K-pop (2015)

Trigger is fun, dig it when Kenzie goes batshit. Some other cool sounds on the album for sure. Still prefer the IU song, though.

I had to laugh at my own SUPERIORITY in k-pop listening when I arrived at the last track on Shinee's album (which threw me off since it's so.. traditional) and immediately made the connection with Jessica and Onew's ballad 'One Year Later'from 2009, and true enough, same guy wrote it. I really liked that song back then. Well I still do. It made me fall in love with Jessica's nasal voice as well.

@abcfsk nice ear on that!

and yeah two k-ballads on an 11-track shinee album is excessive, to say the least. especially when one is the closer and the shinee album is called 'odd'

what's a good international/western hit analogue for "view?" for me it just calls to mind stuff like disclosure and clean bandit (and uh, the verse melodies are sort of like that one good chromeo song), but there's a modesty here in arrangement/vibe (very little aggression) that feels different from those groups' hits for me. i looked up what else i could find by LDN noise but that stuff's even less close than disclosure, i think

I think Kiss My Lips is by far the better song, but Who Are You is showing some great longevity in the face of new releases, still instiz top 5. Happy she gets that hit even if it's not the song that deserves to be huge.

Not the first time this year a buzz single / b-side / whatever turns out become the real hit, though.

where on earth is the "view" video tho? i feel like this could really hurt their impact this time out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF53cptEE5k

love it

not a dance-in-a-box video, yay! also it's nice to see SM has finally discovered instagram filters.

The indie aesthetic MV teased by f(x) and partially achieved by Red Velvet finally arrives

Make sure you eat your meals even if you're tired, guys https://youtu.be/Ibb5RhoKfzE

Prefer Zero Gravity but this is touching, and he spent about 70% of his #hashtag interview talking about Crush which was cute

Wait, were SHINee kidnapped?

And did one of the kipnappers break a beer bottle over Minho's head at 2:16?

yea they were fake kidnapped by a bunch of hot girls so that they can all go buy beer and party. and then at the bar some dude hits on one of the girls, Minho goes to rescue her, gets a beer bottle over his head and then he gets laid while presumably recovering from a beer bottle-induced headache. SHINee, living out every k-pop boyband's dream.

People spent a good amount of time from the teaser release date to now discussing whether the girls in the video were white and then realizing they were thai and then actually half thai in various ways.

One of the things I love about the pretty simple IU single is the consonance of sh and ch sounds and the wave of harmonies crashing in on them.

I don't think they were fake-kidnapped... I think they were actually kidnapped (or in a best-case scenario, thought-kidnapped) and what follows is a sasaeng fantasy that SM & SHINee are too polite too contradict. That's why the police sirens play at the end.

In other words the MV is definitely a dream, but whose dream is it? Idols present according to their fans' dreams.

"Reality" is in black and white, "fantasy" is in color... the scene where Minho "agrees" to be kidnapped is in color while the kidnapping is in black and white. The MV ends before we go back to reality.

Leading the charge into normcore on MCountdown https://youtu.be/mvhJfM2BPSA

http://www.thefader.com/2015/05/22/diplo-cl-riff-raff-og-maco-dr-pepper

CL's verse is the best I think. Nothing too special, and not sure if this'll be winning too many fans of ATL rap, but good for what it is.
Riff Raff and OG Maco aren't doing anything too out there either which makes it somewhat more accessible for k-pop fans I guess.

man that zion.t hashtag interview is great and that phone call was amusing

Isn't it??? Zion.TxCrush 4ever.

http://www.xxlmag.com/rap-music/new-music/2015/05/listen-riff-raff-og-maco-diplo-cl-doctor-pepper/

xxl on the money w/ "CL doing a pitch-perfect impression of urban radio’s biggest pop stars," been trying to place those for a couple days now. 0:54 is an obvious (almost spooky) rihanna, anyone catching other clear vibes?

Nicki, specifically Nicki on "Did It On Em" which CL has covered before.

It's not just because I'm not cultured enough that this track sounds lazy, right?

Cause I listen to urban radio and like... Riff Raff's verse sounds like it was phoned in (literally - or sent as an LQ email attachment more likely), and the flash of sadness at "always traveling" is the most interesting thing about CL's delivery... but then it's hard to believe the rest of her tough-girl delivery.

Thinking very seriously about going to KCON NYC, if the tickets aren't highway robbery.

Meanwhile if you are just starting to learn English (or Hangul), SISTAR are going to teach you some very basic phrases/symbols: https://youtu.be/zlwsggJUwuI

YOUR BODY. WOW BODY.

not sure if i'd call the track lazy but it's very -safe-
also ahaha i def laughed at "your body wow body"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhlU34DloDY

ha the first 30 seconds made me think of daphne & celeste, though that was just because of that girl's voice (dunno names at all atm). song is pretty alright albeit well-produced

also man that new kara mini is a dud

Wow I love this, especially coming from CLC who were a bit generic before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ips2mM7Zqw

what a mess of a song :/

and oh god, "we like 2 party" is even worse. omona otm, it sounds like Teenage Dirtbag: https://soundcloud.com/k2nblog19/big-bang-we-like-2-party/s-K6WPI

ahaha oh god

I hear "Beverly Hills" by Weezer

yeah I think they were going for One Direction and somehow ended up somewhere in early to mid-00s radio rock instead.

Wow that's embarrassing

Though I'm looking at the dogs in GD's other videos differently now

"Ready <b>or not</b>, if we don't give them what they want..."

Emphasis mine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuqaVryDRd0

sounds like SHINee minus the personality. I wish whoever handled EXO had proper ideas on what kind of group they should be musically but this was my problem w SuJu too.

My expectations for this comeback were rock bottom so this is a pleasant surprise.

Aren't EXO a throwback pop-RnB group?

At this point, I mean. And Suju have settled into doing comedy songs.

Chanyeol's tragic Chinese rapping on the M version tho

First Love isn't bad either, I think it's a refugee from a few albums ago: https://youtu.be/BTAykHwftRM

New HIGH4 joining the batch of k-pop songs that switch gears into something super bright in the chorus. Not as effective as, say, GLAM's I Like That though.

Who knew hitchhiker was going to be a trendsetter like this.

The chorus is basically Should Have Put a Ring On it, no?