I met Choi Siwon at the start of November. Choi, one of the founding members of the K-pop idol group Super Junior is a mega-star. Meeting Choi Siwon would be like meeting one of the members of N'Sync. I don't know who was in N'Sync (really, no idea), but Super Junior has been one of the most prominent boy groups in K-pop since their debut in 2005 under SM Entertainment, the most dominant K-pop star making company. Super Junior is aging out of the traditional K-pop demographic (tween and teen girls), but has managed to stay relevant (if not out compete more recent groups such as label mates EXO or groups from competing companies such as BTS) through a very smartly orchestrated expansion into the Latin American market. Super Junior's most recent album features several Latin artists and the stats on the release have been their best in years.
Choi Siwon is a big deal, both as a key member of Super Junior, and as an actor.
How did I meet him? There was a conference, specifically on the Future of Korean Studies as a field, held at Stanford. I was invited to participate as a "rising star" in Korean Studies and my expenses were covered. I did not have a chance to speak on a panel devoted to cultural studies, or to hallyu, or something like that because although other panels addressed history, literature, Korean language education, and the social sciences, the panel for popular culture was given to Choi Siwon and Dominque Rodriguez, the head of SME's US branch office (the man who practically actualizes SME's vision for North American and Latin American expansion).
Thursday the conference started and I was no closer to an answer to my inner question "Do I take a photo with Choi Siwon?" than I had been in the weeks since I learned I'd meet him. Why would I hesitate? It's true that my favorite thing Super Junior ever did was a brief foray into trot (in other words, they are not my favorite group), but more specifically, Choi Siwon had shared an anti-LGBT tweet/link. When fans responded he defended himself, saying that because of his Christian belief he believed marriage was between a man and a woman. This exchange (deleted not that long after, but screenshots are always taken these days) had caused me to write off Siwon, and to an extent, Super Junior. There are so many other K-pop groups to like, and only so many hours in the day, I felt no loss at this decision.
Thursday night at our fancy reception (Stanford is fancy) Siwon was seated one table away from me, we were facing the same direction. Turning 90 degrees to my right, there he was, not seven feet away. I didn't ask for a photo. Some others did. I went back to my hotel room, knowing that my students would be impressed if I took a photo with him, but still conflicted. And I hatched the wild plan to make him record a video greeting to my students. I didn't use zoom for this photo. Also, honestly, I was taking a photo of Shin Giwook, Stanford Sociologist and the man who made the conference happen giving an address to all of us. (Siwon is on the right, Shin is the man who is standing).
The conference room had space for 150 people, although some chairs were blocked from good view by SBS, which had set up a whole media center-- they're making a documentary on Korean Studies (airing in March 2019). On Thursday and Friday morning about 50 people were in attendance, a little more than the number at our reception the night before. But Stanford had let people register online and Friday afternoon as Siwon's presentation approached the chairs were all spoken for. I was still in my same seat for the entire conference-- 2nd row, center aisle. Mr. Rodriguez spoken, and then Siwon. I have a fair amount to say about what they said and how but I'm trying to make a different point here-- let's table that topic. However, suffice to say that I asked a very tough question, and instead of answering directly Siwon asked me "Saeji 교수님, .." yes, Siwon is that smooth. He knew my name, and used it. And then he sort of ducked my question, even though he had switched to Korean (as he did for all the complex questions). So we had this little exchange in the middle of the conference. He also ducked a question about his stance on LGBT, later in the Q and A. Oh and those many additional attendees? They were fans who had flown in from Boston and Ottawa to breathe the same air as Siwon (and ask some questions of their own). Siwon, Dom Rodriguez and Dafna Zur (Stanford, literature). Shin Giwook and Siwon after the conference posing for a photo with a lot of fans. Dom Rodriguez is next to Shin Giwook.
When the conference ended as Siwon was exiting (through a gaggle of excited girls) I jumped into the elevator (as the people around him tried to block me, and he said it was okay) and in the 1 floor elevator ride I told him he needed to record the video greeting to my students. And the elevator opened and despite people trying to rush him to his 'schedule' I directed him to stand in the nice light and told them it'd take 30 seconds. Success.
Siwon says, "Hello. Today, luckily I was able to spend a good time with Professor Saeji. Study han'gukhak, study Korean Studies hard. And please love Choi Siwon, Super Junior and many SM artists."
I kind of flew down the stairs, still not believing I had been that gutsy. I mean, the man sucked all the air out of the room, and I was less than an arm's length from him.
It took me several days to finish thinking through my experience. To realize that I was impressed by Siwon. That he had changed my opinion of him by being self-possessed, articulate (in English and Korean), funny, and seemingly genuine. And then I started to feel bad. I had judged this young man, just sort of put him on the 'bad' list based on a single two part social media interaction-- sharing the link, standing by the anti-gay marriage sentiments of the link. I literally wrote and published an academic article [link] with several really great former students and TAs about SHINee Jonghyun's suicide (although there is no way to know how much online criticism impacted Jonghyun's decision to take his own life, it was undoubtedly a factor). I know that idol stars' tiny missteps are blown up into giant controversies. I know (and lecture to my students) that many idols have poor educations-- they begin training as early teens, debut in their mid to late teens, and are kept constantly busy to such a degree that exhaustion and stress-related injuries are common. They don't have time to learn even the things that ordinary Koreans know. They are memorizing choreography instead of going to classes. They are learning new songs instead of listening to the Korean equivalent of NPR, CBC, or some smart podcast. They are body-building instead of reading up on social issues or hanging out with diverse friends. I also know (and teach my students) about various Korean positions on various hot button social issues-- I can talk to you for quite a while about homophobia in Korea, and I am well acquainted with the ways the Protestant evangelicals in Korea weaponize Christianity against sexual minorities. If those are the ideas you're exposed to, and you're too busy to learn more on your own, should it be surprising you think that way? And somehow, despite knowing all the ways that idols are held to insanely high standards, and all the reasons why Siwon might not know better than to be against marriage equality (or even, *gasp* that he has a right to have his own opinion even if it does antagonize part of his fan base), I had judged this man. Really, a young man, with very little life experience aside from an all-consuming entertainment career. Siwon is not much older than my students.
And my students do say some darn uninformed things and I figure 'I'm going to move this student in the right direction by educating them,' I don't write them off. I separate their half-formed ideas, their poorly-thought through opinions from them as humans. I have a student right now who has expressed some MRA (Men's Rights Activist) ideas, but I think he's a super sweet young man, and he's hardly the first MRA-influenced Korean man I've met (in fact, MRA thought is convincing to young Korean men for the same reasons that the Yemeni refugees in Korea are getting the cold shoulder-- Koreans feel so panicked, so squeezed, so under pressure living in 'Hell Joseon' that they can easily feel there isn't enough to go around to share equally with women, or to be gracious and welcoming to the refugees).
And Siwon was smart, gracious, and sincere. He held himself well, and acted, so far as I could see, with grace and kindness. But as a celebrity anything he does (or his dog does when his dad is walking it) can become a controversy in moments. That his boss, his contract, his obligation to his group mates, his fame, his chance to star in dramas or appear in ad campaigns all keep him in such tight control that one wonders how much actual life he is able to enjoy. When I was his age I could still say dumb things without the world knowing b/c it wasn't on Twitter. And even now I can say dumb things and I'm just a person, really not very important at all (and I do say dumb things, my foot fits very well in my mouth, I'm afraid). I didn't let Siwon make a single mistake, even though I wasn't online writing nasty comments, I was still part of the problem. That was a very sobering, even humiliating realization.
Right now BTS is in the wringer for a series of conflated incidents that happened on different days in different places and for different reasons-- another bunch of boys in a public relations minefield. And I want to excuse them (why them and not Siwon? because I like their music, because they're so young, because I want to believe in fairy tales?). In my mind BTS are boys who put on the clothes they were told to wear, and months later find concerts cancelled as people curse them online. Boys that will bear the brunt of the anger, even if each of the separate incidents that has created this kerfuffle may not have been their mistake at all.
BTS leader RM wearing a Nazi hat from a 2015 photoshoot, posing at a Holocaust memorial, and the same shirt that member Jimin wore in the spring to set off the current controversy.
Will this one mistake by BTS (or three dating back to 2015) be enough to derail BTS's burgeoning popularity? This certainly is not helping. BTS was partially able to attract Western audiences for their social consciousness and actually holding (trendy) social positions (unlike most K-pop groups) as indicated by their work with UNICEF, famously culminating in their UN speech earlier this fall. The Nazi hat and H-bomb t-shirt (to Koreans the H-Bomb mushroom cloud is a symbol of freedom from the brutal Japanese occupation) have been written off as the responsibility of the agency and stylists, not the idols, but for those outside the Korea-sphere this shifting of responsibility is unlikely to work, especially since it runs counter to BTS's appeal that they are a different type of idol group (not controlled, not a formula).
Seeing online vitriol directed at BTS (and feeling my mama bear instincts activated) I realized that Siwon's mistake had pushed my own buttons-- by motivating my worries that idol's voices are too loud and youth too impressionable, while my Korean friends who don't fit the hetero-normative paradigm experience indignities, even danger in a society with no legal protections and a lot of prejudice (nor did it relieve my frustrations with the co-opting of Jesus for hate, or my annoyance with the unsavory behavior of evangelical Koreans in general). BTS's mistake felt like this one time when I was working and I was told to do X, and X was really a bad idea, but because I was told to do X, I just did it without stopping to question if it was a good idea, or what my own knowledge told me about the situation (X meant I got a truck stuck in a river and we had to winch it out, but the engine was not okay with the dunking, just in case you were wondering).
In other words, I am now embarrassed both that I condemned Siwon so easily, and that my instinct is to leap to BTS's defense when really they know the importance of the title 'idol,' and they have created a socially aware hype that is part of the problem (greater expectations=greater disappointment). Being an idol is not easy, being a young person with social media at one's fingertips is not easy, and learning to extend the same compassion I give to my students to even a celebrity who was a total stranger until the conference is not easy. I'm going to work on that last one and hope the idols and young people of the world work out the other two to be a little more self-aware, and a little more empathetic.
So, I got the idea that there is no one more qualified than me to make a list of the best Korean pop and other (not traditional) music released in 2017. I mean, I pay attention, right? I spend hours per week staying up to date in order to teach my students. And I told myself to make the list and then see how many it was. I mean, who says it has to be Top 10 or Top 50? It could be Top 37! [Ironically it was top 99 and then I realized that I'd forgotten something I love and now it's actually 100]. The problem is, I love music. I'm picky and opinionated, but I'm also just really super into music and music videos. So I like the video concept here, the dance there, the melody for that other song, the rap on yet another... it never ceases.
I started out by re-listening (while grading coursework) to the playlists I made in 2017. Of course some songs never made it onto a playlist, or I may have been concentrating and never heard the song as it went past me. But just that listening took a long time. Then at the end I realized that I was missing representation from some groups or singers I really like and then I actually went back to their releases for the year and found which was the best and decided if it made the list. So this project actually took almost three weeks.
So welcome to a REALLY long list. The entire list is also accompanied by a YouTube playlist (of course). But you could just read down here and watch things you aren't familiar with. The further down the list you go, the more music you'll be unfamiliar with, because I start with the major hit groups and solo acts. That is because the list has mainstream K-pop at the top, and we get into the Independent music, even some underground music, further down the list.
The section headings are also links that take you directly to that place in the list, in case you want to scroll past one group, but listen to all of another section.
[Apologies for saying something really obvious if you already know about K-pop] In K-pop we have a type of pop star called an "idol" that is characterized by being recruited (often very young), trained, and extensively managed. They are placed in groups, assigned artistic concepts or personality types, and given choreography and lyrics to memorize. Although some idols grow to be artists who may write songs or play instruments, the category of idol more or less sticks with them, even as they mature and sometimes become more creative. These are the biggest and most popular acts-- they're backed by a huge artistic apparatus -- particularly if they are managed by one of the biggest companies (the top three companies can essentially guarantee success to any act they debut). They are created for tweens and teens, and as they age, their audience ages, too. After they become a source of international soft cultural power for Korea, older people got more interested in the K-pop world, too. Some videos may hit 5 million views within a week, with fans from allover the world.
BOY GROUPS:
Block B "Shall We Dance"
Oh yes, we've got a mishmash of cultural elements in true bricoleur K-pop style, some soft-appropriation (soft as in they're just going for an aesthetic without being particularly offensive), but the song is fun, the hook is catchy, and I guess I'll miss the boys when they enlist.
BAP "Honeymoon"
I actually really like this song, it hits all the right points for me-- the "wooo-hooo" background is particularly pleasing. Nothing here is that original, but I still feel it may be BAP's best song yet. The video I'm less interested in, but I like the sound a lot. But "Wake Me Up" a BAP release from March was also quite excellent, not quite enough to get on the playlist, but enough to get a mention here!
Black 6ix "Please"
To me this is a stereotype of a new hopeful boy group -- the song evokes early B2ST.
BTS "DNA"
BTS is particularly hot right now, and with their reliably good releases it is not hard to see why. They even get two songs on the list because Come Back Homesounds absolutely fabulous even if some fans complained because they couldn't see enough of the handsome faces of the boys. However, this song is just a remake-- BTS and Seo Taiji collaborated to do a twenty-fifth anniversary reboot of this song. The sad thing is that before this song many so-called fans didn't know who Seo Taiji was. Just the leader of the first K-pop group that created the model of K-pop we still see today... (this is the original Come Back Home). EXO "Ko Ko Bop" TOP TEN
This is the first of my top ten for the year selections. Why does this song get the honors and not a song by a group I like more? Because I am honestly able to listen to this song on a loop for a ridiculously long time. I like the Alice in Wonderland acid trip video and the music feels like a warm summer day.
Winner "Really Really"
This is Winner's best release to date.
GOT7 "Never Ever"
Like Winner, Got7 seems to finally be living up to my expectations. Seventeen "Don't Wanna Cry"
This group might be my favorite boy group right now (since I believe Big Bang is essentially over). On the other hand, I am enjoying BTS a ton, I just don't think they need more fans. They've got a lot of backers right now. Seventeen, though, also has some very interesting stuff they're trying, I particularly like the idea of having the three subgroups who focus on dance, hip-hop, and performance. (Trauma by the Hip-hop sub group is the best of those releases, not quite good enough for this list, though).
EPIK HIGH "Bincha" feat. Oh Hyuk
I am a sucker for one of the rare songs with some meaningful lyrics. Plus Epik High seems to only get better with age, if less "idol" than ever. Oh Hyuk's songs with his group, Hyukoh are listed below.
GIRL GROUPS
Just in case you are not familiar with the K-pop world, we have gender dimorphism in K-pop in a big way. Women are definitely required/encouraged to act either girly (or aegyo, an affected cuteness which is totally socially acceptable) or sexy. The idea that you wouldn't call a physically mature woman a girl has yet to hit the K-pop world, and in fact many young women debut when they are as young as fifteen or sixteen, so these are "girl groups" -- this becomes a bit awkward when they are in their late thirties like the first group (a comeback of a group that debuted in 1997), or even in their later twenties. SES "Paradise"
If you call yourself a K-pop fan and don't know who SES are, I think you don't even know what K-pop is. SES are the prototypical girl group. Here they are, twenty years later, back together. So awesome.
April "Mayday"
I may or may not have included this so that my list of girl group releases got longer. But honestly I like the nostalgia and the primary colors. This has so much of what a typical girl group video should have. I could make a checklist of common K-pop elements for a girl group and check of probably everyone of them with this video.
AOA "Excuse Me"
I had to go all the way back to January to find AOA's best song of 2017-- not everyone would agree with my assessment, some people were disappointed by the release, but I liked it, and I still do, and 20 million views can't all be guys watching their butts in short-shorts, can it? No. The retro look and dance here is good, and the song, like all good idol pop, is catchy.
Girl's Day "I'll be Yours"
Maybe I just like this video b/c a woman in a giant dress punches men^^ -- certainly I find some of the dance moves uncomfortable at best.
GFRIEND "Fingertip"
This is Gfriend's least annoying release in 2017 and one of my former students will kill me if I don't include at least one Gfriend song. So this is here to save my own life.
EXID "Night Rather than Day"
I like EXID. And I liked them more when they still had their best vocalist, who is missing from this release, but I still like their sound. If you give me a choice between a girl group that is sexy and a girl group that is girly (as if those should be the only choices, and clearly Mamamoo shows there are other choices), then I'm going to pick the sexy group. Neither sexy nor girly is truly empowered, but at least the sexy ones aren't pretending not to be sexualized (because those girly aegyo groups are just as sexualized but in an icky infantalized Lolita way).
Mamamoo "Aze Gag" with an honorary mention for "Yes I Am"
Now that both 2NE1 and Sistar are history (and Sistar was pretty inconsistent), and Brown Eyed Girls haven't released anything good in about 5 years, Mamamoo are my favorite currently active "girl" group. They're just plain fun.
2NE1 "Goodbye"
I didn't know if I'd include this or not. 2NE1 has been my reliably favorite girl group for years, from their second release ("Lollipop" was annoying). This song is bittersweet, but it has that sound, that 2NE1 sound that I've always liked so much.
BOA "Camo"
I have never been the biggest BOA fan, I like her dancing more than her singing, but I really like this song a lot-- it's in her top 5 releases ever, in my opinion.
Hyori "Black" and "Seoul" feat Killagramz TOP TEN
I have always loved Hyori, she's fun, increasingly political, and she brings the best of K-pop to the table. I think these are my two favorite songs from her entire career, from her days as one member in the idol group FIN.k.l. until the present. They both belong in the top list. U Go Girl!
Here's the video link to "Seoul," which I marginally prefer over "Black,"even though I think she should call the song "Seoul and Jeju Island" considering how much of Jeju's scenery appears. Honestly though, both could practically make the top ten.
Hyuna "Babe"
As much as I dislike the way Hyuna embraces her status as a sexual object, I also like her. She's not exactly a "bad girl" because mainstream K-pop doesn't have bad girls (in interviews and other programs she's totally covered up, innocent as could be, the sex-object thing is depicted as her stage persona and not her real self), but she's fun. She's enjoying herself. This music video with its crappy effects worked in to make it more low brow and approachable, it's hilarious nonsense lyrics (do you not actually know how old you are?), the nasal rapping, the 70s moments... its fun. I like fun.
Seonmi [Sunmi] "Gashina"
This track surprised me -- I hadn't expected something quite so ... fierce? From Seonmi.
IU "Palette" feat. G-Dragon
Actually this might not be IU's best in 2017, she's so prolific though, it is sort of overwhelming to even choose what's the best.
Jung Yonghwa "That Girl" feat. Loco.
This is Jung Yonghwa's best work in my opinion, it's fun, it's upbeat, the rap by Loco works smoothly with the parts that Yonghwa sings. In the past Yonghwa's releases have been almost always slower ballads, or what he releases with his group CNBlue, which is also often (rock) ballad type songs.
Taemin "Move (solo performance M/V)" (M/V # 1, Duo Version M/V) TOP TEN
I cannot emphasize how many times I watched this video, and the other two official videos. Taemin's dancing is amazing (thanks to the choreography of Koharu Sugawara, the short dark haired woman who appears in the duo version video with him). This comes in as one of my top ten for the year.
Rain "The Best Present (white version M/V)" (the dark version)
This video only makes the list because no one in K-pop can pull of this R&B slow song + athletic dancing thing like Bi, and we should all bow down and worship him for his skills. Note-- this was ONE TAKE.
Zico "Artist"
Actually Zico irritates me-- everything about him, including the spelling of his name (there is no Z sound in Korean, so in fact it should be Jiko not Zico). He's a serial cultural appropriator and he does it in the worst way-- like wearing the confederate flag-- but he's a prodigious talent.
Zion T. "The Song"
If there is anything this list has proved to myself, it's how much I like some humor with my K-pop. This is Zion-T's (in my opinion) most danceable and humorous release of the year, even though it came way back in January.
PSY "I Luv It"
I have to love this video. Just watch it. It's too much fun. But just so you know, the practice of embedding a translation (guiding understanding and making it impossible to view without translation), particularly a translation that does not properly capture the complexity of the video, is evil. No one should do this. Observe how Psy works to advertise travel to Korea-- this embedded product placement is obvious, but really there is PPL in a large amount of mainstream videos. Why did I pick this song for the list instead of "New Face"? Well, Yi Byeongheon (the actor) has an adorable cameo here, as does the Pineapple Pen guy.
San E "I Love Myself" feat. Hwasa of Mamamoo
San E has always been a more political rapper, but he's still mainstream idol-managed, so one never knows how much of what he raps is "him" and how much of it is a performance.
Jonghyun "Lonely" feat. Taeyeon
Honestly, this song would not have made the cut, even though I was always biased towards Jonghyun out of all the SHINee members (even though I love Taemin's dancing and Minho's eyes) because Jonghyun was an actual artist who wrote this song himself. Now, I don't want to listen to this, because it depresses me to think "what if someone understood what he needed?"
Triple H is non-standard because it is a solo artist working with two members of a larger group under a new name -- Hyuna previously did this as half of the Troublemaker, so perhaps Triple H will release again. And KARD is one of the only idol groups (and the only recent one) that combines men and women in one group.
Triple H "So Fresh"
This is one of the most risque K-pop videos ever. This project group (Hyuna, Edawn, Hui) combine murder, a menage a trois, and suicide in one of the most over-the-top K-pop videos of 2017. And it gets stuck in your head like you would not believe. So I am following a song by a man who committed suicide with a K-pop song in which three stars pretend to commit suicide. KARD "Rumor"
This is KARD's best release yet, and I actually found it quite singable (I even made a mild effort to memorize the lyrics).
Yoon Jongshin "4월호- 살아온 자 살아갈 자"
Yoon releases one song per month, always creative. this is my favorite of 2017 and I thought that at least one of his songs should be represented here. He's a singer, songwriter, radio and TV star, and has his own (minor) K-pop management agency, Mystic89 (they manage among others Uhm Junghwa who appears on this list).
Bak Jaebeom (Jay Park) "Hulk Hogan"
It's true that in general I like everything Jaebeom does, even when he's a sexually objectifying ass. (Yes, intentional play on words, since he is obviously obsessed with butts). I don't like the aesthetic of this video, which is, if I am reading it correctly, a sort of nod to the authenticity of Korean independent / formerly underground artists like Keith Ape (not that Jaebeom isn't independent, he is). But I love the sound, the unlikeliness of the subject, and just the basic Jaebeom swagger.
Gallant, Tablo, and Eric Nam "Cave Me In"
I feel guilty, but it's Gallant's voice that has me captivated here. I really appreciate that idols (albeit super non-standard idols like 'Blo) are actually making real music with non-Koreans, not just throwing random foreigners into the background in the video to show how cosmopolitan they are (I have a whole chapter in an edited book written on the topic of foreign dancing bodies in K-pop, in case you didn't realize).
Honestly, all the music below here is basically independent or alternative-- people with no representation, people working in cooperatives of like-minded artists, people who are the cusp of stardom, or who have actually made it, but did not approach it like idols did. So this is a lazily titled section. This section has the more independent music that is not more properly classified as hip-hop focused. The hip-hop/rap is further down the list.
Last summer someone accused me of being biased towards male groups and singers. I am now sure that's wrong.
1) there aren't many women in hip-hop and I do listen to a lot in that category
2) I don't like idol girl groups that much
However, looking at this list, in the solo female categories there are a ton of women, whether in this women-dominated alternative section, or in the idol solo acts. Even many hip-hop songs made it on the list because of the female guest vocalist (often not the rapper).
Stella Jang's "Vanishing Paycheck" TOP TEN
This is definitely in my top 10 for the year.
Oohyo "Goodbye" "Dandelion"
I think I like "Goodbye" more than "Dandelion" as the relationship seems so evocative, but with "Dandelion" there is a great chorus, and still the same soothing voice. Also the nostalgia-inducing video and the lyrics are pretty cool.
Cherry Coke "Like I Do"
Like the songs above, this is a trippy floaty art piece.
J'Kyun "Soaking"
This song probably makes it on the list because of Cherry Coke's guest vocals and the dance-filled video. This and the track above just need to stay together.
Zee Bomb "Walking Last Night"
Another jazzy song with some sweet guitar work.
Seon-u Jeong-a "C A T" feat. IU
A jazzy offering by Seon-u Jeong-a, another of my favorites. This song just came out, do I like it enough to place it in the top 100, or am I just so happy to have a new song from her?
Choi Ye-geun Band "Adult"
Apparently I like some jazzy accents in my music these days. [Edit: I can't believe I didn't watch this video really before today-- and today I finally noticed that this is ONE woman playing all the parts in the band. I had pegged it for a not interesting video and mostly just listened to it before].
Yi Byeonghyeon "Bye Bye Cloud"
This whimsical jazzy little number is another that I had forgotten about until I went back to re-listen to everything. Cifika "Doorgoro"
This is not the Cifika song I want to include, but it was released in 2017, and after my friend introduced me to her music I've been so in love with her sound.
Yaeji's "The Drink I'm Sipping On" TOP TEN
This laid back, trippy, and totally not idol song was such a favorite of mine that I probably started to annoy people as I went around introducing it to everyone. It is another of my top 10 tracks for the year. Bravo to 88 Rising for giving Yaeji so much exposure. This young woman is super talented.
Coco Avenue "Eottae"
Yep, this is a duo of two African-American women. But this is K-pop (in a sort of idol pop style), and they sound great (not like EXP Edition and their mangled lyrics). I love this song.
Jessi "Don't Make Me Cry"
I don't want to like this song, because Jessi's performance of self on TV shows really turns me off, but she's got some serious pipes, and there are very few voices like hers in K-pop.
Hyuk-oh "Tomboy" and "Wanli" TOP TEN (Wanli)
Tomboy made the list just because you need to go watch this awesome video -- the art is very fun, very whimsical.
Hyukoh is actually a four man group fronted by Oh Hyuk. Oh speaks Chinese, in addition to English and Korean, and Wanli is in Chinese with a video that seems to be filmed in China. I love it. It's amazing, quirky, and so different than most Korean music. The video's aesthetics are so amazing to me that I'm sticking it on the top ten.
Captain Rock "I Don't Know" feat Cha Seung-u and Bak Jonghyeon
Just in case you thought Korea didn't make any (punk) rock! Captain Rock is Han Gyeongrok, the bassist for Crying Nut. And the video even has a cyclist!
Yoon Dohyun "Sparks Fly"
This song is beautiful, and Yoon is a giant in the history of Korean music, yet... Korean music is so saturated right now this beautiful song dropped without an outside-Korea trace (inside of Korea it got more traction because people know who Yoon is).
Jazzmal "Ma Home" feat Sato Yukie
This is the most neglected song that has made this list. I love this song. I've shared it on FB repeatedly. But still no one has watched it. I know they aren't cute or young, but surely this shouldn't be so unknown. I know the singer has horrible hair, but I just love his deep voice!
Hey Men "Jelly"
Another neglected song-- it's barely been watched at all, even though they actually made a decent video, not just throwing up an image with an audio track.
Primary "~42" feat. Esna and Sam Kim
The video's cute and I like the Korean on the screen to make it easy to sing along.
JK Skull and Tiger JK "Here to Stay"
One of the most important points about K-pop is that it's genre flexible. This is your reggae + rap offering of the list. Actually it's a really smooth song, if the video is an annoying mash-up of posturing to demonstrate authenticity.
10cm "Phonecert"
Honestly, I over listened to 10cm in 2010, right before they got super big and I'm totally sick of them and feel like their sound hasn't evolved at all, but this is the better of their 2017 releases.
Dauri "Why?" feat. U-il
A sappy breakup song for you, right before the comedy pieces below.
SET "Nalari"
This song gets onto the list for the dubious honor of being bizarre and trying WAY too hard to be an idol pop song. Don't miss the part where they tell you the blood type of each of the girls on the screen.
This is another humorous video, this time indeed we have good (and very misunderstood) zombies. It's fun, it's funny, and it incorporates a ton of intertextual humor.
Dumbfoundead "Water"
I have always liked Dumbfoundead's music. I am not entirely happy with his more commercial turn this year as can be seen in this song, "Hyung" and "Every Last Drop" and "Rocketman" -- I still think he's really talented, though, and I wish him the best with his BornCtzn label.
Bizzy "What up Hyung?" feat. YDG
If you listen to this song with only one ear attuned to it, you'll think you're listening to Tiger JK. All in the family, right?
Sway D "올라가" feat Superbee and Gortexx
This is a clever, visually captivating video, and none of your friends have seen it.
Goretexx, Han Yohan, Black Nut "Silky Bois" Behwy and Yang Sehyeong "Manse!"
I wanted a Behwy song on this list, because I really admire his skills, but I don't like much of what he's done in 2017, except this. It's actually part of an "Infinite Challenge" challenge, and it's teaching the audience the history of An Junggeon (Korea's penultimate martyr and hero). I even downloaded this, so it really does belong on this list of best of 2017. Turn on the subtitles if you don't know Korean. G2 "Bang" feat. Bago, Los, Dumbfoundead
Okay, honestly this is on the list because of Bago's vocals. Amazing. She needs to be in every video (okay that'd be over doing it, but I love her voice).
Young Cream "Better Know" feat. J-Boog
To me this video represents a lot of things that were done right-- it's a really beautiful collaboration between two people who sound good. It brings together cultures without cultural appropriation BS. It's got a steady line of gayageum all through the track-- the only thing that could be better is the video.
Don Mills "Mr. Trap Hwang"
I work well to this song, the beat works well for me, I guess. But I also like the strings (acoustic maybe yanggeum really low in the background.
Code Kunst "Fire Water"
I think really this is just here because of the line in the chorus "fire in the water" -- love it. Actually the music, the whole thing, it's great.
Cheetah "Blurred Lines"
I don't quite know how this song escaped notice, perhaps because if a woman is in Korean hip-hop she needs to blatantly objectify herself to succeed and Cheetah doesn't.
Siyun "그 때의 너" feat. Seo Jayeong
The vocals on this song, the simple video, and the fact that no one has watched it lead me to ask you to give this charming song a chance.
GroovyRoom "Sunday" feat. Heize and Jay Park
This song was able to do quite well because Heize and Bak Jaebeom (Jay Park) were the featured artists. GroovyRoom (Bak Gyujeong and Yi Hwimin) are actually pretty well known producers who have produced songs for a lot of big names (like Hyolyn of defunct group Sistar, Heize, and One), and they have been signed to Bak Jaebeom's H1GHR Music so we should hear more releases by them, not just songs they produce.
Double K "Used to" feat. Kriz
Actually I think I mostly like this song for the singing by the guest vocalist, Kriz. Legit Goons "Junk Drunk Love"
No one is taking themselves too seriously here, but the result sounds good. Crush "Outside"
This is super smooth and the video is amusing.
Mun Myeongjin "Lie Down" feat. Reddy
From the Tibetan vocal sample at the start of the track, the music all the way through, the neon over-saturated colors, and the smooth rap, this is one of my favorite rap releases in 2017.
It's a simple and beautiful little video featuring Suran, really nice.
Reddy "My Lite" feat. A.C.T.
I have no idea why this video hasn't gotten more views. ACT's singing really adds so much to the song, too. Another on the list for the year is also by Reddy, "Supreme" Bill Stax "38 Flexing"
Bill Stax (back when he was called Garion) was a favorite of mine many years ago. I still don't know why he had to change his name to another stupid combination of Western name and sounds that don't exist in Korean ('st' as well as 'x'), but the track is awesome. I love that he calls himself the father of Korean rap in the song, too. Justhis and Paloalto "Brown Eyes View" feat. Cifika (whom you already saw above).
With Cifika's guest vocals and a video where they cruise the city I miss so much, this is just so awesome. Bumkey "Surprise"
The singing in this song is just so sweet, and I'm a sucker for anything that includes Beenzino.
OLNL "Oyeah"
He's so young I just want to pinch his cheeks and pat him on the back and say "good for you!" He really qualifies for the description of unknown young and struggling artist, so please throw a little love his way.
And video director August Frogs brings me yet another video with interesting hints of Korean locality, perfect for a paper I'm working on.
Keith Ape and Ski Mask the Slump God "Achoo!"
I like a good bizarre video, and this song makes me bounce around in my seat I like the beat so much... Keith Ape even washed his hair before the video shoot-- I'm impressed.
This is one of the simplest and strongest videos, ever. It's just a shot of a middle aged woman, sad, crying, drinking soju alone in a restaurant surrounded by couples and what not. It's a song of longing for an unhealthy relationship.
Nasangdo "Get Up"
Trust me. Watch it. Yes, it has an unexpectedly advertisement like beginning (it makes more sense the second time you watch, and of course, if you understand Korean or have watched some Korean TV before). You just can't be in a bad mood while listening to trot (well, you can be sad, like the above).
Seo Ina "Apdiero" TOP TEN
I use this video to illustrate inter-textuality in Korean media to my students. But more than all the clever references and the humor, it's just awesome. One of my top 10 for the year, for sure.
I could move the songs around the playlist, or I could keep these off the list, entirely. But somehow each of these songs told me I had to put them on the list, even though they all irritated me at some point. Dok2's "Crazy"
At first I didn't like this song much because it is essentially an extended product placement for Adidas, even though I liked the sound, in general. However, I have exactly one MA student-- even though she's in her MA she decided to take my K-pop class like a regular student. This song was one of the options for the final video essay and she chose to write on it, turning in a very pithy and well-argued analysis of Dok2 (who is an independent rapper, not an idol pop star) and his finances as one of the artists by the collaboratively owned and managed 1llionaire Records. According to her analysis Dok2 is unabashedly making money and he's not going to pretend otherwise.
Dok2 rubs his fingers together representing money, clad head to toe in Adidas. [screenshot]
Day 6- "All Alone"
This isn't my favorite type of K-pop, and I don't even like their other songs, but the layered voices in this song really grew on me. I found that even though I had reacted with "meh" at first, I was listening to the song often.
Babylon "Lalala"
It's not a complicated track, but it's fun-- upbeat.
NCT 127 "Cherry Bomb"
I didn't like this song because of the overly repetitive and essentially meaningless lyrics, then it grew on me -- I guess sometimes repetition can be a good thing^^
Uhm Junghwa "Watch Me Move"
Musically this song doesn't really have anything to say for itself. But I love that Uhm is still releasing music from time to time, and this video is trippy. She isn't pretending not to be older than all the little K-pop stars, nor is she just trying to do their thing (this feels consistent with some of her work more than a decade ago), and the visuals are trippy.
Kim Changhoon and Blackstones "My First Love, Gwangju" feat. Jeong Hongil and Yun Seong
This makes it on the list even though I cannot actually list to it too often, because of the historical lessons for those still unfamiliar with the Gwangju Massacre in May 1980.
HearIM "Snow Flower"
It was really hard for me to get past this stupid name. But the song has a gorgeous video and combines piri with guitar and piano in a not unpleasing way. I mean, I want to see more of this! Oh, also, it's totally instrumental. Which makes it the only all instrumental song on the list.
I lose track of time a lot. I live in that weird academic reality where time is governed by classes and semesters and grading periods. But somehow since I got to UBC, and certainly this semester as I taught a class that had a substantial drama component, I watched more Korean Dramas (TV dramas) than I ever did before. I used to have a rule about not starting a Korean drama more than a couple times a year, as it generally turns into a binge, sooner or later, interrupting your normal life and sleep patterns for what... escapism, I guess.
Right now I am just finishing teaching a class on Contemporary Korean Culture. To try to make it more engaging (and to avoid reading final papers that were Wikipedia influenced reports), each student signed up to be part of a group that watched an entire drama (start to finish), blogged on each episode, and incorporated that drama into their final paper (on any topic they could bring their drama into). Students had a choice of 17 TV programs, not all dramas, but signed up for the following 8 (all dramas):
Age of Youth (season 1) Misaeng Forest of Secrets Fight for My Way Chief Kim Reply 1997 IRIS (season 1) Descendants of the Sun
Originally I had not watched all of these dramas, I relied on the recommendation of friends to pick dramas with solid analyzable content. After the class started I quickly finished watching Reply 1997 because I had always planned to watch it, and just hadn't gotten to it yet (it's one of the two older dramas on the list). I planned not to watch the remaining two (Age of Youth and Chief Kim) but soon found that my feedback for those two groups of students was not as good as for the other six groups. Now in the last week of the semester I am finishing Chief Kim.
How did these dramas work for students? The links below take you to the blogs the students made. Feel free to give them feedback if you want! As the student papers come in, you can judge for yourself how the class format worked to advance their understandings of Korea.
Age of Youth. This drama includes themes and content related to the tribulations of youthful college students, part-time workers in Korean society, gender discrimination, abusive relationships, sexual attitudes in Korea, parenting (or the lack thereof), sex work, body image/cosmetics/plastic surgery, the importance of education, class advantages, and educational networks
Misaeng This drama is famous for its realistic depiction of the life in a medium-large sized Korean company, particularly the difficulties of contract (not permanent) workers. Educational and personal networks, difficulties of working mothers, entertaining and drinking culture in the Korean company world, sexual harassment and gender discrimination, and more makes an appearance. Forest of Secrets. Watching this drama, I immediately knew I wanted to include it. On one level it's a detective story as the leads try to catch a murderer. But more importantly its a story of the corruption in Korean society-- the two main leads are a prosecutor who is only believably honest as his backstory is that he had a part of his brain removed, robbing him of any empathy and leaving him a complete stickler for the rules, incapable of being corrupted. The drama also stars Bae Duna, and she is a reason to watch just on her own. It is the darkest of the 8 dramas, with sex work, blackmailing, corruption of the legal and law enforcement professions, corporations controlling politics, gender discrimination, and of course, murders.
Fight for My Way. This drama is somewhat unique in that it does not follow the ideal successful young person, but rather four friends from more disadvantaged backgrounds who are struggling to overcome poverty (or at least get by in the world) while staying true to themselves. It's clearly a parable of "Hell Joseon" -- a new term for Korea popular with youth feeling the intense pressure of living in this society. The drama brings in issues of class, the importance of networks, the pressure in the workplace, the expense of marriage, fidelity, changing attitudes towards pornography, and so on. Reply 1997. This drama swings back and forth between the past (with a lot of emphasis on 1997 and 1998 when the main characters are in high school) and the present (2012). Actually I had really looked forward to watching this drama, but was fairly disappointed. It has a historic K-pop and K-pop fandom connection, and addresses the importance of education in Korean society. It touches on corruption, the development of internet companies in Korea, regionalism, and much more. The same production/writing/directing team is also responsible for Reply 1988 and Reply 1994, but the stories are totally different.
Descendants of the Sun. This drama was a huge hit, one of the biggest. It was even tremendously popular outside of Korea. The drama deals with themes of nationalism, patriotism, professionalization of the military, sexual harassment in the workplace, networks and class and their impact on job opportunities, and even international peace-keeping. It is also a romance of the first order, with a stunning male lead who embodied almost every item on any woman's checklist. Chief Kim. This was the last of the dramas that I watched myself. Friends strongly recommended it, but it hadn't seemed that attractive to me-- however, I ended up thinking it is one of the best of the eight. It is somewhat of a comedy, which actually works well to lighten up the dark dark dark topics addressed. The drama is another version of Misaeng in one way, except that the main characters all work for a major jaebeol (conglomerate like Samsung or LG or SK). The drama demonstrates the prioritization of the greed of owners and executives over the plights of irregular workers, contract workers, and of course the good-hearted team in Business Operations who are uncovering massive corruption that others continually try to hide using overseas paper companies, mafia-style shake-downs (the drama begins with someone being forced to commit 'suicide'), scapegoats and influence peddling. It just has to be the only drama in the history of the world with a bunch of accounts as the heroes and heroines.
IRIS. IRIS has a much more stereotypical hero-- a secret government agent cast down and falsely accused of being a traitor who is trying to avenge himself. The actor who plays that agent, Yi Byeonghyeon, was at the height of his popularity when the drama came out-- a total heartthrob who has since seen his star tarnished. The plot includes secret talks between the DPRK and the ROK, and some of the main characters are northerners. Other than Descendants of the Sun it is the only drama to include Korea's international standing/position and international politics as a major theme. At the time it was made (2009) it was the most expensive Korean drama ever-- shooting in Hungary and Japan in addition to Korea.
I posted some of my thoughts on teaching the class as it was going on the main clearing house for the class, here, if you're curious.
I've already been in Vancouver for months, but it seems that I cannot find time to catch my breath. My current backlog of things to do includes:
Writing half of a chapter for a book on how to talk about Korean performance, sort of an introduction to the specialized and representative terminology (the topics in the chapter have been divided, I'm responsible for half of them). After both of us have written, then I'll have to go back and work with my co-author on editing them into a coherent whole. The book is part of a series with many different countries represented, and the authors were all part of a workshop in Berlin last summer where we hashed out what to write about (and who would write about each topic).
Editing and encouraging the writing of another chapter for the same book. I'm the native English speaker, but the other author is senior and more of a practitioner, so if he doesn't start writing soon I should put my encouraging hat on. As I understand it, I will be using my advanced knowledge of the topic and my English skill to make his writing more academic, more of a match with the volume, and of course, more fluent.
Writing a chapter for a book that will accompany a museum exhibition in Germany.
Reviewing a book (a solicited review for Journal of Western Folklore)
Reviewing another book (a solicited review for Ethnomusicology Forum)
Preparing my conference paper for Association for Asian Studies in Toronto in March. Yes, I know many people write their paper on the plane but 1) I don't work well that way and 2) I'm on the job market so I need to be schmoozing and shaking hands and attending talks, not locked in my room writing my paper throughout the conference. Also, it's a new project which means it requires more work to get it ready.
Finishing up a journal article on K-pop cover dance that is more than half done (and the research is done-for-now, although it is an evolving field so I will have to write more about it in the future).
Reading and responding to various other people's work (the only way to ask them to look at mine^^). I am really behind on this.
-and most of all-
Finishing my book. The idea was to be done in the summer, then I got this postdoc and decided I'd rather finish it while I was here (the postdoc application did indicate I'd work on it this year), get feedback from people here, and take advantage of a little more time to improve it. But since I got to Vancouver I haven't even opened the files.
What have I been doing? 1) Teaching my class, and 2) job applications (they take a lot of time as well as mental/emotional energy). Fortunately this year there are quite a few jobs open that are worth applying to. Unfortunately most of those jobs will get more than 300 applicants (and that's only for the jobs in the smaller fields or with more restrictive search criteria, some of them will probably get closer to 1,000).
I just find this photo (from promotions for Troublemaker "Now") disturbing on so many levels that I'm subjecting you to it. Sorry.
But the good news has been my class. The class is great. Although it is lot of work to teach such a large group (120 was the maximum enrollment and we had many students clamoring to be added to the class, at the start we didn't know how many of the students who enrolled were serious about taking it, or had just "saved themselves a spot," so we gambled and took just about ten extra students to make up for people who were going to drop. At that point we were just over 120, and worried about the work of grading, but even after the midterm we lost a few students so we're now about 110 + auditors). Teaching such a big class does mean preparing lectures (you can't have much discussion when you've got so many voices!), but the lecture topics are fun and the students are really great.
It has been quite a learning curve for me. It's my first time to teach a class with my own TAs. I have two, both really excellent. One is a fourth year undergraduate, and she understands the system here at UBC perfectly, is very responsible and detail-oriented, and navigates the computer system / learning platform (connect) for the class. The other TA is an eighth year graduate student here. She's full of energy, very thoughtful, and quite knowledgeable. I am so thankful that I got TAs who help me and never cause any problems. I think I've done a fairly good job of asking them for help so I'm not overloaded, but not dumping more on them than they should be dealing with. One of them is better about protecting her own time than the other. Preparing lectures for two classes per week has felt like twice as much work as preparing for one a week, which sounds right if you forget that lectures in Korea are three hours long, and this is only one and a half (one hour and twenty since I need to give them time to get to the next class). On many instances I have prepared much more than I can cover in the time period and had problems such as transitioning into speed-lecturing mode (this is NOT helpful, not just because I have many exchange and international students, but because no one can process information as fast as someone else can spit it out). Since I teach the same class next semester I will be able to better divide topics so that the important topics get enough time to talk through them slowly and thoughtfully. I will also have time to refine and revise my lecture notes instead of just throwing tons of information at paper and scanning through it in class, hoping I organized it effectively.
Google results for a search for Korean "flower boys"
As for topics, at the start of the class I had some orienting lectures (first about Korean music before the modern era, and second a quick swing through of Korean history), various lectures then covered the evolution of music in the modern era (music in the colonial era, music under the dictators and such). These classes were the first 1/3 of the lectures. After that I have been working topically. For example, last week we had a lecture on K-pop Consumption and Fandom (Tuesday) and on Choreography and Fans Engaging with K-pop through Cover Dance (Thursday). Obviously both of those are linked to fan practices-- I did always try to make linked topics appear in back to back classes, to the extent possible. So the class that dealt with Masculinity, Male Image, and Mandatory Military Service was right before the class on Femininity, Plastic Surgery, and the Obsession with Image. Tomorrow I will be talking about Tradition, Korean Image, and K-pop (so how tradition is used within K-pop and how K-pop impacts the way tradition is packaged/promoted). I am really looking forward to this topic, although I'm so exhausted I wish the semester was over already.
Colored light sticks wielded at concerts correspond to the K-pop group you are a fan of
There are always ways to spend more money on K-pop
The class has no attendance, but quizzes without prior notice (so a zero on a quiz is the penalty for not showing up that day-- students can roll the dice to see if they want to show up or not, but we did decide to throw out the lowest two quiz scores). Quizzes are operated on the iclicker system (so the computer grades the quizzes and inputs the grades at the click of a button). Quizzes are 20%, there is a midterm (20%) and final (30%) as well as a video project (done in groups, 30%). In general I have no problem with attendance, because students enrolled in this class because they are interested in the topic-- it will not help them get a job or fulfill requirements for graduation. So they come, they stay awake, they send thoughtful emails and do pretty well on their assignments.
Speaking of doing well on assignments: the video projects varied greatly in quality-- the best groups were really amazing, and most fell into the A range. Here are a few of the best videos:
I don't have time to write up a review of this book, and I read it over two months ago (three? time flows so strangely sometimes I have no idea). It was not very good. Don't read it. There, review done.
Honestly I originally intended to write a more in-depth review. I read the book and although Ms. Hong shares some insights, none of them are particularly new or original. When she's at her best she's sharing the sorts of reasonable sounding pronouncements you might find in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or other publication where competent writers fact check things before they get published. Those authors aren't generally experts, but they are smart and have more than a passing knowledge of Korea. That's about what Ms. Hong is-- a smart person with more than a passing knowledge. She lived in Korea as a teen for a few years (although she was so bad at Korean she couldn't attend a regular Korean school despite trying and went to an upper crust private school taught in English instead). She's been in and out of the country since, but her home is America, and the list of people she managed to interview for the book were undoubtedly interviewed with the assistance of a translator-- she never says so, but since she mis-translates Korean terms on over a dozen occasions throughout the book it is obvious she does not have a solid grasp of the language.
The book is, however, well written. The prose is good, it reads quickly and easily because the level is approximately middle-school English (making it perfect for a general English-reading audience unlike more academic books). Hong mixes in amusing personal anecdotes from her childhood and her research process, showing her struggles with cultural competence (such as arriving at an interview with a Starbucks cup in hand, preventing the standard polite serving of drinks to the guest). She uses abundant interviews, as I mentioned above, many are with people who are not easy to access. Yet her writing and research method seems to be a cherry-picking, skimming the cream from the top of the milk approach that obliterates any depth and does not facilitate deeper understanding, and unfortunately the book reads to me as a Korean-American's attempt to profit from the sudden interest in Korean popular culture, or at best a struggle to understand that sudden interest.
Just some random passages to give you a taste before I end this lazy attempt at a book review:
p. 53: On han: "It's the opposite of karma. Karma can be worked off from life to life. With han, the suffering never lessens; rather, it accumulates and gets passed on. Imagine the story of Job, except when God gives him a new family and new riches, he has to relive his suffering over and over again."
p. 77: "Being Korean in America when I was a child was like being a smoker now. We were pariahs with filthy smelly habits that made our friends not want to come over to play."
p. 97: "Building a pop culture export industry from scratch during a financial crisis seems like bringing a Frisbee instead of food to a desert island." (this from where she assigns credit for the gov't focusing on pop culture to Kim Daejung instead of Kim Youngsam, even though it was Kim Youngsam who started the initiatives after the famous Jurassic Park realization).
p. 134 -- on Simon and Martina of Eat Your Kimchi "Theirs is probably the best English-language site for comprehensive analyses and reviews of Korean culture." (seriously? they're wrong as often as they are right and they are annoying as heck!)
Actually, to tell the truth, since this book is short and easy to read, it's not that bad a way to spend a couple hours (I read it on a bus ride to Seoul and then part of the ride back home). But don't take the things Ms. Hong says as absolute truth, she's repeating things that have been published often already and scratching the surface on her new observations.
