Frank Kogan

If you were to ask me do I think T-ara are sexy or, instead, do I think they're cute, you've asked me an insane question, since their cuteness makes them sexy and their sexiness makes them cute. Not that there's a complete overlap: cuteness is only a part of their repertoire of sexiness and sexiness is only part of their repertoire of cuteness. And they generally avoid cutesiness, which is a turnoff. But what I'm noticing is that "cute vs. sexy" is something of a meme in K-pop, even though as an actual dichotomy it hardly seems usable. But there is even an officially designated "sexy version" and an officially designated "cute version" of T-ara's "Bo Peep Bo Peep" vid. Recognizing that "cute" and "sexy" are being used as generic, symbolic terms — so not encompassing something like "Minzy has a cute ass," where "cute" means "she's really hot"; but more like how a nightgown symbolizes sexiness while a business suit symbolizes seriousness even though someone can look really sexy in business clothes and look unsexy in a nightgown (not sure what a "cute" costume would be: a bunny suit comes to mind, but that's problematic) — there are nonetheless performers like Sunny (of SNSD) and HyunA who are also adept at interweaving the symbols of sexiness and cuteness (and the word "interweaving" is misleading in that it still implies too much of a difference), not to mention seriousness and the business suit when those performers are so inclined.

( That's how far I've gotten stating the issue )

( Sad but sexy )

One thing I noticed, looking at that and the other GLAM vids, is that view totals are edging up and there are all these recent comments to the effect that "Kim Nana brought me here." So who's Kim Nana? Turns out she's a character in the TV miniseries Monstar, the actress portraying her being GLAM's own Dahee. And talk about SAD AND SEXY! She's absolutely smoldering — despair, anger, and heat all at once. And in the TV show, straight, as far as I can tell. I'll confess I haven't had time to actually watch an episode, and it looks like I'm not going to; frankly, from the clips I've seen it doesn't seem very good ("Monstar depicts the lives of ordinary teens who are injured psychologically and heal themselves through the power of music"). And while the ballads are passable, the bravura pop-rock showpieces are utterly tedious: big blundering TV-contest ideas of what impressive, powerful song presentation is supposed to be. Yet there's Nana as a character, introduced to us first as the dangerous, dark brooding sexy girl from the wrong side of the tracks — don't mess with her — whose heart, we're to learn soon enough, is secretly breaking. That's pretty much all I've gotten from quick-skimming the clips; I can guess how everything plays out but I don't know, or what surprises I missed, or what I got wrong. Nonetheless, there's Kim Nana. I can't tell you, not having watched more than scattered scenes, how good Dahee is as an actress. It may not matter. All she has to do is to look out at us through her long hair and to never smile. If I'm fourteen years old I know who I'm in love with.


( Censors unrepresentative mindset )

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.

Visited the pop!gasa K-pop translation site and unearthed these gems:

SeeU the Vocaloid, in "I=Fantasy," speaking on behalf of centaurs, unicorns, animated characters, Elizabeth Bennets, Te'o girlfriends, Margaret Berger robots, and holograms the world round:

Those idiots don't know anything
Oh no
Oh no
Oh no
They hate those who are not real
Oh no
Oh no
Oh no

<">

T-ara, carrying on typically like T-ara ("Day By Day"):

I hope my lips that recite this sad poem will be remembered in your black eyes

E.via (a.k.a. Tymee) "I Know How To Play A Little":

Even if the world vanishes tomorrow
Love will be forever

Girl's Day "Oh! My God":

All men are the same
They know one thing and don't know the other things

( It's hurdle after hurdle of lyrics )

Here's a slight rewrite of my Pazz & Jop comments. I'd whipped the comments out in three hours right at deadline, and I liked the result: power and emotion maybe because of the rush. But owing to the speed, some ambiguities were left in, and some useful details were left out. So I've tweaked the sentences a little, and expanded a few.

( Budokan )
( People decided to imagine where the rage comes from )

A young woman, a member of a K-pop group, writes a tweet that goes, "The differences in levels of determination ^ ^. Let us all have determination." And several members of the same group take to twitter to concur, or re-tweet, with Jiyeon's concurrence maybe taking on an edge, the phrase, "I applaud you, acting genius," seeming like sarcasm. Hwayoung, the group member whom these tweets are apparently directed at, tweets back, "Sometimes determination alone is not enough." And from here the Internet takes over, seeing this as a set of girls ganging up on another girl. And videos that were obviously faked or even more obviously taken out of context begin to appear, to support this narrative, of a gang of girls bullying another girl: At the K-pop track-and-field events Hwayoung's umbrella is blowing apart in the rain and none of the other girls are helping her. Next image, they're force-feeding her while on a Japanese game show, jamming a rice cake into her mouth. (Amazing that that's taken as bullying; I mean, it's a game show, it's done for laughs, it was broadcast on TV, when it aired thousands saw without seeing any bullying; a few minutes earlier in the very same episode, Jiyeon, supposedly Hwayoung's main antagonist, also had a rice cake shoved into her mouth. Of course, the antis who distributed this as evidence of bullying edited that part out.) And we've got a photo where Hwayoung was on one escalator and the other girls were on another, definitive proof that she was ostracized, shunned.

So, there's a story basically creating itself out of air, but a story that's already in so many people, waiting for an excuse to take to the air.

( Make the other members suffer as well )

( Singles )

( Albums )

--Frank Kogan, December 28, 2012; minor revisions in comments January 23, 2013.

GLAM's "I Like That" entered the Gaon Chart this week at 57. This was way lower than I'd anticipated, my expectation being based on an Allkpop story saying "I Like That" had finished number 3 on January 2 on the Bugs Chart. I don't know what the Bugs Chart does, actually (the chart is in Korean, not surprisingly). I assume it records daily numbers, though I don't know of what. "I Like That" isn't in today's top ten.

GLAM began promoting the single on December 29, performing it on SBS's Gayo Daejun accompanied by their Vocaloid friend SeeU. The video didn't go up until three days later, though teasers had started on December 26. Full-throttle comeback performances started on January 3. So, anyway, I don't know whether or not the song had a full week in the public consciousness to post numbers — Gaon's week runs Sunday to Saturday, so the current rankings are based on December 30 through January 5; next chart will cover January 6 through today.

SNSD's "I Got A Boy" is number 1 with a rather unimpressive 28,479,080 points. Its numbers might not reflect a full week either: video wasn't up until Monday December 31, and I don't know when sales started. Also, it's a weird song.

On YouTube, "I Got A Boy" is at 26,564,464 views. Are there Korean video sites I should be taking account of too? YouTube views for "I Like That," which are divided up between LOENENT and GLAMofficialvideo, total 291,414. A couple orders of magnitude of difference, there. Gaon points for "I Like That" are 3,376,761, which makes up one order of magnitude but is still way behind. So Allkpop's lead, "GLAM have been giving Girls' Generation a run for their money with their new single, 'I Like That,' which is rising up on music charts," seems very wrong. Premature, anyway.

I'm rooting big for "I Like That," which I'll write about later. Is a good song, not a great one, but socially this group matters. And they dance well. And the lyrics engage in fairly subtle arguments with themselves, aren't just slogans. Though as slogans they're good, too.