Ahh… Meisa Kuroki — you know I have a soft spot for you? Somewhere deep in my brain there’s my subconscious telling me that you have potential. Then, the snarky part of me bursts out laughing when I see you in you music videos (and avoid your live performances)… and I swear I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just something that sort of happens.
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I think the director of Sixth Sense and Midnight Circus [1] might be my favorite director this year, though I gotta admit that Bounce is giving it a good run for its money with not only The Kingdom of Fools [1] and Hebe Tien’s My Love [1] and Joey Yung’s gorgeous MV hybrid with a perfume CM commercial, LOL – One Flower and a Thousand Tress [1].
But there’s just something really fierce about Sixth Sense spelling sex without being tacky, instead being completely fierce about it. I mean, Narsha did make me uncomfortable as she frolicked as a prisoner… but that was the only thing. The rest of the video/song was hard-hitting pizzazz… especially when we reach Miryo’s rap and she drops her verses adding the “grazie” and “gracias” — by the way, her “gracias” was almost on point perfect. xD
If you don’t know who directed Sixth Sense, why don’t you go to YAM Magazine and search for it.
I’m also considering buying my first ever mini-album… but it’s really costing me to go against my album etiquette. It’s like I’m going against everything I stood for all these years. Can I do it for BEG?
This is my list of Best 2011 MVs at the moment.
Nick, over at Anomalous Material, did his list of 13 Iconic Movie Images (for him). I thought I would share mine here since things have been a little on the weak side lately.
I dunno exactly why 13, but… it suits me fine. It gave me room to include things I wouldn’t have included in the first place. I’m surprised I cut so many from my Top10 Fave Films, but I did manage to squeeze half of them in. LOL I also set myself two rules… no black and whites, or animated films. ;O
So here we go~~~
I feel terribly sad that this had to happen this way~
It’s not like I sat through the VMA this year (the very first year that I chose not to, without counting the years I had no access to MTV), but having Jersey Shore introducing me nominees was too much for me to take… in the end, I tuned out and went for dinner.
When I found out that MTV was going to do a Britney Spears tribute, I thought to myself “why?” because, well — for starters, Britney’s not dead. Plus, Britney’s been on the music stage for barely 10 years… and out of those ten years, only five had been actually unquestionably successful.
So it pained me to have to see Britney accepting this because it means it’s just never gonna happen again. No, people. Do not expect Britney ever to recover her former glory, because it ain’t going to happen. But what’s worse is Britney (and her camp) accepting this poorly put together tribute… but who do we blame?
It’s not like the music industry has being able to produce anyone to follow Britney’s footsteps — failing to produce someone who can at least lipsync and kickass dance like Britney used to be able to. So what does MTV do? Get no-name little girls to dance to a speed-up Britney mashup. Each of her tracks gets reduced to a 15sec. blurb in which the girls duplicate Britney’s ‘famous’ moves — it’s just chaos.
And what does MTV do? They make Britney introduce Beyonce.
That just… doesn’t make sense at all.
Britney, you used to deserve so much better. Specially from MTV.
Yu-chan, why do you do these? I mean, release stuff on the same day. It makes me do multiple posts, and makes this blog look hugely disproportionate. xD
Having said that, what are these? Because they’re hilariously cute.
I’m not really familiar with SunnyHil, but my curiosity was peaked when I caught a teaser for Midnight Circus that had BEG member Ga-In, just about the time when they released the video for Midnight Circus~
I dug it… kind of a mix of music that wasn’t exactly Kpop… it had something — I was caught inadvertently saying “midnight cir-CUS!” once or twice. And the video is class… really moody… almost a bit cabaret-y punk-y, but not really that… it wasn’t the Dresden Dolls, but it was interesting Kpop. xD
So I was really surprised with their MV for Pray — which once again peaked my curiosity with the teaser. There’s a certain sci-fi horror feel to it… combined with this creature that looked a bit like an orc combined with a little bit of Sloth from The Goonies.
It’s just an outstanding music video overall — such a despicable (yet so familiar) storyline! A ‘monster’ lured in with affection that’s suddenly betrayed by the people that he thought care for him. Amazing.
Hey, Britney~
Let your body loseeeee control~~~
I wasn’t aware Britney had enough videos to fill a Top10. LOL
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~
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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?
Needle heels should be banned from choreographed music videos.
on Meisa Kuroki dancing with heels.
I’ll eat my words by the end of this post, don’t worry.
As you all know, I’m a late K-pop bloomer. Since everyone around me seems to be into Kpop, I don’t keep an eye on it because I don’t feel like I need to… I just wait for my friends to tell me what to watch. LOL
It is in my search for Glee + Kpop posts (because I want to see how much audience would be into it… not many), I ended up on the video posted on a celebrity gossip website, that shall remain nameless, of After School’s Let’s Step Up MV.
They described it as Glee Korean style — which is not. As you know I love Celtic music, hence I also have a fascination with Riverdance, and tap dance. Let’s Step Up blew my mind. LOL Are you kidding me? Glossy pop music mixed with tap, mixed with Riverdance? I love it.
I’m not even a fan, but woman knows how to work that stage. She certainly knows how to close a show! On a very VERY long new year night… imagine having to download 11Gb to watch a roughly 6hr show, Jpop duo DREAMS COME TRUE was the most memorable number of the night — which includes a giant tsuru (crane), and a rock n’ roller tongue-wiggling ojiisan,
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Are you kidding me? A marching band (the Kouhaku Marching band) with a lead singer jumping in a kimono? That’s an automatic win. xD Plus, Ikite yuku no desu (生きてゆくのです) is super catchy, the performance just brings it to the level of memorable.
This is the best I can do for the moment, the only clip I’ve been able to find. If/when I find something better, will re-post. Now, if NHK was smart, they’d be posting the Kouhaku performances on their own site for embedding, instead of taking down the performances that make it online…
