Summary
Criticizing kpop artists, disrespecting their journey, their trauma, their strength and their talents is garbage behavior from garbage people.
#FirstCoffeeThoughts
Disclaimer
I am NOT an expert on kpop. I am not a FANATIC about kpop. This is just my opinion and feelings about music that I sometimes enjoy listening to.
The first Kpop song I EVER heard was “Irony” by the Wonder Girls in 2007. I was hooked ever since then. I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” because I cannot be fanatical or obsessed with anything like that. I like MUSIC. I am a child of the 80s, a time when you could hear EVERYTHING on the radio … every artist, every style … you were exposed to all kinds of different music and you learned to develop an ear for them. At any given time you could hear pop, heavy metal, R&B, new wave on the radio and it was all amazing. I learned to love opera from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and I am thankful I grew up in a time of such musical diversity. I like MUSIC period. Kpop is a kind of music and some of it I enjoy and some of the artists have beautiful voices. That’s ALL it is to me; music I enjoy listening to sometimes. But in that I enjoy it, I wanted to fully appreciate it … same with opera or heavy metal … I do my research. I learn about the artists, about the music, about how it is made, who is behind it, so I can truly appreciate what I am listening to beyond just consuming it casually. The more I learned about kpop, the less I liked the industry and the visionless, Western-music obsessed men behind it, and the more I came to appreciate the artists themselves. Kpop is more than just over produced, heavily appropriated, uninspired music and often recycled choreography and “over-trained machines” … it is beating HEARTS, tortured and abused SOULS, amazing TALENT, and desperate DREAMS.
Some Of These Ladies Can Sing
The Kpop industry is slowly changing to focus on talent.
BABYMONSTER is changing the entire kpop game. They are singing LIVE 100% of the time and using LIVE instrumental versions of their song. There is no piped in music, no background vocals to disguise when they are not singing. It’s all live. Many idol groups lip sync because the choreography requires so much intense movement. Lives are rare and usually for special stages. YG has created a true monster that might bring about a much needed shift in some parts of the very broken Kpop Machine.
All the girls can SING like nobody’s business. They can dance. They can rap. Several of them are triple threats who CAME IN at 13 years old ALREADY with incredible singing voices and talent. They are upping the stakes to everything and creating a situation where now … just looks and dance and HEAVILY produced music won’t be enough to satisfy audiences.
THIS is where things SHOULD be going. The kpop industry is a MACHINE of heavily manufactured, over produced trash. But now we have some authenticity. It’s BEGINNING. I would like to see more of this going forward.
I bring up BLACKPINK a lot because the group was terrible, barely put out any music, and all the unique talents of each member were BURIED in favor of a blended sound that was generic AF. Everyone knows Rosé can sing but you BARELY heard her voice ever when she was in BLACKPINK. It was a waste of an exceptional talent and heavenly voice.
They can’t all be BOA or Ailee or Lee Suhyun … or Rosé … there are FEW truly extraordinary voices like these in kpop … but there are enough that it makes me wonder why they aren’t being heard and why they are being suppressed.
Things are changing RAPIDLY. As contracts expire many artists are choosing to go SOLO and starting their own labels of just THEMSELVES so they are free to express and create on their own terms.
Eventually, the ENTIRE industry is going to shift. I can’t wait for that SHIFT. It’s been a long time coming … the kpop machine is hopefully finally dying and we will finally get TRUE music from the hearts of these talented people without all the oversight, slave labor, over production, and unfairness.
I never wanna see what happened to Euna Kim happen to anyone else. She deserved so much better. She deserved so much more.
Kpop Is A Fledgling Industry
It has barely existed as a true industry for that long.
Remember that the kpop industry is RELATIVELY NEW. Remember that South Korean “dance” music was not even a THING until the mid 80s.
Kim Wan Sun shocked the SHIT out of everyone when she was on stage SINGING AND DANCING at the same time and people thought it was OBSCENE and this was in the 80s … we’re not talking 50s or something. South Korean music was always traditional, national music … pop music wasn’t really a thing. Kim Wan Sun, Uhm Jung-Hwa, and King Seo Taiji were pioneers of it.
This was around 1992 …
When you understand that the ENTIRE Kpop industry didn’t truly exist until the 1990s … you’ll understand why it’s so heavily controlled, manufactured, and has no sense of originality.
American music went through all this stuff a LONG TIME AGO … Kpop is still a baby industry that doesn’t really know what to do with itself still and culturally it still has a ton of growing to do.
South Korea COPIES everyone else … traditional Korean music is technically the national SOUND.
What Song Sohee does is something I wish more people would do … she merges traditional Korean music … with a POP FEEL creating something that is truly and uniquely KOREAN MUSIC.
Kpop is basically how to copy western music in Korean and that’s not the same thing. They borrow from mostly African American styles and West Indian styles and call it pop but it’s not truly Korean.
Song Sohee is one of the only artists doing TRUE KOREAN POP music that is DISTINCTLY Korean.
Frankly I would RATHER listen to Song Sohee then 99% of these kpop manufactured trash groups.
I would rather listen to true and pure voices that are gifts from the Universe that required very little training and are just beautiful and pure and come from their souls.
Kpop is still a fledgling industry … it has no idea who it even is or what even is Korean music. It just copies others and true artists are lost in the trash.
If you know nothing about Korean culture, nothing about the history of Korean music (traditional or otherwise), and have no idea how the government censors things or controls things then yeah you probably aren’t a “fan” of kpop and don’t appreciate what it takes to be in that machine, why people turn to the machine, why thousands of girls and guys want to succeed in one of the only industries that celebrates creativity and artistry.
If all you see is bad music, you don’t know anything about it.
