What do you think about K-Pop?

[daveb]

K-Pop. It's like Marmite (for those of you who know what that is) - you either love it or hate it. Personally, I feel the latter. This article attached sums up my sentiment. Interestingly enough, it is from a Malaysian perspective - where the good ol' Hallyu Wave has been washing up on their shores.

http://ecentral.my/news/story.asp?file=%2F2012%2F1%2F6%2Fmusic%2F10069191&sec=music

My question to you fellow waygookins is this - Do you love or hate K-Pop? Specificially, for those of you who love (or ''don't mind'') K-Pop... please explain why?

Everytime I walk past that flatscreen TV display in Homeplus blasting out the same K-Pop song (unchanged for the past 8 months), the ''music'' makes me want to hurt someone. Given that I'm an easy-going, open-minded pacifist who avoids hurting insects, this sums up the profoundly negative effect K-Pop has upon my sanity.   

Below is the latter part of the article that encapsulates how I feel:

A lot has been made about the Hallyu Wave, the unstoppable South Korean pop culture tsunami that has washed up on the shores of the world, conquering music charts, television ratings and the wall space of adolescents’ rooms.
 
I am heartily sick of it. Every bit of it. The manufactured sounds, the ersatz emotions, the clone-like stars, the cult-like, weepy fandom.
 
My more moderate friends point out that teen idols from the East and the West were never the vanguard of musical experimentation. Neither did they inspire devotion from level-headed people.
 
Before your Super Juniors or 2AMs, there were cheesy boybands such as Backstreet Boys in the noughties and The Partridge Family from the 1970s.
 
But of all the decades of cashing in on teenagers’ hormonal urges, the K-pop phenomenon seems the most coldly cynical and formulaic. Compared to the uniformity of the South Korean stars, Backstreet Boys seem like veritable bastions of individuality.
 
Part of the reason is because the Korean record labels have gotten their star-making formula down to a T.
 
This seems to be the drill: Train some nice-looking kids in a star factory. Assemble a group of them. Give them a name that is an abbreviation for something or just a random collection of letters and numbers.
 
The girls must have stick-thin arms and legs and the boys must look a bit like girls. Next, produce a song that is the demon child of Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas. Throw in Autotune, hip hop beats and strong synth lines. Make a video that is a mini movie, featuring the stars doing synchronised dance moves while the back-up dancers gurn at the sides.
 
Voila! You have a viral hit.

Insert your sentiments here:

[JahRhythm]

I think so little of it I don't find it worthy of discussion.
Just as back home in the U.S. I would spend zero time thinking about or talking about whatever lame, media-contrived B.S. du jour was popular.
I live in Korea but that doesn't mean I need to have an opinion on things that mean nothing to me just because they're Korean.

[Frozencat99]

I find it like any other brand of pop-music: fad-oriented, focused on a select group of people that changes bi-annually, and revolving around the same style/beats/format to appeal to popular trends. I don't think this is overall a negative aspect. I like some pop music artists back home, and dislike others, just as I do here. There isn't a point in denying that many of them have natural talents (just as there isn't really a point in confirming that many of them rely on auto-tune to sound good).

I like Hyuna (aka HyunA), for example.

It isn't really much of a weight on my mind, though I found the article a bit contrived. It can apply worldwide. I wouldn't really say anything I've heard is as bad as Lady Gaga + the Black Eyed Peas. Typical physically attractive person of either gender + mass production values + simple beats and progressions = viral hit.

This comedy group nails what I'm trying to say: [Minor NWS warning, there are a few cusses :3]

[daveb]

I think so little of it I don't find it worthy of discussion.
Just as back home in the U.S. I would spend zero time thinking about or talking about whatever lame, media-contrived B.S. du jour was popular.
I live in Korea but that doesn't mean I need to have an opinion on things that mean nothing to me just because they're Korean.

So, its not worthy of discussion - hence, your opinionated post? :)

Just because K-pop is Korean, are you saying I can't have an opinion about it? Thanks!
 
I agree with Frozencat99, its no better/worse than the equivalent sausage factory music back home.

I'd like to hear from others who actually like K-Pop. It's just a debate about personal taste... there are no winners or losers here! X

[stellamcinness]

I've only been in Korea a week, and I can already see the music is so different.

I love it, they really practice the moves well, not like the 80's groups back home.

What's the problem?

[elzoog]

For what it's worth,  www.eatyourkimchi.com   did teacher training entirely around the theme of K-Pop.   They ended up going away from the goal of training teachers, to focusing primarily on K-Pop and hence, lost quite a bit of their relevance. 

As to my own personal opinion, there are a few K-Pop songs that I like.   However, "Sorry Sorry" by Super Junior has just about totally destroyed much of the respect I had for it.   The fact that a song whose primary melody consists of the same eighth note repeated over and over again can become a number one hit tells you everything you need to know about K-Pop.

As Frank Zappa said, if you become a pop music writer, whether your songs are good or not will be dictated by 14 year old girls.

[JahRhythm]

Daveb - I was speaking for myself (as the bolded quote you included makes perfectly clear).  Thanks

[daveb]

stellamcinness - you are right, Koreans can master a choreographed dance routine like no others on Earth. Maybe, I seem like the Friday night Grinch, but please let me know if you feel the same way in a few months or years! 

[daveb]

Daveb - I was speaking for myself (as the bolded quote you included makes perfectly clear).  Thanks

Ok, great! Let's kiss and make up!  :)

[Frozencat99]

I will add -- in agreement -- that I do find their choreography to generally be better and more diverse than pop back home. Bad Romance, for a random example, can be learned in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, videos like this perplex me:

(I'm overdoing the videos a bit tonight, my apologies)

[daveb]

For what it's worth,  www.eatyourkimchi.com   did teacher training entirely around the theme of K-Pop.   They ended up going away from the goal of training teachers, to focusing primarily on K-Pop and hence, lost quite a bit of their relevance. 

As to my own personal opinion, there are a few K-Pop songs that I like.   However, "Sorry Sorry" by Super Junior has just about totally destroyed much of the respect I had for it.   The fact that a song whose primary melody consists of the same eighth note repeated over and over again can become a number one hit tells you everything you need to know about K-Pop.

As Frank Zappa said, if you become a pop music writer, whether your songs are good or not will be dictated by 14 year old girls.

Absolutely! Where would the world be without legends like Zappa!?

[tails]

Some of it's okay, I really like the video by an artist called IU it was like a small fantasy movie.  The majority is awful but no worse than UK or US pop.  I hate that eatyourkimchi website how camp can two people get, must be doing something right as they are very popular!

[rjesu007]

I enjoy K-Pop and I have gone to couple of concerts (Seoul and Busan) in the past 6 months since I've been here. I listened to K-Pop for over 3 years before I showed up to Busan. I find their music videos a lot more tolerable than many of the (North) American music videos. A lot more dance, and a lot more choreography than just head bobbing or close up of the singers. I still have no clue what they are singing about so I don't have any opinion on that.

HyunA is considered to be the "bad girl" type in all of K-Pop because of her dance steps and clothing and yet compared to any of the artists back home in Canada or States, she's just another face in the crowd.

K-Pop is a billion dollar (not won) industry and they seem to be doing a good job advertising. 2NE1 (21 or 'Anyone') just recently went to NY to perform live and they also received a MTV award for being "a upcoming artist".

K-Pop is certainly not for everyone, that's for sure. Then again, I listen to more Bollywood, Kollywood, and K-Pop than any other genre of music. That's just my taste in music. I like more dancing and beats than actual lyrics to it. Odd, I know... lol

[moksori]

Honestly, I'm kind of tired of reading articles about how annoying, manufactured, and disturbing K-pop is. Likewise, the articles making it seem like some godly force taking over the world are worthy of side-eyeing as well. K-pop's just pop music to me. Some stuff's catchy while some stuff's blehh. But I do think the amount of training and practicing these "idols" do is respectable.

[FloridaGator314]

It's manufactured garbage, but Koreans can like whatever they want, even if they have terrible tastes in music. Most of the girls are cute though, except those girls in that "Mr. Simple" video.

It's kind of annoying when Koreans who have never been to US insists that K-Pop is popular in the US when 99% of the country has absolutely no idea who Girls Generation is.

[Horus]

K-pop is nauseating. One of the worst things about living in Korea is my daily exposure to it. It's everywhere, and it is just dreadful. Makes me want to tear off my ears, fill them with cement and bury them.

A truly aweful Korean phenomenon.

[confusedsafferinkorea]

K-pop is nauseating. One of the worst things about living in Korea is my daily exposure to it. It's everywhere, and it is just dreadful. Makes me want to tear off my ears, fill them with cement and bury them.

A truly aweful Korean phenomenon.

I take then you don't like it? 

[hilarity ensues]

If openly liking it didn't make me feel as though I were justifying Korean notions of their own inherent superiority over all other cultures… then I probably still wouldn't like it.

I also don't like plastic surgery, super-bright key lighting, commercial dancing, designer clothes, gay haircuts, wealth-worship, over-emoted cliches, strained facial expressions, or edgy-but-harmless formulaically marketed personalities. Actually, pop music in general pretty much takes everything I dislike about the world and combines it into one horrible product…

[Frozencat99]

What exactly is a "gay haircut"?

Also this poll is troubling, I can't at all decide which option best fits my posted feelings.

[gookway]

There's no doubting the talent and creativity of korean kpop stars.  Korea is known for being skilled with media arts.  They have a knack for things such as choreography, dance, art, etc., and I think they do a better job than the US popstars, BUT that's where all the praise ends.

I'm sick of the superficiality of their appearances and fakeness of the appearance of their beauty and happy life.  Whenever I see the little girls at my school using the computers, they are all constantly fixated on looking up pictures of their kpop female stars.  They are constantly gazing at and admiring how beautiful so and so is and all I see is a person with a hell of a lot of makeup on and probably double-eyelid surgery, etc.   When I see the student's faces, there is a sense of expression of both admiration but also despair.  That despair comes from the fact they feel they aren't as beautiful, and will never become a kpop celebrity even if they tried.  If somehow they can't look like that, sing like that, dance like that and be all over the flatscreen tvs with their "barbie doll" figures and outfits, then somehow, they are less than worthy and less than valuable.   That makes me mad. 

It's the same reason why southeast asian girls also look up to the korean kpop celebs because they are just that much more beautiful with their white skin and stick figures, as if to somehow condition their minds that dark skinned asian women from poor countries are not beautiful.  Kpop is both brilliant and a ingenious moneymaking machine, but it is also a subliminally destructive pro-hedonistic message pounding regime that is changing trends for both korea and those nations that are engulfed / addicted to kpop.