Kpop, Kpop, and Kpop: The Discussion Thread

Yeaaaah, I don't know about the name either.

With ease! But then again, I also like Infinite - Man in Love. What's with K-pop videos and going all "fake radio" at the end of their videos?

Pretty damn cool, actually.

And apparently, Snoop now makes Hellectro.

For those that never saw this great show, the first season of Invincible Youth is now being released on KBS World's Youtube channel. You can already find this entire show fansubbed, but this is the best picture quality I've seen and probably the best subs as well. Love this show. Funny interactions between all of these girls and where I became a fan of all them, especially Sunny and Hara, who both have exceptional variety skills. Hara eventually won KBS's Best New Female MC Award for her work on this show.

(Won't play while embedded.) -__-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmwSIm4a2pY

joah kind of broke me as well. i hated jay park, almost irrationally so, the same way some people hate t-ara now. but i dunno, i'm coming around on him. he's really good on snl korea.

infinite is like the most consistently good male group that i don't actively listen to. their dancing is so synced and visually interesting, but i dunno none of their songs have really clicked with me yet. just waiting for a beast comeback...

IY is definitely worth watching, everything on it just seems to go together well right from the start, and it really helps you get to know the idols as funny, hard working, and humble people. can be easy to forget that you're watching two members of the biggest girl group in the world, and an international star from the most viral of videos do farm chores.

Holy crap. I want some way to set this as my alarm clock every day.

that would just soothe me back to sleep

If you haven't seen it already.

Sounds like 2NE1 will comeback right after, like they did with Park Bom's solo.

continuing my mission to convert more people into nine muses fans, their adorable interview/google+ hangout on arirang's after school club

they come in @12:00, it's mostly in english.

tonight is music bank's 700th episode, to celebrate, they're having some special stages, full list here

highlights include secret performing lee hyori's u go girl, and nine muses performing park jiyoon's adult ceremony

Really enjoyed seeing SNSD perform Gee again on the show. Sunny's charisma was sparkling.

Really enjoyed seeing SNSD perform Gee again on the show. Sunny's charisma was sparkling.

the performance in question

nine muses

secret

4minute

there's more but that's already a lot

CL's solo single just showed up. I like the song but the video is not particularly great, though it does have its moments.

wasn't really a fan of either personally, it feels like a rejected GD song/video and with CL it doesn't really work for me. it's kind of hilarious how yg fans will always praise how creative and unique and different etc. their artists are, and now they basically all have the same style/sound. only instead of looking/sounding like other idols, as someone else pointed out, it's like they're trying their hardest to be RiFF RAFF.

a recent release i liked though is crispi crunch's sajangnim nice shot!, they always portray themselves as goofy ass perverts, but their songs are solid

their last song, menboong time

and their ode to night at the roxbury, thumbs up

I agree with pretty much all of that but it's also exactly what I was expecting from a CL solo effort so I'd already made peace with the inevitable. I do think that the video has some great visuals but they aren't really used effectively, it feels kind of thrown together. The song would be better if it was more balanced, the back half is good but it's front loaded with two long, sparse "verse" sections.

YG could really use some fresh blood behind the scenes. The most disappointing aspect of this release for me is that it feels like it was on autopilot.

SM's rookie guy group EXO is back with OOLF Wolf and maybe i've just gotten used to it from the leak months ago & choreography leak, but i think it's alright.

other recent guy group releases include VIXX with Hyde, which is somehow more laughable than OOLF but the song is about as good

starship's boy group Boyfriend released On & On which is really not my thing at all

100% is back and shirtless as fuck with Want U Back

2PM is finally back in korea with A.D.T.O.Y. and it's dope

B1A4 has been doing well with their new song What's Happening?

and legends Shinhwa are back again with This Love

sorry if i missed any but that's a pretty good sampling anyways

hello again thread. the new rainbow is out

mblaq is finally back with a new song

san-e now free from jyp and on brand new music finally decides to release a new song

skarf is back as well

some heavy hitters coming this month: sistar, after school, dal shabet, henry lau, crayon pop, chocolat, and supposedly fiestar, girl's day, and a pink.

@mcghee Okay. Solve this for me. You know more about K-Pop than I do, obviously because well...obviously.

A friend and I got into a huge argument over this a few days ago and we haven't spoken since. I want to preserve this friendship and having something as silly as an argument about K-Pop so I need you right now. I need your expert opinion.

Umm . . . what?

@onimonkii:

I'm looking forward to After School and Fiestar, but I am really going crazy waiting for IU and Kara to return this summer.

It's been quite sometime since I listened to K-Pop. I remembered the time when I listened to groups like S#arp, Seo Taiji, and Jaurim.

Nowadays the newer (and popular) groups, seems to be more like one hit wonders to me, but again it might be due to my age.

Anyway, here's one of Jaurim's best songs (sounds bit like Cranberries)

The only one that counts!

i just hope the kara one isn't disappointing ever since lupin they haven't had that same hype behind their releases. iu i am less enthusiastic about but there will probably be a few guaranteed good songs out of it. new taeyang & 2ne1 around the same time should be nice, should yg not push them back again forever. it's been forever since a new beast too, t-ara eh, i dunno. even as a fan of their work i am keeping my expectations low with this one, aside from how good jeon won diary was, ccm has been full of questionable decisions lately.

About Kara, that's not true at all. Step was hugely successful in both Korea and Japan. Pandora was not as big, probably because of the criticisms that it sounded too Japanese. There was also controversy about those stupid islands that Korea and Japan are fighting over and Kara's, Gyuri, in her comments would not come down on either side of the issue. She handled it perfectly but still got some criticism from both sides. Kara is the #1 Korean girl group in Japan, the first to ever hold a solo concert in the Tokyo Dome just this year in January. So yes, Kara may have slipped slightly after Step in popularity in Korea because they have focused so much in Japan, where they are mega-huge, but if they come back with a song as good as Step, they would jump back into the limelight instantly. Hell, they are all even filming a 5 part mini-drama series for Korea right now.

Holy shit, this is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. Dreadful. Not to mention the whole "Korean girl acting like a thug" nonsense.

i just mean for me personally, i don't factor overall korean popularity into things i like. step and jumping were just kinda boring when they should have been like earth shattering, especially because they'd been spending so much time in japan (where i don't like anything they've put out at all), when they come back to korea it feels like it should be a big event. maybe it's just expectations were too high on my part, but regardless of their commercial/chart success, they just haven't really been the same to me. like, pandora was a step in the right direction imo, that was basically what i had been waiting for all along, and seungyeon's solo was great, but hers was the only one i liked. so idk, expectations are low for me, hopefully i'll be surprised.

Is she K-Pop? Y/N

@onimonkii: Thanks for posting that. I can't deny the talent behind lot of this gayo stuff, but it just never appeals to me much. It reminds me too much of western pop groups most of the time and it seems to me that a lot of it would be written off a lot quicker if the same songs were being done by Americans or Europeans.

I haven't heard Hong Jin Young before, but that trot sound instantly appeals to me more than most of what has been posted on this thread.

@rebgav said:

I quite liked it.

but i guess thats because i'm not a snob.

My girlfriend played this on my computer a lot, and I can't say I hate it. So I share with you. Warning: From my understanding, this music has some Homestuck connections. So if that stuff sends you into fits, then I advise against listening.

I'd argue that the individual elements are okay and could have been massaged into a good song but that the end result here is poor overall.

Hopefully 2NE1's comeback will be better and we can all forget that this ever happened. I am going to go ahead and file this song under guilty "pleasures."

I love CL and I like this particular song more than I'd expect most people to but it's pretty disappointing. You don't have to be a snob to be turned off by the mish-mash of musical styles and the WWE Divas level of quality and authenticity in the video.

block b is good but that's the first i've heard of that. i guess i wouldn't if i didn't actively follow it anyways right? anyway yeah it's unfortunate what's happening to them, they're a good group. check out LOL

and Nalina

normally i'd wait for a couple more releases to post up a block of new music, but here's Henry from suju m's solo debut

@mariachimacabre: I didn't know where else to put this. Sorry @buzz_clik.

@villainy said:

@mariachimacabre: I didn't know where else to put this. Sorry @buzz_clik.

Ha! Amazing and relevant.

@truthtellah said:

@villainy said:

@mariachimacabre: I didn't know where else to put this. Sorry @buzz_clik.

Ha! Amazing and relevant.

I feel the need to reaffirm my desire to see that on a shirt. @buzz_clik! Make it happen, motherfucker. Use that influence. Take my money.

@villainy said:

@mariachimacabre: I didn't know where else to put this. Sorry @buzz_clik.

Please don't encourage him. @mariachimacabre

Thanks (in-part) to @babylonian, I've recently caught up with this video; I fucking love everything about it. The tune, the look, all of it. The way it shifts into that next gear in the back end is aces.

@mcghee said:

@villainy said:

@mariachimacabre: I didn't know where else to put this. Sorry @buzz_clik.

Please don't encourage him. @mariachimacabre

I'm not the one that made this BROWSER KILLER of a thread. If anything, this is all your fault.

@buzz_clik: I'm glad someone likes it. Makes me grind my teeth.

@villainy: Why would you apologise for making something better?

@mariachimacabre:

I had been asking myself if you were being serious, trying to be funny, or just being a dick. I'm leaning toward just being a dick.

I can assure you no dickishness was intended. It was all in the name of whimsy and jest. Mostly whimsy.

to prep for new releases, and to desperately try to get this thread back on track, here's the last song released by each group coming back soon.

after school - flashback

chocolat - harumandeo (pick whichever of the like 4 translations you like)

crayon pop - dancing queen

sistar - alone

personally, just based on the teasers that have come out, sistar is probably going to just destroy everything. AS hasn't put out an mv/audio teaser yet, so there's still time for them to blow people away. chocolat's black tinkerbell, from the teaser and the bit they performed on after school club, seems alright, but probably won't make much of an impact. crayon pop's bar bar bar could do alright for them, but i dunno, they're like the rookiest of rookies still, and i don't think their goofy style leads to as many sales as it is endearing.

anyways, here's the teasers in question, judge for yourself.

Don't know what's the deali-o with fancams in this thread but in relation to @onimonkii's contribution of Crayon Pop's latest teaser, here is the first live performance of it.

I've been fidgeting all day trying to get the song and the choreography out of my head. It's so silly. I love it to bits.

@onimonkii: Sistar has really hit the zeitgeist in Korea. "Alone" was pretty good, but after that, I haven't seen anything they've done that is particularly great, but Korea is eating it up like crazy. They have jumped into the top tier and I'm scratching my head over it. Their group has no balance in my mind. They have Hyorin. Bora is alright. But if you look at them as a team, I think they are lacking. There is nothing that puts their recent releases above many others, but they have hit a high to where it doesn't matter. It's kind of interesting how these things happen.

@aurahack: I think Crayon Pop is almost suited to Japan better than Korea, like they could blow up there if they did it right.

yeah, it's weird to see what hits big out of nowhere and what continues being stuck in the middle somewhere (rainbow ;_;). personally i think soyu has a great voice, and i far prefer it to hyorin oversinging everything, but she gets all the credit for the group's vocals. bora is super pretty, but she's basically just another one of hyorin's backup dancers in sistar19. can't even really say much about dasom other than she's cute, so that right there just further proves how imbalanced they are as a group. that said, their songs are consistently good.

sistar's new mv is out, the song is great imo

ccm put out a project group of soyeon from t-ara, eunkyo from 5dolls, yoojin from the seeya, and taewoon & sungmin from speed. the mv stars jiyeon from t-ara and is sad as hell @aurahack probably shouldn't watch.

chocolat's black tinkerbell is also out

still waiting on crayon pop's bar bar bar and after school's first love. first love sounds a bit like sistar19's gone not around any longer from the teaser. here's that teaser.

what do you guys think?