Question that applies to the past and the present: were there/are there many disco boybands and disco girl groups? Except I'm meaning "boyband" and "girl group" a bit more narrowly than I normally would: I'm thinking of the music dating back to the gospel quartets that went secular and was taken over by teens and doo-wop and then the late '50s/ ( Read more... )

What's going on with Rainbow's "concept"? And how do "concepts" work in general in K-pop? Even though performers do sometimes change 'em like costumes, that doesn't necessarily mean those very performers aren't committed in some deeper way to what the concepts mean. Or at least it doesn't mean that they're not committed in the audience's eyes, or ( Read more... )

During last year's T-ara War I was often wondering who all these people were, the commenters, the battlers. I made guesses (that most were in their teens or twenties, most were female) that I can't confirm; also wondered what countries they were posting from. I was watching the ones who posted in English, which I knew was an international language ( Read more... )

GLAM's "I Like That" entered the Gaon Chart this week at 57. This was way lower than I'd anticipated, my expectation being based on an Allkpop story saying "I Like That" had finished number 3 on January 2 on the Bugs Chart. I don't know what the Bugs Chart does, actually (the chart is in Korean, not surprisingly). I assume it records daily numbers ( Read more... )

While searching "Oscar song meanings," I incidentally found this thread where non-Koreans talk about how they discovered K-pop and why they love it ( Read more... )

Inspired by Christophe calling Big Bang's "Blue" the greatest boyband song since Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way," I compiled a list of fifteen boyband tracks. Not a best-of, not a survey, but some stuff I think highly of, and enough gaps to call forth lists of your own:

The Jewels "Hearts Of StoneDion And The Belmonts "I Wonder Why ( Read more... )

A peculiar thing happened over the last eight months, while 2NE1 was being my official favorite band in the world, which is that T-ara became the group I actually listen to most. That's one effect of T-ara being worked like dogs: they're always doing something - songs being performed to death, new versions of songs that are three weeks old, videos ( Read more... )

Orange Caramel's "A~ing♡" is our problematic video of the week, which I posted over at poptimists, but since almost no one there writes comments anymore, I'm putting it up here as well. As Mat says, "It's odd, because they almost have a supermodel look to them with their long legs, and it just seems grotesque to put them in cheap girly Halloween costumes." I ( Read more... )

I had an ongoing list of videos I liked, then back in May I forgot to keep up with it, so here are some vids from early '09. For further viewing pleasure visit Kat's tumblr.

( Will Young )