Day 13- A Guilty Pleasure

Teen Top, a Korean boy band.

I bet Mom has been waiting on this one.

Oh, the boy band. The K-pop. The one that sucks up loads of time and keeps me from doing Korean lessons when I should. Couple that with stalking the Personality Cafe forums and you have my biggest time wasters and guilty pleasures. >.<

Sure, sure, I watch a lot of drama. It does take up a large time slot, but I actually have learned a LOT of Korean from those dramas. I learn a mere fraction in comparison from K-pop. In fact, the most Korean I learn from songs/recognize in songs is actually in songs by K-indie groups like Vanilla Acoustic, Vodka Rain, Sweetpea (amazing stuff) or 10cm, and K-rock/indie groups like Nell, Dear Cloud, and Gukkasten. So I don't just limit my music choices to Korean pop, by far. I've even tried some K-rap before, like Tablo (who is absolutely amazing) and heard a little Epik High (but I'm of the opinion that I like Tablo's solo work a bit more...erm, less cursing, generally).


So, K-pop. What do I like about K-pop? To be quite honest, some days I'm not sure. I like the catchy-ness of boy band songs like SHINee's 'Sherlock', the creativity and honesty of NU'EST's 'Face', the bouncy, happy cuteness of B1A4's 'Beautiful Target' and the sweetness and beauty of BTOB's '아버지' which means 'Father'. But then again, '아버지' is ballad.

I don't normally like the entire song lineup of a group. I just can't bring myself to be that die-hard of a fan. And to spite that most K-pop idols do photoshoots like this-

MBLAQ, four-member boy band whose name means 'Musical Boys Live in Absolute Quality'. Definitely not something WE would dare to name a group, but somehow, it works in Korea.

-and generally promote the clean, pure, first-love-is-the-last-love Korean ideal, they don't always write songs like that nor have videos that are clean. Not to mention the dancing from some groups can be downright totally wrong.
 Mind you, their music is a little less foul than our pop is here, but some songs, videos and dances just don't make the 'appropriate to listen to' cut for me. Too many references to the club, too much ghetto/gangster influence, or a bit too many English swear words.
 Another downside to Korean pop is that it tends to sound...manufactured. Like it's the same thing over and over again, without a lot of change in lyrics, style, or emotion. That's because most boybands don't even write their own lyrics or compose their own music; they hire people to do it for them. While I'm not totally opposed to that (hey, I considered writing lyrics as a career once), I do wish they would switch it up a bit more sometimes.

 Most boy bands manage to keep several of their songs pretty clean though, and there are rare gems of compelling creativity and genius writing that comes out of a boy band member once in a while.

 As to the other side of K-pop, girl groups, I will give a few words to express my opinion.

f(x), probably the only girl group I listen to consistently at all, posing cutesy (except Amber, the resident tomboy), looking like a Dollar Store exploded all over them, as Martina from EatYourKimchi, a popular Korean culture blog, would say.

 There are several girl group songs that I like. 2NE1's I Love You is absolutely gorgeous, f(x)'s Electric Shock, Hot Summer and (guiltily) Nu ABO are so catchy and spunky, and I must admit I do like Wonder Girls' Like This. Did I mention that K-pop groups tend to have the weirdest names? They actually make sense when you look them up, though.

 But generally I dislike the image of girl groups as a whole and their attitude filled songs. Add to that the fact that they dance quite seductively...generally most of the time. >.< So, yeah, wouldn't recommend the videos of these songs I listed. Just the music. ^^

 So, in closing, my favorite things about boy bands in K-pop would be the style, the music videos, the music, the talented singers, dancers, the rare cases of ingenuity, and lets just face it-a couple of those guys are seriously handsome.

SHINee, while practicing the dance for their song 'Sherlock'. The choreography was done by a man who also did choreography for Michael Jackson. The dance for Sherlock is surprisingly complicated and very impressive, though.

My favorite things about girl groups are their catchy music and bravely explosive and colorful style...though I would never wear some of that stuff myself.

 -Argentia