HyunA is my artist of the year for 2016, but Wonder Girls also had a couple of excellent singles, and since they've now disbanded it's my last chance for them. Hence the dual award. (I'm in the habit of doing this every June, except when it slips to July, or in this case August. And my 2016 singles list still needs to go up ( Read more... )

Lizzy's advice on how to acquire the voice she uses for Orange Caramel and for trot (but not for After School):

Keep nagging at your mom when you're little.
Demonstrated here, with variants here (happy) and here (annoyed)* (h/t David FrazerI'm even more behind than usual (mid-year list to come, once again w/ Lizzy). I keep promising research on ( Read more... )

I like how the rhythm in "Tiny Montgomery" makes itself strong by just digging in and digging further, no moving forward. -The rhythm I'm referring to is mostly Dylan's voice, and the strum strum strum. Bass and the rest are a shuffling swing, I guess. So you can sway back and forth while the song steadily drives you down. A-Plus ( Read more... )

Even with S. Korea having canceled spring on account of the ferry disaster (as Subdee says), I'm woefully behind on K-pop, and my listening elsewhere has been too random and intermittent even to be called scattershot. But anyway, int'l dance cheese goes strong at its most opportunist (Chainsmokers, Orange Caramel, Badkiz [the "Party Rock Anthem" ( Read more... )

Of three recent albums by K-pop big shots (SNSD, 2NE1, and After School, w/ 4minute and Super Junior-M in my to-do pile), After School's is head and shoulders above the rest, once again. I still have no sense of the members' individual musical personalities, if they have any, and not much sense of a collective personality either, sonically. "Smooth ( Read more... )

Tracks that stand out as being less like most of the others on this list:

Wa$$up "Wa$$up" and "Jingle Bell": Like a lot of K-pop, this music draws on American hip-hop. But unlike a lot of K-pop this doesn't sound like K-pop, but rather like American jumprope pop.

Tren-D "Candy Boy": Like a lot of K-pop, this music draws on Italodisco. But unlike ( Read more... )

Second year running I've entitled a post "After School's Good Year." Last time, I was urging myself to get to know the group better, find out who writes the songs,* who makes the decisions, what's going on with After School's images and "concepts," whether or not personalities are spotlighted and what the personalities are, what After School's ( Read more... )

Japanese freestyle - is there a lot of it? I wouldn't know. Just glad that the style, which is pretty much gone from U.S. airwaves, is still strong in Asia.

( h/t arbitrary_greay, of course)

Tomato n' Pine FAB ("Free As A Bird")

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The rhythm is simply a hopped-up electrobeat, not freestyle's fast twists and breakneck turns, but the melody, at least in the verse, ( Read more... )

On the latest 4minute EP, four* different sets of producers/writers make the same decision (or follow the same instructions), which is to create songs that have lots of empty space, highlighting each singer and song segment without worrying too much about tying sections together musically or emotionally. These tracks belong to a strange and ( Read more... )

Something amazing has happened this year with Orange Caramel's singing, though I can't put my finger specifically on what. All I've got is adjectives. Last year Orange Caramel had two terrific songs ("Bangkok City" and "Shanghai Romance"), each dragged down a little by vocals that I'd describe as "adequate": going for cuteness but sounding blah, ( Read more... )