What's Wrong With My Age?

[koganbot]

This song's been on the Billboard K-pop chart for 12 weeks, whereas the Gaon chart refuses to acknowledge that stuff like it exists.

Watch on YouTube

If anyone has any music-theory insights, feel free to post them. Is not my strength. The crucial chords seem to be I II V (as opposed to I IV V), though my guitar is tuned about a quarter tone off from this so I'm not sure. The fa and the ti of the western scale seem to be getting short shrift. If there's a crucial leading note, it's the fifth of the V chord, which happens to be the second (or ninth) of the I chord, the chord it leads to. As for an analogue in my American listening, it would — I think — be the music of the rural British Isles, which of course is one of the inputs into the southern cauldron that produced what's confusingly called American "folk" music.

Meanwhile, Shinyoo's "Hands Of The Clock" hangs around at 36; has been in Billboard's K-pop Hot 100 for the entire year-and-two-thirds (88 weeks) that there's been such a chart, and presumably goes back months or years before that, though it's never gotten higher on Billboard than 23. (A typical Korean hit, one that goes top five, might stay in the Top 100 for not much more than three months. E.g., SHINee's "Dream Girl," at a couple of weeks short of three months, is down at 85 on the Gaon chart.)

Comments

[askbask.livejournal.com]

What's wrong is that there are too many people in Korea his age and above, and their percentage is increasing. Although for the audience present during that recording it means they get to decide who wins presidential elections, and get to surprise analysts when a high turnout most importantly means a high turnout of 60+s, not people in their 20s.

I've been going crazy enough trying to put words to what makes, say, typical j-pop melodies sound so different from western pop melodies, with no music theory knowledge at all, that I'm not even trying with trot and trad Korean pop (except to notice that North Korean popular music of the now is very similar).

If someone with a lot of knowledge of both Asian pop and theory could only write the article I'm waiting for! Of course ArbitrayGreay has spent some time pondering the same thing and linked to these probably very fascinating videos that unfortunately are unsubbed in Japanese http://youtu.be/VMW4eyNY_Rk
http://youtu.be/fkhCwNwuMUQ

But those J-pop melodies don't sound like Korean anything either, so..

[koganbot]

I assume there's the same problem as in the U.S., of getting young people to show up at the polls, much less getting 'em engaged in issues of property tax, zoning, etc. On the other hand, in the U.S. old people are hardly a solid conservative voting bloc, esp. given their having been socialized during the height of the union movements, and being themselves the beneficiaries of the basic Democratic Party social welfare reforms of the 20th century (social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, labor laws, consumer protection). Not sure how anything like this plays out in Korea, which didn't have its first free elections until 1988, and earlier had its left harassed and crushed by three consecutive dictatorships. Not that I know much more than that about Korean history.

Shin-yoo hits 100

[azacab.livejournal.com]

"Hands Of The Clock" is about to hit week 100 now, and I'll be doing a piece on it soon. I can't find anything - anything - about the song at all, except for your writing, which is of course informative and (I assume) stuck in a similar situation about the track's origins, impact, etc. So I guess I wanted to say thanks for pointing out this awesome anomaly. This is when I wish I could read Hangul.

Re: Shin-yoo hits 100

[koganbot]

You're quite welcome. You could try asking on I Love Music's K-pop 2013 thread, though I wouldn't expect you would get an answer. But Mat is at least in Korea, and maybe he'd have an idea whom to ask.

Re: Shin-yoo hits 100

[koganbot]

Btw, who do you write for/where do you write?