T-ara Pure
Jun. 12th, 2012 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotI 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.)
[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.)
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.)
[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.)
