K-pop (2015)

"hopeless love" by jimin park kinda has that weeknd thing going on too. guess ariana put him on jyp's radar or sth

@forapper that UNIQ song is like p convincing b.i./bobby karaoke

wow expected nothing from Hotshot but "Rain On Me" is probably the best straightup r&b song out of korea so far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94fx_DLsQWA

also warming up more to that Lim Kim single, it's persistent

****best straightup r&b out of korea _this far_ so far, lol

this /year/. gonna take the rest of the weekend off, i think...

jk. big bang "loser" sounds like a winner song (so does "bae bae," kinda)

I really like Loser! Daesung nails the feeling, TOP's part is a highlight as always, overall the instrumental isn't as complex as Blue's but I'm more convinced that they really feel sad. It has a sing-song children's song part toward's the end that makes it sound like a Big Bang song.

GD's rap part is like "Black" 2.0.

Bae Bae I dunno, the melody is interesting but the instrumental seems a bit bare.

Hotshot are really consistent with their sound.

the angst in "blue" feels much realer to me. in any event, very curious that YG decided to break the 3-year silence with a two-sided ballad single

It worked in 2012 (with Blue)... maybe he's following the blueprint (excuse my pun)

Hotshot are such good vocalists. I really liked their recent single "Watch Out" too https://youtu.be/UeFq-g0uTEo

soyrev, what about Nu'est's "I'm Bad" (aka a top-10 single of 2015 according to Soompi)? https://youtu.be/fYyV6Gi4sJw

There's also Mr Mr's "Out" which just came out yesterday https://youtu.be/vGwZxPNb5uM

So many chill rnb boyband songs to choose from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGwZxPNb5uM

@forapper yes, though that wait had been less than a third the wait. didn't really feel that nu'est single when it came out

"Loser" does sound like a Winner song, haha. structure-wise, it's pretty much Blue 2.0 - Seungri leading the chorus, everyone else with their own verse, Taeyang on the bridge. it's kinda boring imo but Korea will prob love it.

The Hotshot track is much better.

Mr.Mr., as usual, elevating a so-so song with great vocals and terrible dancing. I think I root for them so much cause they try so hard even though they're a mess... those patterned suits are at least two seasons behind in K-pop trends.

#teamroz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAdDsmJZsno

GD bringing those "I do a lot of pills" vocals, and all five of them sounding a lot more alike than they do on record (which was true when I saw them live as well)

Maybe if we root for Bae Bae hard enough they'll make it the single and "Loser" the B-side

by the way, I have a theory that GD has style icon for each comeback that he models his looks and performance after... Michigo's was Zion T, Fantastic Baby's was Skrillex, High High's was Pete Wentz, Bae Bae's is Rihanna?

*waits for Roz to skillfully weigh in*

Woke up with this stuck in my head after only listening it to a couple times a few days ago, so here it is embedding for stickiness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96THVBRqJvY

Let the record state that the black-suit-jacket-over-patterned shirt is a look EXO recently rocked on Call Me Baby (in what was probably a deliberate nod to the Suju-ness of that song), while the red suits are a look VIXX recently rocked on Love Equation. The patterned suits, no comment, except that MRMR are tall so they look good in suits.

PROOF SHOT. My personal fav of all the looks VIXX tried out this comeback, increases the bonkers quotient of the song by at least 50%

imo "call me baby" wrecks like 99% of suju's discog, though true it's the most suju-sounding thing they've ever done.

@forapper GD definitely has clear and simple style references for his image(s), like all k-pop stars, for sure. musically, too – you can hear him swiping chance the rapper's adlib squawks on the stages that he did with taeyang on that Rise album duet of theirs

Oh yeah the magpie instinct is strong with that one.

By the by, since I'm just made of time these days (aha...), and since forksclovetofu said he was giving up on the spotify playlist for this thread, here's YT playlist of most all of what's been embedding so far, roughly from newest to oldest. (I swapped out some of my own - also took some liberties with the song order to put similar tracks next to each other.) If I missed anything crucial let me know!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsh4Z5FNfPMBl9mgoSZewSdBiG3ZRS_d4

lol forapper. GD's current style inspiration is Beck, and not just because I keep singing "I'm a loser, bae bae" to myself (I can't be the only one right?). All those YSL suits with 70s silhouettes = Beck.

@roz tzechar was telling me the same thing, but i just now realized that this is way more plausibly deliberate post-beck AOTY grammy. hilarious

Glad to be wrong just so I could learn that

soyrev, exactly what I was thinking esp with the Kanye connection. haha.

Liking this new Lim Kim track, even though I think Awoo is just a bit better. Great beat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKlJXpjeYC8

definitely prefer "awoo" but this isn't bad, and wow, feels weird to finally think that a blond-dyed/blue-contacts look actually really works. props (y)

Listening to the new BTS mini and track 2 has a Massive Chorus in English(tm)

couple mehs (incl. "love game" for me), but Lim Kim's new mini kills. "No More" and "먼저 말해" are great album cuts, and in general there is way more taste and restraint here than some entire years of k-pop output. between stuff like "Awoo" and "Upgrader" it sure took k-pop a while to get around to that bloghouse pop/Purity Ring/Lorde kinda sound but it works really well on her.

must also be said she has a pretty great back catalog of music that is nothing like her new stuff, too. and she's only 21. if mystic89 keeps it up i can see her having one of the best discogs in k-pop by the time she's ga-in's age.

The interesting thing about Love Game is that it made me realize how it's pretty rare to hear a K-pop song comfortably utilize a singer's vocals for the purpose of a cut-up melody.
I've only heard the mini in full once but I didn't care for it aside from the singles and No More. Pleasant enough and good production but not really my thing.

And K-pop is always behind on trends anyway so that's expected I guess.

behind on trends, and yet visionary in how to synthesize and redirect them (consciously or not). that's the main appeal – for me, anyway.

I like K-pop for that too but I've never been under the impression that it's something that happens frequently. Like, outside of SM artists and a few other artists it's definitely not the norm?

Like, that's the same reasoning the late 70s/80s for Japan is so interesting to me and that whole era seemed far more forward-thinking than what I would consider to be happening in K-pop.
K-pop for me, I think, has always been how it appropriates pop tropes into something suitable for its own culture or simply has expert songwriting.

I don't think it's limited to SM.. but also it can take different forms. Like CCM / (earlier) T-Ara building on retro Korean pop sounds that at the time built on a Japanese mutation of western sounds.

Also I think it's established and agreed on that a certain kpop 'sound' exists, forward-thinking or not, that goes beyond a song's quality. In k-pop circles and in pop talk circles in general - you'll hear people talk about western pop songs sounding like a k-pop song, perhaps songs with a certain hyperactive, layered energy to them, not to mention in this thread.

EXID's "Ah Yeah", for example, borrows dance saxophones, but is otherwise a wholly native k-pop song that you don't hear anywhere else.

"Uptown Funk" is a Kpop song

That's why it's selling so well in Korea

Oh I don't disagree that there's a "kpop sound"; I was mainly talking about the "visionary" aspect of his comment, which I've always been unsure about when it's mentioned in K-pop circles.
And yeah I was thinking of early T-ara as one of those artists but, again, they were pretty distinct. Maybe I'm just not easily impressed/am being a debbie downer, just ignore me!!

What makes Uptown Funk a K-pop song for you forapper? Pretty interesting statement.
I hear it mainly in the build up to the chorus and the chorus itself (or at least mainly when there isn't any singing and it lets the groove work on its own).

Are there any other songs on the radio currently that sound like K-pop?

It's the high-gloss retro production style. Nothing else on the radio has that much brass and shine but it fits in with current Kpop trends. Also the build to the chorus and chorus break, yeah. It also has a nonsensical hook (uptown funky what?) and choreographed dance MV.

Ariana Grande sounds Kpop to me. More high-gloss retro production and nonsense hooks. She's even got a "good girl" idol image.

iirc it's uptown funk you up

"I like K-pop for that too but I've never been under the impression that it's something that happens frequently. Like, outside of SM artists and a few other artists it's definitely not the norm?"

it's all over the damn place. will prove this over time (http://k-pendium.com -- current posts have nothing to do with this strain of k-pop however, though "i am the best" comes close)

"Like, that's the same reasoning the late 70s/80s for Japan is so interesting to me and that whole era seemed far more forward-thinking"

interesting. i put that at '80s/early '90s japan myself, but agree one hundred.

"...than what I would consider to be happening in K-pop."

imo the three great flowerings of pop music as an exquisite and leagues-deep musical expression would be '60s US/UK, '80s-ish japan, and korea since 2009. i think '80s japan fucking wrecks k-pop in terms of albums but if you went for individual songs korea may well win out (need to do about 2000 hours of further listening to say w/ real conviction).

"EXID's "Ah Yeah", for example, borrows dance saxophones, but is otherwise a wholly native k-pop song that you don't hear anywhere else."

yep. great example of what i'm talking about (an A- version, anyway, not A triple+). and good luck finding any other pop industry that churns out even one song like that, let alone a canon

"uptown funk" is not reaaaaally k-popesque and it's only selling *relatively* well here (if you're not in the instiz top 20 you're not really a mainstream factor, and i seldom see "uptown" or anything non-korean on there. and rare, fleeting exceptions like "problem" can usually credit their popularity to being covered by a korean singer on one of the competition shows; i would say that song is slightly k-poppy in its pointed mood shift from verse to chorus but that's really it, and nothing else by her sounds distinctly k-pop in any way imo). one western example of recent years that sounds like a k-pop song imo is "trouble" by taylor – the pop rock verses with the sudden drop into a EDMstep chorus is a very k-pop composition move that you seldom hear elsewhere

Yeah gonna have to say Problem is the only remotely K-pop sounding song from Ariana. Aside from, you know, the demo that became the f(x) song but even then there's a difference between the demo and the final result. Her good girl image is a result of her Nickelodeon beginnings and is something her sophomore album was trying to crush, which is why it came out so fast and featured songs with The Weeknd and ASAP Ferg. Does she have nonsense hooks? Can't recall anything off the top of my head. All that comes to mind is her Mariah Carey-isms and/or inability to enunciate lol

Taylor Swift's "Trouble" as a K-popesque composition is something I never would've thought about but I can see that. Definitely only saw that as a continuation of her more overt radio-friendly sound with Max Martin without getting too deep into the sound (compare that with idk Nicki Minaj's Starships).