K-pop (2014)

wow what an awesome list. this is super surreal: remember Elite Gymnastics' mix All We Fucking Care About Is K-pop, Whitehouse, and Our Cats? did that hip Bennett to this stuff or was he a k-pop fan from the start? what the fuck is going on?????

Yea I don't know, I kind of wanna ask him... I'll just fb message him I guess. That EG mix was kind of a while ago so it's up in the air as if that had a direct influence on it. Like, if you look at the lists he made for Boomkat in 2012 and 2013, it's clear that this year's is the first that's pop-oriented. He also wrote a huge thing about the new LDR album for Electronic Beats earlier this year.

He replied, he said he had heard the mix and liked it but "actually loved it from long before as for (him) it represented the true spiritual successor to Italo and 70s disco".

cool

'Tis the season for silly costumes, ft. SISTAR, BTOB and 2am.

Also the season for year-end shows! Here's SBS Gayo Daejun

Xposted comment:

Really liked the remixes for "Something" and "Sugar Free", maybe even more than the original songs! Also really like 4minute's "remix" that was actually a completely different song.

AOA's intro with the moving sidewalk was cool, also Orange Caramel's Xmas tree outfits, though I with they'd changed the songs up a little more.

Taeyang was off his game but GD was back on. Can there only be one???

They gave the "Award" to EXO but Seo Taiji performed last, says it all really... pretty canny of him to put a Xmas/Halloween song on it so he could be seasonally appropriate twice.

hey james, do you still listen to k-pop?

STJ's "Christmalo" was the one stage that night that wasn't a complete waste of time. korea still needs him.

No love for the Xmas tree dresses, soyrev?

KBS Gayo Daejun: boring overall, but VIXX were good for a laff and Block B's cross-dressed HER was legitimately great.

Was also pleasantly surprised by Dongwoo's singing (on a song in his range) and Hyungseung's rapping (on "Loyal"), but my expectations were very low.

i have a new project called the K-Pendium, wherein i attempt to trace the entire history of korean popular music from 1926 through the present, via a series of individual song essays.

here is the first post, about "Gee" by SNSD: http://www.k-pendium.com/001/
here is some context re: my motivations etc: http://www.k-pendium.com/info/

please spread it around if you like it!

Ask a Korean was doing a similar project, though his was very rockist. Have you seen it?

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/1998/02/50-most-influential-k-pop-artists.html

Music Core's year-end show is a nice collection of groups with strong live performances... add Orange Caramel, 4minute, EXID, f(x) and TOPP DOGG and it comes pretty close to matching the list of idol music show performances I personally enjoyed the most this year.

Infinite's Back remix and Teen Top's Missing remix were highlights I think, alongside Block B (as always).

yes, have read some of his stuff and will definitely continue to now that i'm in korea and actually have a chance of getting my hands on a lot of this music. his will be a crucial resource for my own project.

i think we differ a bit in audience and intent, not to mention format – but AAK's knowledge and expertise re: korean pop history is definitely an aspiration of mine!

That's a weird list.

speaking of, here's my top 20 k-pop songs of 2014, for vice/noisey:

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-20-best-k-pop-songs-of-2014

Which one's weird, mine or AAK's?

switch it up: K-pop (2015)

Looks like I can retire - soyrev's on it!

BTW I thought MBCGayo picked up a little steam toward the end - or at least TVVQ "Something" was the perfect song to end on. 2012 is still the Gayo year to beat though.

Somewhat of interest: SISTAR and Ailee and Taemin turned in good performances, Zion.T was blowing everyone else on his stage away, EXO sang both Thunder and Overdose LIVE and sounded good, the Zico/CNBlue collaboration stage was a hilarious mess, SNSD's MR MR remix was decent.

More seriously of interest: I wish B1A4 would stop messing with Lonely because that song doesn't need a remix. The swelling-orchestral-strings version of "Solo Day" was actually good though, in a Brian Wilson masterwork kind of way.

http://youtu.be/WrSgz63g-Ko

Skip to the end for B1A4 "Solo Day" (orchestra ver).

And to round out 2014:

Boy Group Debuts http://youtu.be/0ZBsXkbSp0Q

Girl Group Debuts http://youtu.be/u7Lsxskse_Y