K-pop (2015)

meanwhile "married to the music" is barely clinging to the top 10. at least "view" hung around quietly for a couple weeks.

love basically every song on the wonder girls record except "back." "oppa" seems suspect but then the chorus is totally killer

The WG band showcase http://omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com/16317755.html

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.

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.

they sound real shaky in a few of those but "i feel you" sounds great

"Married to the Music" is great and reminds me of fx "Shadow" (the main melody).

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"

i like the gd&top track, prob the best of m-a-d-e after "bae bae"

Set your instiz chart watch - Infinity Challenge song fest tunes will be released on the 12th

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!!

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

"i feel you" grows

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=maSoUetHock

And the mini this comes from is solid too https://youtu.be/uzGNybp892E?list=PLvBVZD15ofEWPQINPN-6n7PETaR6zyPho

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

Going after the military fans like Wanna.B and Nine Muses

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

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.

이용자수 means users, so yeah probably unique listeners

WG kicking it on sketchbook tonight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUeyuv1hS9A

wow that sounds great

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.)

"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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_k2EB33s7A

That's a lot of white people lol, but YES.

Yeah, but while there are a lot of white girls in boyband videos, female idols necking white dudes is a rare enough sight.

yeah, very different social implications there. the last time i remember there being so many foreign horndogs in a k-pop video it was lim kim's "love game," and that was practically retributive. pretty sure this clip breaks ground as a promotional strategy in korea, in at least a couple ways...

maybe more. i just awkwardly skimmed through it >_<

the sweetest k-indie thing i've found in a while

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Vcy-AoyG0

Narsha did it, but that's now five years ago.

I wonder if they had trouble finding Korean actors who were willing to party that hard on camera.

http://hypetrak.com/2015/08/american-hustle-a-conversation-with-keith-ape/
http://www.complex.com/music/2015/07/keith-ape-trap-star-interview

I wonder if they had trouble finding Korean actors who were willing to party that hard on camera.

― hurricane weather (forapper),

Well it was filmed in California

Not that there aren't a lot of Koreans in California

there are def a lot of koreans in cali who would happily be paid to party with hyuna

"francis bacon in the kitchen" unintentional pun or is TOP's mastery of English a whole lot better than he lets on?

Oh come on that's totally intentional

although also v. juvenile, in keeping with the rest of the song

finally gave into show me the money 4. black nut's the best

did you start after tzechar worked him in? XD

i'm one episode behind on infinity challenge. so far the highlight was when haha picked zion.t up late at night - and they drove around discussing ~deep things~ using yanghwa brdg as a jumping-off point. lots of zion t songs are sad but he's been pretty active, young and cheerful on the show - you could see he got into the car thinking they'd do comedy together only to realize he'd been typecast in a very different scenario lmao. was a good sport about it though. the IU/DJ GREAT PARK bits are hilarious as well.

into what? conversation? because uh...maybe... :-S

some rare topics broached, with Primary and Suran: http://noisey.vice.com/blog/primary-and-suran-mannequin-south-korea-interview

into the video i linked in my comment... guess I got too fancy with the tags, lol.

and hahaha:

https://twitter.com/yulneck/status/631441847936684032