western – Dina Daily

In my previous post (which you can read here!!), I mentioned that I will be doing a series of posts contributing to my post about K-Pop success in Western countries. I’m sorry that this wasn’t posted on the same day as my previous post. As you all know my mother is ill (If you didn’t know then click here), so I have a lot of family members coming round and I have to put my life on hold to be with them. Without further-a-due, here is:

The first in the series of posts:

Why I listen to K-Pop.

Korean artists are versatile. I know some bands go through a stage in the beginning of their career where they have to do songs which are slightly cheesy and a bit commercial, but once they pass this stage and have a big loyal fan base, they tend to move into their own and have songs which are more unique. Take BigBang as an example. BigBang have now got songs which fit in to several types of Genres. In their solo careers, they have songs which fit in to different genres and this has come together in their album ‘Alive’.

I am going to do something a bit strange and compare BigBang to One Direction. Now I am well aware that they are completely different groups and they have different fan-bases, but they are the only western Pop band that I can think of at the moment!

Now, One Direction are talented! They are cute, they can sing and they have catchy songs. The one up that I think BigBang have, (and this is the reason why I listen to K-Pop), is that, One Directions songs all are classed as Pop or maybe even Rock-Pop. They only sing one type of Genre. JLS is also an example similar to One Direction and even artists such as Kanye West and Taylor Swift. BigBang have songs which fall under Rock (“Wings
(날개)” by Daesung and “Oh Mom” by T.O.P), Hip-Hop (“Bad Boy” by BigBang and “One of a Kind” from G-Dragons album “One of a Kind” and R’n’B as well as Pop.

But aside from BigBang, Jay Park (박재범), also shows versatility and uniqueness by blending songs of different Genres into one album. Although I listen to a lot of different artists, Korean and Western, it makes it interesting and exciting to see how one artist (or a group) can switch singing styles and can compose different genres of music.

That is the main reason for why I listen to K-Pop! Also, I am hopefully that it will expand my Korean vocabulary! Plus, there are several hotties in the K-Pop world!! =P

Recently I have been reading blog posts which discuss K-Pop & Western success. The main thing I noticed was that there are a lot of people who think K-Pop Artists need to release songs in English, in order to get successful in Western Countries. This blog post is going to be about why I think this shouldn’t happen.

The band I am going to use as my main example is… 빅 뱅 (BigBang)!

So BigBang were in America recently and there were many blog posts about BigBang becoming successful in Western Countries. While I was glad to read about BigBangs success, I had a problem, every blog post that I read suggested that BigBang should have an English album. Now, I must state that this is purely my opinion, and I am sure people will disagree. I think, if BigBang or any other K-Pop band started singing in English rather than Korean, it would be a disaster.

I think that K-pop works so well because it is sang in Korean! There is something enticing ad attractive about listening to people talking Korean and I believe that K-Pop is the best way to show how interesting, beautiful & sexy Korean Language is! Singing or Rapping in Korean is what sets K-Pop apart from mainstream music in Western countries. I completely understand that some people won’t listen to K-Pop because it is in Korean, but people who appreciate well made music that is catchy, will listen to any kind of music, regardless what language it is sang in.

Being someone who hangs around with a lot of people who don’t listen to K-Pop, I realised that they tend to think that K-Pop is cheesy and sounds like the type of songs you hear when you play dancing stage in an arcade. So when I showed them songs such as G-Dragons ‘One of a kind’ and a few songs by Jay Park, they were shocked that they sound like songs they would hear in western countries. Some of them even liked the songs so much that they downloaded a few! The point I’m getting to here is that, if K-Pop had more coverage in the press, people will know that it does not sound like the music you hear on Dance Dance Revolution! And they might be more open to listening to K-Pop.

Recently, Psy (Park Jae-sang) has had a lot of media coverage, but as a comical music act, he does not and cannot represent the whole of Korean music. It’s like saying that Taylor Swift can represent western music as a whole. There are several different genres within Korean music, as there is in western music. There is Hip-Hop, Indie, Rock, Pop, R’n’B & Jazz to name a few, the only difference is that they are sang in Korean, by Korean artists!

Now, I was originally going to make one big blog post about K-Pop, but it might not be easy on the eyes! This post is already a bit long so I am going to do a small series of follow up blog posts. The next one is going to be posted today.

Please stay tuned for ‘Why I listen to K-Pop’…

featuring BigBang!