Disclaimer:
I am NOT an expert on kpop. I am not a FANATIC about kpop. This is just my opinion and feelings about music that I sometimes enjoy listening to.
The first Kpop song I EVER heard was “Irony” by the Wonder Girls in 2007. I was hooked ever since then. I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” because I cannot be fanatical or obsessed with anything like that. I like MUSIC. I am a child of the 80s, a time when you could hear EVERYTHING on the radio … every artist, every style … you were exposed to all kinds of different music and you learned to develop an ear for them. At any given time you could hear pop, heavy metal, R&B, new wave on the radio and it was all amazing. I learned to love opera from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and I am thankful I grew up in a time of such musical diversity. I like MUSIC period. Kpop is a kind of music and some of it I enjoy and some of the artists have beautiful voices. That’s ALL it is to me; music I enjoy listening to sometimes. But in that I enjoy it, I wanted to fully appreciate it … same with opera or heavy metal … I do my research. I learn about the artists, about the music, about how it is made, who is behind it, so I can truly appreciate what I am listening to beyond just consuming it casually. The more I learned about kpop, the less I liked the industry and the visionless, Western-music obsessed men behind it, and the more I came to appreciate the artists themselves. Kpop is more than just over produced, heavily appropriated, uninspired music and often recycled choreography and “over-trained machines” … it is beating HEARTS, tortured and abused SOULS, amazing TALENT, and desperate DREAMS.
BABYMONSTER is changing the entire kpop game. They are singing LIVE 100% of the time and using LIVE instrumental versions of their song. There is no piped in music, no background vocals to disguise when they are not singing. It’s all live. Many idol groups lip sync because the choreography requires so much intense movement. Lives are rare and usually for special stages. YG has created a true monster that might bring about a much needed shift in some parts of the very broken Kpop Machine.
All the girls can SING like nobody’s business. They can dance. They can rap. Several of them are triple threats who CAME IN at 13 years old ALREADY with incredible singing voices and talent. They are upping the stakes to everything and creating a situation where now … just looks and dance and HEAVILY produced music won’t be enough to satisfy audiences.
THIS is where things SHOULD be going. The kpop industry is a MACHINE of heavily manufactured, over produced trash. But now we have some authenticity. It’s BEGINNING. I would like to see more of this going forward.
I bring up BLACKPINK a lot because the group was terrible, barely put out any music, and all the unique talents of each member were BURIED in favor of a blended sound that was generic AF. Everyone knows Rosé can sing but you BARELY heard her voice ever when she was in BLACKPINK. It was a waste of an exceptional talent and heavenly voice.
They can’t all be BOA or Ailee or Lee Suhyun … or Rosé … there are FEW truly extraordinary voices like these in kpop … but there are enough that it makes me wonder why they aren’t being heard and why they are being suppressed.
Things are changing RAPIDLY. As contracts expire many artists are choosing to go SOLO and starting their own labels of just THEMSELVES so they are free to express and create on their own terms.
Eventually, the ENTIRE industry is going to shift. I can’t wait for that SHIFT. It’s been a long time coming … the kpop machine is hopefully finally dying and we will finally get TRUE music from the hearts of these talented people without all the oversight, slave labor, over production, and unfairness.
I never wanna see what happened to Euna Kim happen to anyone else.
She deserved so much better. She deserved so much more.
Kpop Is A Fledgling
It has barely existed as a true industry for that long.
Remember that the kpop industry is RELATIVELY NEW. Remember that South Korean “dance” music was not even a THING until the mid 80s.
Kim Wan Sun shocked the SHIT out of everyone when she was on stage SINGING AND DANCING at the same time and people thought it was OBSCENE and this was in the 80s … we’re not talking 50s or something. South Korean music was always traditional, national music … pop music wasn’t really a thing. Kim Wan Sun, Uhm Jung-Hwa, and King Seo Taiji were pioneers of it.
Seo Taiji and Boys was highly successful and is credited with changing the South Korean music industry by pioneering the use of rap in Korean popular music and utilizing social critique, despite pressure from ethics and censorship committees. By incorporating these musical elements with Korea’s ballad music, Seo Taiji and Boys provided the basis for the hybridization of Korea’s music with that of the West, resulting in the foundation of modern K-pop.
This was around 1992 …
When you understand that the ENTIRE Kpop industry didn’t truly exist until the 1990s … you’ll understand why it’s so heavily controlled, manufactured, and has no sense of originality.
American music went through all this stuff a LONG TIME AGO … Kpop is still a baby industry that doesn’t really know what to do with itself still and culturally it still has a ton of growing to do.
South Korea COPIES everyone else … traditional Korean music is technically the national SOUND.
What Song Sohee does is something I wish more people would do … she merges traditional Korean music … with a POP FEEL creating something that is truly and uniquely KOREAN MUSIC.
Kpop is basically how to copy western music in Korean and that’s not the same thing. They borrow from mostly African American styles and West Indian styles and call it pop but it’s not truly Korean.
Song Sohee is one of the only artists doing TRUE KOREAN POP music that is DISTINCTLY Korean.
Frankly I would RATHER listen to Song Sohee then 99% of these kpop manufactured trash groups.
I would rather listen to true and pure voices that are gifts from the Universe that required very little training and are just beautiful and pure and come from their souls.
Kpop is still a fledgling industry … it has no idea who it even is or what even is Korean music. It just copies others and true artists are lost in the trash.
If you know nothing about Korean culture, nothing about the history of Korean music (traditional or otherwise), and have no idea how the government censors things or controls things then yeah you probably aren’t a “fan” of kpop and don’t appreciate what it takes to be in that machine, why people turn to the machine, why thousands of girls and guys want to succeed in one of the only industries that celebrates creativity and artistry.
If all you see is bad music, you don’t know anything about it.
Tortured Artists
Kpop artists are reaching for their dreams and suffering deeply for it.
There are many TALENTED girls and guys in the industry … that want to be seen and heard and who have real RAW talent … just like artists here in the states. But the Korean music industry doesn’t work like ours does … it doesn’t have the same rules or opportunities or structure. Kpop is still a relatively new industry and currently a handful of companies have a monopoly on everything. Like Johnny’s in Japan that ran almost the ENTIRE pop industry and ruined it and was full of pedos.
The music industry in the U.S. is not everyone’s music industry.
Freedom isn’t available for everyone in the same way.
Your reality isn’t everyone’s reality.
These are PEOPLE … with hopes, dreams, desire, and talent and you know NOTHING about their world, their country, their hell … so you can’t possibly appreciate that any music even exists under these circumstances.
Sunmi
If you don’t know that Sunmi was forced to learn to play guitar while in the Wonder Girls because their management decided that they would STOP being a dance group and START to become a band … if you don’t know she had to leave the industry because of mental illness where there is a HUGE stigma in South Korea … if you don’t know the hell she went through to heal and come into who she was, who she wanted to be …
… then you can’t APPRECIATE this very much …
Maybe it just sounds to you like some mediocre song by some random girl playing a bass. If you don’t know how this girl came to be, what she has been through, the strength she has, the pain she has suffered through and all she has overcome then you really can’t appreciate seeing her freely STILL playing bass which she says she has some to love … singing in her own voice … solo .. quiet … coming into herself and being free and healthy and happy.
You don’t know what it took for her to get there … to create this …
These are people … in an industry that is terrible to them … these are artists … who have hearts and souls.
𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘺. 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 … 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰𝘰 …
Chungha
Chungha almost left the industry entirely … she was so mistreated and so overworked and she is so insanely talented.
The girls around that table represent 2 generations of idols. All who knew each other in passing but weren’t close friends. They shared their pain and their stories and found strength together. They are … Chungha (solo artist), Sunmi, YooA, Chuu (who started a FIRE in the kpop industry the way she broke away from her agency), and Hani (from EXID). These aren’t nobodies in the industry, they are the top.
Listen to them and understand just a tiny bit of their hell before you judge their music …
This hell they have been through is the Korean music industry as much as it’s the Korean culture and the mentality of not dealing directly with mental health and expressing honesty. It’s a lot of things.
I grew up in an abusive space … surrounded by narcissists who didn’t see me as an individual at all. I know what abuse looks like. I recognize it instantly and all I ever see in kpop are artists suffering a ton of psychological and emotional abuse. I see pain and I see torment and I see people struggling to live.
Thinking too much means you’re not busy enough …
This kind of shit … this kind of grooming isn’t specific to Korean culture … it’s a huge part of American work culture and slave culture as well. Many should be able to easily understand and relate to Chungha running herself into the ground … trying desperately to pursue her dreams and trying to live.
When you understand what Chungha went through … how her agency abused and mistreated her … how she almost ended up in the hospital … how much she LOVES music, how TALENTED she is, how beautiful she is … and know that she left Korea in 2022 and almost didn’t return AT ALL … and you see her return with THIS … epicness, this fire, these LYRICS, this strength … on her OWN TERMS …
Chuu (Kim Jiwoo)
When you understand what Chuu went through (it’s way too long and complicated to explain here. Read this post to learn the details) … how she fought ALONE with no support from even her group members. She fought against her agency, she got blacklisted by them, they tried to sabotage her … she took all that on … for YEARS by herself (with her mother beside her) … and then you see this and hear her voice … single … not buried beneath 10 other girls …
This is why we support her.
Because she is so strong and so pure and so kind and she NEVER lost her brightness through all the hell she went through.
I admire these women so much.
Korean culture can be hell for a lot of reasons especially mental health … and when you have talent and a creative nature it can be CRUSHING because, similar to here, it is not valued very much. Seeing these artists try to pursue their dreams in such a brutal industry and a culture that doesn’t always value them … it is all about triumph and overcoming odds and obstacles.
If you cannot appreciate that … if you cannot hold that in your heart … you lack empathy. It’s just that simple.
If you think what happened to K$sha and Britney and other American artists was bad, you should try understanding what South Korean artists go through. With those two artists what happened to them was very specific to them, very personal, it is NOT the accepted standard of how artists are treated in the American music industry. In South Korea though … the abuse, the slave labor, the low wages, the bad management, the destruction of dreams and souls is the ACCEPTED STANDARD.
That standard is slowly starting to change … but not fast enough.
Learn to STFU
Education, empathy, and understanding goes a long way.
Kpop isn’t JUST about the music and if you say you hate Kpop its because you’re not LISTENING to what is at the heart of the music. You can’t listen to Rosé or Chuu or Ailee or Chungha or Hwasa or Lee Suhyun and say the music is BAD. It isn’t.
What you hate is the kpop machine that creates TRASH which is legit … but then you’re completely IGNORANT of what happens to real, raw, genuine talent trapped in that machine … and you don’t care to learn. You just want to say you hate an entire genre of music and the country that produces it …
The only way kpop will change as an industry is if more artists fight … if more artists find strength and stand up for themselves and their dreams … the only way things will continue to change thanks to the strength and honesty and sacrifice of people like Sunmi, Chuu, Chungha, Hwasa others in the last 2 generations is if people continue to support their individual efforts and support them pushing boundaries, pushing for change in Korean culture …
If you develop a full understanding of how things work and why and have an opinion on that, awesome. If you don’t understand it and don’t care to understand why it exists and how it came to exist the way it does and just want to criticize it, just don’t say anything and mind your own business.
People who truly understand kpop are fans of individual artists who they want to see succeed in an industry that is designed to grind them up and spit them out and replace them with someone else.
People who truly enjoy kpop are rooting for these girls and guys who are trying to make it doing something they love in a country that sees them as disposable assets and parts of a greater machine and not actual talent or individuals.
People who understand the industry want it to change.
So again … if you know nothing about Kpop, Korean culture, Korean music … that’s fine … but criticizing the artists, disrespecting their journey, their trauma, their strength, their talents … that’s just garbage behavior from a place of ignorance and lack of empathy.
You don’t know shit, so don’t say shit.