Kpop, Kpop, and Kpop: The Discussion Thread

Simon and Martina are pretty great. They also get on my nerves pretty quickly, but I enjoy them in small doses.

Whew, page seven. You guys were right. Lets keep videos to links.

New Ku Hye Sun. She's amazing: actress, director, musician, and painter. I wish she released more music.

One of the first Korean songs I ever listened to was her song Brown Hair, still one of my favorites. So sweet and playful. Got roped into all of this Kpop because one day I started watching Boys Over Flowers randomly on Netflix. Somehow I got hooked. It's overall a pretty terrible drama, but I love Ku Hye Sun, my first Korean obsession.

@mcghee said:

yeah, i hate their skit based stuff, but everything that's basically just them talking is alright

park chan wook directed this music video for lee jung hyun's new song v.

it's pretty creepy.

That new 2ne1 track is all kinds of great.

new f(x) is out and it's alright. it's got a decent instrumental but kind of lacks energy, i dunno. it's enjoyable. red haired krystal is the worst though.

meanwhile over in the nugu zone, tahiti put out a new track and it's pretty decent. and aoa black, which i guess is the band subunit of aoa? put out a pretty mediocre song imo. one of the girls looks like alice from hello venus and that's the only highlight.

more comebacks, koyote is back with hollywood, double a is back with midnight taxi, and outsider is back after his military service with bye u.

new BEG next week, i hope it's good, here's the teaser for kill bill, which looks like it is quite literally, kill bill. also 5dolls, or should i say f-ve dolls, is coming back soon as well, now with 6 members, one of which is oh yeonkyung from the seeya :D

@onimonkii said:

Man, yeah, I agree on the lack of energy, especially when you compare it to Electric Shock which was so great at being in your face constantly. There are parts here and there that bring it up a bit, but it isn't very exciting overall.

That BEG teaser seems promising. I'm curious to see how far they go with the "homage" in the actual video.

still waiting on the MV but BEG just performed recipe & kill bill on inkigayo and it was awesome.

in other news girl's days new summery song isn't all that great.

Love the new f(x). You're crazy about not liking Krystal's red hair. Loved their school uniform outfits on Inkigayo.

BEG is one of my favorite groups and I'll say that track is pretty good, but it's not blowing me away. I'm hoping it will grow on me and I can't wait for the full album.

IU has left Inkigayo and this must mean that she is going full force into her new album. That is what I am excited for the most. I've been watching "You're the Best, Lee Soon Shin" all week and she's also an amazing actress. Watching that show, she has the greatest eyes in the world. So adorable, I'm dying over here.

listening to the gsd summer song again it's not that bad, i was probably a bit harsh on it at first. i like it, it's just not their best stuff (don't forget me, don't flirt, etc.)

i dunno if you guys keep up with it at all but apparently crayon pop is full on going viral in korea right now. it's insane how fast it's happening, people are saying they're hearing the song in malls and shops, SM artists have been performing dance covers of bar bar bar at live shows, and the performance director for SM even made a remix, and most recently, SS501 leader/industry veteran Kim Hyun Joong came out and said they were his favorite rookie group on tv.

"I'm a ghost senior because I'm not used to being greeted by my juniors. I run away from them. I do watch girl group videos on YouTube. My favorite junior is rookie girl group Crayon Pop. I have a song titled 'Lucky Guy' and the 'Bar Bar Bar' choreography is similar to it. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they copied it. Should I sue them.... (laughter). I'm joking, they're a junior I really like."

there's some fancams of people chanting/cheering/dancing along to bar bar bar in a baseball stadium, and it's in the top 10, if not the top 5 of every single chart right now. tonight was the first time they were invited to perform on inkigayo since their debut stage.

I'd say it's their best song since Nu ABO. Electric Shock was completely flat for me because it lacked in music - just sounded like them in an echo chamber. Krystal has always been my favorite so I can stomach the red hair but yah, the whole "dye one of the members in a wacky color" trend in KPOP is losing it's muster. Luna looks like she lost some weight, and I continue disliking how Amber is styled as an androgynous tomboy.

@onimonkii: It's pretty cool to see it happen for Crayon Pop the way it is. They've worked incredibly hard. I just saw fancams a few days ago of Girl's Day singing pieces of BarBarBar during their warm up and then a couple of the guys from Shinee doing the dance at the end of their concert. Loved the Inkigayo performance where it looked like their backup dancers were fans. lol

and here's the mv for brown eyed girls - kill bill

Follow Amber on twitter. Look at her pics and how she dresses in her free time. She is a tomboy. That's not just SM's doing. Her older sister is like that too. You can also see it in her dancing. It is more powerful and dynamic, like a guy's.

@humanity: I won't say that Electric Shock was the greatest song. It just has great energy and a great beat. I haven't really heard much else from them aside from this and Electric Shock and I just prefer ES--at least after only one listen of the new song.

That all seems a bit strange. I like that MV, but I don't really think the song is the greatest vocal performance-wise. I wonder what it is about it and that group that caught on so heavily.

@wemibelec90: I'd say Hot Summer is a decent song by F(x) and if you haven't heard it yet definitely check out New ABO

@wemibelec90 said:

not to be a dick but this is pop music, there's no direct correlation between having great vocals and having a song that becomes popular. i think a lot of people forget that sometimes, with all the focus on the vocal powerhouse artists/groups and ways to determine who sings best live etc. sometimes all you need is a simple, catchy, fun song that people like to hear.

@onimonkii: No doubt. I love a good catchy pop song as much as the next guy. It's just fascinating how the songs that catch on the heaviest seem to be entirely random; if you think about it, what distinguishes those songs that are extremely popular from the multitude of other catchy pop songs? I do think that the MV is great fun and can understand why people are so enamored with it. Crayon Pop is a cute group. I'm anxious to see what they do next, especially with this newfound popularity.

@wemibelec90 said:

word from korean crayon pop fans is they performed their next single at their mini-concert and it's more of a ballad

Dudes, Brown Eyed Girls' new album Black Box is amazing all the way through. Kpop album of the year so far.

@mcghee said:

idk dude, Pink Tape is like, f(x)'s Absolute First Album

I've been listening to that today as well. It's pretty good, but sometimes f(x)'s songs are too childish for my tastes (Gangsta Boy, for instance, *shudders*), but that's their demographic, after all.

BEG is just soooo good.

@mcghee said:

yeah that's the thing, i don't like their other albums that much, because their non-singles just feel like reject snsd songs or just otherwise aren't great. but this one is good from front to back. black box is good too though

i think f(x) has the better album overall, but BEG has the better singles

That BEG album is pretty good across the board, with the possible exception of Kill Bill which I'm still not sure I like yet. It's likely it will grow on me, as several KPOP songs seem to do.

While we're talking about albums, I have a question for the kings of KPOP here. Do you buy albums and if so, where? The only album I actually own is J-Rabbit and that's because they sell it digitally on Amazon for a decent price. Is there a way to get KPOP albums digitally somewhere or are you pretty much stuck with physical ones shipped from overseas? If physical albums are really the only option, is there a good place to get them for a not absurd price?

Feel free to ignore this question if you simply use Youtube or pirate them. :)

I get my stuff from kpopmart.com. They're only up to $13 most the time and as I live in the UK it gets super cheap. The most expensive part is fast shipping, but if you don't need it quickly there's a cheap shipping option.

And as for this month I'd say f(x)'s Rum Pum Pum Pum is the best song of the month, and Brown Eyed Girls' Kill Bill has yet to grow on me, but I'll still probably get their Black Box album either way.

As much as people hate SM, this year they've been doing some really off the wall things with their groups. They're becoming almost experimental as a label, I Got a Boy had various tempo changes and f(x)'s Rum Pum Pum Pum is so different from any other title track they've done. EXO becoming one group for this promotion, both the K and M learning each others language respectively and producing a song which is so heavy on the vocals yet is nuts with dubstep. SM is a really interesting label, and everything they do seems to be off the wall nuts and surprising.

Also Luhan is my wife.

@wemibelec90 i used to buy songs off mnet until they made it a pain in the ass to add funds to your account. most stuff is on itunes from what i hear, or you could try soribada

ccm just popped out a double with t-ara & davichi feat. skull and their summer special song, bikini and the long awaited return of 5dolls with soulmate #1

personally i like the 5dolls song more. the best word i could use to describe the other is "inoffensive". speaking of, here's the new girl's day summer special song, do tell me

@librorumprohibitorum i don't really hate sm on principle or anything but most of their artists just do nothing for me. henry was a big exception, OOLF was a good song but other than that exo doesn't have much i'm into, but now pink tape is actually really good. i got a boy gets way too much credit just because it was snsd, when glam & fiestar did the same thing first w/ i like that & we don't stop.

everything about snsd lately just feels like coasting on past success, we get like 1 song a year if we're lucky in korean and yet they're still "on top" somehow despite a billion other groups actually working their asses off promoting and putting out good music. it's cool tho i'm sure they'll turn up this winter and pop out a korean version of a song off their last japanese album to throw another log into the fire.

woops i'm ranting about snsd again.

I've actually seen a mostly negative reaction to I Got a Boy compared to everything else they've done, and it's mostly because of the tempo stuff, and that it's SNSD. SM likes SNSD to be in Japan because it is pure profit as opposed to releasing anything in Korea. SNSD absolutely destroys the Oricon chart consistently with their releases, so I don't blame SM for putting their effort into Japan over Korea. You see a similar thing happening with KARA where most of their songs are Japanese now and a Korean comeback is a huge profitable event for the label.

Also, I love GLAM, I adore GLAM to death, but I Like That is nothing like I Got a Boy outside of the mixed American apparel hip hop concept. The song's meaning is different, the choreography is different, and I Like That is more of a love-note to Korean pop culture and the way society is over there, I Got a Boy on the other hand is about the mixed emotions you feel when you're in love, and conveying them through a beat and tempo.

Apparently SNSD's comeback in Korea after the Girls & Peace World Tour is going to be an original song, and it'll comeback right next to Taetiseo's new album. It may not look like it, but SNSD made idol and girl groups what they are today, or at least formed a path to go down, they do take inspiration from old, old idol groups around the time of Into The New World and Kissing You, but they work hard. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it does not happen. This year they've had a comeback, promotions for the comeback, a Japanese tour, filming for two Japanese songs, the promotions of the Japanese songs, a flash mob of sorts, various solos for Korean drama series' and recording music for upcoming film releases, recording of new music (aforementioned Taetiseo comeback and Korean SNSD comeback) and that's not to mention some of the individual members are recording dramas right now. This all on top of a World Tour. To put that into comparison, 2NE1 last year had to choose between new music promotions or a World Tour, and they chose the latter. Falling in Love was recorded last year, and you can hear it on their I Love You comeback stage on Inkigayo.

I hope this gives you a little more insight, if not and you already knew this I apologise, I'm way too passionate about these nine girls. (and f(x) oh my god f(x))

@librorumprohibitorum i did already know all of that because it's the same thing literally everyone says about them. i just personally don't give a shit about anything that happens in japan, despite all the money there is to be made there, there's less tv music performances, which are my meat and potatoes so to speak, so japanese promotion time is wasted on me, since i'm not in japan. at least when they promote in korea, i get to see it because of how their music promotion works. kara and now t-ara are the same way, more time spent in japan where events/performances aren't filmed/broadcast really.

it seems like that's the split, once you get big enough to break out of korea and into japan, you can take longer between releases and just tour, where when you're stuck in korea you're just busting your ass pumping out songs hoping you earn enough of the public's mindshare to be considered for "the tier that will forever be directly beneath snsd" (4minute, sistar, secret, girl's day, etc.).

but i'm also biased in that i personally haven't liked anything snsd has done since oh! really, and i don't like japanese language songs from korean artists, they just sound weird to me. like, 3 exceptions are orange caramel's yasashii akuma, and 4minute's love tension & ready go. that's the other shitty part i guess haha, everyone who listens to them seems just as passionate about them as you are if not more & follows them super closely, but to someone like me to whom they are just another group, they don't really hold up so well. but you can't explain that to the other camp, you just hate them because of how big they are etc. if you try and judge them the same as any other group.

i got a boy was especially weird because like, yeah when a new song comes out i'll give it a couple listens to let it really sink in, but there were people literally forcing themselves to listen to it with the mv/without the mv over and over in various ways UNTIL they "got" it and liked it. it was super weird reading comments like "hey guys, here's how i started to like the song, maybe try listening to it like this and you can like it too".

@onimonkii: Don't get me wrong, I judge the quality of SNSD's songs just like I'd judge any other girl groups music, I just really like SNSD's music and experimentation. Though I do judge boy and girl groups separately, as sometimes boy groups have a different appeal and go for a different tone and often different style of music, like I'd never compare BIGBANG to SNSD outside of "who has the most fans? (based on café's etc)" and "who sells the most units?" as that is all what matters when comparing those groups. Maybe that comes off as a little sexist or something, but I've noticed a distinct difference in boy and girl groups to kinda separate the two.

When it comes to music, you either like it or you don't. It's hard to change anyone's opinion of a song because of how objective liking music is to a person, which is why I'd never say "this is outright bad" or "you need to listen to it like THIS" to anyone, because music doesn't work like that. Sometimes an MV can be too much information the first time and would require listening without the MV, which is what a lot of people had issues with regarding I Got a Boy. There were nine girls, tons of different outfits, several tempo changes, several sets, a lot of hair dye, and a scene where they looked identical. It was difficult to take all of the information in at once, it's an exhausting MV, so I can understand why people just needed to inject it bit by bit into their brain.

As for you not liking the Japanese promotions, that is understandable, you don't really get to see those promotions easily as Japan has some unusual broadcast terms and they don't trust the internet yet, but that's changing ever so slowly. I'm used to this as I'm a fan of Japanese music like Perfume, Capsule and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and I believe Nakata Yasutaka is God incarnate come to this planet to save us all from the sin of Western music, BUT that means I can get by, look forward to the albums and get the MV's on a DVD (fucking DVD's, Blu-ray people.)

Though, to prove I'm not just a crazy SONE defending SNSD to the death, and I acknowledge they are flawed as any other group (aside from Jessica as she will be my wife one day) I also really love 9MUSES, GLAM as I mentioned before, I like 4minute a whole lot (this year hasn't been their strongest), I'm not too keen on T-ara but I love T-ara N4's mini-album, Secret is fantastic, f(x) is my second favourite group ever, I really like BoA, I find Miss A phenomenal, Lee Hi is THE BEST and my other favourite group on part with SNSD is 2NE1. Also, SunnyHill, they're always great.

As for boy groups I love SHINee, BIGBANG, MBLAQ, Infinite, Nu'est, LC9, BTS, Super Junior (manly -M), but my favourite boy group right now is EXO. I really, really like EXO. I like everything about EXO so much.

I just like this stuff a lot.

@wemibelec90: Best place for Kpop downloads is iTunes as far as I can tell. As for physical albums, YesAsia is good, but my stupid bank started blocking my card when I try to buy from websites in Asia. How fucking annoying.

Thanks everyone for the quick responses. I guess physical albums are my best option, as I don't want any of my music locked up in iTunes and those other digital sites seem somewhat iffy to me. Not the worst thing in the world, but digital would certainly have been easier.

@librorumprohibitorum: It is a huge bummer how impossible it can be to find a Japanese music video and the labels are VERY QUICK at getting them pulled off Youtube and other video sites. I can't count the number of times I've had videos disappear and have a hard time tracking them down again. Also, I appreciate your taste in Japanese pop groups. :)

You know if you buy an album on iTunes, you can just burn it to a CD and you've then got it DRM free, right?

I was not aware of that, actually. Nice to know. Still, it seems a little too annoying to bother. A good option, at the least.

EXO's Growl is out.

Korean

Chinese

The absolute best choreography of the year.

i wonder how that's going to look with all 12 on the same "side"

Holy shit, Kara teaser just shown for their 4th full album releasing sometime in September.

They're still the hottest group for me. Each of them has such a unique look and personality. Beautiful goddesses in this masculine concept. Love it.

Man, this thread has really stagnated, hasn't it. Can't tell if everyone has just lost interest or if nothing of great interest has popped up recently.

I do have a submission though! I Am Not Crazy by Son Seung Yeon is something I just found at random, and it isn't bad. May this thread never die!

i've been busy & there haven't been many good releases aside from wassup

basically not much new to post.

hey, there's new stuff! and it's good!

former wonder girls member sunmi has gone solo, still under jyp

loen's boy group history is back with 'tell me love'

seungri from big bang put out a new single off his second solo album, called GOTTA TALK TO U

and sori decided one song called bikini wasn't enough this summer, and showed t-ara how the bikini mv is done

@onimonkii: Some great stuff in there, as always. Thanks!

@wemibelec90: @onimonkii: Damn right dudes, that Sunmi comeback is hot as fuck. Was starting to wonder if JYP lost his touch, but this song is great. This is her first live performance of 24 Hours.

I'm not sure if this was posted before but when I saw this I immediately thought of this thread.

@aurahack: @onimonkii:

Dudes, something really cool has happened. Recently Crayon Pop's BarBarBar went viral and became huge in Korea a couple months after its release. They started getting on more and more music shows until finally they won their first show today. This is a really big deal. Very happy for them. They are from a no-name company with very little money, and they use to perform on the streets because they couldn't get into music shows. They've also had some recent bullshit controversies. But the girls persevered and has finally made it. Very awesome.

@mcghee: Yeah, I saw! So rad. I'm really glad they've gained such popularity over there. Anything that will assure we will get more infectiously fun music from them in the future!

I actually can't beleive I'm beating @mcghee to posting the new amazing kara song

but also there's an awesome new g-dragon you should listen to.

hype for both of these albums

Yeah man, I was at work all night. Been listening to it on repeat while watching this tribute to Ryan stream. Can't say it's my favorite Kara song but honestly, I love them so much, it doesn't fucking matter. Just happy to see them back. Jiyoung has grown into such a beautiful woman, damn. More interested to see the live performance than anything.

Man, it's been awhile since anyone has posted here! I need to resurrect this thread from the dead with a few songs I've been enjoying lately:

The Cure by Drunken Tiger is a nice mellow rap song with a soothing melody.

I Ain't Going Home Tonight from Navi starts a bit slow but picks up into a somewhat repetitive but fun song.

Rocking by Teen Top is maybe a bit generic and predictable, but I like it. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure with its catchy hook.

Feel Good from CNBLUE is an enjoyable pop-rock song. I'm really starting to get into this group with songs like this (and Lady on the JPOP side of things). The guitar lead-in to the song is pretty good too.

Hope someone finds these enjoyable!

I'm super excited for stuff on the horizon, to the point where nothing else is really holding my attention at the moment.

I mean, T-ARA is coming back, finally, and Nine Muses is going to have their first full album with ELEVEN ALL NEW SONGS.

Hype.

How did I not see this topic sooner? I need more K-pop in my life. But only after I finishing listening to Asura Balbata again for the umpteenth time.