Crayon Pop Tiers Up

[koganbot]

"Bar Bar Bar" has unexpectedly caught a gust of wind. First week on the Gaon it was limping at 143, three lower than a faltering ChoColat. Second week it jumped to 90 on the heels of a Music Core performance, third week it fell as expected to 116 and appeared ready to join koganbot faves ChoColat, GLAM, Evol, Tiny G, D-Unit, and Z.Hera in the Land Of Flopperooni. But then last Thursday it was up all the way to 54, and that only takes us through the previous Saturday. Eight days farther along and it's placing between 10 and 25 on the various daily and real-time charts (don't know which of these are which, but Melon 19, Olleh 18, Mnet 22, Daum 16, Bugs 10, Naver 10, Monkey3 25, Instiz Aggregator 16). No real idea why: they've only been on the top TV performance shows twice (Music Core three weeks ago, M! Countdown last week). Been on some of the minor ones, and they're plugging away, recently performed at a baseball game, then at the DJ DOC pool party.

Also, in our little cul-de-sac, they so far have gotten twenty-nine people rating it on the Jukebox reader meter (which excludes people who officially write for the site), getting a score in the mid 8's (far higher than the mid-5 it got from the Jukebox sourpusses). I've not been tracking that aspect of the Jukebox, but though 29 isn't a statistically significant number, it's way higher than you usually get. [UPDATE: See comments for relevant numbers. As of mid-afternoon on July 23 there are 31 reader votes, with an average score of 8.58.]

Is a good song with a presentation like no one else's, but there are a lot of good songs so I have no further explanation other than that Crayon Pop persevered and finally luck gave them a hand.

So this may be the final post where Crayon Pop are eligible for the No Tiers For The Creatures Of The Night tag.

In the meantime they've become Crayon Fox, donning neo-'70s wigs and acting out neo-'80s music, specifically 2011's "Itaewon Freedom" by UV ft. JY Park.

Crayon Pop 크레용팝의 이태원 프리덤

Watch on YouTube

UV ft. JY Park "Itaewon Freedom" (이태원 프리덤)

Watch on YouTube

Interesting cultural projection and romanticism there, as Itaewon is the Seoul district most associated with foreigners and with a nearby American military base. So, I suppose, Americans are colorful and American style is freedom. (Couldn't find translated lyrics.) The UV track, as a dance video, is a tribute to London Boys' "Harlem Desire" (1987), a song written and produced by a German and performed by two Brits about the allure and danger of New York. An iffy way to view Harlem, I suppose, but I never hung out there.

London Boys "Harlem Desire"

Watch on YouTube

h/t Mat and Dash.

Comments

Jumping, jumping...

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

Bar Bar Bar is number one on Melon's daily MV chart.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Ilbe users driving sales after recent controversy?
Celebrity fans doing dance covers and spreading the word to their own fans?
The N/Ellin kiss episode of Boom's new variety show?

[koganbot]

Except the first and third come well before the recent surge, and also I really doubt the first anyway (that there are enough of them or that many of them even know about Crayon Pop; anyway, it's not even certain [to me, at least] that Ilbe got anything even remotely like an endorsement from Crayon Pop; my guess is that the "controversy" was netizens picking up on the language of a single or a couple of tweets and having a netizen spasm; but I don't know Korean or the situation). As for number two, that would seem to be more a symptom than a cause, though it can be both, of course, in a feedback loop; but also, from what I can tell, so far it's only been SHINee, Heechul (of Super Junior), and Girl's Day, the latter two being only spontaneous miming and not getting a lot of YouTube views (the Girl's Day thing occurred during rehearsal). And Led Apple danced to "Dancing Queen" three months ago, but that's three months ago (I suppose it could be getting new YouTube views now, but there's only one recent comment).

I assume there will be a lot more, the dance being unique but copyable.

I do assume the nonstop self-promotion, and the creativity of it, laid the groundwork, made the breakthrough possible (but hardly guaranteed the breakthrough; you should see my article on cumulative advantage, about fame being rare and needing to build on partial fame but also about there being an irreducibly random element to that partial fame in the first place — though this doesn't mean that fame is entirely random). In any event, Crayon Pop have become something of a thing (I don't know how much) in the last two weeks, without much help from the major media. I also think that what makes "Bar Bar Bar" different (non-r&b-based song, strange dance, matching sports rather than glamour outfits), and what therefore probably worked against it at first, now will work in its favor, nothing else like it so it's instantly identifiable. That also means, though, that they'll have a problem thinking what to do next, to keep them from being just a novelty one-hit wonder. I hope their back catalog gets a lot of attention.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I joked that Bar Bar Bar is becoming Korea's Gangnam Style elsewhere, and it does seem to have caught on due to online excitement, copyable moves as you say with high cover potential, and a general viral appeal in laughing at and singing along to something slightly off. Schoolkids sharing links on kakaotalk is more important than number of celebs doing it I suspect. There's also the power and potential in sticking to an image and a style of your own, as we've discussed before with some artists tiering up in k-pop.

[koganbot]

And I see that the SHINee and Heechul clips are from three weeks ago, when the song was slipping down the charts. Maybe that's part of the dynamic, though: as the media were ready to consign the song to being a flop, cutting down spins and airplay, it was nonetheless growing a fanbase, through people getting a kick out of hearing it, watching it, imitating it.

[koganbot]

By the way, Crayon Pop unfortunately have simplified their dance (maybe to make it easier on themselves, maybe to make it easier on the copyists) by getting rid of the part where they double-time the piston jump. (Double-time now replaced by simple sideways hops.)

[koganbot]

So this earlier rehearsal version, with the double-timed piston, is the one we should all be watching (starts at 1:37* [EDIT: except this version, being shorter, leaves out the part where they charge across the stage in formation; so for the right and full version of the dance, we've got to go back to the fancams of the preview performances, which unfortunately have bad sound]):



*But the instructions that YouTube Help gives for starting it at 1:37 on the embed — basically by adding "#t=1m37s" to the URL — don't get it started there.

[koganbot]

Ah, we get almost a full version of the original choreography on Show Champion on June 26, though the best rip is over on dailymotion, which lj won't let me embed in comments:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x120xhj_130626-crayon-pop-bar-bar-bar-mbc-show-champion-1080p_music?search_algo=2#.Ue8yx43VCJk

[koganbot]

And we get the full version w/ double-time piston just ten days ago over on Sketchbook, so obviously Crayon Pop haven't dropped the move from their repertoire, but just sometimes put it aside.

Readers' Poll

[koganbot]

Keeping my compulsivity in check by not going back to the beginning of the year and by rushing through quickly (meaning I may have missed something), I've compiled all the songs reviewed at the Singles Jukebox since April 1 that received 15 or more reader votes. To put this in perspective, the Jukebox has reviewed approximately 720 230 songs over that time. And "no reader votes" is a typical result. Just as a sample, here are a few of the K-pop tracks that have been reviewed at the Jukebox, followed by the number of readers ratings they garnered (bear in mind that readers rate things low as well as high; but number of ratings indicates something about reader interest or lack of interest): Girl's Day "Expectation" no reader votes, 4minute "What's Your Name" 6 reader votes, T-ara N4 "Countryside Life" 7 reader votes, CL "The Baddest Female" 14 reader votes (the only other K-pop track to get more than 10 reader votes).

In ascending order:

Taylor Swift ft. Ed Sheeran "Everything Has Changed" 15 reader votes
Jessie Ware "Imagine It Was Us" 15 reader votes
Beyoncé "Grown Woman" 16 reader votes
Tegan and Sara "Now I'm All Messed Up" 17 reader votes
Vampire Weekend "Ya Hey" 18 reader votes
Selena Gomez "Come & Get It" 19 reader votes
Britney Spears "Ooh La La" 19 reader votes
Kanye West "Black Skinhead" 19 reader votes
Robin Thicke ft. T.I. & Pharrell "Blurred Lines" 19 reader votes
Mariah Carey ft. Miguel "#Beautiful" 20 reader votes
Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams "Get Lucky" 24 reader votes
Crayon Pop "Bar Bar Bar" 31 reader votes
Paramore "Still Into You" 63 reader votes

[koganbot]

A thought about the video: even in the dance version, Chrome Entertainment kind of blew it, by switching up locations too often and using closeups poorly and so not getting enough of the full dance formation, especially when the piston dance first appears. In fact, so far the rehearsal video is getting more views than either of the official MVs.*

*Though that may not last out the day, as the official dance MV is the version that seems to be going viral. ("Going viral" is relatively speaking; it's at 714,000 now, and my guess is that it surpasses a million views in the next day or so. Compare to "Gangnam Style," which is currently at 1.7 billion views.)

[koganbot]

Well, that prediction turns out to be somewhat wrong, and maybe we're blowing this thing up bigger than it is. Seventeen hours later the official vid (741,322 views) is indeed ready to pass the rehearsal vid (743,499), plus it's gotten on the news for topping the Melon video chart. And YouTube is probably lagging a bit with its numbers. But still, 28,000 new views in seventeen hours hardly qualifies as "viral." For all I know, "Bar Bar Bar" has peaked, though if high-profile performance opportunities open up and news sites continue to report the Melon triumph, there could be further surges or a breakout. Hoping.

Some commenters are calling "Bar Bar Bar"'s relatively late success (given its release over a month ago) "unprecedented," but I'm skeptical. How else can a song by a little-known group with a small promotion budget rise except from an initial slow build, as it gains an audience incrementally? So of course this won't match the flash-and-then-fade trajectory of tracks by idol groups who are already well-known or by the big-budget rookies whom everyone hears at once. I'd guess that Korean hip-hop hits by relative newbies also start with an initial slow build, though I don't have any information on this.

Crayon Polish

[koganbot]

And a woman who writes a blog D4ZZLING ME about nail polish was inspired by the Crayon Pop MV to do each nail in one of the five Crayon Pop training suit colors:

http://d4zzlingme.blogspot.com/2013/07/crayon-pop-bar-bar-bar-inspired-nails.html

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

So, I suppose, Americans are colorful and American style is freedom. (Couldn't find translated lyrics.) The UV track, as a dance video, is a tribute to London Boys' "Harlem Desire" (1987), a song written and produced by a German and performed by two Brits about the allure and danger of New York.

Re the "allure and danger of New York", there are quite a few K-Pop videos set in a stylised version of New York (or a generic big, scary American city), all neon and graffiti and payphones and big blinging cars and urban decay.

2NE1 - Fire ("Street" version)

[Error: unknown template video]

f(x) - NU ABO

[Error: unknown template video]

2NE1 - Ugly

[Error: unknown template video]

Lee Hi - 1, 2, 3, 4

[Error: unknown template video]

Updated links for David's comment

[koganbot]

Updated links for David's comment:

2NE1 - Fire ("Street" version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49AfuuRbgGo

f(x) - NU ABO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ZrPFMr_nY

2NE1 - Ugly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGe0hHvAGkc

Lee Hi - 1, 2, 3, 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AI7UP1iRAU