상세 컨텐츠
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Date: 2023.12.16
2023, K-pop groups that survived the K-pop era (settlement)
K-pop was in its commercial heyday in 2023. The cumulative exports of K-pop albums exceed 300 billion won (about 31 million dollars) from January to October. Many K-pop groups were seen in the U.S. Billboard and UK Official charts, and rosy achievements were made by decorating the stage of famous festivals. At the same time, it casts an Ominous Shadow. The chaotic takeover battle of SM that turned the beginning of the year and the rumors of the "K-pop crisis" advocated by chairman Bang Sihyuk and HYBE created a sense of crisis throughout 2023.
K-pop wanted to become an Anglo-American pop itself. HYBE, the leading agency of the industry, has strongly pursued it's goal of becoming a pop without K. Along with "Chasing The Feeling," by TXT, which dreamed of becoming The Weeknd's synth move, and "Sweet Venom" by ENHYPEN, which honored Michael Jackson's dance, music video and music. Jungkook challenged the persona of solo pop star in the 2000s and collaborated with Justin Timberlake, a witness of that era. HYBE partnered with Universal Geffen to form a global audition program "The Debut: Dream Academy" to transplant K's production system and refine K's nationality. Along with HYBE, JYP was the agency that help localize K-pop in the U.S. market. With the audition of "A2K," Stray Kids, which made achievements on Billboard 200 chart, and TWICE, who successfully completed a huge North American tour, rushed to replace K-pop in the U.S.
The K-pop management philosophy of the two agencies, "We need to meet a wider consumer base in a wider market," was convincing. However, as a result, looking back on the year, the outcome of the strategy was not very satisfying. The era of classical popularity across the globe has passed due to the settlement of streaming music listening, the strength of short-form platforms. Local and fandom-based artists who can strongly represent each group, including country. Mexican music, Latin pop, and hip-hop, won the top spot. Taylor Swift has become on a different trajectory that cannot be explained as an established pop industry by combining their lomg-established music and fandom bonding strategies. Paradoxically, K-pop which entered the global market in the 2010s, is losing interest by claiming to be a substitute for the waning British-American pop.
K-Pop's "K" has various meanings. K-pop trainees, who nationality and identity, including Koreans, Korean language, and Korean society, are selected and trains trainees, and British-American pop music is used as a conveyor belt system to combine songs and performances. K-pop is an industry that attracts dedicated fans and induces organized consumption behavior. There are two things that those two want to take "K" out of K-pop overlook. It is good to build each group's worldview from various stories such as fantasy, growth cartoons, and myths. However, the decisions to remove K-pop's unique production structure and emotional K-pop, which led to its success, lead to the abandonment of many of its alternative status in the global market. As the philosophy was shaken, only the results were difficult to be praised as more than consigned products. K-pop is no longer an alternative to pop, so there is no need to listen to it. Fortunately, not all K-pop has run toward "British Pop"this year like HYBE and JYP. While following the big line, there were many cases where it added its own personality to produce much better results.
Against this backdrop, I will pick a piece of K-pop that was impressive this year. The girl group H1-KEY's performance/activities was impressive. "Roses Blooming Between Buildings" and "Seoul" presented by Young-K and Hong Jisang, which piled up the stories of DAY6, accurately penetrated the care emotions of K-pop toward its inhumane production process, jungle-like activities, and nonetheless unyielding dreams. It was a feat achieved by sticking to the structure of a composer-group, excluding universal methods of selecting and localizing sketches by overseas composers. Not only the team, which was thrilled to see the reverse, bjt also the listener were impressed. "Letters with notes," a solk album released by Young-K after being discharged from the military, is also recommended as a full-length solo rocker's debut.
There is fatigue in the basics of K practice, overwork, overtime, pretense and gossip, viral, malicious comments. They stand in front of the public with a bright smile everyday, but he has to overcome the deep skepticism. It's a self-portrait of Korean society that is suffering from infinite competition and fastness that gave birth to K-pop. Songs that sympathize with the reality were more impressive in the era of "Post-K." The lookism of (G) I-DLE, which came from Jeon Soyeon's experience, "Allergy," a song that criticizing social media, Seventeen's "Son Goku," which substituted this horrible feeling into the grievances office workers, Seventeen's "F*ck My Life," which shouted "This bloody world" at the group level, and Woods Cho Seungyeon's "Abyss," which is reborn as a great songwriter.
Girl group ITZY's "Kill My Doubt," album is in ironic piece of work. The title track is a song that confess self-loathing and cynicism, and the title track is "Cake," which is a way to achieve perfection on stage with tired body and mind. Interestingly, the album credit does not contain any names of the members, which is full of sincere confessions. This is why it is a perfect K-pop album. K-pop is truly a K-pop album , with young people investing their entire lives in a stage that shines with contradictions and wounds, and the members who faithfully carry out.
Among the electropop recommendations that follow the the trend are STAYC's "Poppy" and Tribe's "Stay Together." Billlie's "The Village Of Perception: Chapter 3" is a masterpiece that nicely embodies the group's mysterious identity. In addition to the title track "UNOIA," Jeon Somi's "Fast Forward," which is sophisticated deep house in the 2000s, was dan because it was familiar but not worn out.
Kiss Of Life is the team that was most frequently dubbed "well-made" and talented. In fact, when it comes to songs, there is no distinct points that stands out with the lingering scent of British-American girl groups that debuted in 2010s, if you look back a little, you can see the goals of TLC, EN VOGUE, and Destiny's Child in the 1990s. However, the atmosphere changes as soon as the four members who have experience in various fileds add strength to simple music through outstanding vocal harmony and performance. If we remember that K-pop's early promoters targeted English-speaking R&B girl groups, Kiss Of Life, which targets Fifth Harmony and Little Mix, can also be selected as a model example of trying to break away from K with a classic approach. They are evidence of the K-pop market, which has been upgraded to the point where small domestic agencies have production the capabilities that can meet the demand of British-American girl groups. I recommend the album "Born To Be XX," which is beautiful in harmony among the members.
The boy group camp, which was constantly being asked to contact the public, also strugled to came up with an answer. Among them, I would like to support SM Entertainment, which released "DJ" by NCT 127 and "Get A Guitar" by Riize. "DJ," which emulated Herbie Hancock's touch, while ranking over difficult messages and tree planting, was an impressive song. "Get A Guitar," which untied the title, concept and sound of musical instruments to make the boys' debut song, shone with unique ideas and simple composition. The turbulent SM years have rattled each team this year with jagged perfection. However, the team remained strong and did not prepare in vain for the future of the group.
The final settlement is NewJeans. There is nothing missing about NewJeans under all the conditions proposed so far. ADOR, CEO Min Heejin, and the label BANA team are closely intertwined with the centralized structure that led SM Entertainment's heyday, and roll up their sleeves to build a spotless "NewJeans Utopia." The makers who are sensitive to new trends in pop music have successfully popularized and distributed the drum-and-base and Jersey Club genres, with single-person bedroom musicians in the U.S. drew attention during the pandemic, into Sweet K-pop songs of "Super Shy" and "Ditto."
NewJeans' ultimate ideal is also Western pop from the British and American countries. Sensitive music videos and the sensibility of British and American students' filmed on the Iberian Peninsula are clearly not from Korea and do not hide the strong desire for a while that Korean society has. However, lyrics such as "The day Hyein got in trouble / The day Jiwon broke up with his girlfriend" (ETA) created a strange optical illusion by attaching colorful K-Identity stickers to NewJeans.
Anyway, what do you think? Global music fans, who were exhausted of the eventful year of 2023, were mesmerized by the massive group dance of "Super Shy" reminiscent of flash mobs and uploaded social media contents, and bought tickets for the fantasy express train to NewJeans, worries could not have existed at least in a sterile room called New Zealand.
