Kpop 2018

the minseo track is like a really motivational anime opening song... she is great and the orchestration is so full!

and sunny summer is growing on me too.... I like the instrumental more the more I listen to it.

that Minseo track is indeed great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiHSVQy9xN8

really like the new Red Velvet. not quite as great as Red Flavor but still a worthy successor as summer single. especially like the chord changes in the nanana section. the mini is very solid too

the minseo track is like a really motivational anime opening song... she is great and the orchestration is so full!

― hurricane weather (forapper), 25. juli 2018 00:27 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol, this is absolutely otm. Great track! The video is pretty anime as well, reminds me of Your Name or Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

wow power up is so fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFJPFfnzZ7w

LOONA full group debut is pretty good

Good song, terrible video. I lol'd at omona commenters who said it's pretty much a boy group song done right - it absolute is! Sounds like an EXO track.

"Power up" is fun, but can't shake how the chorus melody is lifted directly from Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend".

oh it is very similar now that you mention it, but it has a completely different feeling there so it doesn't bother me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1OUMTMwVsY

this on the other hand is such a rip of Tinashe's Superlove lol

Wow, that is *brazen*. Please tell me Tinashe and her ppl were duly compensated.

the Red Velvet mini-album is great so far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MthLgPs7oU4

not sure why Brave Girls are releasing a remix of Rollin a year and a half later as a new single but it's even better than the original

WOW that remake is really good... and why not try it out again as a summer single, since we're still getting trop house from all the other popular acts

And speaking of (kinda)... I know it's a YG songwriting cliche but I really like the last drop on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7upxtfys2QI

Good to see girl group member producers/songwriters (Soyeon) flex.. this is one of the more interesting gg singles of the year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKNXn2qCEws

ooh I really like that. nice to see Soyeon continuing to be great yeah, I loved her solo track Jelly from last year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ8kJdTYj1o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDAqx45Duqw

also really enjoying this from a few weeks ago, one of the best tropical summer singles this year

I'm into all the jazz piano slowly invading the idol scene... the bridge on this is WILD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCb6XJ_2Z3E

It feels spare but not boring, a bit like Pentagon's SHINE, and that song grew on me a lot.

It just makes you smile!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBuZEGYXA6E

new BTS is fantastic, really was not expecting something like this from them

it s supposed to be influenced by Gqom

For real. It’s got the gqom sound palet, especially in the intro and the verses (the drum rolls, the whistles, the synths), but the chorus is firmly in the Kpop zone. Fantastic baby!

Heard it's meant to be a mix of traditional Korean sounds and the South African music hitman bang has on his ipod right now...

I like the production touches and "BTS as global commodity" visual messaging but the song feels thin on melodic ideas to me... more "Bang Bang Bang" than "Fantastic Baby" (if Bang Bang Bang was less dated-on-arrival).

What I do like about BTS is how quick the feedback loop is. Less than a year in from Love Yourself: Her setting sales records and rather than continue to tour that album, they already released the 2nd and 3rd acts wherein they tentatively/enthusiastically embrace their fame. It's the Kpop production schedule combined with a savvy sense of narrative and self-reference.

DNA was their Fantastic Baby, obviously.

Apart from my enthusiasm my exclamation was mainly inspired by the “ooh-hoo!” in the chorus. The guys were clearly thinking of BigBang and “Fantastic Baby” themselves. The song itself is somewhere halfway between FB and BBB, I guess.

yeah the "ooh-hoo!" is straight from Fantastic Baby. the South African/traditional Korean blend is extremely effective here and i'm really glad they're doing something so fresh while at their peak, unlike their last few singles which have felt overly safe. i don't have any complaints about melodic ideas since it's driven so strongly by the rhythms and has plenty of hooks even if they aren't very melodic ones if that makes any sense

Girls' Generation coming back (as 5) in September

So then Seohyun and Sooyoung are out?

Going back to BTS, I think IDOL needs "something" more to be really good... but it is head and shoulders above most of the other songs on the BTS album which are, like, total snoozefests. So there's that.

yes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ8MFfg3DHA

Seohyun and Sooyoung left SM with Tiffany, yeah.

hello k-pop thread, haven't had much time to post lately but just wanted to say how much i've been enjoying everything Hyolyn's put out this year. I think "Bae" might be my fave at the moment, so much summery goodness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2V4lymB6VU

yeah her singles this year have been great, See Sea is definitely my favourite though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNWMZIf7eSg

this is my favourite Sunmi solo single so far

also coming soon is a Blackpink & Dua Lipa collaboration! it'll be interesting to see if Blackpink attempt any sort of Western breakthrough then

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

With credit to Our Girl Jamie for working so hard all these years to consolidate Jimin's fanbase... some of the best fanmade Kpop content on the English-language web!

All joking aside, the (long overdue) Jimin Park mini is solid. I like tracks 1, 2 and 4 especially. See if you can spot the Shine reference!

lol

BTS was playing in downtown L.A. tonight and apparently they've sold out four shows here at Staples Center. People camping out in tents in the line waiting to see them.

My friend wanted to see them at Citifield (where the Mets play), tickets were by lottery and we didn't get them. But I'm pretty agnostic on the new album so maybe we dodged a bullet.

Oh!GG Lil Touch isn't terrible but it's suffering pretty hard from every line being written twice so they can be divided 'fairly' between all 5 girls.

Either have a 3-girl subunit, work harder on the song structure, or forget about the distribution...

I like the new NCT Dream song though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV1Es22E0RI

Supposedly Mark will be "graduated" from NCTDream after this song which is a bit weird to think about considering he's featured so heavily on it and even the other rappers sound like him. But just like Cube think they can have Pentagon without E'Dawn...

Here's an opinion piece on the NCT franchise model and other artist-as-commodity long term planning by SM:

https://omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com/22890849.html

Popular culture critic Kim Hyun Sik said, “In a franchise, the flagship store must be successful in order for its brand power to expand to its chain stores. It would be sequentially correct to develop a team that can be the center of NCT and then expand its influence to its derived teams.”

Would you buy a home AI system with Wendy's voice and image?

Sunmi's "Siren" rules <3 She does high drama so well.

Performance predictably great too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcBFktktV80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrvdjyIL0fA

iiking this track in the k-patchwork-pop tradition

the OMG track is great, I hear a lot of other songs I like in there

the one that most comes to mind is GLAM's Party (XXO)

also I Got A Boy

Wow this is awful: https://www.soompi.com/article/1229651wpp/breaking-hyuna-edawn-removed-cube-entertainment

I could see them letting go of E'Dawn but Hyuna?! She practically carried the label.

wow that's awful and shocking, absurd that dating scandals are still such a thing and that companies can react like this over them

It just seems incredibly short-sighted. Hyuna was probably popular enough to ride out any dating scandals, while E'Dawn was a rising star. Good luck Cube imo.

i've seen some suggest that the issue was that Cube denied the dating rumours only for Hyuna & E'Dawn to publicly confirm they were dating afterwards and it seems Cube really didn't like that they did that

Yeah Cube's shares tanked after they went public (and is tanking now after this latest announcement).

I feel bad for Pentagon though - they were just starting to make waves. They don't deserve this.