K-pop (2016)

Been a pretty good July imo with Wonder Girls surprising total domination.

BLACKPINK is live.

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

Boombayah https://youtu.be/bwmSjveL3Lc

Nice visuals but a disappointing debut imo, songs are kinda boring and their charisma is totally contrived.

I like Whistle, Red Velvet meets 4Minute

I do like the prechorus on Whistle quite a bit... a bit of a that fusion country sound Bae Bae had (and awesome production like YG always has too). The verses are a little too sparse for me tho, and I don't like the chorus until the very last go round.

I guess it's a stylistic thing but I'm really not into these super sparse trap tracks.... though the snare drum and high hat hits do add a bit of interest to this one.

I'm into this though, or maybe just happy BAP are being allowed to be weird again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLLBk6fb5Zw

BYG has writing credits on half the songs on the single, which bodes well for them, I hope...

BLACKPINK going strong in the US charts... first group to top the worldwide Billboard with a debut song.

BTW **both** new album tracks on EXO's obligatory album repackage are killer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN-TNtUNXMA

And She's dreaming + Lotto (single). Baekhyun is so good, especially.

Hmm after a couple playthroughs I think She's Dreaming (the played-straight RnB track with chewy surf guitars keeping the beat) has more staying power.

You guys never told me how good "All Mine" is! Maybe not as ILXy as last year's album but idk I love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0S3knWIdrY

yeah, All Night is great. another favourite of mine is Why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri6wvGjuoOg

Playlist is updated.

f(x) is the most overrated K-pop band. Black Pink is no 2NE1, I don't understand what CL is doing at all

was always a Jia guy (rip Miss A) but Fei didn't get a mention?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEF1Ah8QaXw ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSm1eRvS_k0
this is great

Yes please, after IU went full songwriter I've been missing this patented grand mid tempo pop from Lee Min-soo and Kim Eana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-67pGMcgW3k

Jay Park never trading on subtlety but this sounds pretty lush

http://www.youtube.com/watch?a=&v=-qSNMfm1rlg

The new Red Velvet single - and this is the group that set the golden standard for that brand of upbeat pop with "Happiness", `"Ice Cream Cake" and "Dumb Dumb" - is majory disappointing and just.. bad. I'm not even going to post it unles it grows magically on me.

not getting on too well without me, i see!

"all mine" might be a Station throwaway but lol @ best pop act of the decade being "overrated," and "russian roulette" may not quite make ICC or DD muster but putting "happiness" above it would be mental (it's great (whole EP's easily the best k-pop release since The Red))

Sounds like a middling SNSD song, making it an extra disappointing Red Velvet single. Verses just aren't there. Ok production makes it listenable - barely. Will have to give the EP a bit more time - some of it sounds good, some completely forgettable.

I guess no one posted GFriend's Navillera here - it's not _quite_ as good as their previous singles, but they're still gunning for one of the more consistently good single runs.

I agree with you the Hyuna Ep is great though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXHJQ7CYqQM

She has so much charisma

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc6kDLUiV4

Really takes off after the 3 min mark

Everyone's favorite underrated boyband (High4) are back with a rapper subunit named... wait for it... High4:20. The song is pretty good!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwp7Kfenbyo

I mean it's taking a lot of pages from GDYB's "Good Boy" but that's a good song too so...

Wait why didn't anyone mention to me that SHINee had gone ahead and recorded a goddamn 2-step song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BSDV9uKEIo

<333 I really like '1 of 1' too!

I.O.I going out on a high note:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1hxg1rY17I

Also another nicely jazzy downtempo song from Ladies Code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsx9f8tdifw

It took me a while to warm up to Cheer Up (TWICE) but I eventually got there... Very Very Very has a similar tempo and vocal style but it sounds good right away. Though I wish they'd thought of way to end the track and not resorted to the fade out...

I really like the direction Ladies Code have gone in since their reboot, they really suit the chic jazzy songs... especially Sojung with her kinda smoky vocal tone...

Ladies Code fill a niche in the k girl group landscape, just hope they do well enough to keep doing their thing with expensive looking classy videos.

Very Very Very is def in the Gee school of earworms. And directly lifts 2 seconds of melody from Gee. I like it.

Playlist is updated; we got 90 songs and about 5 1/2 hours of music.

ILM's Rolling K-Pop Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist

Like the new Hyuna!

New group with a solid debut song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOnK_GOR3W8

TWICE TT grew on me a lot (still don't like the MV tho):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOnK_GOR3W8

Happy to see IMFACT again considering the financial woes of their company:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOXVTjlF2pk

And of course there's EXO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOzVyVv1HtQ

The IMFACT song is a different from what they were doing before but they kept the bratty rapping I enjoyed in Topp Dogg also. As far as EXO goes, the video is enjoyable, but the live performances are terrible as always... you'd think that with 2/3 of the vocalists in the group they'd be allowed to sing live for once...

Whoops, messed up the TWICE link... you know what, have a selfie version...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_wyXaRK8Q0

GUYS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nchkAmc49p4

Pretty song, pretty video, pretty vocals, and pretty perfectly on-trend single from SHINEE.

Plus more easy-listening rnb:

Nu'est - Look https://youtu.be/rKNL7eME7JY
Junggigo - Nocture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVNfYP-3eA

Sistar on that tatu - all about us game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4TygUpWUTQ

Lmao it really does sound like tatu!

It's the processing on the vocals and the 90s anime italodisco backtrack making it sound like that, right?

So far, the only K-pop-related performer that I can find speaking out or demonstrating against Park Geun-hye is Lee Joon, ex of MBLAQ. Are there any more? I'm not shocked there aren't a lot - likely many have contracts that limit such things - but I'd still expect more than there are. She's down to a 5% favorability rating, so I wouldn't think there'd be a lot of risk here. I know that in South Korea the government can boost or limit artists, more so than in the U.S. or Western Europe. This would seem to provide plenty of motivation to work against her, to try to change the system or at least to keep friends of Park's from being the ones who wield the hammer. That's what the scandal is basically about, extortion and influence-peddling, right? Anyway, I'd think that you'd find anti-Park feeling among the Brown Eyed Girls and Hwang Soo Ah and thereabouts.

Other prominent music performers in the demonstrations are Jeon In-kwon and Lee Seung-hwan, neither of whom I previously knew anything about (but both got started prior to K-pop, right?) and rock group Crying Nut.

(I'm wondering if anyone's talked to Shin Jung-hyeun, who was imprisoned and tortured by Park Geun-hye's dad. He's 78 now. I gather that in his heyday he was something like a cross between Jimi Hendrix and Berry Gordy.)

Also, has anybody here been following the scandal well enough to know what's going on with Cha Eun-taek and whether he was genuinely part of Choi Soon-sil's circle? He's been arrested, and an AP story says prosecutors are seeking to indict him. But I feel that even on a board as obscure as ilX I shouldn't be glib about whom I'm connecting to scandals and such: I'm thinking of how the constant repetition of phrases like "T-ara bullying scandal" and "Clinton email scandal" had such a destructive effect, convincing members of the public who actually knew nothing about it that T-ara and Clinton must have done something deeply wrong, even though there was no actual evidence. In any event, I know almost nothing about the current scandal. Fyi, Cha directed the video for my favorite K-pop song (T-ara's "I Go Crazy Because Of You"); he directed perhaps my favorite K-pop video ever, at least one of my top five, T-ara's "Roly-Poly"; also "Cry Cry"; also the Japanese version of "Bo Peep Bo Peep"; also Lee Hyori's "U Go Girl"; also 2NE1's "Go Away." I wouldn't say, from my distance, the attitudes in these vids are socially challenging. But they do seem vaguely feminist, and there is nothing remotely reactionary or traditionalist about them. And they are good. (And Cha took the risk of speaking up for T-ara when they were under attack.) He's accused (by whom? on the basis of what evidence? not that there probably isn't a lot, just expressing my ignorance here) of wielding power in the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

By the way, I miss abcfsk and hurricane weather over on my lj, if you or anyone else would like to drop by.

I haven't been quality-commenting on anyone's LJ recently but I'm listening to your top 2016 singles now, Frank.

Frank, I don't have a stream for livejournal so have to rely on suddenly getting the idea to visit the place. I missed out on you posting some solid kpop content this month so I'll get to that now.

I think there are a few who have spoken out against the scandal. I remember thinking "wow, this is a special case" when I saw a girl group member posting an instagram photo of the downtown demonstrations - but a quick look now didn't jog my memory on who it was. In any case, when active idols feel safe with a political statement like that it's something. I also feel like I've read a few stories about angry tweets but can't remember who now.

Lee Hyori and a few friends put out a protest song (ballad) https://youtu.be/hXEjZTdCr4w

About BEG and Hwang Soo AH, both Kim Eana and her husband Loen's Cho Young-cheol have been at the demonstrations.

None of this would've come to light now, btw, if it wasn't for the awesome students at Ewha Women's University who tirelessly protested for weeks earlier this fall after suspecting rotten play at the top - leading to the discovery of secret players.

Lee Hyori's a big deal. The protest ballad - "Abandoned By The Side Of A Street," by Lee Seung-hwan ft. Lee Hyori and Jeon In-kwon, produced by Lee Kyo-ho - now has a part two featuring a cast of over a hundred. Soompi reports the performers include Lyn, Sweet Sorrow, Ha Dong Kyun, Rooftop Moonlight, and Shin Dae Chul of Sinawe. Of these, I'd only heard of Lyn and Sinawe, though that doesn't tell you anything about how prominent they might be. Still, not much idol participation. And except for metal guy Shin Dae Chul, the new listed performers seem to be from the ballad/legit singer or respectable indie wing of showbiz.

2016's most unlikely feud: Wiz Khalifa vs Taeyeon

https://twitter.com/hyk0505/status/805063085950169089

You'd have thought someone one the awards show staff would've checked these issues beforehand... or bothered to communicate them to the foreign star who flew all the way out to perform...