I express my confusion over at the Jukebox

[koganbot]

Not at all clear yet as to what I'm hearing when I listen to the new 2NE1 single. I express my confusion over at the Jukebox. Can't say I'm able to pick out the non-Western sounds the band are talking about in interviews* (trot, enka). Sounds like R&B-based dance-pop to me, but pushed into interestingly disparate melodic sections. But then, I'm not educated in Korean forms. Maybe you can help.

Watch on YouTube

*At allkpop and kpopstarz.

Comments

What's the MV's concept?

[koganbot]

Also, what's the video's concept (other than that the "you" in question never shows)? I like the look — they're beautiful — and it seems to be shifting decades without deliberately signifying a specific retro period, or staying in the past. Maybe there are specific illustrations of the lyrics that I've not yet noticed, not looking yet at the translations. There's a phone booth!

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Xposted from elsewhere:

Love 2NE1 but when they talk about this being the "first" electronic trot song I cringe a little. Didn't Super Junior have an entire trot sub-unit a few years ago? Aren't a lot of T-ara songs pretty close to being trot? Wasn't there a trot parody concert recently where Infinite sang a trot version of their own song ("Before the Dawn") and it wasn't too different from the original?

Perhaps what they mean is that "I Love You" is the first song with a trot melody/rhythm to have been given the full-on Western Dance Pop Chart Topper treatment? At which point, I have to say I think this sounds more like a Western Dance Pop Chart Topper song than a trot song. But I think it's always easier to notice the production on a song than the melody or rhythm, when you are trying to place the genre (and trot melodies sound like Slavic or Jewish folk songs to me anyway). I'm not sure this is going to immediately strike a European audience as something new, either, since there have been a lot of songs out of e.g. Romania or Bulgaria or Israel on the Europop charts recently.

This is not a criticism of the song, btw, which really does grow on you. But I wish artists would do some research before making grandiose claims about inventing new genres.

***

Or in other words, I agree with you, but I don't know that much about trot or enka either.

I think the MV theme is 1) classy-sexy, or sexy in a grownup way, reinforced by CL's classy retro look, Minzy's body, and Bom's experience; 2) East-meets-West, to go along with the "electronic trot" theme. The "east" ends up looking kind of Meiji-era Japanese, but I think that's because they are choosing Eastern symbols that will be familiar to a Western audience (and maybe so they don't have to shoot a different version of this video for Japan - see also the fact that the lip sync doesn't quite match up).

[koganbot]

Is someone really saying it's the first electronic trot song? Seems to me that pretty much all LPG songs, for instance, are electronic trot songs. I mean, they use electrobeats. If this isn't electronic trot, I don't know what is (except they won't let me embed):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cypljQqft9s

[And Super Junior-T and SHINee have done versions of this song, too, though not as electronically as LPG. It's a relatively old song, I guess.]

And speaking of East meets West:

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From several months ago, here's Lay.T, whom allkpop describes as trot disco:

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I went looking for the interview(s) I remembered but all I can find are interviews where other people say it's new or unique, and 2NE1 say it's a hybrid of trot and electropop that should appeal to all ages in Korea and Japan and might sound "fresh" to their international fans. Whoops.

http://ygnxgeneration.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/article-we-will-quit-when-our-music-loses-its-freshness/

http://ygnxgeneration.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/article-we-will-never-stop-reinventing-ourselves/

http://ygnxgeneration.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/article-k-pop-queens-2ne1-return-with-glorious-new-anthem-i-love-you/

http://ygnxgeneration.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/2ne1-first-girlgroup-in-nation-to-go-on-world-tour/

http://ygnxgeneration.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/interview-2ne1-i-am-the-best-on-stage-part-1/

http://ygnxgeneration.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/interview-meaningless-to-do-music-when-we-cant-be-inspirational-to-people-part-2/

Sorry 2NE1! Looks like this is just lazy/sensationalistic music reporting.

[koganbot]

What strikes me most in those interviews is the — to me — strange use of the phrase "sexy concept," as if what 2NE1 were doing before wasn't already very sexy. I mean, just what is all the strutting supposed to be, not to mention Minzy rolling on the floor and twitching her cute butt? And I wouldn't call Bom's bare-legged look "frumpy." But then, "sexy concept" probably means something far more specific and focused in Korea. (I was going to say "specific and nonaggressive," except it would be hard to claim that HyunA's sexiness, for instance, is at all passive.) I suppose there's a difference between sexy concept and merely looking/dressing/being sexy.

As I said last April, my guess is that 2NE1's got a better shot than T-ara at getting a male audience in the U.S., even though in Korea it's 2NE1 who are having trouble crossing to males (supposedly; I wonder if anyone has published the numbers that would back up such observations).

[koganbot]

I gather from the interviews it's the melodies, more than the beat, that's supposed to be trot, and that Minzy in specific was singing the trot parts. So I'm watching/listening again, especially for Minzy's parts, and I'm still not distinguishing whatever it is that's trot, or even particularly Eastern. "I Am The Best" has a part that's more overtly Eastern, though not at all trot.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Dunno, but Yang Hyun Suk is on record saying that 2NE1 are "cool" rather than "pretty":

http://ukygqueens.com/2012/05/22/news-2ne1-are-not-pretty-yang-hyun-suk-cool-is-better/

It could just be that the "cool" concept they are known for became a trend, so now they have to think of something else to stay new and relevant? They kept the conflicted lyrics and the shout-rap bit at the end so you know it's still a 2NE1 song.

I think 2NE1's "sexy" concept is more in line with what an international audience would consider sexy, but that being popular overseas can also be a strategy for being popular in Korea. Because if foreign people like it it must be good, right? But then you get into tricky questions of selling your identity out, or not being proud enough of where you came from, which are even trickier because Korea was a colonized country and 3/4 of 2NE1 have spent significant portions of their lives overseas. So maybe they are conflicted about that, too.

[koganbot]

Would I be right to say that T-ara's "TTL" has a melody that's more Asian-sounding (maybe even trot), more so than "I Love You"? Yet "TTL" is also saturated in rap.

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[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Sounds right to me. I could see this playing on something like KEXP out of Seattle/New York, which plays old school hip hop and "world" music (though I can't remember any Apop on there, now that I think about it).

BTW here's the vocals for I Love You:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5vb2TVXPZg

Even though the melody doesn't sound "foreign" to me, it does sound weird somehow. Like the church harmonies on "I love you" are different from the harmonies on the rest of the song.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Frank, I've been reading some intriguing background on enka in a book I've been reading, Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop by Michael K. Bourdaghs. The chapter on Misora Hibari, which I'm reading right now, is particularly fascinating. Among other things it discusses the post-war movement of Japanese music away from embracing a broader Asian context and toward a bi-polar world of Japan on one side and America on the other, other Asian cultural elements even being taken by way of the U.S., rather from the source.

Honestly, I'm not sure how far this would go in helping you understand the Korean music you are interested in, but I think you might find the book worth reading on its own terms, since it seems close to your concerns (even if the music it covers is pretty alien to you).

Rudipherous

[koganbot]

Thank you. The Denver Library has another book by Bourdaghs* but not that one. But Inter Library Loan usually comes through for me, though it sometimes takes a while.

*The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimakazi Tōson And Japanese Nationalism

More on a Korean connection to enka

[(Anonymous)]

Just read something of potential further interest to you, from the book I mentioned, during my lunch break:

"Koga's [sic] music is said to provide a paradigm of Japaneseness in music, but Kogan himself was raised in colonial Korea and acknowledged that he had developed his style around the songs he heard laborers sing there. Even Yamaori Tetsuo, the stalwart defender of Hibari's essential Japaneseness, acknowledges the ongoing debate over whether enka might not best be considered an essentially Korean, rather than Japanese, genre."

And so on.

Bourdaghs has a blog here, in case you were not curious enough to google: http://bourdaghs.com/

Rudipherous

Re: More on a Korean connection to enka

[(Anonymous)]

oops, I did slip up and make Koga into Kogan. It's Koga Masao.

Re: More on a Korean connection to enka

[(Anonymous)]

Or better: http://bourdaghs.com/blog/

Re: More on a Korean connection to enka

[koganbot]

Ah, I see he's a Kinks fan!