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Coming To Terms With Ballads (Kim Bo Kyung and Barbara)
I thought that listening to huge gobs of Korean music would help me finally come to terms with ballads, since about a third of the music out of South Korea is not just ballads but is specifically in the genre "ballad" (as opposed to e.g. someone in r&b who happens to be doing a ballad). But what happened is that I realized I couldn't listen to everything. And as songs labeled "Ballad" and "OST" (most of the latter being ballads) tended to go in on ear and out the other anyway, those were the ones that got set aside.
About one in twenty ballads I hear I really like, and I wouldn't say I dislike the rest so much as I don't react and I barely differentiate one from the other. I couldn't tell you what's specifically different about the 5 percent I do like. I just get hit by something all of a sudden. So here's one I listened to by mistake and I love it.
Barbara had a so-so album out earlier this year, Neo Beat Generation, which was breathy and stylized, as you'd expect from the title, the "Neo"–ness putting a screen between me and it. Whereas "꿈..그보다 아픈," while being just as musically audacious and self-conscious, rips through emotionally: held slow and impressively controlled but ready to let loose, which of course it does. Yet lots of songs do the same, so I don't know why this one succeeded in being special.
And here's Kim Bo Kyung's "아파," variously translated as "Sick" and "Hurt" and "It Hurts," and it's more familiar, a power ballad, rises and wails, full cataract, all engines running.
From what I can tell, she's a former talent-show contestant who flourished by singing "Because Of You" and "Hotel California," though there seem to be several different Kim Bo Kyungs in Korean entertainment, as well as a footballer.
The quality of her records is scattershot, but "Suddenly" from earlier this year is good, very much along the lines of "아파."
About one in twenty ballads I hear I really like, and I wouldn't say I dislike the rest so much as I don't react and I barely differentiate one from the other. I couldn't tell you what's specifically different about the 5 percent I do like. I just get hit by something all of a sudden. So here's one I listened to by mistake and I love it.
Barbara had a so-so album out earlier this year, Neo Beat Generation, which was breathy and stylized, as you'd expect from the title, the "Neo"–ness putting a screen between me and it. Whereas "꿈..그보다 아픈," while being just as musically audacious and self-conscious, rips through emotionally: held slow and impressively controlled but ready to let loose, which of course it does. Yet lots of songs do the same, so I don't know why this one succeeded in being special.
And here's Kim Bo Kyung's "아파," variously translated as "Sick" and "Hurt" and "It Hurts," and it's more familiar, a power ballad, rises and wails, full cataract, all engines running.
From what I can tell, she's a former talent-show contestant who flourished by singing "Because Of You" and "Hotel California," though there seem to be several different Kim Bo Kyungs in Korean entertainment, as well as a footballer.
The quality of her records is scattershot, but "Suddenly" from earlier this year is good, very much along the lines of "아파."
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Kyun-woo: They have to kiss in the end.
The Girl: This isn't a melodrama. It's an action movie.
Kyun-woo: You don't know movies. Koreans like melodramas.
The Girl: Why?
Kyun-woo: Know what novel touched us when we were teenagers? 'Shower' by Hwang Sun-won. It shaped our people's sensibility in their teens. Koreans like sad movies all because of 'Shower.'
The Girl: 'Shower'? What's sad about it?
Kyun-woo: It's sad when she asked to be buried in the clothes reminiscent of her love. I couldn't sleep for one week.
The Girl: The ending sucks. Gotta change it.
Applies to the music as well I s'pose. Pretty sure I like a few more (k-)ballad-ballads than you, but have a similar problem defining the requirements. Generally, the problem is that their idea of dynamics and the pitch for their emotional investment is the most annoying giant wailing climaxes, acceptable if well-deserved, not when finishing off a flat melody-less black hole of a song.
The ones I like, I think, are ones with a sense of melody and a sensitive touch. Sometimes I like the artist and will listen to a ballad enough times so that I'll like it(*1). Feels like I fall more easily for cheap tricks when it comes to ballads, familiar chord progressions, instant mood-setters. I generally like ballads, which says a lot about how bad some of the bad ones are for me to hate.
(*1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxcD_kMzsVk
Melodic, and enjoyable because his voice is so impossibly smooth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyp-BBD_aAM
Amazingly dark power ballad:
(At first, it's the men: They trick you, don't mean those sweet words. Then the twist: She never meant it either, no one loves, there is no love, nowhere.)
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I like the singing and phrasing of the Sunny song (even when she's out of tune), but the overall melody is in-one-ear-and-out-the-other for me. That's on one listen. I have the same reaction to the Sung Si Kyung; I like the smoothness, he doesn't ick up the thing with sugar, but again I don't find myself humming it afterwards. My reaction to the HwanHee isn't hatred. My reaction is basically negligible, though I recognize he isn't a good singer. I do kind of like the lift in the singing that occurs at around 2:18; maybe that's the part you'd classify as an annoying wailing climax.
Unrelated specifically to ballads, what's your impression of Sunny? After watching some clips here and there of Invincible Youth, I had the idea that if Sunny has a strong analytic mind and an interest in, say, economics, she could conceivably become a political figure, say president of Korea, or secretary general of the U.N. A natural leader. I mean, assuming she worked to become it, not just on the basis of her being in SNSD and on Invincible Youth. If not politics, she's probably set for life as a talk-show host, if singing doesn't continue to pan out for her.
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Maybe not exclusively Korean, but the very earnest sadness seems to be present in so many of these. The Gummy one is less disinctly Korean I guess.
Sunny is my favorite k-pop star! She's the only one returning for season 2 of Invincible Youth (this november), as the group leader. Feels like any moment she wants to take control of she will take control of, ad-lib skills unsurpassed, confidence to the point where she hangs back for periods of time to let her other members show off, offering her expertise if an awkward silence looms.
Anyway, she ran that show and when she quit some ways into the first season it sorta fell apart. No wonder they had to hook her back in.