When Kpop Went Beyond American Pop

I love when I do long and weird titles. xD

I don’t want to offend anyone — I know I’m doing my generalization, but let’s be honest~ I haven’t been into the American commercial pop scene since… I left Britney, and I left her circa her Toxic days too.

Even though people say I’m a music snob (I don’t know why…), I really like my easy-to-digest commercial pop of pretty idols that I can worship,  catchy music, and dance routines. I was big on the dancing, and I’m not talking about jiggly butt dances or Waka Waka stuff — as you know, I prefer my Shakira in her Donde Estan los Ladrones days… — I’m talking about sync dancing that gets you pumped, all the UMPH from the Nsync and Britney days of late 90s and very early 2000s.

I gave a try to the Katy Perrys, the Jonas Bros, the Justin Biebers (yes, yes I did.) — by the time Ke$ha was out, I had already given up. I didn’t even try Miley because her voice exasperates me, so I wouldn’t be able to stand her singing voice.

And then Kpop happened.

Maybe it was because I saw these Asian faces looking back at me — then again, maybe it isn’t — or maybe they put something in my kimchi (though I’m pretty sure I started eating kimchi after my Kpop thing), maybe it’s because they’re just better… who knows, but there’s something so VERY fascinating about the way Kpop is spreading.

We’ve been looking how it’s grown over the past 2 or 3 years into a phenomenon. I wonder how big is going to get, I want to see it get big… but not only Kpop, of course — other types of Asian music. I want to see how Kpopers get famous, Cpopers, — okay, not Jpopers, but definitely Jrockers, and the Taiwan music scene, and the indie Japanese scene~

So obviously, I made a playlist prompted from the Kahi post I did a day or two ago.

These are songs from from the Kpop industry that just stuck out. It’s a bit thin on the earlier years [the playlist is ordered by year], but it begins getting pretty heavy in 2008. I tried picking just songs that are dance pop and not ballads just to keep the list in check — at the moment it has 30 tracks, that I hope will expand into more songs as the months and years go by~

[iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLDD96E58EC50B1F36&hl=en_US”]

Here’s the YouTube link.

If you have any suggestions as to what it’s missing, comment away.

*EDIT*

Must include MVs (so songs released as singles), not older than late 90s.
Also… song must work as MV too. So no awesome songs but tacky videos. Sorry.

Now tell me, how did you get into Kpop?

11 responses to When Kpop Went Beyond American Pop

  1. I got into K-pop after Ueno Juri appeared on We Got Married. I thought it was a Korean drama, but when I watched it, it was an odd reality show thing with famous people pretending to be husband and wife. From that I researched SNSD. Then after that Miss A, Wonder Girls, CN Blue, Big Bang, etc etc.

    K-pop is fascinating, since there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be global (in terms of talent) but I’m interested to see how the quite xenophobic UK music industry reacts to it. I think it has a better chance in the US and in Europe where they’re more used to foreign songs getting into the charts.

    However, recently I’ve been listening to Korean indie bands. If anything, they’re even better. My personal favourite at the moment is Raspberry Field, but I write about my first steps into the genre on my blog:

    http://ifbyjapan.blogspot.com/2011/05/currently-watching-korean-indie-bands.html

    What with this and alt rock bands like Apollo18, there seems to be a bit of a musical renaissance going on in Korea at the moment.

    • @ersby, I think I also got into it through variety shows xD – I didn’t know the UK music industry was xenophonic… I always thought the American market was just avert to anything that’s not in English, hence taking Shakira from us.

      I would really love it more if Kpop didn’t have do sing in English though, I hope they can make it singing in Korean – oh you Stephen Colbert. Must you always come up in my posts? – not being able to understand what they sing makes the pop easier to go down ~~~

      I agree with you, though. Korea seems to be having some sort of – bad pun: big bang – in terms of music… or Entertainment in general. They are really taking seriously that of the “global” world and attacking on all fronts. I prefer the Mando (either Mainland China or Taiwan) indie music scene though xD

  2. Muy buena la lista, añade a H.O.T. o MBLAQ

  3. MBLAQ – Cry
    MBLAQ – Y
    SHINee – Noona
    ShiNee – You
    DBSK – Wrong Number
    DBSK – Purple Line
    G-Dragon & T.O.P – Baby Good Night
    G-Dragon – Heartbreaker
    G-Dragon – The Leaders
    B2AST – Soom
    GaIn – Irreversible
    2AM – I Did Wrong
    Super Junior- It’s You
    T-ara – Like the First Time
    Brown Eyed Girls – Candy Man
    2PM – Without U
    Infinite – Come back again
    2NE1 – It Hurts
    After School – Because of You
    Davichi – Time, Please Stop
    SNSD – Girls’ Generation
    Kara – Lupin
    SS501 – Crazy 4 U

  4. You know how I got in to Kpop, you where there to see me fall hahaha.
    Your list is pretty good. Why are you asking me to do the Kpop 101? You seem to know it pretty well :P

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