Frank Kogan

Made a YouTube playlist of my favorite tracks from K-pop's lower commercial tiers.



In ascending order. As you can see, I like both it and that:

Leader'S "Hope" (2011). The song is called "Hope" but the sound is heartache 24/7. I left NYC several years before Hot 97 or whatever it was came in with a Latin freestyle format, but I can imagine this humid emotion emanating daily from car radios and bodegas on my block (I lived on the northern end of Mott Street, which was nominally still part of Little Italy, but the Italians had mostly moved to more well-to-do neighborhoods, being replaced by immigrants from the Dominican Republic).

D-Unit ft. Vasco "Stay Alive" (2013). Produced by Zico of Block B, this is a lot more natural than his own group ever was at creating a hip-hop idol sound, emphatic rapping with a backdrop that's half dreamy and half disorienting.

Chi Chi "Sexy Doll" (2012). A come-on that sounds at least as ominous as it is salacious.

Z.Hera "Peacock" (2013). Haven't yet discovered who wrote this, but it's someone with a far better understanding than I of Chopin or whomever, the track moving along towards inevitable bliss, while the singer uses the strain in her voice to suggest struggle and uneasiness. She just debuted, and I'm hoping for great things.

Clinah "So What If" (2011). Fractured power pop. It feels Japanese.

Tiny G "Minimanimo" (2013). I wonder if Bo Diddley had the least inkling in 1955 that he was setting the beat not just for buckets 'n' guts, but for sprites and nymphs.

Miss $ "Physical Or Emotional" (2012). Back to the dark Bodega wail. Miss $ had been a so-what r&b act for several years until they suddenly blossomed into passion.

Evol "Get Up" (2013). Get ur twisty little freak on, and take it to the disco.

GLAM "I Like That" (2013). Samples New York City sorrow, then pushes towards a joy most complicated.

Flashe "Drop It" (2012). A lot like "Bo Peep Bo Peep" in the way it teases and nags you.

New.F.O "Bounce" (2011). While the video apes 2NE1-style imperiousness, the band bubbles and bounces.

ChoColat "I Like It" (2011). Young Melanie wants it all, with a massive voice of promise and pain.

Crayon Pop "Bar Bar Bar" (2013). Perhaps they're lucky not to be stars. They get to spray everyone in their audience with water pistols.

E.via (now calling herself Tymee) "Pick Up! U!" (2010). The queen of the lower reaches, she can be anything from a severe art bitch to the cutest and quickest of the wild spirits. Here she gives us fractured power pop, fractured dance pop, fractured Poképop.

Fat Cat "My Love Bad Boy" (2011). Putatively cute and catchy, our heroine breaks her voice into scrapes, sparks, and splatters, and the sort of hooks that rip flesh.

Honorable mentions: Gangkiz "Honey Honey," A-Jax "Hot Game," MYNAME "Just That Little Thing," Blady "Spark Spark," Delight "Mega Yak," X-Cross "Crazy."

( Steerage )

I crossposted this on ILM's K-pop 2013.

Z.Hera "Peacock": Dance-pop from a writer who seems to have studied études and preludes, featuring a rookie singer who puts strain in her upper register in a way that's heart-tuggingly passionate, like the best of the '80s. She's got something, as does whoever wrote and produced the song, even if it's getting nowhere on the charts.



It would help if the visual concept were more than just "I'm young, I'm fresh, and I dance pretty well." In the video she's a caged bird who escapes her garret into a land of balloons and Swiss roofs and soap bubbles. The lyrics (English version here) are about never giving up in the face of adversity or a love object's indifference ("Nobody close, I'm feeling lonely, bitter cold/Only thought it makes me stronger"). Then she steps through her wardrobe into a tinseltown freeze, but she's feeling fire, and her energy never flags.

( Live on Mcountdown )

Baek Ji Young "떠올라": Baek Ji Young has been doing well recently with ballads of dripping emotion, no droplet or gusher held back, one of the few ballad singers to reach me consistently. But she has an easy touch on dance tracks, into which she inserts pangs and power, also reaching me.



( Back catalog )

BoA: BoA is an astonishingly fluid dancer, my favorite in the world. In comparison, her voice often seems locked-in. But her nasal soundpack is just right for the OST ballad "Between Heaven And Hell": restraint, clear line on the melody, dignified little quavers.

GLAM's "I Like That," over on The Singles Jukebox: Jukebox reviewers are always pretty good at K-pop, since they're coming in without preconceptions, or the preconceptions are wrong enough that there will always be angles I'd not thought of and attention to what's actually happening in the song. I like Ian's sense of the sun coming out in the chorus, and Iaian highlighting Zinni's squeaks. Meanwhile, I was trying to jam as many facts and overtones into my own writeup as I could. (Wanted to find a way of working in that hilarious YouTube comment Subdee uncovered about a GLAM dance performances with SeeU the Vocaloid: "it seems seeU is the only one who did the dance, 'right.' i=fantasy is not a sexual song, (as most people see it) GLAM, by there dancing makes it seems that way." But I couldn't figure out how to work it in without seeming to veer too gratuitously away from the actual song under review.)

I wouldn't be surprised if, in the "Party(XXO)" video when Dahee wears the big letters GL on her shirt, leaving off the AM, she's inviting us to fill in BT afterwards. I can't say what this means for Korea, since I don't know Korea; but that's why I was making such a big thing in last week's comments regarding whom GLAM record for. Getting major-label support, which they seem to have, is probably significant. And "Party(XXO)" is stronger than "gay friendly." It's "gay explicit" (or bi or whatever: see Eng Trans). So good luck to them, and for doing it in a way that's colorful and funny and complicated rather than simply earnest. But they are in earnest, too.*



( Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein not source of sample, but good song in its own right )

( Why You )

( Because Of You )

*UPDATE: I'm keeping the killed embed up because I'm fascinated by this sentence: "'글램 GLAM I LIK...' This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Fever Records, Inc." Fever Records is the Cover Girls' old label. I would guess that Fever has decided to raise a stink over GLAM's use of Chuli & Miae's sample of the Cover Girls' "Because Of You." But a Google search isn't confirming this. And LOEN Entertainment's YouTube post of "I Like That" is still up. [UPDATING THE UPDATE: No, finally decided to put the good version in.]]

I was under the impression that, if there's been any identifiable trend in recent K-pop, it's been in the direction of increasing the electrobeats, with minitrends towards crypto-freestyle and blatant disco, these at the expense of a more R&B sound. But there are probably nearly as many counterexamples as examples, and Lee Hi's soul-r&b "1,2,3,4" was number one for three weeks last month. An even bigger "but," when it comes to trends and directions, is that I just ran across H.O.T.'s "We Are The Future" from way back in 1997, and it feels a lot like electro and freestyle too, though of course with the requisite K-pop rapping. And it's good.

H.O.T. were boyband superstars, probably the band that put SM Entertainment on the map.*

Watch on YouTube

What reminds me of freestyle are the dolorous melodies (sounding a bit like the Mideast), the intertwining instrumental hooks, and the electro-rhythms. Freestyle's heyday in the U.S was the mid and late '80s (Cynthia's great "Change On Me," for example), but Korea has been making hay with it since, though not diving as deep and deliriously into hooks and beats as the original New York–Miami version had.

*You who know K-pop history better than I do should correct me if I'm wrong.

Kim Wan Sun, from 1987. It's not quite freestyle, but it's pretty close (closer than Madonna ever got, for instance). And it's pretty great. The same piercing passion.

Watch on YouTube

"리듬속의 그 춤을" is translated most often as "The Dance In The Rhythm." Google Translate gives us "In Rhythm With The Dance," which I like more, whether or not it's accurate.

If YouTube commenters are right, the track was written and produced by Shin Joong Hyun, who also provides the guitar solo; this is interesting in itself, since from last year's compilation I gather he was more a psychedelic and metal guy than a dance guy. Think of Jimmy Page producing the Cover Girls. [EDIT: The guitar solo on "The Dance In The Rhythm" is not by Shin Joong Hyun but by his son, Shin Daechul, of the band Sinawe. Did I just assume the solo was by producer Shin Joong Hyun, without checking, or did one of the YouTube commenters assume it, and I copied the assumption? (The original embed was killed by YouTube, the embed above is a replacement, so the YT comment thread I was reading is gone.]

Don't know where this music would have found itself in the sounds of South Korea circa 1987, since I barely know what those sounds were. If Wikipedia is right, K-pop didn't coalesce as a genre until the early '90s. But if "Roly-Poly" is right, South Korea was glomming off American disco and club sounds since the '70s. Could Shinsadong Tiger and SweeTune been listening to this song as tykes? (Tiger'd have been four when it came out.)

h/t G'old Korea Vinyl, who stream this and many other vintage tracks, and where I will be spending many hours.

( How to get Maura Johnston interested in K-pop )

( Britney )


IU, "The Story Only I Didn't Know." I don't have a good explanation for why a particular ballad hits me, since most go in one ear and out the other, leaving only torpor to mark their passage. Here, IU creates a space of intense agony, the music standing stark still. Her small voice sounds almost matter-of-fact. Like adding up deadly accounts. (So, torpor bad but stillness good?) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAQ0d3LAtZ0 [click CC if you're not seeing English captions])

Galaxy Dream ft. Turbotronic, "Ready 4 Romance." Take any room, from shack to bar to ballroom, dim the lights, add breaths and echo effects, and voila! A dark, erotic, cavernous space. The cavemen figured this out early, using shadows and torches.

HyunA, the Bubble Pop! EP: on reality TV HyunA plays herself as a goofball and brat (search YouTube for "HyunA screams at chicken"), yet this does nothing to undo her sexual aura. On live performances of "Just Follow" she moves slow, her face expressionless, the expressionlessness expressing force and haughtiness, and an inner stillness — the stillness totally sexualized. I wonder what she thinks of it. Does the force field of sexiness that emanates from her have anything to do with her, or is it just a thing that she ("she") can use? Is it just her gorgeous, slightly blank face and her way of barely moving, restraint in her gestures, onto which we project the force field? She and Zico had performed "Just Follow" seven consecutive times [EDIT: over ten days, that is]; at the end of the eighth they deliberately break character and smile, "See, we're normal warm people after all"; and HyunA winks. But this is a controlled warmth, "See, I've been here all along," her revealing herself in her own time, doling out the warmth but only when she wants to. So besides warmth what's revealed is mastery, the ability to control the revelation, the smile demonstrating more control since it says "I can turn my roles on and off." The fear and hysteria she puts on when she wants to go girlie-girlie is a role too — even if the various roles all happen to be the truth. [EDIT: This P&J para, written Dec. 22, 2011 or thereabouts, was my first attempt to get at the awe-and-aura-not-requiring-distance point I next made a week later on my lj and a few days after that on Tumblr.]

( Singles ballot )

( Albums ballot )

( Why I don't capitalize the m in 4minute )

Fat Cat and CL wiggle their way into the Top 10, producers/writers SweeTune give us Nine Muses' "Figaro" and Infinite's "Be Mine," and somewhere on here there's something new I added that isn't Korean, maybe down around 60:

Singles through September 30:

1. Britney Spears "Hold It Against Me"
2. Jeremih ft. 40 Cent "Down On Me"
3. GD&TOP "High High"
4. 2NE1 "I Am The Best"



5. Galaxy Dream ft. Turbotronic "Ready 4or Romance"
6. IU "The Story Only I Didn't Know"
7. Bobby Brackins ft. Dev "A1"
8. Big Bang "Tonight"
9. SNSD "Bad Girl"
10. Fat Cat "My Love Bitch" [EDIT: the most common translation of "내사랑 싸가지" turns out to be "My Love Bad Boy," so that's what I'm now reluctantly going with]


(But the camera person was too reticent, so you'll need to go here [EDIT: where it's called "Indifferent Love]," for a better view of Fat Cat ticking her tush like a clock.)

( 11 through 73 )

( technical note )

( 2NE1 Uncertainty Principle )

Just spent an hour on YouTube listening to freestyle raps in Korean, a language I don't understand. Here's Huckleberry P.



And here's Huck and SOOLj. Don't know if they're debating or organizing or what, but on the basis of their flow and demeanor, they've got my vote. Mayor and deputy mayor.



(Just beginning to explore this, but something seems to go wrong when Huck gets in an actual-for-real recording studio, usually as a guest rapper. He'll be spittin' fine but he'll be caught in a lugubrious arrangement, or the whole thing will be in tedious sincere-style rapping, the bane of Korean hip-hop. In contrast, this year's SOOLj EP, Electro SOOLj, is quite good - maybe 'cause it's fundamentally dance, and SOOLj has tendencies towards the other freestyle, the '80s one out of Miami and New York dance clubs.)

Wonder Girls to tour U.S. with Jonas Brothers this summer (says UPI):


Seem like a variation on NY-Miami 1988, which I think is a good thing.

( Tell Me )