T-ara Pure

[koganbot]

I remember Gene Wilder in a TV interview putting forth an insight that went something like this: He recalled an old Charlie Chaplin clip where the tramp, famished, was standing behind a burly man holding a baby. The baby was eating a partially peeled banana. Whenever the burly man looked away, Charlie would bob his head forward and take a bite, pulling his head back when the man's gaze turned towards the baby. So you had a funny scene, an accidental dance, Charlie's head bobbing back and forth at the banana while the burly man looked to and fro. But what Wilder observed was that Charlie's motion was absolutely pure: no mugging for the camera, no wiggling eyebrows. The humor was in the idea, in what was happening, and Charlie didn't need to juice it up with funny faces to inform you that what you were seeing was funny.

To me, this describes the sound of T-ara: it's often cute, but the singing is pure. It's high-pitched, in service of catchy-rhymy songs; but the singers are doing it straight, not the vocal equivalent of making faces, not going chirpingly cute. (I already said this in my first quarter wrap-up; just wanted to add the Wilder vignette.)

"T-ara - Lovey Dovey 20 in 1 Live Compilation" (Watch on YouTube)

[EDIT: had a really good live compilation of "Lovey-Dovey" that got deleted, but maybe this'll do]

I wouldn't call it a general principle, that pure is better than ham. Girl's Day go all high and girlie and chirpy in "Oh! My God" and it's a fine energy. And among T-ara themselves, Hwayoung launches into a rib-nudging squawk in "Roly-Poly" and "Why Are You Being Like This? " which helps make the songs potent, the result being aggressive rather than gooey (though Hwayoung's interjections in these two tracks annoy the hell out of Mat). The "oh oh oh ohs" in "Why Are You Being Like This?" aren't wink-free anyway, and again that's no problem. The "oh oh oh ohs" in "Lovey-Dovey" are cute as fuck, they're delivered straight, and the song has an unannounced gorgeousness to it and maybe that's why.

So far I'm talking about their sound. Their videos and live performances are something I want to think more about, as I go back and look at the earlier ones. The concept can switch from song to song and the look can switch from woman to woman and performance to performance. On stage, Boram will cute things up in a way that makes me grit my teeth, but only to the extent that I notice. Hyomin, in the MV's for "Like The First Time" and "Roly-Poly," plays roles that are fundamentally different from her regular demeanor in live shows: in the first, she's a naïve young teen who needs to be taught how to dress, in the second a precocious teen who's having fun goofing around as a hottie. Of course, not only isn't she actually a teen, she's the one who on stage looks naturally wise and at ease, someone you'd assume would have no problem with elegance if she chose, but she'd rather make you feel comfortable yourself. For all I know this has nothing to do with her personality (I should check her out in Season One of Invincible Youth) and more to do with the long shape of her face and her grace of movement. Significantly, she's the T-aran most responsible for hitting the high-pitched, catchy notes. And she's the one who comes off least like a child.



The videos for "Like The First Time" and "Roly-Poly" are about roles and images. In "Roly-Poly"* T-ara are dressing up and making a scene (and briefly being the scene). But even prior to the big night of dressup, the characters are posing for each other (in regular-girl clothes at the start, at the "Kumbaya" camp, each exaggerating her discontent in order to signal to the others that it's time to split), and throughout they're posing for onlookers and for each other but not for the camera (it's shot naturalistically, and the result is natural) — except actually of course the camera manages to capture them looking smashing. Boram is fine as the nervous girl who has a soda with the cute boy. Jiyeon owns the dance floor, creating total effervescence without once cracking a smile. In the disco night, she's the light, lines of brilliance flowing from her in all directions.

[*I'm linking the Eng Sub version; would embed, the video being so crucial, except the embedding is disabled.]

(Every time I write a T-ara post I think of another three I should be writing, which means there are fifty or so unwritten T-ara posts racing round my head. I need to ponder Trevor's take on T-ara as undifferentiated aliens. Anhh was made uneasy last summer about how the "Roly-Poly" vid might play ideologically as part of Korean nationalism and the papering over of a problematic past and a finance-driven present, wasn't able to articulate the unease, but there's unease to be explored whenever an age group or a time past is being presented as innocent, even though I love the vid. New T-ara alb is predominantly their greatest hits but done in Japanese: "Bo Peep Bo Peep" thrives, "Why Are You Being Like This?" holds its strength, the rest are somewhat weaker than the originals — but this is what I'd expected, and so far I may be hearing my expectations more than their sounds. I still have no idea how it is T-ara have released nothing but good songs, even the ballads. Some of it must be luck, but maybe there's something in the feel or concept of "T-ara" that brings out the best in a range of songwriters and producers, not all of whom do consistently well when working with others. But what is the concept? As for their lyrics, what I hear so far is sound more than words, not surprisingly since I don't know Korean; so I haven't even approached the ability to have an opinion on Subdee's assertion that T-ara take the K-pop cliché "crazy for you" but shift the emphasis away from "for you" and towards "crazy." Hey, maybe they are like the Rolling Stones.)

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Was thinking about this in relation to Britney the other day -- I heard "Baby One More Time" not-on-the-internet for the first time in forever (I think it was playing at the mechanic I go to) and started thinking about how strange Britney's timbre was when that song was released. Because of the overwhelming visual nature of her ascent to stardom, often what I'm tempted to call her "trademark gurgles" were coded as a kind of baby-doll affectation. But listening somewhat removed from thinking directly about it, I realize or maybe just remembered that actually Britney has what you're calling "pure," I think. There's a distinctive grain of the voice -- it's not "workmanlike" in the way that I've always felt Christina Aguilera fundamentally is -- but it's not pulling faces. It just has a strong character, one that only codes as "baby-doll" if you pay attention to the accompanying imagery.

That isn't to say that there aren't baby-doll coos in music, or that there aren't lots of normal ways of acting sexy vocally that do code as the things that Britney was generally thought to be doing, but that Britney herself wasn't really doing them. She was doing something, but it didn't quite sync up with the overdetermined imagery that accompanied her. I think that's one reason why Blackout was so compelling. Can't remember if it was you or me that called her voice "power-stained" into the tracks, but to me that was the purity, the grain of the voice drilled down or distilled into an essence and slathered over everything. I didn't get that sense, so much, from Circus (which did feel like "making Britney faces") or Femme Fatale (which was power-stained, but not exactly with "Britney").

[koganbot]

"Power-stained in" was you, though I can't find the original quote. Here's you quoting you and me quoting you:

"Whereas before Britney was kind of a rubber stamp on top of the production, now she's everywhere in the tracks, like power-stained in to them."

One of the weird things is when I hear people describe her music as "robotic." I've never heard Britney's music as robotic. I may have at some point called her singing "clipped-off." Don't remember if I ever called her voice "child-like," back in the old days, but it's surely possible. For what it's worth, I didn't come to "...Baby One More Time" through the video (in which she plays a teenager, by the way, leading the breakaway from the classroom), I never had a strong sense of Britney's look until the last five years, and I don't particularly associate that look with her sound. I think if I'd seen her on the street prior to 2007 I'd not have recognized her.

Intend to post someday on how K-pop has finally forced me to really pay attention to visuals, rather than just giving lip service to their importance. There was no escaping Michael Jackson's visuals, whereas Madonna's always seemed less relevant then people thought. My line has always been that music includes its social world. But what that music world looks like has always been the weak link in my understanding — well, that and being able to understand chord progressions and harmonies.

Trina's a singer whose vocal personality hit me so hard right off that I immediately had an "image" in my mind of her. Don't know how visual that image was; just a— I'm not sure, a something, bright-eyed and wanton, throwing toys. Saw her picture not too long after "Nann Nigga," but have never been able to connect the vertical ovalness of her face to the horizontal mayhem of her voice. (If those metaphors make sense.) Just as the feel I get from reading Chuck Eddy, expansive and forthright, doesn't match his rather wiry body.

Of course, you can be yourself and be hammy, if your self is hammy (or the self you've created vocally). I don't want to link "pure" and "genuine" too strongly.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Agreed on Madonna's visuals, and I think Lady Gaga played right into the Madonna playbook with her own visuals, which rarely match the adventurousness or lack thereof in her music. For one thing, Madonna was all about breaking down loaded imagery, or presenting it in a new way, whereas it seemed like Michael was creating a genuinely new iconography. Madonna spoke a pre-existing language in intentionally provocative ways, Michael spoke in tongues (and then we all learned the tongue). I think that one thing that puts me off about Lady Gaga is the way that she uses existing visual language and then tries to appear to be speaking in tongues. (Self-conscious "speaking in tongues" probably isn't effective as natural/visceral speaking in tongues -- there's something about genuineness there, but maybe not "purity." So something like, visually speaking, Madonna was in conversation with the avant-garde, Michael WAS avant-garde, Lady Gaga is playing at avant-garde. And maybe I'm overestimating how much Madonna was "playing at," and it's merely the rose-colored glasses of history that makes her avant-garde-ness seem interesting when perhaps it was just as dull and contrived as Gaga's?)

[koganbot]

Madonna's always seemed less relevant

Er, no, I remember writing early on that without the visuals, Madonna's persona scatters. But I was wrong.

As I did with Britney, I came to Madonna initially through sound not sight: the song "Everybody" was all over NY dance radio, more or less at the same time as C-Bank's "One More Shot" and similar stuff, early Baker-Robie. As such, her music wasn't the soundtrack to Madonna videos, but to people's lives.* Saw a bodybuilding competition where one of the women did her routine to "Everybody," centering around the part that goes "dance and sing, get up and do your thing."

*Not that that has to be mutually exclusive.

[koganbot]

Of course, if someone said to me, "But Frank, I find T-ara totally hammy and mannered," I wouldn't know how to convince that person otherwise.

I Go Britney Because Of You

[koganbot]

Speaking of Britney, what do you think of "I Go Crazy Because Of You"?

Re: I Go Britney Because Of You

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Song or video or both? Really like the song, though it's hard to hear it free from "Britney-isms" -- which work, but also read somewhat as Britneyisms. It's very "Radar."

I still can't keep track of who's singing when, I like the deeper voice I'm hearing in verse two, the very mechanically vibrato'ed one, and actually the Britney impression in the bridge is working well on its own. And it also doesn't do the one K-pop thing that I'm not a huge fan of, which is intimidate in the verse, smile in the chorus. (Like the CL song on your mix, which I don't have in front of me.) (Prefer the other direction I think, smiles giving way to a sneer. The other direction tends to sound like they jammed a (good) chorus in, but I may or may not have any actual evidence for this happening aside from that one song at the top of my head.)

There's one artist I can think of who pulled off what I get a sense of from the collected work of T-ara (so far), and that's Rachel Stevens, who should have pushed all the wrong Popjustice/anonopop buttons -- the ones that artists like Linda Sundblad and Roisin Murphy and Girls Aloud and Sugababes all press in too-large doses (as opposed to singles) -- but actually creates a blazing, if chameleonic, personality over the course of the album. I don't know if I can think of a single other album that works like Come and Get It does, 100% essential front-to-back even though no individual element feels amazing overall.

Re: I Go Britney Because Of You

[warthoginrome.livejournal.com]

The Britney-ism is the reason because at first I always skipped this song and "Cry cry" (which also includes the "latin" intro), of course ending to be trapped by MVs and even more by live studio performances guided by Hyomin's charme and EunJung's energy and sex appeal. These songs are not the only in K-Pop being "inspired" by western music, but I think that the source representation should be more subtle.

Re: I Go Britney Because Of You

[koganbot]

Here's "I Go Crazy Because Of You":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEF5uf2MSKI

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I was mentioned! \o/

I'm working on a "Kpop Hearts the 80s" mix right now, and I ran into this, which is relevant to your interests:

[koganbot]

Yeah. Further bolsters the argument that women are singing better than men these days. Love the start of this, with the house bass and dissonant orchestra. Felt they were potentially embarking on something new. But this crumbled when they started singing.

I'd assumed it was Hwayoung in the video; but Mat informs me it's her twin sister Hyoyoung, of 5dolls.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I dunno why, except that SPEED is the male half of Co-Ed School (5dolls is the female half). Maybe none of them are great singers because the women do most of the vocal heavy lifting in the combined group?

You really think there's a gender difference? I can think of a bunch of strong male kpop vocalists... the RnB belting thing and the ethereal floating thing does seem to be mostly women, but there's a lot of guys singing in this super emotional ballad style which is pretty difficult to do.

[koganbot]

It isn't that I think female singers are inherently more talented or better-trained than male singers, or able to master more difficult material, but rather that their results — these days — are better.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Is it because girl groups are more exportable, and so more money/attention/care is going into capturing their voices and incorporating them into the music? Like the domestic market revolves around variety show appearances, but the international market is more driven by music videos?

Like, I read somewhere that boy groups are in fashion this year, but there are still slightly more girl groups (something like 55% of Mnet performances) in part because they tend to sell better overseas (because, you know, Asian guys are effeminate/misogynist but Asian girls are hottt).

And then there's also the "guys writing cute songs for cute girls to sing cutely" thing going on, which you can see over in Japan with vocaloid music.

Anyway I still disagree; I think it has to do with how much you like the super emotional ballad style of singing, or Very Manly rap.

[koganbot]

Yes, people like different things, and obviously what we like affects what we like to listen to. But even among the stuff I like, there have been years and decades when I quite liked male singing, and I don't think it's me that's changed, just that what guys are doing isn't working as well, anymore (when they're trying to do the sort of music I like).

For what it's worth, I put both Big Bang ("Tonight") and GD&TOP ("High High") on my year-end top ten last year.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Gotcha.

I dunno why I'm defending boy groups anyway, because in general I like girl groups more, with exceptions for boy groups that have members of ambiguous gender (Big Bang falls into this category). Because traditionally gendered heterosexual Kpop is depressing: girls manipulate guys to get what they want and guys tell girls they have to put up with bad behavior and no one ever accepts personal responsibility for anything.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Dunno if this will influence you one way or the other, but I kind of like this better than the original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39Iwx5WmJ8

Of course, it's a traditional singing style XD.

[koganbot]

I prefer the original, but I like the style of melody of the new version, and I see no reason in principle why men couldn't sing it as well as women sing it. But then, I see no reason in principle why men can't be singing K-pop bubblegum as well as women sing it, but generally they aren't.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I realized the reason I love trot (when it's not too trot) is it sounds like Yiddish folk songs. So that's probably factoring in somewhere too XD.

[koganbot]

Did like their rapping, before the singing starts. First 48 seconds is great, and 1:35 through 2:02. I don't comprehend why the singing should be so weak.

[koganbot]

Here's the link to the video sub_divided embedded (SPEED's techno-rap version of T-ara's "Lovey-Dovey"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSaPmPwfCBs

[trevitron.livejournal.com]

Been really busy lately, so I'm still digesting your thoughts here, but I wanted to make sure you saw this:

[koganbot]

Yeah, the JoJo version! I've seen it, but this is timely because I want to write about CL soon. I also have some — mostly ignorant — thoughts about Korean hip-hop I want to share with you soon.

[koganbot]

Link to the vid trevitron embedded (CL's version of "Marvin's Room" at NOLZA 2011):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iNJ6msoN7Q

[trevitron.livejournal.com]

I was quite amused to see this headline on Allkpop.com a few days ago: "T-ara’s Hyomin and Jiyeon are aliens?"

[koganbot]

Hyomin and Jiyeon did this specifically to support your interpretation of the "Roly-Poly" video.

[koganbot]

This might be the Chaplin scene, though if it is, it's somewhat different from how I remember Wilder describing it — though I'm sure I remember the basic point correctly, what Wilder was saying about the purity of the motion. Chaplin does mug a little bit, but not for us, not for the camera, but to put the baby at ease.

http://youtu.be/QNAjMc02UlU?t=0m54s