If I Have Artwork That Contains Idols but It Is Only Art to Me What Should I Do Wirh It
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How K-pop became a global phenomenon
No land takes its fluffy pop music more seriously than South korea.
They telephone call it Hallyu, the Korean wave: the idea that Southward Korean popular culture has grown in prominence to get a major commuter of global culture, seen in everything from Korean dramas on Netflix to Korean skincare regimens dominating the cosmetics manufacture to delicious Korean tacos on your favorite local menu. And at the heart of Hallyu is the ever-growing popularity of Grand-popular — brusk, of course, for Korean pop music.
K-popular has become a truly global phenomenon thanks to its distinctive alloy of addictive melodies, slick choreography and product values, and an endless parade of bonny Southward Korean performers who spend years in grueling studio systems learning to sing and dance in synchronized perfection.
Hallyu has been building for 2 decades, but K-popular in particular has become increasingly visible to global audiences in the past five to 10 years. South Korean artists accept hit the Billboard Hot 100 nautical chart at least 8 times since the Wonder Girls first cracked it in 2009 with their crossover hit "Nobody" — released in four different languages, including English — and the consign of K-pop has ballooned Republic of korea'due south music manufacture to an impressive $5 billion manufacture.
Now, with Southward Korea hosting the 2018 Wintertime Olympics in Pyeongchang at a moment of extremely heightened geopolitical tensions, One thousand-pop has taken on a whole new kind of sociopolitical significance, every bit Republic of korea proudly displays its best-known export earlier the world.
What the Winter Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies told united states about K-popular (and vice versa)
During the Olympic opening ceremonies on February nine, 2018, athletes marched in the Parade of Nations to the accompaniment of a select grouping of K-popular hits, each playing into the image South Korea wants to present right at present: 1 of a state that'due south a fully integrated role of the global culture.
The Parade of Nations songs all take significant international and digital presences, and each advertises the cantankerous-cultural fluency of Thou-popular. Twice's "Likey" is a huge recent hit for the group, and recently made information technology to 100 one thousand thousand views on YouTube faster than whatsoever other song by a K-pop girl group. (The video prominently features the girls on a fun field trip to Vancouver, marketing the thought that they're at home all over the globe.) Large Bang's "Fantastic Baby" was one of the first Grand-popular hits to brand inroads in American civilisation and was featured on Glee'due south K-pop episode along with "Gangnam Style," which also played during the Parade of Nations.
Psy's ubiquitous 2012 hit is part doofy one-act and part clear-eyed satire, fabricated past a musician who's part of a wave of Southward Korean musicians who've studied at American music schools. "Gangnam Way" spent five years racking up more than three billion views on YouTube, reigning every bit the most-viewed video in the platform'due south history before being dethroned in 2017.
Equally a whole, these songs and performers bear witness us that Thousand-pop stars tin excel at everything from singing to comedy to rap to dance to social commentary. And their fun, singable melodies make information technology clear that the South Korean music industry has perfected the pop production auto into an effervescent assembly line of ridiculously catchy tunes sung by ridiculously talented people in ridiculously splashy videos. When Red Velvet sing, "Bet yous wanna (bet you wanna) dance similar this" in their single "Red Flavor," they're sending a bulletin to the world that Republic of korea is modern but wholesome, colorful, inviting, and fun.
And at the Olympics closing ceremonies, we saw alive performances from two more K-pop icons: solo artist CL, formerly a member of the powerhouse girl group 2NE1, and multi-national band Exo. CL'southward appearance was a testament to her success in achieving one of the holy grails for Thousand-Pop — a crossover into The states fame, or at least onto the Billboard Hot 100. CL has landed on the list twice since 2015.
Exo, meanwhile, is arguably one of the two or three biggest K-Popular successes going right now. The band was a perfect fit for the Olympics — they're multilingual and were formed with the intention of performing in Mandarin and Japanese as well as South Korea. And for several years, Exo was divide into two subgroups, one performing mainly in Korea and i mainly in Mainland china. All of this made them a great choice to serve as a symbolic transition between nations, equally Tokyo gets ready to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, followed by Beijing hosting the Winter Olympics in 2022.
Prominently missing from the alive operation roster at the Olympics was the nearly popular K-popular ring in the universe at the moment: BTS. BTS became an uncontested United states phenomenon in 2017, with two songs hitting the Billboard Hot 100, a huge performance at the American Music Awards, a New Year's Eve performance in Times Square, and a remix of their latest single, "Mic Driblet," washed by Steve Aoki. If it'due south possible to ascribe a tipping point to a "moving ridge" that seems to be endless, BTS might be it; it certainly seems that the all-male child group has gone as far as a South Korean band tin can go in terms of making inroads into American civilization — they recently graced the cover of American Billboard magazine. But while the band was missing from the Olympics, their song "DNA" — the other of their pair of 2017 hits — did at least play during the opening ceremonies, much to the delight of fans.
None of this is accidental. K-pop has get the international face of Republic of korea thanks to an extremely regimented, coordinated production organisation. More than any other international music industry, K-popular has been strategically designed to earworm its mode into your encephalon — and to elevate South Korea and its culture onto the globe stage.
How did we become hither? Through a combination of global political changes, savvy corporatization and media management, and a heck of a lot of raw talent being ground through a very powerful distinction mill.
Grand-pop began in 1992 with one electrical hip-hop operation
Grand-pop every bit nosotros know it wouldn't exist without democracy and boob tube — specifically, Republic of korea'southward reformation of its democratic government in 1987, with its accompanying modernization and lightening of censorship, and the effect this change had on television.
Prior to the establishment of the nation's Sixth Republic, at that place were only ii broadcast networks in the land, and they largely controlled what music S Koreans listened to; singers and musicians weren't much more than tools of the networks. Networks introduced the public to musical stars primarily through weekend music talent shows. Radio existed just, like the Goggle box networks, was under tight state control. Independent music production didn't actually exist, and rock music was controversial and subject to banning; musicians and songs were primarily introduced to the public through the medium of the televised talent show, and radio served as little more than a subsidiary platform for entertainers who succeeded on those weekend TV competitions.
Before the liberalization of South Korean media in the late '80s, the music produced by broadcast networks was primarily either ho-hum ballads or "trot," a Lawrence Welk-ish fusion of traditional music with one-time pop standards. Afterwards 1987, though, the country'southward radio broadcasting expanded quickly, and South Koreans became more regularly exposed to more than varieties of music from outside the country, including contemporary American music.
Merely Idiot box was still the country'southward ascendant, centralized form of media: As of 1992, national TV networks had penetrated above 99 percent of S Korean homes, and viewership was highest on the weekends, when the talent shows took identify. These televised talent shows were crucial in introducing music groups to S Korean audiences; they nonetheless have an enormous cultural impact and remain the single biggest cistron in a South Korean band'south success.
As Moonrok editor Hannah Waitt points out in her fantabulous serial on the history of Grand-pop, K-pop is unusual as a genre because it has a definitive start engagement, thank you to a band called Seo Taiji and Boys. Seo Taiji had previously been a member of the Due south Korean heavy metal ring Sinawe, which was itself a brief simply hugely influential function of the development of Korean rock music in the late '80s. After the band broke up, he turned to hip-hop and recruited ii stellar S Korean dancers, Yang Hyun-suk and Lee Juno, to join him as backups in a group dubbed Seo Taiji and Boys. On April 11, 1992, they performed their unmarried "Nan Arayo (I Know)" on a talent show:
Not only did the Boys non win the talent show, merely the judges gave the band the lowest score of the evening. Only immediately after the vocal debuted, "I Know" went on to height South korea'south singles charts for a record-keen 17 weeks, which would correspond more than fifteen years as the longest No. ane streak in the land'due south history.
"I Know" represented the first time mod American-fashion popular music had been fused with South Korean civilization. Seo Taiji and Boys were innovators who challenged norms around musical styles, vocal topics, way, and censorship. They sang about teen malaise and the social force per unit area to succeed within a grueling education system, and insisted on creating their own music and writing their own songs outside of the manufactured network surroundings.
By the time Seo Taiji and Boys officially disbanded in 1996, they had inverse South korea'southward musical and functioning landscape, paving the way for other artists to be even more experimental and interruption even more boundaries — and for music studios to quickly step in and take over, forming an unabridged new studio system from the remnants of the broadcast-centered organization.
Between 1995 and 1998, 3 powerhouse music studios appeared: SM Entertainment (often referred to equally SM Town) in 1995; JYP Entertainment in 1997; and YG Amusement in 1998, created by one of the members of Seo Taiji and Boys, Yang Hyun-suk. Together, these studios began deliberately cultivating what would become known equally idol groups.
The outset idol group in South Korea appeared on the scene in 1996, when SM founder Lee Soo-man created a group called H.O.T. by assembling v singers and dancers who represented what he believed teens wanted to see from a modern pop group.
H.O.T. shared traits with today'due south idol groups: a combination of singing, dancing, and rapping, and disparate personalities united through music. In 1999, the band was chosen to perform in a major benefit concert with Michael Jackson, in part because of their potential to become international pop stars — an indication that even in the '90s, the industry was attuned to K-popular's potential for global success.
That potential tin can be seen in the studios' eager promotion of multilingual artists like BoA, who made her public debut at the age of 13 in 2000 and in the ensuing years has become ane of South Korea's all-time-known exports thanks to a brand built on raw talent and multicultural positivity.
All the while, K-pop as a whole was edifice its ain brand, i based on flash, style, and a whole lot of quality.
Don't enquire what makes a K-pop vocal. Enquire what makes a K-pop performer.
In that location are three things that make 1000-pop such a visible and unique contributor to the realm of popular music: uncommonly high-quality performance (especially dancing), an extremely polished aesthetic, and an "in-firm" method of studio production that churns out musical hits the manner assembly lines churn out cars.
No song more perfectly embodies these characteristics than Girls' Generation's 2009 striking "Gee," a breakout success that came at a moment when K-pop was starting to turn heads internationally due to a number of recent milestone hits — notably Big Bang's "Haru, Haru," Wonder Girls' "Nobody," and Brown Eyed Girls' "Abracadabra." "Gee" was a viral cyberspace earworm, breaking out of typical M-pop fan spaces and putting Girls' Generation within striking distance of Us fame.
The combination of derisive, colorful concept, clever choreography, cute girls, and catchy songwriting makes "Gee" the quintessential G-pop song: It's fun, infectious, and memorable — and information technology was all but algorithmically produced past a studio machine responsible for delivering perfect singing, perfect dancing, perfect videos, and perfect entertainment. The and so-nine members of Girls' Generation were factory-assembled into the motion picture-perfect, male-gaze-ready dolls you lot see in the song'south music video via extreme studio oversight and years of hard work from each woman — a combined 52 years of grooming in total, starting time in their childhoods.
Through highly competitive auditions, starting around ages x to 12, music studios induct talented children into the 1000-popular regimen. The children attend special schools where they take specialized singing and dancing lessons; they learn how to moderate their public beliefs and prepare for life as a pop star; they spend hours in daily rehearsals and perform in weekend music shows every bit well as special group performances. Through these performances, lucky kids can proceeds fan followings before they even officially "debut." And when they're old enough, if they're actually one of the lucky few, the studios will identify them into an idol group or even, occasionally, launch them every bit a solo artist.
Once an idol grouping has been trained to perfection, the studios generate pop songs for them, market them, put them on Boob tube, transport them on tour, and determine when they'll next make their "improvement" — a term that usually signals a band'southward latest album release, generally accompanied by huge fanfare, special TV appearances, and a totally new thematic concept.
Because of the control they exert over their artists, Southward Korean music studios are directly responsible for shaping the global image of G-pop equally a genre. But the manufacture is notoriously exploitative, and studio life is grueling to the point that it can easily cross over to abusive; performers are regularly signed to long-term contracts, known as "slave contracts," when they are still children, which closely dictate their private behavior, dating life, and public bear.
The studios are besides a breeding ground for predatory beliefs and harassment from studio executives. In recent years, increasing public attention to these bug has given rise to modify; in 2017, multiple studios agreed to significant contract reform. All the same, equally the recent suicide of Shinee creative person Kim Jong-hyun revealed, the pressures of studio culture are rarely made public and tin can take a serious cost on those who grow upward within the organisation.
Despite all this, the cloistered life of a One thousand-popular star is coveted by thousands of South Korean teens and preteens — so much and so that walk-in auditions to scout kids for the studio programs are frequently held in Republic of korea and New York.
In addition to studio auditions, a wave of new TV audition shows have sprung upwardly in the by few years, giving unknowns a chance to be discovered and build a fan base. Often called idol shows or survival shows, these audition shows are comparable to American Idol and Ten-Cistron. Competitors on these shows can make it big on their own or be grouped up — like the recently debuted grouping JBJ (brusque for the fan-dubbed moniker "Just Be Joyful"), consisting of boys who competed in the talent prove Produce 101 Season 2 final yr and then got put in a temporary group afterward fans started making composite Instagram photos of them all together. The band only has a seven-month contract; enjoy it while it lasts!
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These TV-sponsored idol shows have caused pushback from the studios, which see them every bit producing immature talent — and, of course, cutting into studio profits. That's because a K-pop group's success is directly tied to its alive TV performances. Today there are numerous talent shows, forth with many more than multifariousness shows and well-known chart TV inaugural shows similar Inkigayo and Thou Countdown, which factor into how successful — and therefore bankable — a Thousand-popular idol or idol grouping is seen to be. Winning a weekend music evidence or weekly chart inaugural remains one of the highest honors an artist or musical group tin can accomplish in the South Korean music industry.
Because of this dependence on live performance shows, a vocal'south performance elements — how piece of cake information technology is to sing alive, how easy it is for an audition to option upwards and sing along with, the impact of its choreography, its costuming — are all crucial to its success. Groups routinely go all-out for their performances: Witness After-Schoolhouse learning to perform an entire drumline sequence for live performances of their unmarried "Blindside!" besides as pretty much every live operation mentioned here.
All of this emphasis on live performances make fans an extremely active part of the experience. K-pop fans have perfected the art of the fan dirge, in which fans in live studio audiences and live performances volition shout alternating fan chants over the musical intros to songs, and sometimes as a counterpoint to choruses, equally a testify of unity and back up.
This collectivity has helped ensure that K-pop fan bases both at home and abroad are absolutely massive, and intense to a degree that's difficult to overstate. Fans intensely back up their favorite group members, and many fans go out of their mode to make sure their favorite idols expect and dress the part of world-class performers. G-Con, the largest U.s.a. K-pop convention, has grown exponentially over the years and now includes both Los Angeles and New York.
(There are too anti-fans who target band members — most notoriously an anti who attempted to poisonous substance a fellow member of DBSK in 2006. But the less said about them, the meliorate.)
You lot might expect that in the face of all this external pressure, M-pop groups would exist largely dysfunctional messes. Instead, modern-day K-pop appears to be a seamless, gorgeous, well-oiled automobile — complete with a few glaring contradictions that make it all the more fascinating.
Mod M-pop is a bundle of colorful contradictions
Though government censorship of South Korean music has relaxed over time, it withal exists, equally does industry self-censorship in response to a range of controversial topics. Southward Korean social mores stigmatize everything from sexual references and innuendo to references to drugs and alcohol — as well equally actual illicit behavior by idols — and addressing any of these subjects can cause a song to be arbitrarily banned from radio play and broadcast. Songs dealing with serious themes or thorny issues are largely off limits, queer identity is generally only addressed as subtext, and lyrics are usually scrubbed downwardly to fluffy platitudes. Thematically, it's ofttimes charming and innocent, bordering on adolescent.
Despite these limitations, Thousand-pop has grown over time in its nuance and composure thanks to artists and studios who take often either risked censorship or relied on visual cues and subtext to fill in the gaps.
Case in indicate: the 2000 hitting "Adult Ceremony" from vocalist and actor Park Ji-yoon, which marked the first fourth dimension a M-pop striking successfully injected adult sexuality into adequately innocuous lyrics, representing a notable challenge to existing depictions of femininity in Due south Korean pop culture.
The women of Grand-popular are typically depicted equally traditional versions of femininity. This usually manifests in one of several themes: adorable, shy schoolgirls who sing about giddy crushes; knowing, empowered women who need an "oppa" (a strong older male effigy) to fulfill their fantasies; or knowing, empowered women who reject male validation, even as the studio tailors the group's members for adult male consumption.
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An idol group'due south epitome ofttimes changes from i anthology to the next, undergoing a total visual and tonal overhaul to introduce a new concept. All the same, there are a few daughter groups — 2NE1 and f(ten) bound almost readily to mind — that have been marketed as breaking away from this gender-centric mode of performance; they're packaged as rebels and mavericks regardless of what their anthology is nearly, even while they operate within the studio culture.
Yet the women of M-pop are besides increasingly producing self-aware videos that navigate their own relationships to these rigid impositions. Witness Sunmi, a former member of Wonder Girls, tearing down her own advisedly cultivated public image in her recent single "Heroine," a song about a woman surviving a failed human relationship. In the video, Sunmi transforms physically, growing more empowered and defiant every bit she faces the camera and finally confronts a billboard of herself.
If songs for women in K-pop intermission down forth the "virgin/mature adult female" divide, songs for men tend to break downward along a "bad boy/sophisticated man" line. Occasionally they even interruption down in the aforementioned song — like Block B'due south "Jackpot," the video for which sees the band posing as wildly varied members of a renegade circus, uniting to kidnap actress Kim Sae-ron into a life of cheerful hedonism.
Male person operation groups are generally permitted a broader range of topics than K-pop's women: BTS notably sings about serious issues like teen social pressures, while many other boy bands characteristic a wide range of narrative concepts. Simply male entertainers go held to arguably even more exacting physical and technical standards than their female counterparts, with precision choreography — like Speed'due south all-Heely dance routine below — being a huge part of the draw for male idol groups:
If you're wondering whether co-ed bands coexist in these studio cultures, the reply is, not really. Most of the time, co-ed groups tend to exist 1-off pairings of members from different bands for one or two singles, or novelty acts that are apace carve up into gendered subgroups. The well-nigh famous bodily co-ed band is probably the brother-sister duo Akdong Musician, a pair of cute kids who made information technology large on an audition bear witness; and fifty-fifty they get split up up a lot to pair with other singers. (Encounter the "Hullo Suhyun" prune above, which features Lee Hi and the sisterly half of AM, Lee Su-hyun.)
It probably goes without saying that this traditional gender divide isn't exactly fertile ground for queer idols to thrive. Despite a number of K-popular stars openly supporting LGBTQ rights, the industry aggressively markets homoeroticism in its videos merely remains generally homophobic. Just progress is happening hither, as well: South Korea's first openly gay idol just appeared on the scene in early 2018. His proper noun is Holland, and his first single debuted to a respectable six.5 one thousand thousand views.
Hip-hop tends to be a dominant part of the K-popular sound, particularly among male person groups, a trend that has opened up the genre to criticism for appropriation. S Korea grapples with a high degree of cultural racism, and recent popular groups have come nether burn down for donning blackface, appropriating Native American iconography, and much more than. Yet, G-pop has increasingly embraced diversity in recent years, with blackness members joining Grand-pop groups and duo Coco Artery putting out a bilingual single in 2017.
Concluding but non least, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Due south Korea'southward emergent indie music scene, which includes a thriving crop of independent rap, hip-hop, and, increasingly, R&B artists, as well every bit a host of grassroots artists who've made waves on SoundCloud.
Taking stock of all these changes and paradoxes, we might be able to extrapolate a scrap about what the future of K-pop looks similar: even more diverse, with an ever-increasing number of independent artists shaking up the studio scene, even though most of them will still have to play inside the organisation's rigid standards.
This gradual evolution suggests that part of the reason Thou-pop has been able to brand international inroads in contempo years is that it'south been able to button against its own rigid norms, through the use of modern themes and sophisticated subtexts, without sacrificing the incredibly polished packaging that makes it so innately compelling. That would seem to be a formula for continued global success — especially now that Republic of korea and its civilisation has the globe's attention. Hallyu may swell or subside, just the G-pop product machine goes e'er on. And from here, the future looks fantastic, baby.
Source: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/16/16915672/what-is-kpop-history-explained
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