I saw this photo on PopSeoul yesterday and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. On the left is Taemin from the boy band Shinee. On the right is Gu Hara, who I wrote about in a post here. She’s a very small woman by Korean standards (I wanted to say even by Korean standards, but the fact of the matter is that Koreans have grown in just the past decade), something you wouldn’t necessarily notice when she’s performing. When she appears on TV shows, as she and her Kara brethren have been wont to do these days, she kind of looks like a cute head on pencil -- I'm a little unsure if I'm actually attracted to her anymore.
But nothing really prepared me for ol twig legs here on the left. Initially I despised Shinee, but they must have changed songwriters or something, because the new tunes aren’t driving me to spit at the TV. They've got some hooks. Here's a link to their YouTubes most recent videos first.
I'm pretty sure that at least two of the guys in Shinee are gay, which is perfectly cool, but probably an uphill battle in the world of Korean pop music.
I wouldn't say T-ara is my favorite girl group of the moment, but they're up there on a short list. I thought the song T.T.L. (Time to Love) was actually pretty good (despite the dudes). It's got a classic late 80s/early 90s dance pop (in Korea) sound to it.
"Bo Peep Bo Peep" on the other hand is pretty weak and is currently your #1 song in Korea. Basically they took the image, look and dance from Brown Eyed Girls "Abracadabra," put it to a much inferior song, then added some inexplicably stupid touches to said dance. Viola, #1. I don't so much mind the fact that it nicks Abracadabra -- if I got caught up in that I'd be hating on every K-pop song in existance. I don't even mind that the song isn't very good.
What bothers me mostly is the video, which is so over the top sexed-up it's embarrasing. Yeah, I just wrote that. Abracadabra, with it's also embarrassing faux-almost lesbian kiss at the end, was also dumb and out of character for Brown Eyed Girls, but at least that group has a hip-hoppy, at the club, leathery, sexed up image to begin with. "Bo Peep" doesn't sound sexy, and Tiara has always struck me as more of a pure-n-white kind of group, not a take-me-in-the-back-room-at-the-club-and-fuck-me kind of group.
It's sort of like if you're watching pro wrestling (I don't) and a villian emerges from the locker room spreading rose pedals in the crowd. It doesn't fit. I guess, since I feel I'm already demanding very little from Korean pop groups, I at least desire some consistancy in image. On this song T-ara isn't even consistant week to week -- here's a post New Year's live version where they're back to pure-n-white, which followed a bizzare sexy Hanbok thing that even the normally uber-positive Roboseyo found weird. Here's a video of a loser elementary school teacher doing the Bo Peep dance. Trust me, this song isn't that popular and not many people are doing the lame dance. In another two weeks everyone will have forgotten this song ever existed.
I do like music, as the first post on this here blog somewhat indicates. I have a funny relationship with Korean pop music. When I first moved here I thought it was insipid and beneath contempt. Then I started to view it as more of a sport -- you have your favorites, your heroes and villians, you root for the ones you like and against those you don't like.
I tend to like girl groups. That is to say, I like Korean girls doing Korean pop music as opposed to the guys. So sue me. That's not to say I don't like any male K-pop artists or songs. But it's probably something like 80-20%, and I'm much more likely to dispise male K-pop artists. At least I'm in touch with my feelings on the matter.
One of the more popular groups going these days is Kara, who, say what you will, produced one of the catchiest songs of the year called Honey. I don't know what other foreigners think about Kara, because we don't talk about this sort of thing. By virtue of being Korean, all Koreans like all K-pop songs and artists, which is probably more the way it ought to be. But I'm a critical guy. I gots me opinions.
Kara are super cute. Sometimes the music jives with me and sometimes it doesn't. Honey is a great song, mostly because of the instrumentation, specifically the synth-washes. I also love the white/purity image they were running with at the time (note the sports metaphor). I say running because Kara changes it's image often, much to the dismay of some foreign bloggers.
So the big news is that Kara has opened its own bakery. As I understand it, the bakery is a TV show concept, but the bakery itself is real. It's part of the Crown bakery chain, the Wondergirls did a similar show/campaign a bit back. As far as Korean bakeries go, I'd place Crown at No. 4 or 5, which isn't very good considering there are about six in total.
So why is this worth posting about? Well, because they each did promotional videos and in this one you get to watch Hara dance around with a phallic, shake her 언덩이 and lick what looks like, um, frosting, off her fingers.
I suppose I could put myself on the couch and really get at my perceptions of gender, the hidden symbols of women in Korean pop music, and how this will play out in the Korean society of tomorrow, but frankly...that would be boring.
