Kpop 2018

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.

lololol what a mess

[UPDATE] A senior official from CUBE Entertainment said the withdrawal of HyunA & E'Dawn is not final yet. The agency officials are having an urgent meeting & will gather the opinions from their artists as well https://t.co/yZlkxg3xhw pic.twitter.com/weppSv4c3U

— The Seoul Story (@theseoulstory) September 13, 2018

If the point was to show Hyuna and E'Dawn who's boss, it backfired big time.

Pentagon are promoting right now and the song is pretty bad, but that might be because E'Dawn is not there to sell his Shine pt 2 co-write

The main thinh OMG's Remember Me reminds me of is f(x)'s Pinocchio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RUeTYiJCyA

I've never really been able to get into GOT7 but that's quite nice.

I like it, it kinda sounds like Teenager (fan favorite off the last album): https://youtu.be/MPhAEcLaiNs

I think I'd like it more if it was just a touch more relaxed

dirrrrrrrty bass (but the chorus is poppy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YROy48zGzW4

Doesn't quite stick the landing but I love the first 2 minutes of this...

https://soundcloud.com/bangtan/seesawxineedu

i like this way more than the components

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ekJOWBejSU

this is a very good r&b track with a great keyboard solo that i'd completely missed until now

listened to the GOT7 album and it's really great, one of the best kpop full lengths i've heard. nearly every track could have been the single

this is one of the highlights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6rhxI80-FY

Oh yeah Lee Jin Ah pitched as this piano genius could be very noodle-y but she's shown a great pop sensibility too, even in the songs where she IS doing jazz piano throughout

Like

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