Frank Kogan

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.

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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).