Kpop, Kpop, and Kpop: The Discussion Thread

Dude, NO. You are doing it wrong! There are some really, really good producers working in Kpop (whose names I will eventually look up, probably!) If you remotely enjoy any sort of pop you are bound to find a Kpop group that you will like. It's inevitable.

@vexxan: I hate that saxaphone. I love that saxaphone. I hate that saxaphone. Such a good song but so conflicting.

@mcghee: I hate that saxaphone too, the one in the T-ara N4 song. Unfortunately I think I'll be hearing it a lot because that song and MV are great.

New 4minute. Nothing more needs to be said. I will get through the rest of the videos in this thread later, there is important work to be done ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪

shinsadong tiger, brave brothers, sweetune, e-tribe, jyp, teddy park, and more recently, double sidekick are pretty much the big names as far as i know. there's also sm in house producers who i don't know the names of.

@onimonkii: It's personal opinion of course but I did not enjoy anything T-ara did after and including Roly Poly. I can't really recall any of their other songs but I did get a distinctive retro vibe from them. Maybe it's just that Bo Peep and Crazy were such fast pace ultra poppy songs and then they changed gears into their, now signature, style which wasn't something I was into. I essentially liked kpop to be catchy, synthy, new and fresh. You know songs like: T-ara I go Crazy/Bo Peep, SNSD Genie, Co-Ed School Too Late, 4Minute I My Me Mine, 2NE1 Can't Nobody, JQT Peekaboo. Wierdly I never found anything by Kara that great.

@onimonkii: Is G-Dragon constantly on acid?

their last proper song before this subunit thing is pretty much exactly that, you should check it out

if you checked out at roly poly there's a lot to like recently. if you don't like slower songs stay away from day by day, cry cry is probably borderline but still great. lovey dovey is upbeat and catchy as well. there's also non-singles that fit the bill, like hue, or their japanese single, bunny style.

and poor co-ed lol, doomed from the start. at least speed is doing well. hopefully 5dolls gets to come back soon.

edit: as for kara, i really liked their revolution album. mister & wanna specifically, but also aha. all their singles since then are a pretty safe bet, lupin, step, jumpin, pandora. sadly they do more in japan recently, and that stuff i am really not into.

probably. dude seems to have gone off the deep end concept wise. the music still holds up, but that mv is a hot goddamn mess. crayon was straddling the line and this just jumped over it in a monster truck.

When watching that video I kept thinking if there is such a thing as too much creative freedom. Seems like he made a deal that if Heartbreaker proved he can sell as a solo artist then he could do whatever he wanted on the next one.

I'm a pretty big Girl's Day fan, personally. Twinkle Twinkle and Oh My God are both amazing K-Pop videos and catchy as hell. They just recently had a new song called Expectation that I can't seem to get out my head either.

Other than that, I bounce around quite a bit. Every so often, I find a new group I like and listen to a bunch of their stuff. It's something I've always wanted to get really into and finally did at the beginning of this year, after reading the KPop post on the forums here from around that time.

That video is incredible. It's a total clusterfuck of nonsense but it's super entertaining. The song is great, too.

It seems to me that being eccentric and extravagant has been the YG Ent. house style for a while now, so I'm not sure that there's a line to cross.

Not a girl group, but that song by AA has been stuck in my head for a while. You know, the lyrical masterpiece that goes:

"Come back-back, back-back-back, back-back-back, come back to me"?

Obviously not to be confused with the (clearly) inferior song by N-Train entitled "Come Back To Me".

As for girl groups, I'm partial to Girl's Day - Expectation at the moment.

@wemibelec90: Oh yah Girls Day Nothing Lasts Forever was a great single.

@onimonkii: I don't think anyone had any hopes for Co-Ed but that one song was really good. Their second song was ok but nothing special.

I just like Bubble Pop. It's this refresher course on what late 80s early 90s American pop was, and then suddenly it has a wub breakdown.

It is the best Kylie Minogue song that never was.

@onimonkii: @vexxan: R.Tee is amazing. His Soundcloud is a treasure trove of great remixes. He's also started to produce on his own--this being his most recent track.

Ah I like this thread a lot! I love Kpop but I always seem to end up getting hooked on a few songs and just listening to them over and over. Now I'll get updated and introduced to older stuff by the lovely people in here. Props, McGhee! Ga-ring-ga-ring-ga!

Depending on what day you ask me, I would probably pick Genie over Gee. But for an introduction to Kpop, Gee is an iconic song. Aside from perhaps old Wonder Girls songs, Gee was the biggest hit out of all the girl groups (but I think the Wonder Girls is kind of done, and have never been the biggest fan anyway).

@onimonkii:

I love Nine Muses. Got hooked on them with Dolls. A lot of that has to do with Sweetune's writing, love it.

@rebgav: Saxophone I very much enjoy comes from Lipstick by Orange Caramel.
Someone on this forum posted this video in a similar style thread.

@mcghee: Wonder Girls always had weak vocals and apart from that one hit song they didn't make much of a splash. They had one hit song and all of a sudden they left to conquer America only to return a few years later when no one cared anymore. I mean at least SNSD was on Letterman, thats something I guess.

Lee Min Soo is a genius song writer. He writes a lot of songs for IU, Sunny Hill, and Gain. Listen to IU's album "Last Fantasy." It is one of the greatest albums I've ever heard in Kpop and anywhere else.

@mcghee: Haha that was awesome love me some JK and Tasha. That video should be the official song to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, mecha Tigers. Its actually pretty cool but my 4 year old nephew love Kpop and can't get enough of it, he knows more of the music then I do and can repeat some of the lyrics even though he doesn't understand it.

I. That. You? But? I. It.

How? Why?

i also forgot kim do hoon, who does a lot of g.na's stuff, and more recently, did one of my favorite dal shabet tracks.

i dunno, to me it just seemed like a progression from one of a kind to crayon to this, where he's just been getting weirder for the sake of being weird. at least one of a kind had that typical yg feel, and crayon was super fun. i mean yeah, i still enjoy the music, but i wouldn't mind if the eccentricity was dialed back to previous levels.

or really, maybe don't do so much gd. give me a new taeyang album instead, or let's have 2ne1 do something that isn't a terrible collabo with will.i.am

G Dragon might just be the most obnoxious person on the planet. His face is made for punching.

you might have seen it already, but for the benefit of the others i'll link it anyway. there was a documentary about them, like around the time of their debut, followed them for a year i think. a short version of the full thing came out on bbc called IDOL.

it's 47 minutes long (the full thing is 90 minutes), with english subs. definitely worth watching if you'd like some behind the scenes on nine muses, or kpop in general i guess.

No K-pop, but I like this song.

Day 2: Nobody has picked up on the fact that I linked to J-Pop yet. I will destroy the K-Pop menace from the inside.

@onimonkii:

Awesome. I'd heard of that Nine Muses thing but I thought it hadn't been released yet. Thanks for linking.

@sinusoidal:

Wow that was weird to listen to - note because the song is weird, but because it sounds exactly like the Swedish band Kent around the early 2000s!

And not even a little bit. The sound is basically the same. Scratch that, compare it to this song:

It's basically the same song! This is insane. Run them through the Youtube mixer and jump to around the 2:30 mark on both tracks (curiously they are almost exactly the same length too) Fade between the two tracks at random - try to tell which is which. I dare you. I had a hard time doing it and I actually speak Swedish!

It's not even that it's some kind of rip off - the tracks are different enough. But they are going for almost exactly the same thing. It's as if someone recreated the very essence of 2002s Kent in 2007s Korea. It's amazing. The singing style in particular, that slightly depressed droning tone, is amazingly similar.

@wemibelec90: I love Girl's Day. They have a playfulness that I find infectious and their music is consistently catchy. The Expectation video isn't among my favorites; I have no problem with them going more mature or trying something new, but it lacks the inventiveness of their better works.

Oh! My God is definitely my favorite video of theirs, but Don't Flirt is probably my favorite song. That video is also a blast!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuOu31aIiKY

don't flirt is great, it's a shame they never promoted it. don't forget me is a great in between song. i really liked expectation though.

also, a bonus @arbie might appreciate, sera from nine muses introducing her pets

@unmada said:

I agree that the video for Expectation isn't really that great; I feel it is a bit too pandering for my liking. The song, however, is one of my favorites this year.

@onimonkii: @wemibelec90: I really like the song Expectation itself, as well. I wish the video would have done something more creative. Actually, I think that latest album release (which is crazy to think that it's their first full-length album) is pretty good. Easy Go is a great track, and I Don't Mind is lovely.

yeah, it's crazy how their first album is essentially a greatest hits collection. all it's missing is nothing lasts forever.

Oh wow that new G-Dragon video. His stuff has always been bonkers but that is something else.

The funniest Kpop song I have always has always been Mighty Mouth's "Racing Queen". Between the dope LA Raiders hat the one dude has and "I KNOW YOU LIKE MY SWAGGER" it is just insane enough for me to like while still being a pretty good song. It has sick bass.

Also, the subtitles CJ E&M provided in this video are so sketchy yet so endearing. They spell stuff with z's and everything. Makes it extra stupid. Swagger is spelled "swagga"

I was going to post this. This song is my shit. So catchy

:@mcghee You chose a great pair of comebacks to open this thread with. 4Minute is one of the first K-pop groups that sunk its teeth into me, and I'm loving their new mini-album. What's Your Name is a great tune, and the rest of their release matches it. Not just in quality; I feel like they've succeeded in evoking their debut sound, but in a way that evolved it as well. Great stuff.

I am completely in love with the T-ara N4 release. I prefer the Drama version of the MV, though. T-ara's commitment to narrative context in their drama videos works very well with their new track. Their willingness to look completely inept in this rural setting is a lot of fun to watch. The song is fantastic, too; I love the mix of the traditional instruments with the thumping dance rhythm. Way to go, T-ara!

Eh? Last I peeked in there, which wasn't long ago, it seemed more like the "anime-related memes and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure" thread.

Are you asking him how and/or why the video was created or how and/or why he tracked it down, listened to it, and then kept it in mind for later posting?

No, really, how do you track down some of the crazy shit you post?

My first exposure to Kpop was Big Bang's "Lies" but I didn't fall into the Kpop K-hole until SNSD's "Gee" suddenly became the official theme of Starcraft for like maybe a month. I'm wondering when this Kpop thread will start to resemble Team Liquid's Kpop thread with nothing but .gifs of korean girls shaking their asses and making funny faces.

Haven't followed T-ara since Bo-beep but I'm really diggin the new one.

i've heard many stories of kmd. let me play you the song of my people

I have collected about 600 Kpop gifs, but I hope for the thread to not go in that direction. lol

agreed, there's enough places for that on the internet already. for example, neogaf is really great if that's your thing, they have a really nice OP and like, every kpop image on the internet seems to filter through there. just be prepared to have to sift through mountains of snsd to find it.

!! She's called Sera and she has axolotls?! Oh man we could be soul mates! Thanks for worsening my addiction! I'll mention you at my next Kpop Anonymous meeting.

I like Miu Le. She's vietnamese tho

Oh, and here's some pictures.

@dudeglove: You're going to have to be a little bit more specific.

@azimuttyo: You're going to have to be a little bit more on topic.

@onimonkii: Eh, G-Dragon is just weird enough that I'm willing to pay attention. If he dialed it down from here it will have been a pretty disappointing flirtation with being vaguely entertaining. I don't think that One of a Kind or Crayon were much less odd, I think that he just had much less money to play with.

I could go for a new 2ne1 album though. I have not checked out their hot will.i.am collabo for obvious reasons.

@optix12: Orange Caramel creeps me out. I am not sure why. They are like little singing and dancing Stepford Wives though, that might be it. You have my kryptonite, sir.