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koganbotLive version of "Just Follow," with Zico in place of DOK2; HyunA's relative stillness makes her as steamy as ever, and Zico just kills. His rap in the middle is entirely new, and he improves on the original.
Rapping, and this slow tempo, suit HyunA well. She's digging in, sounding hard and wounded; meanwhile, her sensuousness operates on its own accord, drifts along with the music, a force field that saturates the room.
Don't know if the ban on the "Bubble Pop!" video and on its live dance routine influenced this performance. She's in pants this time, not panties or minis, and she doesn't thrust her pelvis a lot. And this works fine.
Since K-pop is so new to me, I don't understand how the censorship functions, assuming that it does function. Seems laughably ineffective to "ban" a video a month after it's out, and to order changes in a dance routine that's been performed for just as long, the song having already peaked in the top 5. My understanding is that the "ban" means the video can't be shown before 10 PM. But that hardly affects the Internet, right? I'm assuming - though I don't know - that in South Korea, a place with more thorough broadband than anywhere else in the world, kids can go online and watch pretty much whatever they want, though maybe there's some sort of childproofing.
I wonder if there's tension and excitement in Korean pop precisely because of the country's various cultural disjunctions. Of course all countries have cultural disjunctions, but maybe HyunA's style of sensuous sexiness couldn't show up in the pop of 2011 America since America has gotten all blatant and jab-you-in-the-ribs tedious with its sexiness. Honestly, I find it hard to give a shit about Beyoncé's or Katy Perry's body. And Lindsay's and Britney's are focuses for (or sites of) insanity more than lust, it seems. That's the discourse, anyway.
Any thoughts you guys have would be welcome, especially since some of you, unlike me, actually know something about Korea. From what I've read, broadcast TV is still the main medium for music videos in Korea, and live performances on TV are still the main promotional tool for pop idol groups. So the stations can refuse to air a song, or, after a certain performance, can say, "Oh noes! your dance was dirty and children watch us, so don't do that again," and the performers will go "What? you found that offensive? we were merely expressing ourselves artistically; [pause] OK [reluctantly] we won't do it again." According to Wikip, KBS TV wouldn't play 4minute's "Anjullae" because of the line: "Starting from today, I won't give myself to you. Now, I will never give you my entire heart. Now, I won't ever give myself to you." And the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has banned videos for reasons as trivial (to me) as the video showing people in a club that has a bar! But what that "banning" means is that the song or video can't be broadcast before 9 PM on weekdays and 10 PM on weekends and can't be sold to anyone under 19 - and the banning comes weeks or sometimes months after the song or video has been released, making the banning laughable, I'd think. So on the one hand you've got "standards" which are officially strict, and often petty, but on the other hand they seem easy to flout or to get around or even to play with and play off of, letters of laws being followed while spirits are getting massively mocked.
Or am I misreading this, and is a crackdown underway? Is HyunA being singled out for past transgressions?
Although titles such as Ministry of Gender Equality and Family seem comical, they probably reflect genuine contrary tensions and motives and confusions regarding clamping down on versus liberating female desire, and wanting to protect women and girls from exploitation.
Zico's group, the rookie boyband Block B, has an EP with one excellent song, "Halo," the other tracks falling into various degrees of blandness and blah. Could use more rapping, definitely, and better tunes and better singing. Zico's also got one or more mixtapes, a few tracks of which I've heard on YouTube; dexterity and force, need better overall sound. Nothing with the fierceness and pizzazz of "Just Follow," the molasses of which seems to have unleashed the opposite in Zico.
Rapping, and this slow tempo, suit HyunA well. She's digging in, sounding hard and wounded; meanwhile, her sensuousness operates on its own accord, drifts along with the music, a force field that saturates the room.
Don't know if the ban on the "Bubble Pop!" video and on its live dance routine influenced this performance. She's in pants this time, not panties or minis, and she doesn't thrust her pelvis a lot. And this works fine.
Since K-pop is so new to me, I don't understand how the censorship functions, assuming that it does function. Seems laughably ineffective to "ban" a video a month after it's out, and to order changes in a dance routine that's been performed for just as long, the song having already peaked in the top 5. My understanding is that the "ban" means the video can't be shown before 10 PM. But that hardly affects the Internet, right? I'm assuming - though I don't know - that in South Korea, a place with more thorough broadband than anywhere else in the world, kids can go online and watch pretty much whatever they want, though maybe there's some sort of childproofing.
I wonder if there's tension and excitement in Korean pop precisely because of the country's various cultural disjunctions. Of course all countries have cultural disjunctions, but maybe HyunA's style of sensuous sexiness couldn't show up in the pop of 2011 America since America has gotten all blatant and jab-you-in-the-ribs tedious with its sexiness. Honestly, I find it hard to give a shit about Beyoncé's or Katy Perry's body. And Lindsay's and Britney's are focuses for (or sites of) insanity more than lust, it seems. That's the discourse, anyway.
Any thoughts you guys have would be welcome, especially since some of you, unlike me, actually know something about Korea. From what I've read, broadcast TV is still the main medium for music videos in Korea, and live performances on TV are still the main promotional tool for pop idol groups. So the stations can refuse to air a song, or, after a certain performance, can say, "Oh noes! your dance was dirty and children watch us, so don't do that again," and the performers will go "What? you found that offensive? we were merely expressing ourselves artistically; [pause] OK [reluctantly] we won't do it again." According to Wikip, KBS TV wouldn't play 4minute's "Anjullae" because of the line: "Starting from today, I won't give myself to you. Now, I will never give you my entire heart. Now, I won't ever give myself to you." And the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has banned videos for reasons as trivial (to me) as the video showing people in a club that has a bar! But what that "banning" means is that the song or video can't be broadcast before 9 PM on weekdays and 10 PM on weekends and can't be sold to anyone under 19 - and the banning comes weeks or sometimes months after the song or video has been released, making the banning laughable, I'd think. So on the one hand you've got "standards" which are officially strict, and often petty, but on the other hand they seem easy to flout or to get around or even to play with and play off of, letters of laws being followed while spirits are getting massively mocked.
Or am I misreading this, and is a crackdown underway? Is HyunA being singled out for past transgressions?
Although titles such as Ministry of Gender Equality and Family seem comical, they probably reflect genuine contrary tensions and motives and confusions regarding clamping down on versus liberating female desire, and wanting to protect women and girls from exploitation.
Zico's group, the rookie boyband Block B, has an EP with one excellent song, "Halo," the other tracks falling into various degrees of blandness and blah. Could use more rapping, definitely, and better tunes and better singing. Zico's also got one or more mixtapes, a few tracks of which I've heard on YouTube; dexterity and force, need better overall sound. Nothing with the fierceness and pizzazz of "Just Follow," the molasses of which seems to have unleashed the opposite in Zico.
Re: TV live performance
Date: 2011-08-23 12:51 pm (UTC)Re: TV live performance
Date: 2011-08-23 01:42 pm (UTC)That Hyori trick does look like cheating. The official MV upload on Youtube credits him - it's 낯선 / Nassun. He's recognized enough for his efforts for these pop stars to acknowledge him
Re: TV live performance
Date: 2011-08-23 02:29 pm (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]