koganbot | Entries tagged with cover girls

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.

Watch on YouTube

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.

Watch on YouTube

( 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.

Watch on YouTube

Current Music: Baek Ji Young "떠올라"

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.*

Watch on YouTube

( 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.]]

Current Music: GLAM "I Like That"

Hope to post about GLAM in the near future, as they're Socially Important in a good way, and not just because they copy or sample a vocal curlicue from the Cover Girls. But it's that curlicue which is the subject of this post, since, from the way GLAM use it, I'm pretty sure they got it not directly from "Because Of You," but by way of "Why You," a 1993 track by Chuli & Miae (철이 와 미애).

Watch on YouTube

For a couple of years now I've been hammering in the point about K-pop drawing on freestyle, though not hammering with a lot of ideas, just the fact of the influence. (For more hammering, here's my freestyle tag.*) But "Why You" isn't merely influence, it's the thing itself, a Korean track that's out-and-out freestyle. It isn't only freestyle, though. In fact, it's very 1993 (as opposed to 1988), unequivocably freestyle while employing an int'l house mashup strategy. Pretty interesting and doesn't quite match anything I ever heard in the U.S. It starts with the Cover Girls curlicue on repeat,** the vocal riff seeming to call across an oceanic distance. This drifts into poignant house atmospherics, then a properly twisting freestyle riff, setting up a talk-rap that isn't trying to sound hip-hop, while the Cover Girls curlicue is cut up and inserted in little bits, and shards of Korean singing punctuate the rapping. Finally, the singing takes center stage, coalescing into an unabashed freestyle melody directly in the Mickey Garcia/Elvin Molina style of mournful NYC melodies circa 1989 — this all in the first minute and a quarter.

( Footnotes )

Current Music: Chuli & Miae "Why You"

Your life will be happier if you click this link.

[UPDATE: Er, not anymore. Try this one.]
[EDIT: Okay, well how about this one.]

Current Music: The Cover Girls "Inside Outside"

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Frank Kogan

Entries tagged with cover girls

What does not chill me makes me stronger (Z.Hera, Baek Ji Young, BoA)

GLAM over on the Jukebox

Chuli & Miae 1993 (Freestyle Tuesday)

The Cover Girls

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March 2025

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