The South Korean entertainment industry is getting more and more attention lately. They started becoming really popular in the mid 2000s in Asia. Then, it is now going global. One of the most popular artists is no other than Psy, with his famous horse dance music video, Gangnam Style exceeded about one billion viewers worldwide on YouTube making it the highest viewed and ‘liked’ YouTube videos of all times. Well, there are other popular idols or artists other than Psy as well such as Girls Generation, Big Bang, KARA, SHINee, Brown Eyed Girls, Super Junior, Davichi, 2AM, 2PM, SISTAR, 2NE1, 4minute, T-ara, Girl’s Day, Nine Muses, miss A, TVXQ, A Pink and many more. Literally.. like way more, and they are insanely popular in Asia. Normally, they’re of girl or boy groups like Psy said in an interview with Ryan Seacrest. Unlike in the Western music industries, most artists go solo. Well, even in the Western world, groups used to be very popular as well back in those days such as the Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Boyzone, Spice Girls, Michael Learns to Rock and so on. The ‘boy or girl group fever’ is coming back though. Look at One Direction. I won’t be surprised if another recording company decides to form another boy or girl group
I am not sure how popular these K-Pop artists are in the West, but they sure are really popular in most of the Asian regions. But if you look some of them up on YouTube, you’ll notice they have millions of views and thousands of people sharing via social medias. Blogs, Facebook Pages, Twitter… they’re everywhere.
Even the Taiwanese and Chinese music industries were inspired by the Korean music industries. I used to listen to a lot of Mandarin music and most of them are of sentimental genres. Mandarin songwriters love writing emotional lyrics and music back then. However, seeing the Koreans doing so well with their catchy music piece, and from what I noticed they start trying out writing their own versions of catchy music as well. Personally, not really my cup of coffee. If you’re comparing Korean music with Western music, there are similarities and differences as well. In my perspectives, the similarities have to be the beat. You will see almost every K-Pop artist’s singles involves unique dancing in their music videos. American loves writing music to do with dancing. The difference? Koreans don’t tend to write sexual things in their lyrics, as they fear they might be banned from their radio or TV stations.
To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of and sort of get annoyed by K-pop because I can’t understand a single word and that everyone kept talking about it. Apparently I failed, and join in the wave. I constantly had this in my mind that they can’t sing, they use auto-tune to make themselves sound good, etc. Until I heard Tae-Yeon, leader of Girls Generation singing live and that changes my perspectives on them. Then I started listening more and more and eventually got addicted and… bam, I’m a K-pop fan. I am actually glad though; it opens up my views and accepts good music regardless of language. You can get their English subtitles anywhere anyways.
There are literally TOO MANY groups and songs to share. I’m just going to embed three; Girls Genration’s I Got A Boy and Kara’s Pandora and 2PM’s I’m Your Man (Japanese song, though it’s Korean)
P.s – I don’t listen much of the dude bands though ._. Just in case you’re curious about the dudes, here’s a 2PM music video.
Also… girls, you have your One Direction… we guys have our Girls Generation! LOL!