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,
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The very beginning of "Lipstick" sounds just like that children's song. You know the one. "And the girls in France/They aren't wearing underpants/There's a hole in the wall/where the men can see it all" or something like that.
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Also also, the connection between Eastern Europe and Korea is "major drinking culture"? Like trot music is drinking music, right - that giddy spinning feeling you get at the end of the night when you've had too much to drink. In a gypsy movie, it's the scene in the bar just before someone smashes a glass on the floor, and maybe depending on the movie cuts open their hand, because there can be no pleasure without pain, or pain enhances pleasure, or life consists of both please and pain, etc.
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For your Austral-Romanian consideration, I submit Milan Stankovic at the Eurovision Finals in 2010, stumping for the Balkans. Op, op, op! Ovo je Balkans!
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I would argue that by now After School's music has pretty much escaped whatever their concept was once supposed to be. I'm not sure what "the Korean Pussycat Dolls" even was meant to mean anyway (nor the actual Pussycat Dolls, for that matter*). The concept of "Bang!" - to me - was basically just plain bang! Never knew if it came out right before or right after 2NE1's "Try To Follow Me," but in my mind it managed to scale 2NE1's mountain and leap above it from there, "Top this!," braggadocio brought in from the days of the mid-'80s Roxannes. (And of course "I Am The Best" did top it ( ... )
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This is a tremendous description; "Lipstick" really does feel unfettered and even a little unhinged, yet with no strain. Has somersaulted right into my top ten.
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Have you heard Funny Hunny? It's a collaboration between Orange Caramel and a songwriter called Cho Young-Soo, and like you said about those songs it has a trot-ish rhythm. The blurb on the MV describes it as a "funky retro song of the 80s euro disco".
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Being fairly new to K-pop, I don't really know if this is a trend, K-pop pulling trot into the mix. Did Super Junior-T have an impact? They seem more defined as a trottish novelty than do Orange Caramel and the like, who seem to be treating trot as a potential ongoing element that could be belong to K-pop just as much as any other element does. Super Junior-T's version of "The First Train" is limpid and dull compared to LPG's, though I get a kick out of Super Junior T's "Rokkugo."
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(Further examples: just about anything by Shanadoo.)
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