K-pop (2015)

Looks like this is why "showgirls" is on the SNSD album: https://youtu.be/Gt-1yFoXXZ4 Seems like the kind of frantic cheesy spectacle older Koreans like?

And you know... as much as I thought Lion Heart was a snoozefest, the chorus really stays with you.

Doing a better job this promotion cycle than they did with Party BTW, today's MuCore performances mostly solid and only a little bit silly (You Think https://youtu.be/rS64hQ9s8C4, Lion Heart https://youtu.be/APafAyReBYI).

Also <333 Ye-euns's keyboard adlib on I Feel You: https://youtu.be/NX-aADynU8Q

omg the synth solo

JYP, sort of peaking this year in terms of chart appeal, & YJS, eternal nation's #1, is the kind of royal team-up which should've delivered the chart killer to end all killers, but is only 5th among IC songs on the charts. It's not really all that memorable. Yeah the Hyukoh country thing gets me going by the end. Zion T and Haha is pleasant enough if not that adventurous. Surprise tidbit here: Co-produced by KUSH.

i think all this IC stuff is jv at best but i guess it's interesting that the pseud-big bang thing is basically as good as anything they've put out for real this year (one or two exceptions)

surprised "show girls" gets the full stage design treatment (/performance at all) but this really is the pits of those tired faux moulin rouge depths they dip into every now and again.

and i've liked that synth solo every time she's done it, but more and more i find myself hoping the post-promos WG gameplan involves hitting the practice space eight hours a day like they're black flag

Let's not forget that the first year of IC festival gave us the greatest SNSD 'solo' release of all time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCd5-m2hQ1Y

Who's doing worse than JYP/YJS? Not poor Jun-ha and Yoon-sang? The song is stupid and dated, but competently produced at the micro level.

Or maybe my expectations were just low LMAO. Though as someone said at omona, "You have the best Korean producer with you and you make him do this?"

That's the one.

Ichart now:

1 IU PMS
2 GD T KH
3 ZION HAHA
4 HD Hyukoh
5 JYP YJS
.
.
8 Yoonsang

Aw :(

Zion.T is of course cheating by giving fans a burner phone number to call, though the song would be OK if it wasn't being force-marched to that BPM and was about something else (and if Haha had been given more to do than following Zion.T's guide vocal).

JYP YJS had promise but it's brought down by the vocal melody following the track melody too exactly, and (surprisngly) by JYP being the vocal weak link... I suppose they ran out of time.

HyukOh song is growing on me, it's nothing new but it's true duet (like IU/Myungsoo... just checked the lyrics and she really went all-out with Leon/Matilda thing hahaha).

soyrev I know this is beneath you, but these songs are at about my level to analyze, being flawed in such obvious ways haha. As someone who followed the show I'm enjoying this.

There have been some great IC songs through the years

what're your top IC songs, abcfsk?

In all honesty it really is Naengmyun. PMS has been lucky. I Cheated was great. Really liked Jung Jun Ha and Kim C ('Will Be Gone').

Leon has 41 Perfect All-Kills. 2nd place in 2015 is Big Bang with 9.

That Hyorin and Palo Alto track (which is co-composed by Hoody, stepping into the mainstream) https://youtu.be/XTAZ81djBfg

haha i don't consider it 'beneath me,' i love analyzing flawed stuff – just don't think these ones' flaws are all that interesting. will say though that hearing the studio versions, the fake BB track is actually def sub-BB2k15 and the IU song would be around her median quality range if PMS' geezer tone weren't so unappealing. would work better w/ a foil like bumkey

new DSP girl group April's mini is purist k-pop a la Lovelyz and Gfriend, but a notch or two below...

mini isn't so great either :/

It's def a lower tier version of those but the cutesy girl group rookies' output of the last year has been so much better than the pre-'Expectation' years of countless cutesy, shit debuts. Back then there was a cluelessness to the cute style, just dumb signifiers stacked on top of each other without real songs.

ha I guess that's true. the first thing I thought of was when She'z came back with UU (though admittedly I've had that chorus stuck in my head before)

seems like no one mentioned it before but i might as well now... cokejazz & hoody had a song a bit ago and it was nice: https://youtu.be/5hWzjWcMqWs

I kept waiting for Hyolyn to rap on that track...

It's different for Kpop but I feel like there are a lot of much better songs in that style.

Silly stat to follow but here I am - Leon is now the song with the most Perfect All Kills in instiz history at 80.

IU had the previous record with 76 for You & I

Now 100 PAKs and still 320 pts on ichart

Verbal Jint and Sanchez with an 'Up Down' homage of sorts, feat. LE on a nice verse. She did a lot more feats last year, but I guess she's busier with Exid now that they're popular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10_KGAJbXrA

from the second i saw "귀아래 (feat. LE)" i was ready to cringe, but that was p nice

also wtf, how can a song get a PAK so many times? i thought it was basically a one-time thing, unless a song roofed it, fell off, then roofed again. does this mean that for 100 separate hours, the song was #1 on all charts?

I believe so

131

Well not 100 isolated hours it seems. I'm looking at the ichart twitter account now, which tweets out PAKs, and so they tweeted one at 14:30 and another at 15:30. The PAK has been under attack by Show Me The Money tracks the past few days.

i do kinda appreciate that such an odd, awkward mess of a song can become positively massive here, but this instance really is a product of korea's too-big-to-fail brand name power thing. chaebeol pop

and hm, it looks like half past the hour is just when ichart updates?

Yes, but they do separate tweets for PAKs. I don't know if I'd call it Chaebol pop - new 'brands' such as Unpretty Rapstar also produce massive chart hits with unknowns. Just seems the country/market is small enough for events, like popular TV shows, to propel big hits. Mix it with the artist already holding the chart records and yeah.. I like the song but a lot less than 'Heart', one of my favorites of the year.

i mean it has a lot more to do with IU and PMS' name brand values in 2015 (not to mention IC's) than it does with this song being particularly good, noteworthy, or zeitgeist-tapping in any way. obviously upstarts produce massive hits too (crayon pop...), and of course we all know word spreads fast in korea (especially when TV's involved).

Sure, but there's a hit and there's a hit. I guess the interest in the IC chart fest comes mostly from seeing which of the teams manage to hit the zeigeist the most. JYP and Yoo Jae Suk are probably bigger names but have fared so-so in comparison.

And Koreans really love Leon, the movie.

Yeah WINNER Mino is doing really well at the moment, all his songs are charting (the talent show contestant runner-up effect). Dude was a highlight of the show, really entertaining even if the beats were basic e.g. moneyflow. Okey Dokey is unhinged B-side Block B stuff https://youtu.be/EeNHal1Wc8A

idk, i think IU is basically at taylor swift levels (pre-lol gawker "backlash") of goodwill in korea right now – after recovering from her sex scandal, i think she's back to being pretty much unrivaled in terms of celeb esteem (as reflected by her recently becoming an honorary police officer, and her continued dominance as a soju ad girl; as my korean friend once told me, "whoever's in soju commercials is who's most popular in korea right now"). and then PMS has that more legastic appeal (gotta say i'm shocked he's only in his early 40s though). JYP bounced back from years of insignificance with that body image-desecrating butt song, true, but i would say he's still pretty demode these days...jaesuk is definitely still on fire even after the headscratcher deal he cut with FNC, but he's not a musician and music's got nothing to do with his fame.

not that these factors aren't the only ones in play, i think that IU and PMS' song being pretty much exactly how you would expect it to sound for each of them (albeit sloppier and more slapdash than usual, esp for IU), i.e. being on-brand, helps a lot. "i'm so sexy" being unlistenable cheese doesn't help, nor does it playing to everything people jeer JYP for (narcissism, mostly). re: hwangtaeji, i think the public's kind of burning out on big bang momentum after eight smash singles in the past season alone, especially given this new one is a bad pastiche of them...

speaking of JYP, though, i did appreciate how he didn't even bother to conceal his boredom watching all the other IC songs.

idek about Leon having been a popular film – more brand power!!

don't love mino's songs ("fear" is pretty good) but he was very strong on SMTM, pretty annoyed that basic basick won the whole thing after all his uninspired performances and slip-ups (though happy for him in that he definitely needs the money more at this point, and everyone respects the heck out of him so maybe now he's got the momentum to prove why). still think black nut was the obvious highlight of the show and deserved that dough more than anyone

one thing's for sure, if IC and SMTM coincide again next year nobody else is gonna be releasing songs for at least a week on either side. they're annihilating the charts rn

Would be interesting to see how much the artists who are not from those shows have sold these weeks compared to normal. Although these past two weeks are very quiet release-wise.

yeahhhh it's flop city. FTisland releasing the korean pop rock equivalent of "who let the dogs out" in 2015: http://k2nblog.com/single-ftisland-puppy/

also man what were they thinking...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDevPHBHNG0

Is that a promo song? LMAO.

Mino gains more from coming in second, the winner in these shows is usually pre-determined/whoever has the best narrative arc.

Since we're talking about the most loved stars, that's what tvn surveyed people on this week

01. Yoo Jae-suk (MC)
02. Jun Ji-hyun (actress)
03. Kim Soo-hyun (actor)
04. Song Hye Kyo (actress)
05. Jang Dong-gun (actor)
06. Lee Young-ae (actress)
07. G-Dragon (singer)
08. Kim Tae-hee (actress)
09. Ha Jung-woo (actor)
10. Choi Ji Woo (actress)

11. Ha Ji-won (actress)
12. Hwang Jung-min (Actor)
13. Kim Hye-soo (actress)
14. SNSD / Girl Generation (singers)
15. PSY (singer)
16. IU (singer)
17. Suzy (singer/actress)
18. Yoo Ah-in (Actor)
19. Shin Dong-yup (comedian)
20. Park Bo-young (actress)

21. Seo Taiji (singer)
22. Jeon Do-yeon (actress)
23. Kim Hee-ae (actress)
24. Hyun Bin (actor)
25. Cho Yong-pil (singer)
26. Lee Hyori (singer)
27. Cha Seung-won (actor)
28. Kang Ho-dong (MC)
29. Lee Kyung-kyu (actor/MC)
30. Lee Jung-jae (actor)

I like Taeyang's part on "Fear" but not Mino's, though the lyrics aren't bad. Unpretty Rapstar season 2 looks like it's gonna be so bad BTW... nearly all the contestants have that UR "style" you talked about upthread (though KittiB is in it).

About IU, this duet is kinda taking her career full circle, isn't it? She got her start catering to older male fans.

No dig on her, I also like "Leon"

Catering to and working with ahjussis is a tad different though. Melon has a neat feature which lets you see who listens to the top tracks and for Leon that's 52,7% female listeners.

Ok I just now made the connection that Basic was in Jiggy Fellaz with LE back in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCcoQw3hbFs

Interesting list of top Kpop prechoruses: https://youtu.be/ynB88wbob-w