More Superficial K-Pop Reviews

김형준 Kim Hyeongjun from SS501 (a group that is taking a serious if not permanent hiatus) has released a solo mini-album, the first music video from the album is "Girl." It's a dance track, with average music, fairly competent singing and a video that's a bit disappointing (Hyeongjun dances well, but this video spends a lot of time close to his head watching him sing). The song would be better without such singing the word "girl" too many times and the section where he sings L-O-V-E. I understand that Koreans like some English in their pop, but sometimes it really just makes them either sound incredibly unoriginal or it detracts. The odd English (like "Bring, Bring" in Brown Eyed Girls' "Abracadabra" tends to work better musically than many of the English words and phrases that they think will work but in fact have been so overused in English that they pull the song down. A few days later Kim Hyeongjun released a second single, "Oh, Ah." Of course I approached it with anticipation, however the song is merely ordinary. It is the video that sets it apart with it's really unusually eye-catching visuals. I would definitely recommend giving it a watch.

제 블로그를 방문해 주셔서 고맙습니다. 저는 이 블로그에 일주일에 4번 정도 한국 전통 공연 문화에 대해 쓰고 있습니다. 처음에는  K-pop에 관심이 있으셔서  방문하셨겠지만 나가시기 전에 한국 전통 문화에 관한 것도 한번 봐 주시면 좋겠습니다.


동방신기 Dongbangshin'gi (TVXQ) has released a new video, 이것만은 알고 가(Before U Go). I think it's not enormously successful because it's a ballad with a mafia/assassin themed video, which really doesn't go well together. Watch it and see what you think. I'd definitely have preferred another dance track. A few days after I made the above note they released a 16 minute extended video incorporating three tracks from their newest release in a story format. It's actually pretty good-- if you understand the Korean dialogue, at any rate.

Wheesung has released a video with B2ST's Junhyeong, Heart Aching Story or 가슴 시린 이야기. It's just more of Wheesung's admittedly fairly good singing, but it's ballad and I'm not a fan of ballads in any language.

Kim Taewoo has released a video of "Me and My Brothers" with Rain and JYP as the other brothers. It's another ballad. Is there nothing good coming out these days?

Wonbin (not the actor, the guy who used to be in FT Island) has released "C'mon Girl" a light poppy dance track with a somewhat satisfying sound and a video of him looking handsome and metrosexual.

Teen Top's latest, "Angel" is a boring ballad. What a sad follow up to their last release.

Song Jieun's "Going Crazy" is not bad, although the craziest thing might be her bright blue hair. It's true, as this review from allkpop points out, that she has a thin voice, but so do many other K-pop singers.

INY, a brand new group, has released "Shake it, Shake it." The video features ING's three members, with a filming style that is supposed to be from the first person perspective, so you're perpetually at arm's length from the other performers. I found it ineffective and not even particularly clever, partially because the perspective keeps switching without a clear reason (other than letting the camera show all the characters). Oh, and the music isn't that good. You're so busy watching the weird video you barely even hear it. Not catchy enough.

CN Blue has "comeback" (it always cracks me up the way they talk about "comeback" in Korea. Seriously, a comeback is when Guns and Roses releases their first CD in 15 years or what Michael Jackson was preparing to do before he overdosed. A comeback is not when a group that promoted a single six months ago and then took a break to create new material re-emerges on the scene). I also freely admit that I think CN Blue is overhyped. The new song is "Intuition" or 직감, however, is definitely their best work yet. I still think it's silly to call them a band. Yes, they have instruments. But when you listen to the music you do not hear guitar, bass and drums. Seriously. You hear the same sound you get in all K-pop music, not a "rock" sound at all. If only they didn't look like such children. Maybe they'll grow up soon?

ZE:A released "Here I am" which is a sappy poppy love song. The boys look cute, but not half as masculine as they did in some of their releases last year (weird, cause they're older now). I don't find it that good, but I bet it will add to their popularity with tween girls.

Girl's Day released "Twinkle Twinkle" which if you combine the group name and the song name you already know what to expect. It is annoying and worse, I bet it will become too popular for me to avoid. The one thing I can say is these girls can actually make black and yellow stripes look good, that's impressive!

Yi Ashi has come out with a syrupy ballad. The song, 눈물이 마르면 has been praised because it doesn't digitally alter her voice, we're just hearing her. Am I supposed to be impressed? Only in Korea is digital manipulation so common we are amazed when someone doesn't use it up the wall.

Various K-Pop Releases

K-pop Reviews:

제 블로그를 방문해 주셔서 고맙습니다. 저는 이 블로그에 일주일에 4번 정도 한국 전통 공연 문화에 대해 쓰고 있습니다. 처음에는  K-pop에 관심이 있으셔서  방문하셨겠지만 나가시기 전에 한국 전통 문화에 관한 것도 한번 봐 주시면 좋겠습니다.

When MBLAQ asks you to "stay with me" how could you possibly leave? In "Stay" hese guys are so hot, I can almost forget they're practically young enough to be my sons. This is definitely MBLAQ's best work yet, in many ways they are maturing as a group, but I find the song overall to be too "busy," there is just too much going on. And the video, with some of the colors and lighting, sort of strains the eyes, when I'd really just like to relax and look at the guys. There is a longer review on allkpop, just in case you're interested.

Park Jungmin, one of the performers from SS501 (at least in the short term the group is taking a hiatus), has released a solo effort, "Not Alone." The song lacks originality and although the choreography has a few moments of brilliance, we mostly just get to look at the new slicked down hair cut and dark eyeliner that Jungmin is sporting, rather than dance moves. Like some other SS501 songs, Jungmin has utilized a bunch of string instruments, but it feels contrived. And he really shouldn't have changed his look, the old one was much hotter. At least the autotune is not overpowering his voice, which isn't bad.

This character shows up in the video. I just thought the glasses merited a screenshot.


Teen Top (talk about stupid group names) has released the video for "Supa Love," which apparently was produced by a guy who has also produced for Justin Bieber. That should tell you a lot. But as much as the previous releases of this group have fallen short in my opinion, this one is actually a very danceable/club track. If I have to hear it too many times it's going to irritate me, but in the short term I can see myself getting the dishes done in a big hurry while listening to this. The last twenty seconds should be cut off the track though. The video is fairly good, somewhat simple choreography but a nice consistent look throughout. The teen top guys are young, but they don't come across as pre-teens, despite the sort of immature references to supa as in Superman, and a set of outfits that sort of look like trainee superhero garb. I read an online review that says basically one guy, Niel, is singing the whole time. But if it was a solo singer instead of a group that'd still be the case, so who cares how they divide up the work?


A new group that wants to fight back against the idol group culture had just released their first song—the group is called Piggy Dolls and indeed the members are hefty. The song, "Trend" has a long intro, but once the singing starts, you can see that these three can sing, they've got serious lungs, although autotune is still in use, perhaps stylistically chosen, not needed though in this case. It seems to me, though, if they dance that much they are going to lose their trademark plus size. At any rate, Korea is a bit too hung up on appearance and I applaud attempts like this to fight back. But they aren't the first such group, so I am skeptical if they can stick around.



Infinite released a video for "Before the Dawn" that is too violent, apparently, for television. Shots of dance choreography alternate with a dark fight scene. The fight scene just doesn't seem justified in the lyrics, I think it's supposed to be a metaphor, but way too heavy handed to work out. The choreography is pretty good, very strong and masculine, but the singing isn't gritty enough to match the fight or darkness, it's too pretty and smooth.



Joo has released the new track "나쁜 남자", or bad man. The song is whatever, nothing I'd want to listen to again, but the video has an advantage, in that the man is played by Chansung from 2PM, definitely their hottest member. He has the best eyes.

Grape Farm

August 27th, 2010

진홍 Jinhong has several farmers in his family and his uncle has a farm in 경산 Gyeongsan, very close to where he lives. He mentioned that he wanted to go help on the farm, and Karjam and I thought that’d be good, too. But the first day (the 26th) we went up 갓바위 Gatbawi, part of 팔공산 Palgongsan (mtn) with a very famous Buddha statue of the medicine Buddha from 638 AD. This was out of hope that Georgy would come with us, but she chickened out of the hike in the humidity and went back down when we’d hardly started. The 27th we were agreed we’d go to the farm, but from the start of the day it was super high humidity and Jinhong was hesitant. I asked him to call and see what was going on, and indeed the family was working, so we went to join them. In the morning, honestly, we weren’t that much help. They were at the tail end of harvesting and sorting one patch of grapes, and they sent me into the patch with a big silver pail and a pair of clippers, but the grapes I was taking were clearly inferior. Actually the grapes were fine, but they were of uneven sizes, loosely aligned (not a classic bunch) and there were rotten grapes amongst them to be removed before placing the rest in the pail. It turned out that most of the grapes I picked were boxed up for us to take back to Seoul.

Photos:
Karjam with Jinhong and his nephews. Jinhong's aunt and uncle (driving the boxes of grapes out of the work shed after everything was done).




After another lunch prepared by Jinhong we returned to a different area, and after some preparation time, spread a net over an entire grape patch. The patch was about ¼ of an acre in size, rectangular, and each line of vines had a roof of clear plastic tarp (so they wouldn’t get so much rot damage from the summer rains). However it was a bit late to be spreading the net as the vines and leaves also extended up on both sides of the covered area, and I was the only person tall enough to work without a rod with a small scoop on the end to push the net over the top of each hump of tarp-roof. The crew was Jinhong’s aunt (a grandmother of 65 or so), Jinhong’s cousin’s wife (a Vietnamese picture bride I met last year, very nice with heavily accented Korean), Jinhong, Karjam and I. As soon as we got the net over the first row (the hardest row to get it over, for sure) it began to rain cats and dogs and then horses and elephants. I have never been wetter in my life, except perhaps when in 8th grade I was rolled around by rough waves in Baja until I was coughing up water. Water was in my ears. Water was in my nose. Water was everywhere. And of course allover me and staying that way, since I was fully dressed. The raindrops were huge and fat and heavy as pebbles. I had to look up to grab the net standing on my tiptoes and pull it down into the gap between the previous covered row and the yet uncovered row, my glasses were running with water to an extent that I could hardly see the white net against the white/grey cloud-cover. We worked this way laughing and screaming in the rain for about an hour until the entire patch was covered. Then we went back to Jinhong’s aunt and uncle’s house for towels (which I used on my clothes as well as exposed arms and face and hair). Slightly dry we drove back to Jinhong and Georgy’s where I promptly but somewhat ironically took a (warm) shower.

Photos: the grape patch we were in in the afternoon before we started work and the rain began.