Mid-Year Lists 2010

[koganbot]

Mid-Year Lists 2010

Singles First Half 2010: "Blah Blah Blah" is the big hairy dance-mess that's dancing over the world, while Aggro and Dizzee are the only other representatives here of 2010's dance-pop mess. Not enough country on this list, and at this time of year that's usually my fault, but this time I think it's country's. (Probably not

Comments

[anonymous]

I don’t think I can recommend many singles (my own list is quite empty right now and I’m checking every list that I see for songs or albums), but anyway, some that maybe you know or not:

After School “Bang”

E.via “Shake It”

Kara “Lupin” (even if tonight it doesn’t do anything for me)

i-Me “Aiyiya” (love the song, hate the music video)

ICONIQ "Bye Now"/"Crystal Girl"

JASMINE "This is not a Game"

SKE48 “Gommen ne SUMMER” (that if anything changes I suppose is my single of this year, but there is little chance to understand it with such a LQ video)

[koganbot]

Naturally enough, I don't know how to "read" these culturally. All these pretty girls: are they tough? are they sweet? in control? out of control? distinctive? anonymous? None of them seem out of control, in the sense of falling over or swerving off the the road, but are they considered in command or subservient? Naughty girl Jasmine (with cool sex girls [or whatever they are] posing behind her on the merry-go-round) sounds more capable of being hurt than do the happy girlie girls in i-Me.

[anonymous]

That could be quite a complex question to answer. I suppose that it depends on what you are referring to when you talk about those girls, because it can be what are they representing here and now, what their image is or what they are trying to express, or can be about the performers themselves, what they aim to, why they do what they do

[anonymous]

(E.via can start her first music video doing a critique of the ways singers (girls) are portrayed on mainstream music: they are as silly as their music and they act in the same way (doing cute poses to gain attention, shamelessly using their sexuality to fulfil their material and social desires, subsumed to man, etc.) but when she pushes to hard with the video of “Shake It” and gets banned from TV, she does a dance shoot version and goes to live shows where idols go to be adored to do the same than the rest. Kara and After School come from the same place. Talent agencies/management agencies/record labels (they are less or more the same) do auditions and select a certain number of teenage girls and boys. Then they train for at least four or five years, ten, twelve or more hours each day, they sleep on flats with other talents of their same sex, to assume responsibilities or get more competitive, until they broke or are mature enough to debut. Then they sign a contract (something that they don’t have as a secure thing when they start

[koganbot]

Another question, at least as difficult, is what is the relationship to American music? The K-Pop and J-Pop you've posted is very derivative of American music, but at the same time no one would mistake the music for actual American music. The K-Pop and J-Pop is glistening, makes Lady GaGa seem rough-hewn in comparison. And, while European countries have trouble preventing American music from being all over their top 40, Koreans and Japanese seem mostly to listen to stars from their own countries (at least, that's whom the kids listen to).

[anonymous]

But Lady GaGa, like many other artists, is “Big in Japan”. They are “divine” and “full of creativity”. SNSD are going to Japan this August. First they are going to release a DVD with all their music videos, then doing one show for 10.000 people and then release their first single in Japanese. Many sites devoted to K-pop are collecting what “celebrities” and fans from Japan are saying on their blogs, and less or more, you could say the same things: more sophisticated, more interesting, more… But let’s try to answer your question, even if it is with generalizations…

These girls are Idoling!!!, a Japanese idol group. I really like this video because it shows how autoreflexive about the consumer process are both artists and fans. Multiple screens on display, girls that go into the “story” and then back to be faces, dance shoots. They give you something and you work out what interests you. They give you a dance shoot and it is a dance shoot but also something you have to decode. You have to look for your favourite girl (because their

[anonymous]

More than twenty years ago, an influential article in the Harvard Business Review stated that the age of globalization would eradicate all vestiges of indigenous cultural tastes and replace them with homogenized products and services. Characterizing local consumer preferences as befuddled and idiosyncratic, the author had this advice for global corporations: “Instead of adapting to superficial and even entrenched differences within and between nations, it will seek sensibly to force suitably standardized products and practices on the entire globe” (Levitt 1983: 102). Scholars have effectively countered the idea that cultural diversity will be completely submerged by globalization in their ethnographic accounts of what actually happens to rationalized products and services at the point of consumption. There are modifications to business practices and offerings, as in McDonald’s in East Asia (Watson 1997), and local responses to transnationally circulated images, as in bridal photography in Taiwan, which is

[anonymous]

In addition, it is not only that “outside” ideas are combined to create new creolized forms. Together with creolization is co-occurrence of the Japan-created Other and a reinvented notion of the traditional in unblended coexistence. Goldstein-Gidoni (2001) presents a refined thinking about the processes in which the foreign and the local interact through examination of patterns and changes in the modern Japanese wedding ceremony. What she describes is neither cultural homogenization nor creolization, but rather a complex domain where imaginary or contrived Western and Japanese constructions commingle. The artificial wedding cake and fake chapel are Japanese abstractions of Western ritual, and the traditional Shinto wedding is not rooted in legend but is a Meiji-era (1868-1912) invention. Similarly, “French” or “South Asian” beauty industry goods and services often do not “arrive” in Japan but are created there. Thus we find an aesthetic salon treatment based on Western astrological signs and Shiseido’s faux-French Clé de Peau Beauté

[koganbot]

I knew Laura Miller slightly when I lived in San Francisco - assuming it's the same Laura Miller, and given her interests and writing style it probably is. I'm impressed with her thoughtfulness here.

Why Japanese music has a huge domestic share 1 of 2

[anonymous]

In the Japanese market, the share of Western music is about 25% to 30%, which is lower than in most other big music markets, and has been so for the past 30 years or so, but used to be bigger in the past

Re: Why Japanese music has a huge domestic share 2 of 2

[anonymous]

Tv series usually have an opening sequence or ending sequence (or sometimes both) that can last as long as more than a minute and half, to showcase the theme songs, which are usually songs getting released soon, while American TV series usually have very short credits sequences.

For TV shows, tv series for example:

This is the opening of a TV series called BOSS from 2009, featuring the song Alright by Superfly

This is the opening of currently airing TV series GOLD, featuring the song Wildflower by Superfly too

This is a recent ad for two cellphone models, the 1st part features Free Planet by Superfly:
The songs Wildflower and Free Planet are not out yet, and will only be released on the 1st of September, on the same single

[koganbot]

Here's a working link to AKB48's "Keibetsu Shiteita Aijou":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_TlV0FX20E

[askbask]

Not what you're asking for but a little more about the business side Anonymous talks about: Most k-pop stars start out under the regime of star companies, with plenty of work and little in the way of freedom. But if they're popular enough they can gain it, and if they survive the short attention span of the pop audience they'll get more money and power. Korea's Beyonce - Lee Hyori (popular girl group member -> #1 solo star) - has been in the position where she can do as she pleases for a few years now, and recently started her own company for further releases. As she would say -- U-Go-Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PfHhFbd84A... )