing.

Who in the current Korean girl groups would you say is special as a singer or rapper, in the way that Lee Hyori* and IU are special? Or even who are special in a group (e.g., I don't know if anyone in 2NE1 is individually special, though I do like Dara's single from 2009; but together they've got something, in the way that a classic freestyle group like the Cover Girls had something, hit me with their vocals, not just the arrangements but the basic character of the singing).

*Who began in a girl group herself.

You're being very kind to the Girl2School girls' style! Although most girl groups do. Great style, and great styling. Absolutely a part of the appeal.

I think T-ara do girl group-rapping (which is something different from hip hop rapping) better than others, and Eunjung sticks out. Often it's just talking, isn't it, but she (and they) add exciting speed and compactness. "Ma Boo" from the album you put on your list is a good example, with Hwayoung sharing the rap there. Soyeon is their belter.

CL is the main rapper in 2NE1, the one with the most swag as well. The star. Like her label she leans more hip hop, so I won't compare her to the likes of Eunjung. Short clip. She's lived in Japan and France, but how did she get this good at English?. So CL is the rapper, Bom the pipes, Minzy the dancer, Dara the character. Dara is the one who's not all that strong a vocalist live.

Taeyeon of SNSD is constantly being voted the best idol vocalist. 'Strongest, most in control' I'll agree with. With SNSD I think it's the image of 'general excellence' that's elevated them. They're the best dancers overall (while Kahi of AfterSchool and Fei of Miss A are the strongest group individuals), they get the best routines, they've got five people tagged 'main vocalist'. Kara do not feel perfectionist in the same way, I can't see them pulling off this haughty pop with the same authority. WonderGirls, SNSD and Kara debuted in 2007, but only SNSD's got outstanding personalities imo.

Hyorin of Sistar's got the stand-out raspy big rnb voice of all the girl group girls. Doing Mariah Carey great justice.

I will say I've got a thing for nasal voices, which means that where some feel this voice is not made for ballads, it's one of my favorites.

Most groups seem to have at least one member who can belt out a difficult song with high notes. Lots of rookie groups put out 'viral' clips showcasing their unplugged talent to get some headlines.

Just for solo star potential, though, I'd go with 4Minute's Hyunah.

Our guitar-wielding friend from After School is also a piano virtuoso. Surely these videos being uploaded means some sort of instrument-based sub-unit upcoming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLKIyQ5x9b4

I tried to remember where I'd written about this before, but can't right now. (Pop/American Idol copy) Superstar K2 second runner up Jang Jae In just released her debut mini-album. This is her single

What I noted before was that these talent shows, ironically in light of mainstream criticism against them in the West, have boosted the popularity of singer/songwriter types on the chart in Korea. It's only in recent years the shows have taken off and now they're piling on with various iterations.

Interestingly American Idol was veering in the singer-songwriter direction from 2008 to 2010 (and ratings were suffering because of it, I think), which is ironic given that the show is based on people singing cover songs. In any event, Brooke White and Didi Benami gave some of the best performances ever on the show, and Crystal Bowersox nearly won. It turned out that the problem with Brooke, who's got a wonderful voice, is that she doesn't write very good songs. I got the Bowersox album last year and listened to three songs and then stopped, though I should try again. Don't know if Didi will ever get an album, unless she self-releases.

Oh, and Jason Castro set an impressive standard on Idol for stoner anti-professionalism, and last year put out an album on Atlantic, with a forgettably pleasant single.

Haven't come to an opinion on the Jang Jae In yet. Like her deep voice, but the arrangement is too much the International Indie Cute. (But then, this problem may be peculiar to someone like me: I feel massive dissonance when organ styles from the hate songs of my youth end up in retro-fun settings.) Is there an influence here of J-pop? I'm too ignorant to know. The tune itself didn't grab me on first hearing.

Bowersox a real 90s throwback with those dreads. What I know about American Idol contestants is limited to choice names that I've liked and then found out had their start on the show, like Fantasia. Never followed the show as I've followed British X Factor, a poor decision in hindsight considering how little of value have come out of those shows compared to the American counterparts, and I enjoy reading your analysis in the other posts. And the performance videos.

I don't hear j-pop*, but I don't know much about j-pop indierock-ish singer songwriters. I'm guessing she is indeed influenced by the International Indie Cute to some extent. Her voice is unique, though, and the song has some nice melodic parts. Looks a bit like Norwegian rock chick Ida Maria, who I don't like much but got her fair share of international blog love.

* Of course I wouldn't be sad to see a Korean Utada Hikaru emerge.

I wasn't going to post this song, since I don't think it's anything special, but it fits here. IU just released her first 'sole writing credit' song, for a tv series soundtrack.

It's already on top of the online charts, of course, like all things with her name attached to it. One thing I guess it does prove is her ability to professionally churn out a light and inoffensive song when asked for it. It was accompanied by an article titled "IU's aim is to be a singer-songwriter", informing us she'd written quite a lot and that she would be the composer for future albums and singles.

How about surf guitars in a retro-fun setting?

Well, appropriately enough, the instrumental flip side of Secret's "No. 1" is in my top twenty at the moment, so sans cutiepies I'm liking them fine.

SNSD "you-aholic"

This feels early '90s, a time when '70s-'80s smooth soul was being rerun over harder beats. This is very nice, though not exciting (I suppose 'cause it's not meant to be exciting). I like how starting at 2:25 the "oh" and "dit dit dit" etc. are run through the K-pop cuisinart and finely diced.

I don’t find their Japanese album very “exciting”, even if there is this sort of display of craftsmanship, different styles and let’s say it in that way, “international” textures and timbres, but to me it comes as a series of consumerist clichés, the things that are supposed to listen “young”, “modern”, “free” women in their 20s, which is a genre in itself in Japan, Namie Amuro has some nice albums in this mode, the best new song over here (“The Great Scape”) resembles her sound, but to me (as an album) it comes as quite dull.

I really like the album. It doesn't deviate much from what you'd imagine the standard girl group electro pop template would be, but all the songs are catchy.

"you-aholic" is actually my least favorite track on the album.

Korean freestyle Friday part 2: KARA and SOOLj

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