K-pop (2015)

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).

Good thing you brought up the 60s US/UK, 80s Japan, contemporary K-pop eras bit (which I agree with for sure) because I think one of the reasons that it's been hard for me to see K-pop as "visionary" is because the forward-thinking stuff we see from a single can't often be said for the mini/album it appears on. Which is especially dumb when I think about, especially in this day and age, and hypocritical given I say the same stuff about rappers all the time lol

I definitely feel that K-pop sounds different and is its own thing, which is why I was wondering what US pop sounded like it. I mean, you compare most demos to the final K-pop product and that's a really obvious way to see that. At the same time, different =/= visionary and I'd love to hear as to why K-pop right now is that. Always looking forward to the kpendium posts of course, been a while though ;)

Also, pretty sure it's because I'm *living* through this era that it seems hard to see. Like, obviously no one is going to care about all the run of the mill stuff that gets released frequently.

Hate to write even more (sorry) but forgot to mention that when I Got A Boy came out and everyone kept talking about songs with distinct stylistic shifts, I was always reminded of Nicki Minaj's The Boys (though now it's flipped and I say The Boys reminds me of K-pop)

An aside: I wish more cutesy k-pop groups used the j-pop chord progression and I don't understand why that sound stays so firmly within the borders of Japan. The big bastion of classical j-idol sound, AKB, actually has used at least one Korean composer (recently for a SKE48 single).

More importantly.. BAM

http://i.imgur.com/utYLj17.jpg

Album May 12.. all done by her, her big statement. Refer to an earlier post of mine for the complete BoA discography rundown which I probably would disagree with now.

I was thinking of Problem yeah, and also Bang Bang. Not her recent stuff.

hmm – how is "bang bang" k-poppy? can't think of any k-pop song that sounds particularly close.

if we're talking about US songs that emulate K-pop we should probably talk about will.i.am

Hate to write even more (sorry) but forgot to mention that when I Got A Boy came out and everyone kept talking about songs with distinct stylistic shifts, I was always reminded of Nicki Minaj's The Boys (though now it's flipped and I say The Boys reminds me of K-pop

ha "The Boys" def reminded me of k-pop the first time I heard it - I don't know if I've mentioned my G-Dragon being the male Nicki Minaj theory here yet, but that video was where it came round full circle and reminded me that Nicki also reminds me of GD sometimes.

will.i.am's songs are like k-pop with all the joy and (melo)drama sucked out of it.

"if we're talking about US songs that emulate K-pop we should probably talk about will.i.am"

way true. that dumbass "switch up! switch up!" song especially

It's interesting that Mr SM Sound Yoo Young Jin, back in 2010, looked at will.i.am with envy:

"I felt that Black Eyed Pea's "Boom Boom Pow" is simple to the extent that it could be considered close to minimalism but Americans let it become a huge hit. I'm envious of how they make such music and the way it can be accepted."

In this interview, which I've gone back to many times http://omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com/3586995.html

Also speaking of SuJu's disco xxxxp, those singles everyone complained about sounding samey at the time sure are bona fide classics.

lol @ yoo youngjin thinking that. totally insane parallax: he must have been growing tired of the asian market's expectations for rich melodies, dense arrangement, meaningful development, etc.

also re: question of k-pop being visionary, i'd say it's not just the music (which itself can be visionary, on occasion), it's more about the overall conception of pop as a multi-sensory experience that involves also conceptual and perfectly executed choreography, the insane music videos/packaging/"visuals"/presentation aspect, the all-important overarching concept, and even the business practices and corporate rhetoric that goes into the art itself (sooman's innovations especially). k-pop is both anthropologically and musically the most interesting, meaningful thing happening in music this past decade (/up there with many of the most significant across history), and i will enjoy having that full appreciation of it to my(almost)self while it lasts.

Speaking of concepts... the Bae Bae video is hilarious. Big Bang's dealer deserves a bonus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKD03uPVD-Q&feature=youtu.be

it's more about the overall conception of pop as a multi-sensory experience that involves also conceptual and perfectly executed choreography, the insane music videos/packaging/"visuals"/presentation aspect, the all-important overarching concept, and even the business practices and corporate rhetoric that goes into the art itself

Oh I mean, this is certain and something that I think is very very clear, was never doubting how visionary K-pop is as a whole.

total Bound 2 vibes with the Taeyang portion of that video

"bae bae" sounds more interesting in good quality. what even is it? i hear strains of trap, country, and jamaica...

actually also quite beck in a way

Also I guess they're not quite done with the Batman jokes yet. TOP's outfit:

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/batman/images/3/3e/Jack_Nicholson_As_The_Joker.jpg

just gonna refer to bae bae as a trap ballad

assuming the country you're hearing is mainly from that short ascending guitar line and the drum fill that accompanies it?
and the "jamaican" bits from the rhythm of the trap beat? not sure what else could be interpreted as country or jamaiacan

digging both songs, i think i prefer bae bae though. the video definitely helps solidify that opinion.

re: will.i.am, I meant it more in the sense that instead of stretching from here to the moon to try to argue that mark ronson is taking cues from k-pop, why not start with the people who are on record with it

country: yes, the guitar/drum fill; acoustic guitar progression combined w/ snare production for that passage is very contemporary country (and taeyang's vocal line above it, even a bit of the inflection, lends itself to that as well; the wig, cowboy hat, and horseback saunter all clearly underscore the reference). two-note clean-tone electric guitar motif ditto
jamaica: weirdly get this vibe from that same guitar/drum fill, which also calls to mind early (pre-black ark weirdness) upsetters, and pre-dub reggae/rocksteady; top's flow and harmonically flat verse also calls to mind dancehall/more rap-centric jamaican music of the past two decades

not saying these were *all* deliberate, or that what i'm hearing was precisely what they were channeling – but definitely pulling from things in the country/reggae/jamrock continuum

@katherine yeah i think there's literally zero chance that ronson gives a fuck about k-pop (certainly not on his mind for "uptown funk"), i think whoever mentioned it was just thinking in terms of similarities. although i met j-pop guy sky-hi just after he sat down and traded notes with ronson so he's at least modestly dialed into asian pop

and bae bae >>>>> loser it's not even close

I'm just now learning that they're chanting about sticky rice cakes (chapsaltteok) in the last verse

yea that's why they have the two smashing into each other and then we see them eating some.

San E's been at #1 for days now (even holding off "loser" for a good 12 hours now) with a feature from one of the girls of 15&. April really has been the redemption of JYP

Oh man didn't realize Only You was still so high at #4

And just say that I'm still somewhat shocked that San E got an EarDrummers beat (albeit from J-Bo so maybe I shouldn't be that surprised)

okay game over tho, BB is now top two slots with "loser" riding the highest score i've seen to date (380)

deep into the 2 mill views on youtube after just 14 hours, too. dang...wonder how exo stacked up to that (for future reference/comparison, after 1 month "call me baby" has 21.88 mill for korean and 8.87 for chinese)

Just realized BoA will come back when Big Bang's power on music shows is at its strongest two weeks post release ;/

Grown to really hate that miss a song

i've liked it more and more. chorus so melodic~

"loser" hitting 410 on instiz.

7mil plus Youtube views in less than 48 hours (4.9 mil for Bae Bae).

You reckon that's the 19+ age rating on Bae Bae, or just Loser having more replay value?

I wonder if they're gonna hit #1 every month from now til September.

abcfsk juuuust posted this upthread but i want to reiterate its excellence: yoo young-jin interview, 2010

http://omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com/3586995.html

a lot of musical k-pop visionariness in there. gotta be the single most interesting article i've read on the music itself.

http://arcadey.net/2015/05/bigbang-made-comeback/

shaboi arcadey hears that country in "bae bae" as well ;-*

Yeess.. I had no expecations of BoA's pre-release single getting anywhere close to Big Bang on the charts, even a few days later, but it has, if only for today

Olleh 1
Soribada 1
Genie 1
Naver 1
Daum 1
Monkey3 1
MelOn 2
Mnet 3
Bugs 3

#3 on instiz, not bad

HYOSUNG: https://youtu.be/TZLdGojFbNA?list=PLDW7LHwCCGydWr4eNPDhCPuQ89XLnb976

I still replay the album tracks off her mini from last year ("Goodnight Kiss") and this is coming from the same playbook... sax-hooks, syncopated beats and chilled-out burlesque. Thumbs up.

The instrumentals are so good, all the hallmarks of "grown up" like (actual?) brass and saxophone, etc, but mixed in with the dance beat. TS Ent has some great in-house producers.

ALSO, JANG HYUNGSEUNG'S SOLO DEBUT:

https://soundcloud.com/mistress-nicey/sets/jhs-my

Off "My Mini Album", title track "Ma First" features Giriboy and is great.

Actually I'll recommend his 19+ ballad track "I Love You" instead, though the lyrics are kinda fucked up.

Not really feeling this mini apart from "Break Up With Him" (weird videogame bloops, random synths pushed up against a standard R&B arrangement) but Hyunseung looks and sounds great.

Yeah I probably just like dude's voice... He's said "Break Up with Him" was his choice for the single, but his label wanted the dance track.

BTW, new group for all your Infinite/Boyfriend/Sweetune needs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIe47jQcnhc