yea DFD is talented but i'm not too big on his stuff either. he shines as a freestyler/battle rapper and it's precisely because his beats and delivery aren't particularly unique (being a talented rapper can only get you so far nowadays y'know?)
― misterjoshua, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 18:02 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w62JoFqsdhM
― misterjoshua, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 18:03 (eight years ago) link
oh my god
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Wednesday, 29 July 2015 18:04 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkpZ05Vkvqk
so promising
― soyrev, Friday, 31 July 2015 03:30 (eight years ago) link
and i like me some wonder girls, but i've never been a huge fan. this totally could change that
crying
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Friday, 31 July 2015 13:39 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcu7yZBeSKw
― misterjoshua, Sunday, 2 August 2015 16:09 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9QXQz6uE0M
― misterjoshua, Monday, 3 August 2015 05:19 (eight years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/b34NdJ3.jpg
― misterjoshua, Monday, 3 August 2015 05:32 (eight years ago) link
not sold on everything at the moment but the album is solid.one black night really hitting the spot for me atm. the rapping in the album doesn't work for me most of the time, though i think i'm happy a track like 'back' exists here?
― misterjoshua, Monday, 3 August 2015 06:46 (eight years ago) link
This sounds pretty great on first listen - a real shame Sohee couldn't be here though for this as I feel she would be a perfect fit. But Sunmi has a presence unlike most in kpop.
― abcfsk, Monday, 3 August 2015 07:36 (eight years ago) link
nice screencap, joshua -- that's my favorite moment.
was a little underwhelmed by "i feel you" on first listen but two later and i love it. need some more time with the album but my sense of it is that all of it is pretty great, except tracks 8-9 and the closer. def one of the most cohesive k-pop albums to date, which is nice
― soyrev, Monday, 3 August 2015 13:05 (eight years ago) link
the 4 shinee repackage tunes are all in the pretty good to pretty great range ("chocolate" being my favorite). makes the full album painfully overlong and unfocused, but if you were to replace the 4 weakest songs on odd with the new ones it'd have been pretty much perfect
― soyrev, Monday, 3 August 2015 13:08 (eight years ago) link
(even if still not everything a shinee album called odd could have been)
― soyrev, Monday, 3 August 2015 13:13 (eight years ago) link
granted, "married" seems to be falling down the charts after barely a day out ("i feel you" hasn't gone off with a bang, but just hopped into a low third on instiz with little competition). got me thinking – has SM had a legit domestic hit at any point this whole year? even "call me baby," the main thrust behind exo's physical million-seller (mostly international fans, of course), was nothing compared to miss a or big bang's showings (or even jyp's own), and "party" attracted huge interest as soshi's first summer single in 3 or 4 years but that died quick. am i forgetting something?
― soyrev, Monday, 3 August 2015 16:15 (eight years ago) link
[watches "i feel you"] [permanently transfigures into the hearts in eyes emoji]
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Monday, 3 August 2015 16:26 (eight years ago) link
okay! close 1.5 million views in 24 hours, and *finally* someone has knocked hyukoh off the top spot of instiz (with a decent score of 210...for perspective, miss a at their best this year were mid 300s, "loser" peaked out at around 410 i think). they're robbing an empty house for sure, though, and sadly when big bang/GD&TOP drop again in around 10 hours WG will be chased off immediately.
― soyrev, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 05:04 (eight years ago) link
meanwhile "married to the music" is barely clinging to the top 10. at least "view" hung around quietly for a couple weeks.
― soyrev, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 05:06 (eight years ago) link
love basically every song on the wonder girls record except "back." "oppa" seems suspect but then the chorus is totally killer
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 05:57 (eight years ago) link
The WG band showcase http://omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com/16317755.html
― abcfsk, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 08:00 (eight years ago) link
they've got a long way to go before they've got any kind of stage presence (hitting all the notes right would be step one), but honestly, they're a lot better than i thought they would be. yubin was one of the less impressive ones in the teasers but i'm shocked how well she's generally keeping a beat, owning fills, and rapping/singing while playing. the nature of the instrument helps her to be the only one with real charisma so far, too.
if w/ the exception of yenny they actually only started learning instruments halfway into their album sessions, though (which, knowing how k-pop works, prob wouldn't have been much more than half a year ago), this is beyond impressive. if they actually keep shedding they could be a pretty compelling band in a year or two.
― soyrev, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 12:53 (eight years ago) link
Read something somewhere which suggested they wouldn't just ditch the band concept moving forward. Would've been a shame to waste all that effort.
― abcfsk, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 13:39 (eight years ago) link
they sound real shaky in a few of those but "i feel you" sounds great
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 13:56 (eight years ago) link
"Married to the Music" is great and reminds me of fx "Shadow" (the main melody).
― hurricane weather (forapper), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 14:20 (eight years ago) link
oh interesting, can't compare right now but the main melodies from both? which sections? SM's reuse of lyrical themes and melodies has got my interest lately – a good example being how exo's "you're a, you're a / you're a transformer" reconstitutes f(x)'s "joha, joha / NU A-B-O"
― soyrev, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 15:06 (eight years ago) link
i like the gd&top track, prob the best of m-a-d-e after "bae bae"
― soyrev, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 16:16 (eight years ago) link
Set your instiz chart watch - Infinity Challenge song fest tunes will be released on the 12th
― abcfsk, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 17:41 (eight years ago) link
wow. i am shocked! by the time i woke up here (8am), "i feel you" was back at #1, while the new BB fell to *3rd,* behind hyukoh's song (still!). the gd&top track is all the way down at 7th! perhaps YG really misread what the korean public wants this month...
go wonder girls!!
― soyrev, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 23:42 (eight years ago) link
eh bigbang fatigue was bound to set in eventually. that said, I'm glad gd&top continue to bring the best out in each other, regardless of whatever personal issues they've had between them. the video is entertainingly juvenile :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8t8A8E_Tqc
― Roz, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 01:45 (eight years ago) link
"i feel you" grows
― soyrev, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 01:50 (eight years ago) link
it does. vaguely wondering if AOA will revive their band sub-unit if WG keeps doing well. They were good, plus I don't hate Jimin's rapping so much in this context. XD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz3mYbFtC0w
― Roz, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 02:09 (eight years ago) link
it's kind of hard for me to fairly compare AOA black to AOA white when white's had a string of much better songs starting with "miniskirt." the band concept is only really going to be compelling when it stops being a concept, though, and actually functions at least halfway like a band. shaky live performances for WG are a good start (that's how low the bar is – compare this to japan, where competent idol girl group rock bands are old news), but until they at least start playing a little bit on their own albums and using their bandness to come up with and develop material of their own. WG were purported to have that down this time (JYP saying they learned instruments not to play on the album, but to write material for it), but then hyerim or one of the other girls said that they only got the idea to become a band halfway through recording, so it's sort of unclear.
the good news is that WG and JYP have pledged their commitment to handling more of the creative/recording process down the line, and "i feel you" is already doing well enough that i think they'll feel encouraged to keep pushing.
― soyrev, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 03:58 (eight years ago) link
and man, BB fatigue is one thing – i get that you can't keep pushing a 300+ score for a few weeks straight every month – but a new BB (and GD&TOP) single being sub-100 just twelve hours out from release is...well, confirmation that YG doesn't do sajaegi, to put it one way.
― soyrev, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 04:00 (eight years ago) link
rallying bigtime in the past couple hours though, both scores doubled and now WG is third. pretty low scores in general for the past few weeks, but they're on the up.
― soyrev, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 05:38 (eight years ago) link
well the thing about AOA black was that it seemed like FNC was always sort of half-hearted about it - they were rarely allowed to perform live and other than "Moya", most of their songs were just band versions of AOA white songs anyway.
it was more like they were trying to see if they could create a female CNBlue but it didn't work so they decided to abandon the idea entirely.
― Roz, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 06:11 (eight years ago) link
soyrev, the rising melody of "I'm married to the music" sounds like the rising melody of "when the sun rises" in Shadow. Just a brief bit, but it's the highlight of the chorus in both songs.
― hurricane weather (forapper), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 06:41 (eight years ago) link
And Zutter is great, I'm glad GD&TOP are feeling free to make the music they like and not what's public-friendly...if the general public needs a while to warm up to the song or never gets on board all the better.
― hurricane weather (forapper), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 06:48 (eight years ago) link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=maSoUetHock
― hurricane weather (forapper), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 18:01 (eight years ago) link
And the mini this comes from is solid too https://youtu.be/uzGNybp892E?list=PLvBVZD15ofEWPQINPN-6n7PETaR6zyPho
― hurricane weather (forapper), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 18:02 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maSoUetHock
Going after the military fans like Wanna.B and Nine Muses
― hurricane weather (forapper), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 18:04 (eight years ago) link
Interesting chart from Melon - the most explosive hits of the year, or rather most listens the first 24 hours. Hard numbers, which is a nice contrast to the more opaque 'points' on the instiz chart, for example.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLr9opAUwAAQwcN.jpg
― abcfsk, Thursday, 6 August 2015 12:19 (eight years ago) link
yeah, these figures are nice to see. (만 means 10,000, if anyone here doesn't already know – so in 2015 pretty much the best an artist could hope to do in the first day is around a milli on melon, which is definitely not the only platform in korea but for most songs the most popular). idk, though, whether the numbers correspond to unique listeners or listens period. if it's the latter, the domestic market is even smaller than i thought.
― soyrev, Friday, 7 August 2015 01:21 (eight years ago) link
이용자수 means users, so yeah probably unique listeners
WG kicking it on sketchbook tonight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUeyuv1hS9A
― abcfsk, Friday, 7 August 2015 19:36 (eight years ago) link
wow that sounds great
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Friday, 7 August 2015 20:04 (eight years ago) link
guess "let's not fall in love" is the rare BB song that just takes some time to woo the korean public. just today got an all-kill (maybe it's second?), been on top of instiz for a while now. i think top is having an mtbd but yg was smart to milk this last real album cycle from them to the last drop. ("i feel you" continues to hover in 3rd and 4th with a low 100s score, though, which isn't too bad for 9 days out. i think things like the sketchbook performance and "real wonder girls" mini-docs are starting to turn the tide in the public favor, too, so we may indeed be seeing a viable future for the wonder band.)
― soyrev, Sunday, 9 August 2015 07:59 (eight years ago) link
"zutter" is pretty good, it and "bae bae" (a near-masterpiece imo) are really the only keepers from the lot for me. and from what i understand of the latest word is that MADE is just going to be the single tracks packaged together after all. i know it's a k-pop album, but 8 songs feels like a pretty thin yield for 3+ years.
― soyrev, Sunday, 9 August 2015 08:01 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_k2EB33s7A
― abcfsk, Sunday, 9 August 2015 15:48 (eight years ago) link
That's a lot of white people lol, but YES.
― hurricane weather (forapper), Sunday, 9 August 2015 20:20 (eight years ago) link
Yeah, but while there are a lot of white girls in boyband videos, female idols necking white dudes is a rare enough sight.
― abcfsk, Sunday, 9 August 2015 21:05 (eight years ago) link