TaeTiSeo: “Library” (Twinkle, 2012)
It’s too bad the lyrics are stupidly literal (“just a library / will you read yourself to me?”), because this is my favorite track off of the new TaeTiSeo album.
Back to the World: Like a G20: K-Pop and Far East Movements
My friend Chris wrote the post on “Like a G6” that I didn’t have the discipline to start, relating the rise of an Asian-American presence in North American pop music to American pop’s impact on Korean pop music, and speculating on how K-pop can finally take over (this part of) the world. He’s done his homework.
I’m interested in the point about where a lot of artists who have attempted to crossover have failed, i.e. “the artists in question [Wonder Girls, BoA] have been induced to imitate passing American trends before each marketing push.” But I’m not sure we can even make a distinction between wholly American pop music and wholly Korean pop music anymore, let alone call that the problem, particularly when one moment it’s being pointed out that groups “have enthusiastically adopted American musical idioms” and then this same enthusiasm is being seen as “imitating passing trends.” The influences and styles are blended so well now, they just sort of are, and language aside, the trends are practically reversible. I think physical structure and marketing is more an issue than the music itself, particularly in terms of girl/boy groups, the images they represent, and what these do for their particular culture that would make it harder to translate, as it were, overseas.
But yes, agreed: I would love to see SNSD (Girls’ Generation) crossover as is, as long as it wasn’t tagged as being kitschy or oh those eccentric Asians.
Musical Consumption, 2010: 50 Incomplete Thoughts
01. If anything, writing about Korean pop for 10Magazine has expanded both my interest and knowledge in the genre, where before I was content to dabble in a few of the bigger names. In terms of tapping into the popculturenow via singles, South Korea did it better than any other country this year. Still finding major problems with albums as a whole, though.
02. My second largest genre of musical consumption this year was Indian film music, beginning with Hindi and ending in Tamil and Telugu, which took up the bulk of my research from July to November. Unbelievable how some of the worst films had some of the best music (see: anything Pritam composed this year).
03. Girls’ Generation (SNSD) came out with three phenomenal singles this year in “Oh!,” “Run Devil Run,” and “Hoot.” My vote, musically, goes to “Hoot” and lyrically for “Run Devil Run.” I don’t really remember much about “Oh!” except how ridiculously cuuuu~te its portrayal of the female gender was.
04. In January, I always read year-end lists and listen to things I either didn’t have the chance to or hadn’t come across. My favorite missed-in-2009 albums were Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and Bat for Lashes’s Two Suns.
05. A friend bought me a copy of Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now, telling me that I absolutely had to hear the title track. My reaction was kind of like…uh. This song would be a lot better if the male vocals were not happening. Also, whoever got paid to play the piano hook got away with the smartest paycheck.
