Round-up on Rolling K-pop

[koganbot]

Did a brief 2011 round-up over on Rolling K-pop, with more than a score of links:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=2714591&boardid=41&threadid=80662

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe I’m not in the mood to do lists right now (I feel like I’m just listening to the same things or that genuinely I don’t care to search “alleged” new things, but maybe that does have more to with my life right now that with music itself) so I don’t know if I can share anything of value.

Kind of lost with K-Pop. For me both Dal Shabet EPs (the second one is weaker, but has a better lead single) are great, moving between dancehall, R&B and the usual nostalgia influences, but kind of nobody seems to care about them…



So, getting the feeling that I don’t know what is happening, I’m having more fun seeing the reflections K-Pop is getting in the C-Pop market. Four girlgroups.

S.P.Y.

MISSTER

UP GIRLS

Dream Girls



I also liked this song, but is very… “bland”? Also I’m quite bored with the stan mentality and their PR dialogues, so expending time (and enjoying it more) with the experience of just listening C-Pop and handpicking what I like or getting into street idols and regional girlgroups in J-Pop (akin of when in a SciFi movie something falls into a black hole).

[koganbot]

Even before I read the YouTube comments and discovered that the "Bomb Bomb Bomb" he's were all she's, the track made my mouth drop open for the way the push of the vocals matches up with the push of the bass synth. I want to call it "commandingly clumsy." And it's only the third best track on their EP. (But MissTER stumble on the tracks where they try to be straight-up real pop singers. I like their dance messes a lot more.)

[koganbot]

I've now found Shu-I's original "Bomb Bomb Bomb" and I much prefer it, sort of a Korean Pitbull or Daddy Yankee.



(Do like a couple of other tracks on the MISSter EP quite well, however.)

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Nice. At first I thought the Chinese version had a sinister edge, but I'm not sure now, and the Korean one makes a bigger point out of its chorus. I wonder what they're doing now. A youtube search reveals a very lame softie uploaded three months in a third language, Japanese. Are those even the same guys?

[(Anonymous)]

New single:

[koganbot]

Here's another recent one. Do you know if they've given up on Korea altogether?

[koganbot]

[askbask.livejournal.com]

On your ilx list: Secret last year weren't cutesy at all, and I think I preferred them that way even if their retro bubblegum has some charming elements.

Best thing about Mirror, Mirror is how the chorus isn't that English words endlessly repeated but the Korean one, kow-rah kow-rah, those r's sound wonderful.

2PM have got some fan flack for copying GD&TOP's High High-style with their new single 'Hands Up', at least the video (the chorus sounds more like a G6 to me). Even if they have, and I wouldn't care, because it's not a bad thing to copy, their voices and personalities are so different it naturally sounds like something else. They're not really cool, but there's something charming about it.

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Two performances, my interest here lies with the first. It wasn't necessarily my favorite album track (and now it's been performed twice I guess it's a 'promoted track'), but seeing it live I really appreciate how the cut-up verses works their way to the chorus. And the dance routine is great.

[koganbot]

Listened to "Hands Up": might like the East 4A mix more for being more disco. 2pm are wonderful dancers, but their singing has almost no presence or charisma. I've been going through your run-through of number ones on Rolling K-pop, and the only 2pm that's stood out for me is "Again & Again," and I think that's mainly 'cause you linked the dance mix.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Their vocals have always been like that, yeah. Know how to move, though. I've changed my opinion on some of those #1s since then, especially the steel pop of later Shinee and Super Junior.

[koganbot]

Checking credits on the album, most of the new stuff seems to be written by Americans, Swedes, or Australians. "The Great Escape" seems to be from a team put together by E. Kidd Bogart, who's worked a bunch in the past with J.R. Rotem. Andre Merritt, one of the writers, has worked with Chris Brown and co-wrote "Disturbia." Three of the new songs include Leah Heywood and Daniel James, who are best known to me as co-authors with Aly & AJ of "Rush."

[koganbot]

Checking credits on the SNSD album, that is. My favorite new song by far is "Bad Girl," which I don't think has anything particularly Korean, or Asian, in its sound, except for the way it combines pop and r&b seamlessly - but then, I'm hardly the one who can identify what's Asian and what isn't. Maybe there's a particularly Asian push to the bass synths? But if I'd heard this was produced by a Swede rather than just written by a couple, I'd probably say the identical sound was Swedish. It's produced by Hiro, who's Japanese and has a track record, but I don't know anything much about him. He produced "Beautiful Stranger" and "Let It Rain," which I also like. Anyhow, the writers on "Bad Girl" are Hiro, Jorgen Elofsson, Jesper Jakobson, and Lauren Dyson. I know nothing about Jakobson. Dyson may or may not have been the person who sang vocals on the English version of Basshunter's hits. Elofsson is a Swede with more than a decade's worth of writing credits, few of which had an impact on me, at least on my memory, except that he's one of the people to blame for "A Moment Like This," and one who gets the credit for Britney's "(You Drive Me) Crazy" and Marie Serneholt's "That's The Way My Heart Goes" - none of which feel like "Bad Girl"; "Bad Girl" has a soft, sexy sadness that Vanessa Hudgens would occasionally pull off, but sounds less sketchy than Vanessa in its soft sexy sadness. Think I'd credit the arranger and the performers more than the songwriters for that, though the writers might have written the arrangements in, for all I know. Song works for me with all those exhaled "oh oh ohs" that start the song, then seem to transfer their sad energy to the deep synths.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

These two guys are credited on most new tracks alongside the myriad of European names, and talk about their inspiration in this sometimes subtitled clip

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Sm Ent hold songwriting workshops and seminars with European teams, so they're clearly trying for a two-way collab where they won't just get, say, "That's The Wy My Heart Goes" (clearly). We've seen familiar names before without really hearing their familiar sounds... with obvious exceptions like SNSD's "Chocolate Love", clearly Bloodshy & Avant in Sweet Dreams my LA Ex mode.

[(Anonymous)]

Digz,inc website (they are a bunch of songwriters, producers, lyricists, etc. mainly focused on the Japanese market (from AKB girls solo singles to EXILE related things)

http://www.digzinc.com/work/2011.html

Favourite HIRO production (2009):



Don’t know if favourite SYT production, but remember hearing that on its day (2007):

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Your favorite album track got a video

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[koganbot]

[askbask.livejournal.com]

The choreography is a lot more messy than The Great Escape. The video isn't much, but apparently it was just a 'gift' to the fans for the album selling a lot of copies. In other words a rush job. But your live clip has better subtitles.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I like some degree of messiness in the choreography. The Great Escape had difficult moves and synced formation work, but also more free-form parts where they could show off some swagger. They've done lots of great choreographies but they're more of the military parade style - with TGE they could improvise and play around more, a different kind of cool. We've had some of that before, but mostly on solo numbers, dance specials, concert performances.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

For example Taeyeon took out her theatrical side on their recent tour

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[descriptivist.livejournal.com]

I just wrote a small dissertation on "Hands Up". (http://maddieloveskpop.tumblr.com/post/7585805175) I don't love the song, but for some reason I'm much more attracted to it than I have been to any of 2PM's melodramatic post-"Heartbeat" output (which someone on Omona characterized as "emo soliloquies"). I agree - they're not cool, but they're charming.

[koganbot]

Thanks. I didn't know their history. I'd gotten no farther in my understanding than good dancers/weak singers.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Haven't decided what to think about 2NE1's new single yet. Harsh sounds and no mercy.

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[koganbot]

But the harmonies are really pretty.

I like it.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

4Minute's Hyuna with her second solo single (and a mini-album)

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(I think I forgot how to use the embed code on lj to get a different aspect ratio)

[koganbot]

Didn't know you could get a different aspect ratio. It looks fine from here.

Actually listened to the EP last night, and liked all that I heard, surprisingly. I don't think her voice is anything special, or her dancing either, for that matter, though the looks and dress are very appealing, of course. But if she's increasingly the focus for good music, it might have something to do with her, not merely her lucking out with collaborators and producers etc.

[koganbot]

the looks and dress are very appealing

Not to mention the hair.

[koganbot]

On further review, even though it's fun, I like "Bubble Pop!" the least on the EP, as it falls short of true bubblegum delirium. I do like its rockabilly start and the rough cut-up break. I prefer "Attention" and "Just Follow," think HyunA herself provides some good throatiness to their drama. (And once again the phrase "follow me" appears in Korean music. I've been considering a post on that phrase. Also a post on HyunA and 4minute, whom I've obviously yet to make my mind up about. "I My Me Mine," "HuH," and "Mirror Mirror" all hold up pretty well.)

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I still like 'Bubble Pop' the best out of the tracks.. feels like a pretty rich dessert, not necessarily bubble gum. If a song this catchy has horns or something that sounds like horns and lots of other appealing, meaty sounds going on I'm hooked. The dubstep break isn't a very novel idea but the fact that it works says something about the rest of the track beeing less cute than first appears.

She never really sings much as a part of 4Minute, the designated rapper. I don't know if her rapping is special either, but her personality shines through

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa5PHagWezQ

[askbask.livejournal.com]

It seems the message is you should try your best to follow, but in the end it's hopeless. You're right, I think every girl group has a song with that phrase. The only think it can't compete against is 'don't know' - 'molla' which is probably popular (and often repeated molla-molla-molla) just because it's a catchy word to sing.

[koganbot]

What inspired me to think harder about the "follow me" thing was the disagreement you and James Turnball had over on The Grand Narrative's "Mirror Mirror" thread. And it isn't that I have no feeling for James' concern, that when fans attempt to live up to stars there can be flipped-out results (I'm thinking of what Lester said about Peter Laughner, that Peter died in part because he wanted to be Lou Reed). It's just that James and the others on the thread - other than you - were writing this up in the third-person: look how they, the performers, are leading them, the female fans, down the road to low self-esteem and eating disorders. Whereas you and I are fans, can hear the invitation and challenge directed at us, "T-R-Y, Watch me now, Can you follow me? Yes Uh-huh! T-R-Y, Pick it up! You'll never catch me, Oh no!" just as we could take Dylan and Eminem as directing their invitations and challenges at us (no matter whom they thought they were speaking to); and we can imagine writing those words ourselves, or doing the music crit equivalent. (Buried here on this thread I'll say that I feel that I've been inadvertently abandoned - not literally abandoned, just intellectually abandoned - by my would-be or erstwhile fellow musicwrite people in their not taking up my invitations and challenges at the start of Real Punks and throughout the book and throughout my writing, e.g., "The true autobiography of Bob Dylan isn't an account of his life, or how he got to be that way, but of how it got to be that way, how we got to be that way..." etc. T-R-Y, but they never knew how to try, oh no.)

I'm sure I'm close to James in politics and ideals, but I just shake my head when he writes something utterly clueless like this about 2NE1: "To which I'd add the - yet again - outrageous expense of their outfits, which surely undermines their maverick and/or bad-girl image?" Really? Did he ever see Scarface or Public Enemy? (Yes, of course 2NE1 are beholden to the people who pay them - and maybe vice versa a bit, YG Entertainment being beholden to the performers who sell the tickets and inspire the downloads, with the consumers not totally out of the picture - but 2NE1's image and sound isn't beholden to anybody, it's there for our taking. Just as Muni's and Cagney's is.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I just ordered your book. I've been meaning to for ages, never got around to it, but now it's on its way.

Ah yes, separating the creative forces or just the art itself from the forces of capitalism seems very difficult for many.

I guess it's natural when you spend so much time discussing or working with social issues, and don't really know pop music, you start to see connections everywhere, thinking certain quotes or ideas correlates with a social issue when it's just regular pop semantics. It's just sad that we always get to see it happen via otherwise respectable figures, social commentators, feminists, etc.

I don't get why they object so fiercely to promoting some healthy narcissism, though, when it's hardly the most over-communicated idea in the country, or anywhere else, to love yourself.

[koganbot]

Just embedded Shu-I's original (or at least prior) "Bomb Bomb Bomb" upthread in reply to anhh. Contains the phrase "Follow follow me" at :53 and 1:50. Excellent track. More of the Latino influence.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

From Infinity Challenge, a show where unlikely combinations of musicians and entertainers come together to create a track, we get G-Dragon (co-produced by Teddy and E.Knock) and comedian Park Myung Soo (who, in 2009, on the same show, worked with SNSD's Jessica to create the amazing novelty hit 'Naengmyun), with help from Park Bom on a soaring chorus. Phew.

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[koganbot]

Here's a version with a better ratio (and Eng cc).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evxu0IQ0EvY

[koganbot]

So, am I correct in understanding that "GG" is G-Dragon and Park Myung Soo, that the producers (and co-writers [along w/ G-Dragon and Park Myung Soo?]) are Teddy and E. Knock, and that Park Bom is playing the "guest artist"? I think it's Bom who delivers this, does an ace Britney, if slightly more generic. I wonder if Max or Luke has seen this.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Yes that's right. I think there might be a competitive element to the show (at least there was in 2009), but in that case bringing in Park Bom is cheating in a big way!

[koganbot]

Having Teddy and G-Dragon on your team seems a pretty big advantage to start with!

Btw, I've now given this (along with that BoA dance you embedded) a regular post.

[koganbot]

poptimists is asking for our mid year top 20s. I added a June list as well.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Lee Hyori vibes doing 'Attention'

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[(Anonymous)]

I obviously like quite a lot (for theoretical reasons (the extended worldview, the multiple endings etc, not so much for the content)) the new Girl’s Day MV. Also to put to shame the “dynamic use of YouTube” so much talked about with K-Pop…

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Love this track so much more than 'Twinkle Twinkle', this is back to their 'Nothing Lasts Forever' greatness in my opinion.. and the track falls right into one of my favorite k-pop trends of the year - the lush, warm synth landscape of 'Shampoo' and the likes.

I hate hate hate their style and the direction their image has taken after the great biker chick look of 'Nothing' - first person view in a pop video is an unequivocal NO and the date sim element is very much unwelcome.

[(Anonymous)]

I also prefer a lot the image you are talking about. Anyway I think there is a strong tendency to package certain feelings under “traditional”, “productive” stories, like say, the relationship on a dating game, or selling girlgroups as the “dream” fantasies of soldiers or otakus (I know that there are quite some girls that bought the AKB game (to answer (a bit, hard to think that after how boring I have been about that around here, people still find that almost pathological need to find the “hidden truth” and use the same arguments than the sensationalist press or the Japanese extreme right) your fulmination of J-Pop idols on The Grand Narrative)).

Anyway, nor that anybody cares, what I found interesting about this is how you get inside a video a reflection of your consumer habits: you get the same girls on interchangeable images, spaces, places, in the same way you see them on different music TV shows, or reality shows, or magazines, or late night shows were they talk more or do more mature sounding songs, all that media mix, and how you are floating, enraptured on the interstices of it, a network of meanings that only exists because of your work. Probably that also the reason why I like more “OH!” as a record than the first Japanese album: there I got things that doesn’t fit together (like bossa novas, sugary disco bits, ballads, etc.) and I have to think how all of that fits together, while the other one is lineal and already-made to consume in that sense and I don’t find it that challenging (even if it does have great tunes, more dynamic sequence, songs that draw how your emotion resonates through your skin and all that). Probably that is also the reason why people don’t get J-Pop (“why do you like it if the song is shit?”). If you are interested in this (basically how every idol group has been marketed in Japan in almost the last three decades) you can read “World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative” by Otsuka Eiji.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Lyrics to ponder

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Written & composed by Kenzie -- she's worked as an SM Ent songwriter since 2002.