Just a quick reminder that the KPOPALYPSE LIVE STREAM is ON like DONKEY KONG, this weekend!
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I will be streaming TWICE, 12 hours apart. This is for the benefit of those people who live in countries with a tricky timezone for streaming purposes. Here are the stream times:
Adelaide, Australia: Sunday 9:30 AM and again at Sunday 9:30 PM
America PST: Saturday 5:00 PM and again at Sunday 5:00 AM
Jakarta, Indonesia: Sunday 7:00 AM and again at Sunday 7:00 PM
Malaysia and Singapore: Sunday 8:00 AM and again at Sunday 8:00 PM
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT): Midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning and again at midday Sunday
You’re a young guy in high school and you’ve been a closet k-pop fanboy for a while now. Sure, you talk about it in forums while trolling under the safety of your anonymous handle “Taeyeonfap” but in your actual real life where you’re significantly more chickenshit, nobody knows yet, and you’re not sure when or even if you’re going to tell them. It’s been easy to hide from your parents – they tend to stay out of your bedroom since you’ve hit puberty, they only ever enter to change the clothing and the sheets, so they know from the stains exactly how much fapping is going on and are understandably not wanting to walk in on a “session”. Sure, they see the SNSD poster you put up but mixed in with all the Sports Illustrated bikini girls they don’t really stick out, and you’re listening to music mainly with headphones these days so you don’t have to hear “TURN IT DOOOOOWN” from your annoying brother who doesn’t even care what you listen to because he’s into some bullshit music where they have no talent and scream all the time and you can’t even hear the words – who actually listens to that shit, you wonder. So it’s not like anyone’s in danger of busting you.
All is going well in your life, with your k-pop fetish remaining nicely undercover, until one day in the middle of science class, one of these slips out of your bag.
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The guy sitting next to you picks it up and starts laughing – fascinated by “this faggot shit” he starts unboxing it in front of the whole class, to your horror. He lays out all the photocards on the desk one by one while singing “heeeeeey, sexy layydeeee, op, op op…” as everyone gathers around and gawks at them, which is really embarrassing. When he takes out the Taeyeon photocard you get particularly hurt and you try to grab it off him so he starts making lewd comments about her just to fuck with you. To make matters worse, a group of girls behind you start giggling, including this one girl you’ve had a crush on for a while, so you guess you can kiss her off the “she thinks I’m a real man, maybe some day she will touch my genitals” list. Eventually the teacher intervenes and breaks things up, and you’ve never been so happy to have a possession of yours confiscated until hometime. It looks like the class asshole has won this round.
Upset and ashamed, you go home that night. Over dinner your parents know that something’s wrong but thankfully they don’t press you about it – the embarrassment of being “outed” at school was enough humiliation for one day. After dinner you sit with your parents and watch some music competition talent show, and a thought occurs to you: “If only they realised that my k-pop idols are talented”, you think to yourself “maybe then they will take my love of this music seriously”. Armed with an iPad loaded with your best arsenal of “look, Taeyeon is a really talented singer” YouTube bookmarks, you return to school the next day and show it around the class.
It goes about as well as you realistically hoped it would – the girls are impressed while you talk enthusiastically about the harsh training regimes of k-pop and can see your point about Taeyeon, plus that one girl you like is kind of talking to you again – maybe a handjob behind the bike shed from her is a realistic dream after all. The guy who gave you all that shit yesterday grudgingly says “you’re still a faggot for liking that gay shit” but other than this, he keeps to himself and doesn’t press the issue, seeing that you have the upper hand with the ladies and not wanting to get them off-side, after all he wants that handjob as much as you do. You go home feeling vindicated.
After a while, things calm down, and people seem to forget about it. Then, a few weeks later, the school bully confronts you, smartphone in hand.
“Hey, do you like this song?”
“No!” you exclaim instantly, “they’re not talented at all!”
“Shut the fuck up fag. You’re into this k-pop bullshit, and this is a fucking hit song, it’s number one in Korea. You love this shit, you fucking cunt.”
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You try to protest, but it’s too late. Word has already spread around the school and your pontification on “idol talent” now looks like a joke that everyone is only too keen to rub in your face. Lunchtimes become an ordeal with people singing “BaBa-Bar Bar, BaBaBa-Bar” at you everywhere you go in the yard, and occasionally a group of bullies will corner you somewhere and refuse to let you pass until you do the “jumping, jumping” dance. Their favourite time to do this is just before you leave for home on your bicycle – “the helmet gives your dance a more authentic feel”, they remind you. That girl you like never talks to you again and your school social life rapidly disintegrates as nobody wants to be seen hanging out with you for fear of also becoming a victim.
Desperate and with pent-up anger that has no outlet in the real world, you turn to the Internet and unleash as much Crayon Pop hate as you can handle, but it’s no use. It’s obvious to you that the girls are gang members and thugs, but in a unique and astoundingly clever pre-emptive marketing strategy, the girls have left their true colours wide out in the open for everybody to see.
You watch them rob some innocent hard-working pimp collecting his overdue payments from a lazy whore here, and this isn’t some saesang candid camera, this is on their official video, which means they’re proud of this shit:
You also note that their dance tutorial shows them openly bullying class members and practicing fighting moves, just like the ones that guy used to punch you in the stomach the other day, it’s practically an instruction manual on how to slap people down:
What can you do to tarnish the online reputation of a group who are already this openly gangster? Nothing. Even other groups and the media are frightened of them. Yet they got to #1, and they can barely even sing unlike your beautiful perfect angel Taeyeon, where is the justice in this world…
A month later when you are found hanging in your bedroom with a note saying “Taeyeon I’m sorry” which baffles the shit out of your parents (“Who? Is that someone at school?”), the media chalks up your swinging corpse as another statistic in the global phenomenon known as “The Crayon Pop fanboy cull”. At school, you are not missed and the world of k-pop fandoms becomes 0.0001% more sane as a global average due to your sudden departure.
Crayon Pop are helping the mental health of k-pop fandom culture by disposing of their psychologically weakest specimens. Be sure to cheer them on.
Trufax: my first exposure to the word “netizens” was through the title to this video:
I thought “this video is pretty tame, really – what’s a ‘netizen’ anyway, is that some kind of slang for an ultra-sexually conservative Internet censorship body who should be pushed under a bus and forgotten about?”. Little did I know how close to the truth that initial thought was.
Far more importantly though (because netizens are never important), this video was also my first exposure to Rania.
I didn’t think much of “Dr. Feelgood” (great sounds but so repetitive) or their other song “Pop Pop Pop” but I did like Joy, who looks even better backstage than in the videos. I especially like her cute and awkward English-speaking accent that sounds like she’s trying to talk and gargle a mouthful of cum at the same time:
Maybe in fact that’s exactly what she was doing, because not long after this documentary was shot, I heard that she left the group amid rumours of her blowing the guy who refilled the coffee machine in Teddy Riley’s recording studio or whoever. So when a new single of theirs called “Style” was announced, I really wasn’t that interested. Then of course the song was released and made me look like a fool by turning out to be just about the best goddamn thing in 2012:
I won’t go into the musical elements that make “Style” work for me because that would be technical and boring, even by my standards. Let’s just say that I like it musically, a lot. I did find the video a bit dull though, I thought that the “possessive rich guys trying to control Rania by buying them shit to mold them into their idealised image of the perfect trophy girlfriend are told to get fucked” theme was really cool, but I also thought “damn there are some ugly mutts in Rania now that Joy has left”. That is, until the 1:35 mark when the video pulled out its ace card and my genitals shed white tears of joy.
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Tell me that she’s not practicing her blowjob technique right there, right in the middle of a high-budget music video. What a thirsty skanky hoe – of course I applaud her wholeheartedly. Further investigation revealed that this lady is called T-ae, and… well to be honest I didn’t spend any more time investigating jack shit after I found that out, because I was “busy”. How the fuck I didn’t notice her before is beyond me, but I’ve been following Rania closely ever since, and they’re yet to release an absolute stinking turd of a song this year unlike a lot of other groups I could mention but won’t because I’m a nice guy. So when T-ae did a guest vocal on some track with Defconn a few days back, I was all over that shit straight away, and you should be too.
Never mind that it sounds like Pitbull and that Defconn looks like your uncle, or that T-ae is only in it for about five seconds. Those are some of the best five seconds you’re going to see this year, and in fact the whole video is pure gold. Watch T-ae flirt with the camera intensely enough to make Hyuna look like Lee Hi:
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Even if T-ae is not your type, don’t worry, there’s plenty of other eye candy here:
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Pole-dancing too, without the disadvantage of having to listen to After School’s “First Love” at the same time:
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Then there’s the video director’s daring bid to one-up Bikiny’s latest video as the bustiest in all of k-pop:
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I hope the competition between these two video directors keeps up, it can only lead in good directions.
Maybe that’s all a bit raunchy for you though – perhaps you prefer things a little more subtle and symbolic. How about this for subtlety?
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(And there I was two weeks ago thinking f(x) were pushing it hoping nobody would notice their uterus-walls video sets. They slipped right under the radar with that, didn’t they, those cheeky Cao Mi Nas.)
The “I want some COCK…. tail” vocal refrain obviously nicely helps the “this song is about drinking… but not the alcoholic kind” theme along and this is probably the highest concentration of fap in one music video that you’re going to get this year. You’re welcome.
“Our school system trains kids to be ignorant, with style – functional ignoramuses. They do not equip students to deal with things like logic; they don’t give them the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any product or situation. They are groomed and launched to function as mindless buying machines for the products and concepts of a multinational military-industrial complex that needs a World Of Dumbells to survive.” – Frank Zappa, from “The Real Frank Zappa Book“.
I looked at a lot of fancams of EXO appearances while researching this blog, and almost all of the footage had one thing in common besides mobs of young girls with self-esteem lower than Boram’s bicycle seat chasing around a bunch of guys who are probably all banging the chicks in Nine Muses – replaced audio.
The reason is fairly obvious: even some shithouse k-ballad (sorry IU but the MOGEF should really quit with the T&A censorship and instead do something good for pop music culture by banning any song under 80 BPM) sounds a hell of a lot better than this:
Welcome to hell.
It’s fairlywelldocumented that EXO fans are on average the most insane of any k-pop fandom. The question is clearly not how insane they are, or indeed if they are insane – but, what is anyone going to do about it?
To EXO’s credit, they seem to be appropriately embarrassed by the situation, and seem to want to do something about it, taking their time to do a bit of one-on-one counselling of saesangs and telling them off where possible. Of course this is the equivalent of trying to put out a forest fire with an eyedropper. As simple employees of a massive marketing machine, It’s not their fault, right? Naturally, they can’t reform their fans alone… right?
Eager to help, I went straight to the repository of all 21st century knowledge Google to see what I could find out about EXO in order to help them with their quest to control their own mentally challenged fans. Because I care.
Okay, “overrated” is first, yeah no kidding. I understand why their comeback would be searched (or at least I can put myself in the shoes of someone who would search that because I’m really that understanding and kind ahem), and there’s that Wolf song everyone hates… but “powers”, what the fuck’s that? Are they like superheroes or some bullshit?
According to Wikipedia… yeah, like, totally. It’s listed there like it’s no big thing.
Right next to “country”, and the countries aren’t made up, so why would the powers be? There’s not even any debate about this on EXO forums or anywhere else, or even on the Wiki’s talk page where people love to argue and split hairs over the most minute factual details, it’s actual fucking referenced information (sure, the reference goes to an old Allkpop article that doesn’t even exist anymore but let’s just gloss over that for now). Everyone just accepts it: these guys have some fucking “powers”. Like woah, dude.
Now call me crazy, but I believe being a superhero comes with just a little bit of extra social responsibility to use your powers for the betterment of society. If you’re Superman and the convenience store down the street gets robbed three times in a month, it could be reasonably argued that maybe you’re just not doing your fucking job and spending too much time poncing around at home being Clark Kent with your head in Lois Lane’s crotch while your cape is at the dry-cleaners. EXO have got a dude who fucking teleports, another one who can fly, some dude who can stop time, and there’s even some guy who has “healing powers” – wouldn’t that cover the healing of mental illness as well? So how can they realistically complain about their fandom like it’s someone else’s problem? These kids have the power to fix it themselves.* If nothing else, at the very least they could get the guy with the “fire” powers to apply some scorched earth policy next time they have to visit an airport or something.
But no, these selfish EXO kids just want to rest on their laurels. Tsk tsk. For now I guess those who care about the mental health of kids out there will just have to resort to some physical intervention.
Peace and love, kids.
* And if these powers aren’t really real someone get them the fuck off the Wiki. Wikipedia is supposed to be for factual information, not for you fangirls to rub each others’ clits in a massive circle-jerk. Come on kids, what is this.
Want to ask me a question? Don’t want to ask under your real name because you’re too chickenshit to be held publicly accountable for it, or you’re worried that I might find out who you are and ridicule you with my vastly superior wit and intellect? Well, now’s your chance.
It’s no secret that as k-pop’s stock has risen globally, there are more young people in Korea than ever before striving to become idols, and that it’s a ridiculously competitive industry where something like 0.01% of hopefuls will ever get anywhere close to their dream. What would inspire such fierce competition, especially in the case of the male groups? Surely not ego given how much new idol groups are despised, and certainly not money given that even many of the top stars have a bank balance in the negative. So what does that leave?
Answer: the same thing that inspires just about everything else that men do.
“The male sex drive is so powerful that if it were to be eliminated, the entire economy would crash in one day. There would be nobody at work, nobody in school. All we would do is lie around and eat and fart and get fat. The sex drive is what makes men get up in the morning. It’s the machine that runs the world. Why do men want to become successful? To get women. For gay men, it’s no different. You’re ambitious to please your partner. If women didn’t like criminals, there would be no crime. If a thief knew women wouldn’t accept the things he buys with stolen money, he wouldn’t steal. The money would be no good. Very few men are out there seeking just straight-up blatant power. In the film Scarface, Al Pacino says, “In this country, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women.” He didn’t say, “First you get the women.” Women were the prize at the end of the climb.” – Ice-T, from “The Ice Opinion“.
I recently found a fascinating Tumblr called “kpop scenarios“. Most fanfiction sites bore me rigid but what I thought was special and interesting about this site is that it’s a “service” for those who might like to write fanfiction but might not be blessed with any creative writing skills, so you’re getting your fanfic written for you by someone who might be a crazy fangirl just like you, but who has to bend their imagination a bit so they can pretend that they’re into your bias group enough to get “in the zone” to put out some appropriately mushy writing. There’s a business idea in this somewhere.
However, a quick peruse through the list of scenarios currently available revealed a saddening shortfall: the scenarios lacked realism as they were overly “domesticated” – they didn’t seem to reflect the reality of how people have relationships in the high-pressure world of the music industry.
Hey you dumb whore, guess what – some guy in a k-pop group doesn’t have time to teach you the “penguin dance”, don’t you think he gets enough of fucking dancing at work? He probably doesn’t even have time to go shopping either, let alone buy a “bouncy castle” (is this the answer to the age-old question “what do women want”?) – hell, he probably lives in a squalid dorm and doesn’t even have anywhere to PUT your fucking bouncy castle. Where the fuck do you buy a bouncy castle anyway, I must confessed I’ve never looked into this properly. He’s more interested in fucking, certainly not in fucking YOU but certainly getting it wet somewhere along the line.
A little-known fact: most idols, when they have sex (which is fairly often – we’ll get to that in a moment), do it in cars. It’s not hard to figure this out - after all you can’t fuck in your dorm because it’ll annoy the shit out of the other members, if you go to a hotel with some chick the media will be all over it, and you can’t find a dark alley because there are saesangs everywhere outdoors, so unless you’re fucking some girl who works for the same record company as you (in which case you can probably sneak out and find a vacant room somewhere at company HQ) then the car is really the only option. K-pop producer Shinsadong Tiger even bragged recently quite openly in the media about how he’s been responsible for arranging several backseat fuckathons like these, and you can bet he’s not the only one lending out his car for “services”. Korea might be culturally “sexually conservative” as a general rule, but remember we’re also talking about the music industry which is notoriously “sexually unconservative” and has a culture that’s more permissive when it comes to casual hookups.
So how much fucking do these idols actually do? Are any of them virgins?
Hahahahahahaha.
Hahaha.
Here’s Vice Magazine reporting on Seoul Fashion Week.
You always get the most revealing results about k-pop artists from media that doesn’t usually cover k-pop, because the groups are caught a little off-side by journalists who aren’t aware of standard procedure, and the media themselves don’t give everything the usual spin that is customary. Relevant part: from 11:14 to 13:14. Infinite are quite happy to talk candidly about the fact that they’re giving away the D like it’s a fire sale until Woolim Ent. PR reps come storming in and say “we can’t let them film this, quick – shut off the cameras before our precious Infinite reveal they are fucking Dal Shabet and AOA members in the back of the company SUV!”
With all this in mind, I decided to send through a request for some fanfic to “Kpop Scenarios” that would reflect the realities that I felt were lacking in this collection and thereby help rebalance the list in favour of the kind of gritty realism that I try to exemplify in my own writing:
We’ll see how we go. So far, I haven’t heard back. Sadly I don’t think the Tumblr is all that active anymore given that the last visible update is at the end of 2012 but here’s hoping that my requests sparks some more creativity! Wish me luck!
I admit that I just typed in the first reply that came into my head at the time, but later on, this post got me thinking. The fact that someone even bothered to take precious seconds out of their day to post this asspaper of a non-question shows to me that we’re living in an age where having more knowledge than somebody else is actually considered to be an insult. According to hip, trendy young folks (I’m assuming the person who typed this is young and very hip judging from cutting-edge jargon like “LOL” and their refusal to finish a sentence with proper punctuation because young people don’t have time for that in today’s fast-paced world), if you’re someone who “knows stuff” then somehow that’s “bad”, and you should just shut your fucking mouth so other people can be blissfully stupid and ignorant without your interference. How did society become this way? Surely it wasn’t always like this? Here’s one theory:
Does this theory apply to k-pop fans? To find out, I did what any rational person would do, and asked a bunch of them over at Onehallyu (the most active k-pop forum I can find these days that doesn’t suck advertiser penis). Here’s what I got in return:
Derp quota in k-pop fandoms as per the above theory sitting at just over a third. That’s alarmingly high, but perhaps no great surprise. Maybe we should be surprised that it isn’t even higher.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Of course, knowing that there is a high concentration of stupidity in k-pop fandoms is no great revelation – if it wasn’t the case, could a site like Anti Kpop-Fangirl even continue to exist? Therefore the question, as usual, is not “is there a problem?” but “what the fuck is anybody going to do about this?”.
Ah.
I’m sure you’ve all jerked it a few times to the MV for After School’s great new 70s-funk-inspired Japanese song “Heaven” by now. I know that as a Raina fan (if you disagree, good – I don’t need other k-pop fans cutting my lunch when she retires and is looking to settle down thanks) I certainly “appreciated” her bedroom scene:
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Not to mention the other bed scene with Nana and only the barest hint of faux lesbianism:
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Lizzy prowling around on the couch in short-shorts was also quite welcome:
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But the best thing about After School’s new video isn’t any of this stuff. It’s the fact that they’re making being smart sexy. This is exhibited partly in the welcome return of the pole-dancing, which is not just stripper-by-numbers but truly some next-level shit typical of the best After School comeback concepts:
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(If you don’t think this requires brain power, just fucking look at it – it’s like a jigsaw, only fuckable. Sure there’s only 8 pieces, but what pieces. If you think this is just for untalented sluts, get your stupid dumb skanky friends at school or college to try and emulate this and see how they go. Where I live there’s actually places where you can go and study and get a formal certification in this shit. Not even joking.)
But where After School really throw their cards on the table is the sexualisation of books. Heaven forbid I try to gently and politely suggest to anybody in the k-pop fandom that perhaps opening a book occasionally could be a good idea for them, it’s a pretty fucking uphill battle anywhere that k-pop fandoms hang out. Here’s me commenting on a Netizenbuzz article concerning netizens’ latest bee up their ass – “too many idols on too many variety shows“:
Just hope you’re never stuck in a broken lift and forced to make interesting conversation with any of the six people who downvoted that one. Even BoA578′s good-natured “lol” collected 4 downvotes, anyone would think that user told everyone to suck Hitler’s cock or something.
I clearly can’t make books interesting to k-pop fans all on my own. After School are making my job a lot easier though, by deploying some sexiness into the equation:
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If I knew that Raina’s “Basic Instinct” tease was waiting for me behind the desk of my library, I think I’d be asking to see my local reference section a lot more than I currently do. Who knows, I might even read something while I’m there. And watching Nana consult her vast library for a hard copy of “Aesthetics of Pole Dancing Volume 6a – Pectoral Enhancement For A Cups” should be enough to make anyone throw away their lame e-readers and build up a book collection in the hope that girls will notice.
Thanks to their efforts in restoring fap to libraries, maybe not all hope is lost. Don’t forget to do your part. Go to your local library today and bang the first hot person you see, or failing that just do what I do and make stupid posts on the Internet about how books are awesome and shit. Bookmarking this post and the new After School video for “later use” is also highly recommended.
(Massive debt once again to Comekpop who went way above the call of duty to bring you the fappable goodness)
I just got back from seeing 4Minute in Sydney and I’m fuckin’ tired. I’ll write a blog about that shit tomorrow. In the meantime I thought you’d enjoy my entry into the k-rap scene. I thought I’d download Big Sean’s “Control” beat and try some rap over it. Everyone else is doing it, so it must be a good idea, right?
Also, I will admit that I’ve been giving Korean netizens a bad rap lately. It’s awfully unfair of me. Therefore, in this song aside from addressing all my feelings about the latest controversy engulfing the Korean hip-hop scene, I also attempt to redress my negativity towards K-netz and list all the positive qualities of Korean netizens in an entertaining rap format. My version is called “Con, Troll” and I hope you enjoy it. I think there’s something in it for everyone.
The hardcore 4nias were already queueing up 5 hours before the event (I’ve blanked out identifiable faces because I’m a nice guy, but if you were there, you know who you are anyway), maybe even longer. I didn’t see the point of standing in a queue for half a day for a show that was standing room up the front anyway so I fucked off to do some eating and shopping, and to check out some of Sydney’s lesser-known “cultural artifacts”:
The puppeteer was making the skeleton dance and sing to PSY’s “Gangnam Style” – however I noticed the song was not the original, but the Hyuna “Oppa Is Just My Style” version. “Strange choice” I thought at the time… but it would all make sense later.
I turned up back at the venue at about ten minutes before doors-open time to find out that the doors had already been opened early (clearly the venue owners couldn’t be bothered managing the queue outside and felt it would just be easier to let people in to stand around in front of an empty stage instead). Happy about not having to queue up, I made my way up the stairs to the stage, and got instantly accosted by several young girls in the entrance way screaming “two for $5!!!!!” at me, all at once. After a brief moment of confusion I worked out they were talking not about themselves but the lightsticks they had on the table, which weren’t even official 4nia lightsticks but your cheap generic glowstick variety… sorry not interested. I wanted to save my money for the official 4Minute merchandise that I knew would be on sale, and maybe pick myself up an official 4minute shirt or stick or hula hoop or shamwow… oh wait, there wasn’t any, no merch at all. First fail of the night. Bemused by the venue organisers’ apparent lack of ability to milk the fans for every last dollar, I took a position near the front of the stage off to one side a bit, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long – as it was an all-ages show, the venue probably wanted to get things moving quickly.
Before 4Minute, we had the “special guest” denoted on the flyer.
I don’t know the DJ’s name, but he came on solo first and did a 10 minute set of pop mashups that included snippets of PSY’s “Gentleman”, 2NE1′s “I Am The Best”, Crayon Pop’s “Bar Bar Bar”, GD&TOP’s “High High” and a bunch of western pop songs nobody reading this gives a shit about. His mixing skills were pretty decent and he was also good in the performance aspect, visibly getting into it and even abandoning the decks completely to dance at one point, the only downside was the fucking annoying strobe lights in my face the whole time – why does every fucking gig these days have to have harsh strobes. Then he was joined by the rapper you see on the left, who is a Korean-born rapper raised in New Zealand called The Chinga Style aka M.C. YoYo aka Newko aka whatever his mother called him when he slid out of the vag. I couldn’t find any fancams of him at this show so here’s one of his songs from his own YouTube:
I’m in no position to judge his Korean rapping ability as I can’t speak it, but I can tell you that he did a pretty good job of keeping people excited at the show, his tunes were at worst acceptable, and even better, the sound quality was actually decent too. Too many times I’ve been to rap shows and the vocals are mixed way too high compared to the backings and it sounds like anus – not here, the mixing was in fact really good and the only time the sound faltered was when he cupped his microphone the wrong way like a noob and generated a bit of feedback like so many rappers do (I’ll cover this in another blog one day).
Best of all, he didn’t overstay his welcome, he knew we weren’t there to see him and fortunately he respected that – an all-too-rare quality in opening acts. Bless him. About 5 songs and he was gone, and then we only had a few minutes wait and a (very) short introduction video before 4Minute came onto the stage and blinded everyone with more fucking strobe lights while people predictably went apeshit:
If you’re annoyed because you can’t see anything in this picture, don’t worry, neither could I and I was there.
As you would expect, 4Minute started their set with their horrid new songs “What’s Your Name?” and “Is It Poppin’?”, and diligently began shakin’ dat ass:
The new songs actually went across pretty well live, because those annoying computer fart noises tend to get a bit lost in the ambience of the venue, and the screams from fangirls drowned them out too. The fans also drowned out a lot of the rest of the music too, but oh well. Now I know how all those Beatles fans felt in the 60s who just wanted to hear the fucking show.
Then, the group went through a few of their better older songs, including a couple of their written-while-taking-a-shit ballads, which was good because both the girls and the lighting were still for that so it allowed me to get some clearer photos:
I didn’t time it, but if I’ve got one big criticism of the show, it was that it was just way, way too fucking short. Their set was easily under an hour, in fact it felt like it barely scraped 45 minutes. Of course, they came back for an encore, but they may as well not have bothered, because they just played “What’s Your Name?” and “Hot Issue” again – two songs that they’d already done in the main set (what’s with k-pop and the stupid repetitive encores?). And that was it – $139 plus booking fee thank you very much. And it’s not like they didn’t have the material to go longer if they wanted – there’s no reason why they couldn’t have thrown in some album tracks, or a Hyuna solo or a 2Yoon song to mix things up a bit and give the other girls a break, and they didn’t even do “Volume Up”.
Their live singing is fine, the fancams don’t convey it but the reason why sometimes vocals don’t come out clearly for some singers has more to do with mixing and microphone technique rather than singing and vocal technique. They’re also really good performers when it comes to encouraging audience participation and engaging with the crowd. Believe it or not it’s actually their live dancing that sucks. They may as well not have bothered with most of the routines, it’s not like any more than the front row would have been able to see what was going on anyway – but there wasn’t much to see.
I’m convinced that the puppeteer in the Chinatown mall picked the skeleton to represent Hyuna because he’s concerned about her health, I think it was some kind of social statement. Her face looked gaunt and bony as fuck, it was actually a little bit frightening when she got close enough for me to see her face in detail. I don’t know if it’s weight loss, surgery or just too much BB Cream in the wrong places but in any case it wasn’t a good look.
Speaking of which, all the girls were careful to do that “break from the routine to wave and smile at a random audience member so they get to go away saying OMG SHE LOOKED RIGHT AT ME” thing that I’ve heard so much about and which seems to be standard practice in k-pop. I had Jihyun and Sohyun look right at me at various points and smile and wave like they had just seen an old friend they hadn’t seen in 6 months but the obvious emotional manipulation of it felt distasteful and each time my knee-jerk reaction was “don’t stare at what you can’t afford, girls” and I just raised my eyebrows at them a bit. Neither of them tried that shit a second time on me.
“Heart To Heart” was the best song and the highlight of the night, the chorus was a bit screechy (although perhaps that was the fangirls’ screechy audience participation blending in with the actual vocals) but it still came off best. The remix of “Huh” (rejigged into some sort of techno thing) was also decent. Worst song was probably “Hot Issue” simply because most of the details of the song were a bit lost in the mix, turning it into a melody/harmony-less chant fest. Other songs mostly came off pretty good.
Am I glad I went? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Yes, but maybe not as much as I should have given what I paid for it. Would I go again? No, not for that price – unless they were billed with some other stuff I also wanted to see, or the promoters promised a much longer running time, at least double what I experienced that night.
5.5 kangaroo scrotums out of 10.
(and don’t ask me why it was called “Party Rock”, I have no fucking idea, that shit was never explained)
A few people have asked me over the last few weeks if I had any thoughts about the SM/Woollim merger. If you’re one of those three people, this post is for you. If not, I’ll try and make it entertaining enough that you don’t fall asleep while reading it, although if you feel the need to slice open the veins on your forearm and pour caffeine directly into the gaping wound just to keep your eyes open during this shit, I won’t blame you. I certainly melted down and mainlined a bunch of Cadburys just to write this.
I’ll start by mentioning that k-pop fans love telling both idols and record labels how to run their shit. This is truly fuckin’ hilarious to me, and I’ll never fully understand why they bother. I guess these people go on forums and articles just for stroking their own egos and feeling reinforcement of their pre-existing opinions rather than for actually learning any fresh information (besides what colour their bias painted their toenails this week) or, heaven fucking forbid, improving their mental processes. When complex and nuanced issues like industry mergers, lineup changes, lawsuits etc come up, you’ve got masses of extremely derpy and unqualified people who mostly don’t even fucking know what half the shit entails telling people with decades of experience in the music business that “it will all be okay as long as everyone involved does what I say they should do”. You can’t possibly imagine how much of a joke these people look like to someone actually in the industry.
Of course, point this out to them, and the advice goes down quicker than a Sacha Grey audition tape:
That’s my reply to a question thread in Onehallyu, and the red box contains my downvotes. Collecting more than a couple downvotes for a single comment on Onehallyu is actually quite tricky unless you’re a completely obvious troll, so I’m impressed that I managed to achieve this result with nothing more than my sincere and honest opinion.
The reason why I bring this up (besides that it obviously amuses me to do so because I’m a cunt) is to explain why I’m not tackling the issue of the SM/Woollim merger from the angle of “do I think it’s a good idea”, or “did SM do the right thing” or even “did Woollim do the right thing”. I’m not on the inside of the situation so I don’t know how things played out, so if I started casting judgement and saying “company [x] should [y] because I KNOW WHAT’S BEST” this would make me as stupid as the derps who “knew” that T-ara were bullies and that Tablo got his degree from Kinkos. What I can do however, is tell you how mergers like this do typically play out in the industry, and put you in the shoes of someone who would actually say yes to a merger to help you understand some of the factors that may influence the decision, and I’m going to do it with one of my quasi-fanfiction “scenarios”. You love my scenarios, yes you do.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
So “chin up”, everyone,and picture this:
You’re a moderately-successful Korean male singer in your 30s. You’re conscious that you’re actually pretty close to JYP’s age, and while you’re not as ugly as him yet, you know that it’s only a matter of time, and there’s only so much surgeons can do. You’re certainly no dummy – in an industry dominated by appearances and image, you know that even with the help of the best clinics in Gangnam, your days in the limelight are numbered in triple digits at best.
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It’s okay though, you’re not bitter. By any objective standards, you’ve had a good run while it lasted. In an industry where most stars vanish almost as quickly as they appear, you’ve managed to sustain a career for over a decade – no small feat. However, most of your money went back into the company who had signed you up and you don’t have much to show for it all financially. Looking at the situation gets you thinking about your future: wouldn’t it be a lot nicer to be the person on the other end of that contract, collecting the money and deciding where it goes, rather than just getting piecemeal sums for all your efforts? With this thought in mind you take out loans from some sympathetic investors, start your own k-pop label “Open Goatse Entertainment” and begin scouting for some hot new talent to groom.
Three years go by, and you’ve got yourself and your staff at OG Entertainment a nice office, a recording studio, a dorm and a place to rehearse your new groups. You’ve also gotten yourself heavily into debt because you had to take out multiple loans for all this shit from friends, parents, banks and everywhere else you can think of, and you haven’t started actually making money because your groups haven’t even debuted yet. Most of your staff are working without a wage and have second jobs just to make rent, but you’re confident in the abilities of your new boy group CUMRAG (Choreographed Underaged Males Reawakening Antipathetic Girls) to bring in the revenue once they debut – they’re pretty tight musically and they’re certainly hits with the ladies in the office who assure you that they “have lots of potential, especially that one, what’s his number I lost it out of my phone”. You’ve also groomed up girl group SPUNKMOP (Symbolic Prostitution Usurping Naive Korean Men Of Paychecks) but you’re not sure how well they’ll do – you mainly just started them up because it makes your label’s portfolio look more “rounded” to also have a girl group, and you figure it’s better to have girls in the building than to not have girls in the building. After all what’s the point of being a label boss if you can’t be around pretty girls? Also it’s good to have people around who can do guest spots on the boy group’s ballads that you don’t have to pay extra for.
Debut time for CUMRAG rolls around, and the pressure mounts. Two thousand physical copies of their debut mini-album THIS IS CUMRAG are pressed and printed, and spots are booked on all the major music shows for the group to perform. You and all your staff cross their fingers and hope that feature track “Romantic Towel” does the business…
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Then something absolutely fucking terrible happens. The group becomes a massive monster hit.
The group is received enormously well, far beyond your expectations. THIS IS CUMRAG sells out its initial physical run in less than two days. There’s demand to make more, but you can’t afford it right away – you’ve already taken out your umpteenth fucking loan just to get this far, and shovelling the meager amount of money from the first pressing and the first few digital sales straight back into the expenses of more product production is the very last thing you wanted to do with the money when you’ve got masses of debt plus unpaid staff who’ve been working for you diligently for years in the hope of a payoff… but what choice do you have? Also, now there’s a demand for merchandise that you’d be crazy not to fulfill… so you hire a company to make up posters and other crap, once again with borrowed money. To make matters worse, the first cray-cray fangirls have tracked down your company and are starting to saesang their oppas and slide their menstrual pads under the dorm doors… you’ll need to rethink building security, you weren’t prepared for this bullshit. Catering to all this sudden success before you’re financially ready is ironically actually threatening to bankrupt you completely – why couldn’t the group have gotten successful gradually?
Fortunately for you, as the success of CUMRAG has gone national, the banks don’t mind throwing more money at you, knowing that they’re going to get it all back eventually (plus interest)… but each turn from the group just generates more success, which means more loans to pay for it, just when you thought the loans were ending. Follow-up album “FEEL OUR CUMRAG” with its smooth feature track “Absorbing Our Love” sells out of its initial run of 10,000 physical units even quicker than the debut album, and every dollar you spend generates another ten dollars worth of demand, but to fulfill this demand, you need to spend more money and more time on continually expanding the business. On top of this, everything around organising this shit is becoming far more work than you ever anticipated. You have to oversee not just music production, artist training, choreographers, stylists, media liaison, schedules, manufacturing deals, distribution deals and video product, but also rent, cleaners, coffee machine filter changes, office supplies, vehicles, bills, plumbing, workplace arguments and whoever keeps stealing the milk from the fridge. Whatever happened to just sitting back and collecting the money like you had planned? It didn’t seem this hard for your boss back when it was you who was the singer. Due to all this you’ve been pulling 22-hour days for weeks straight and your partner has become a stranger, you barely see her and she’s also getting a bit fed up with you bringing work home. She tells you one day only semi-jokingly that she may as well move out and take the kids and you don’t even have time to talk about it with her because you have to field CUMRAG’s love calls from sponsors after they were just on some shitty variety show that you can’t remember the name of because the office phone is diverting to your mobile after hours. Meanwhile, your girl group SPUNKMOP has been languishing doing very little, simply because you haven’t have the time to spend with them or the infrastructure to support them, your still-tiny label has had to devote just about every scrap of available energy and manpower to maintaining CUMRAG, so they’re on the backburner for now, and they don’t mind telling your staff exactly how they feel about it. A dorm full of broke and pissed-off girls jealously eyeing off their labelmates’ success and pestering you about “their turn” is the absolute last thing you need right now on top of all this other shit.
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Then one day, you receive a phone call from a much larger rival company, HappyEnding Entertainment. They say that they like CUMRAG and want to discuss a mutually beneficial business deal. Intrigued, you arrange a meeting.
In the boardroom, the guys from HE Entertainment are adamant -”HappyEnding needs a CUMRAG, and we’d like to use yours.”
“But what about my Open Goatse?”, you ask.
“We realise that your artist is becoming a relevant market force and we’d be willing to buy out Open Goatse completely. We’d rather work with the market strength of CUMRAG rather than compete against it.”
You object “I want creative control over my artist, I refuse to give them up, I didn’t put in all this work for you to just take CUMRAG and make them just like your other acts. No offense but they probably did so well partly because they are a little bit different. Nobody at HappyEnding would take a chance on a feature track like ‘Romantic Towel!’”
“You would relinquish the CEO position but you would still be in charge of CUMRAG, in a management oversight role, with a generous performance-based salary. Open Goatse would still exist but as an “imprint”, your own “brand” within HappyEnding, if you will, to release these acts and any future ones that you recruit. You would take care of all the decisions concerning the releases of those artists, essentially nothing would change for you in the creative area, you would maintain full creative control. You would also have the benefit that you can now use our existing well-established infrastructure to promote and make product, as well as having your artists become featured on our touring circuits and events. Using our infrastructure also means that a lot of the more boring jobs will become stuff that you won’t need to think about anymore, because we already have people for that. You can concentrate your energy on the things that matter to you most – grooming and directing your artists, and lightening the load might help you devote more energy to SPUNKMOP.”
“I’ll… have to think about it”
“Oh, and if you’ve accumulated any debts in your business processes thus far, we’ll pay those off in full, on top of whatever price we mutually negotiate for the sale of your label.”
“Look, it sounds great, but I need to talk to my lawyer first…”
“And you can move your artists into our nice new dormitories where we have a specially-trained anti-saesang security detail that beats unsanitary trespassing fangirls to a pulp”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
You reach for a pen to sign that contract so fast that you nearly bore a hole right through your fucking hand.
Anyway I hope this explains mergers somewhat, although I did gloss over a few things and focus on others instead for the sake of entertainment, because some details just aren’t that interesting to read about. If you’ve got questions, or you feel like I’ve left anything out that you’re curious about, feel free to ask.
By popular demand, I’m streaming again this weekend!
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As per last time, I’m going to stream twice, 12 hours apart. This is for accommodate people in different timezones, because we’re not all Californian beach girls now, are we.
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The stream times:
Adelaide, Australia (my time): Sunday 15th September @ 9:30 AM and then again at 9:30 PM
USA PST (beach bunny time/Anti Kpop-Fangirl time): Saturday 14th September @ 5:00 PM and then again Sunday 15th September at 5:00AM
Greenwich GMT (proper time for proper folks): Saturday 14th September @ Midnight and then again Sunday 15th September at Midday
People in other countries should be able to calculate the stream times from these.
Note that the first stream time is two hours earlier than AKFG Zaku’s usual stream start time, and I’ll end my stream at 5PM PST which is when he always starts his stream like clockwork. This is because I respect Zaku’s commitment to reliable weekly streaming, and I don’t want to mess with his schedule. In the extremely unlikely event that Zaku does not stream for whatever reason (earthquake, nuclear/zombie apocalypse, surprise candlelit dinner date with Bom, or other extremely important reason) I will continue streaming. scratch all that, Bom obviously liked the ring Zaku bought her, so the first of the two streams is at Zaku’s usual time.
The second stream time doesn’t coincide with anything in particular apart from me having to go to work the next day, so it will go for as long as I feel like it.
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Be aware that while anybody can view the stream, you will need a justin.tv account to participate in the chat and ask questions (unless you’re comfortable with using your real name in which case the stream has a “log in via Facebook” option – but I don’t recommend it). You may wish to prepare an account in advance at the justin.tv website.
What the stream basically entails is me sitting on front of a webcam and answering whatever questions you guys can think up and type into a text bar (plus my Internet connection failing every so often because I live in Australia where the Internet is shit and will remain shit for at least the next three years, thanks Tony Abbott, but if I drop out, be patient – dropouts don’t last for more than a few minutes, I’ll come back). I don’t mind answering basic shit like “what is your bias in group x” but you can ask anyone that. Things that may help you ask something that might generate a bit more entertainment and value for your time:
* I’m a music teacher, and an audio engineer. There isn’t a lot about music and sound that I don’t know.
* I’ve also been in various musical groups and have been on tours, have dealt with record labels etc. – lots of business experience, plus plenty of experience dealing with the politics of working with other musicians oh golly gee gosh how could this be relevant to k-pop I wonder.
* I’m also a k-pop DJ and because of this I have a lot of physical k-pop stuff. Maybe I have something of your bias that you don’t have? Ask me to show you.
* I saw 4Minute live in Sydney recently.
* Feel free to look up my ask.fm account to get a feel for the sort of questions that might generate interesting dialogue.
BE THERE. BECAUSE I LOVE YOU LIKE CRAYON POP LOVES TRACKPANTS. Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
We all know about the Piggy Dolls comeback, yeah? If not, you can read up about it here.
Quick recap for those who haven’t been following this: three girls were in a group called Piggy Dolls that debuted a couple of years back and they were kinda chubby, then they came back and became somewhat less chubby… and then they came back again recently but this time it was actually three completely different girls using the same name who were typical-kpop-skinny, thus defeating the purpose of the original Piggy Dolls concept. Great, now we’re all up to speed.
When this happened, I did my best to get a brief snapshot about how the k-pop community felt about this. The response from YouTube, various articles and forums was fairly expected and mostly the same – naturally, the notoriously whiny “vocal talent is everything omg” crowd were horrified that clearly superior singers were replaced with some averagely-voiced but prettier girls:
1. Yes, I do agree that using the same name for a different bunch of girls to the last lot is kind of odd. I would think that in fact would be odd in any case no matter what the group was, if a complete member-swap was done. Imagine your favourite k-pop group comes back and it’s a completely different bunch of people – no matter the artist, you’d be weirded out. Most k-pop fans cry a river of tears when just ONE member changes.
2. Yes, I do think that the name “Piggy Dolls” doesn’t really have a lot of meaning when applied to some typically super-skinny k-pop girls like that new lot they threw in there. Standing up for equal representation of different body types, helping girls with low self-esteem… yeah, I get it.
3. Yes, the old girls are probably better singers.
4. Back in “Trend/Piggy Style” days I totally would have Piggystyled that girl with the red hair, who was at that stage fairly curvy and in my opinion looking far sexier than later on when their album came out, and also far sexier than about 99% of other k-pop girls in general for that matter. That’s actually not really relevant to any point I’m about to make, I’m just putting it out there just in case some of you reading this right now look a bit like her and aren’t doing anything much this weekend.
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Girl on the right, 10/10 – would pig.
BUT BEFORE WE TAKE UP OUR PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES WITH THE VOCALFAG CROWD AND GO TO BURN DOWN THE BUILDING OF WHOEVER WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THIS FUCKING SHIT, LET’S HANG ON JUST A FUCKIN’ MINUTE HERE, CUNTS.
What does a YouTube search of Piggy Dolls reveal? Here’s the top three matches:
The first MV hit for their earliest song “Trend” doesn’t even have 10,000 views yet. Their album feature track that came out later with the girls noticeably slimmed down, “Know Her”, did substantially better and has nearly 60,000 views – but it took two years to get there, which isn’t that impressive, a video of your friend lighting his farts with a cigarette lighter posted at the same time probably would have more views than that by now. In the meantime, the new song with the all-new skinnier girls has just over 40,000 hits in ONE WEEK.
I wonder what k-pop fans who were supposedly in love with Piggy Dolls and their “amazing vocals” were doing? Not checking out the girls on YouTube, obviously. Maybe they didn’t need to because they’d already purchased the music and had supported these wonderful talented girls that way? I thought I’d take to the forums and ask the question that it hadn’t occurred to anybody else to ask:
Well, that’s a fairly resounding “no we didn’t buy this shit, are you serious?”.
However, do you know who DID buy their stuff? ME, that’s fuckin’ who.
When I went to Sydney in May 2012 I saw it in the Sydney Media Asia store, the biggest and cheapest k-pop store in that city that stocks official albums. It was $22 (a typical new release album price for Australia), and I thought “wow, that’s a bit steep, might pass on that because I would rather save my money for the T-ara Fleshlight”, so I didn’t buy it at the time. I returned to the same store in February 2013 and saw the SAME ALBUM, and it was $10, and it also had a “buy 2, get 1 free” sticker on it. I thought that was a good deal but I couldn’t find two other k-pop albums with the same sticker on it that I also wanted (you know how these pricks are, they only put them on the crap nobody wants), so I passed on it again. I returned to the same store in September this year and THERE IT WAS AGAIN FOR $5, and the “buy 2 get 1 free” had been changed to “buy 1 get 1 free”, which basically means in real terms it’s costing me $2.50. “Wow, they really must want to get rid of this shit” I thought, so I picked it up for curiosity’s sake along with a Seo In Young album.
To prove it, here’s my personal copy, still in the wrapping, with the price stickers intact.
I’ll show you this on my stream if you like. If you look closely, you can see that there’s actually three price stickers layered on top of each other, they just stuck the new lower price on top of the old higher one. Here’s a closer look:
In Media Asia, when you buy a k-pop album, if they have any left over in their stash behind the counter they don’t give you the one off the shelf, instead they give you one from the stash and put the display copy back up. In this case, the guy behind the counter just let me keep the copy in my hand, which means it was the LAST ONE… that they had been trying to get rid of for AT LEAST A YEAR AND A HALF.
Sydney currently has a population of over 4.5 million people, and NOT ONE of them thought it fit to add a single Piggy Dolls album to their collection even when it was priced at aboutthe same value a bag of corn chips. No wonder the company completely swapped out the lineup – you cunts weren’t fuckin’ buying it! Yeah it was a dick move, not to mention pretty naive of them to think it would be received well, but what the fuck did you expect… for them to keep these girls on who make no money because “they’re so talented like omg” and they get a few positive Internet comments here and there? Get fucked and shove your stupid moralising about how talent doesn’t matter anymore up your ass, because in the real world of the music business, it means nothing. If you want your favourite musical artists to succeed, guess what – you’ve got to do more than start “vocal threads” on the Internet and post comments about how horrified you are about how superficial everything is, you’ve actually also got to spend some fucking money, cunt.
So where are these fans of extraordinary vocal performances, who love the old Piggy Dolls, where are THEY at? My conclusion, and I think this is a very fucking reasonable conclusion to come to, is that they don’t fucking exist at all. It’s the same old story – Koreaboo fans around the world want more than anything else to be like fans in Korea, so when they see Korean fans whining about “vocal talent”, they also whine about “vocal talent” whenever they get the chance, just to be trendy and cool, but that whining of course doesn’t actually translate into anything real, because in their heart of hearts they don’t even believe their own bullshit but are just saying it because that’s what Koreans say. I bet they didn’t buy the latest Susan Boyle album either – now there’s someone trading on vocal talent, cynicism about the looks-based music industry and literally nothing else (certainly not good songs, that’s for sure).
For a while now, a horrible cancer has been infecting the world of k-pop – the obsession with “talent”. I put “talent” in inverted commas because when people talk about “talent” in k-pop in either a positive or negative sense, they usually only ever talk about one thing, which is singing ability. They tend to ignore other talents that actually matter a lot more for career advancement and industry success in the world of ultra-commercial idol pop, such as:
Looking good on stage
Dancing (sometimes also factored in when people discuss “talent” – but rarely)
Looking good on TV
Stage presence
Looking good in front of still cameras (i.e modelling)
Behind-the-scenes talent that supports your talent (songwriters, producers, stylists, choreographers)
Looking good at all times
It also helps if you are attractive.
The obsession about vocal performance always seems odd to me when we’re talking about the idol pop genre, a genre of music where the #1 most successful female idol group of all time was The Spice Girls and the most successful solo singers of all time in their respective genders were Elvis Presley and Madonna. I thought it would have been fairly obvious to anybody with their eyes even half-open that outstanding vocal performance was kind of an optional requirement at most. In this context it’s easy to see why k-pop companies don’t bother to train their artists too hard in vocal performance, they’ve sensibly worked out through market research that it’s not something that’s really needed.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop a bunch of armchair douchebags obsessing about vocal quality anyway, and one of the favourite tools that they use to pick apart vocal performance is the “MR removed” mix. This mix is created by ripping out all the backing track with audio editing software, so you can just hear (and snidely judge as if your opinion is in any way relevant) the vocals on their own. OMG THE TRUTH IS REVEALED, AMIRITE?
Well, not exactly. The problem with this is that the results are typically not indicative of the true vocal performance, or anything else for that matter, except how much time some bored Starcraft player has to fuck around with sound waveforms and make them sound like you’re listening to your neighbour’s TV set from inside a toilet bowl.
(Wow, the cheek of the video uploader labeling this “official MR removed” – tsk tsk. Who wants to notify LOEN and shut his/her YouTube account down? Actually, don’t, because then it’ll break this blog post and I’ll have to get MR removed videos from somewhere else, too much hassle, heh.)
So what’s the problem?
To understand why MR removed videos are essentially completely fucking useless as a tool to evaluate singers, we firstly need to understand how the software that removes backing tracks works. The rest of this blog post is going to get a bit fucking technical, but there’s really no way this can be avoided. I’ll do my best to explain this all in language that any 11-year old EXO fan can understand.
There are two techniques that are used to create an “MR removed” mix, and we’ll discuss them (and the associated problems) separately.
1. PHASE CANCELLATION
All sound is the vibration of molecules. When a sound is generated from a singer, the vibration of the singer’s vocal cords from side to side vibrates nearby air molecules which also start going from side to side. These molecules bumpity-bumpity onto other air molecules until they eventually get to your ear, where they bumpity onto the hairs in your ear that then also start going from side to side. Because your brain is ultra-clevery-smart and stuff, it then converts those hair movements into brainwaves and that’s how you hear “ULF NEGA ULF AWOOOOOOOO”.
We can chart molecular motion of sound onto a graph, like this:
The horizontal axis is time (in fractions of a second), and the vertical axis is amplitude. From the center 0.0, the molecule moves up, and then down, up and down…
As you can see, the second waveform we’ve now added below goes up where the first one goes down, and vice versa, just like I would if I was lying down on that stage while Eunjung bopped up and down over my lap. The second signal is what is called an “out of phase” signal, as the wave motion is considered to be 180 degrees different or “out of phase” to the original wave motion, so in other words a total opposite, like how the 180 degree point is on the opposite end of the zero degree point of a protractor.
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In this case, the two waveforms, being opposites, would mathematically cancel each other out, and if you played them both as they are displayed here, you wouldn’t hear any sound at all – even though the sound is still being generated, it’s being generated in equal-but-opposite directions. This effect is known as “phase cancellation”. This is how active noise-cancelling headphones work, and it also part of how cancellation in “MR removed” MVs works.
So let’s apply this to k-pop. Say you’ve got a live recording of Dal Shabet’s new song “Molest Me On The Subway, Oppa”.
Let’s also say that because you’re a big fan, you’ve also got the studio version.
Since you know that the group just sings along to the studio recording on the live stage, by combining the two as above, lining them up just right, and then inverting the waveform so that the studio version is out of phase, the studio version’s audio should cancel out the waveforms on the studio recording that they’re singing along with, just leaving the “difference”, which is the live vocals and any cheering, right?
Wrong – as you can hear. There’s all sorts of weird crusty shit in the mix, for a start – yes the main audio track is cancelled, but the reproduction of it in the TV studio has a different ambience which changes the sound slightly, and those differences can still be heard, including not just the effect of whatever speaker system they’re using in the studio, but also any reflections of sound that are bouncing off the back walls and back into the microphones. Also, half the vocals are actually missing - what’s with that? Is it because the girls are so busy dreaming of all the clit-rubbing action they’re going to get next time the take the subway that they just chose not to sing some of the syllables? Not likely (sadly). The problem with phase cancellation is that it acts across the whole mix, not just the bits you want it to act on, so if you’re singing along to the vocals on the backing track, then every time the waveform of your voice becomes equal-but-opposite to the out-of-phase waveform of your voice used by some Starcraft nerd to perform the cancellation, your voice gets cancelled out as well. Oops. Paradoxically, the more true to the original recording your vocal performance is, the more likely this will happen and the phase-cancelling software will cancel a big chunk of your voice out almost completely. So when you’re hearing an “MR removed” mix, and the voice is kind of fading in and out and it sounds really weak, that could be because that person is singing really poorly, or it could be because they are singing a little bit too well, because it’s so close to like what’s on the recording that a large chunk of it is being cancelled – which is of course exactly what they’re trying to do. Unless you’re actually in the studio controlling those levels, there’s no true way of knowing which one of these possibilities is true.
If backing tracks don’t actually contain the voice itself, then this isn’t a problem, and the phase cancellation works a lot better. However, if the backing tracks don’t contain the voice itself you don’t exactly need an MR removed version anyway, for obvious reasons – you already can hear the vocal.
Let’s move onto our second useless technique that doesn’t work all that well for removing backing tracks from vocals, so we can understand why it also sucks:
2. STEREO BANDPASS FILTERING
Sometimes, you just ain’t got a studio version. Maybe it doesn’t exist, because it’s a one-off never-to-be-repeated live performance of some song that this artist doesn’t normally do. On the other hand maybe it does exist but you don’t have access to it because you’re anti this artist and you wouldn’t buy their stuff, you just want to make an MR mix to prove to the rest of the world why they shouldn’t buy it either, in the vain and futile hope that this will actually affect the artist’s bottom line, because you suck and should be destroyed. Or perhaps you’ve already done the phase cancellation but there’s still a crapload of noise in the background and you want to get rid of more of it so your pristine vocal track shines through so you can hear how shit it is.
Now, common conventional audio mixing wisdom dictates that both vocals and instruments in an audio mix need “room”, which means you’ve got to find somewhere in the audio field to put them, otherwise you can’t hear everything clearly. Let’s look a visual representation of an audio field.
Now let’s separate our field into areas, so we know what we’re dealing with. The vertical axis of our field is the “frequency field”, which means the pitch of our instruments and voices. High sounding things go up the top, low sounding things down the bottom.
Now let’s add stereo. We’ll conceptualise our sound as being either in the center of the stereo field (coming out equally through both speakers) or it will be panned either “hard left” or “hard right”, and we’ll use the horizontal axis to represent this.
Now, when someone mixes a pop hit what they’re attempting to do is fill up all the boxes with “stuff” so they get a nice full-sounding mix, but without anything overlapping. If there are too many things in the one box, they tend to compete for space, so the aim is for a reasonably even distribution of sounds.
A typical result of elements that you might hear in a pop mix:
Dead center is almost always where the main vocal track sits. Seeing as how we want to isolate vocals and hear them on their own, if we apply a filter, we can filter out the deep stuff and the high stuff (thus leaving a “band” of audio in the middle hence “bandpass” because we let that bit “pass” through and block the rest), and we can also filter out the stuff at the left and right edges of the mix. This should just leave us with the vocal, right?
Well, yes…actually it works great. Check this original and then the MR removed version:
But whoever made that video wasted their time, because with a recording like that, you don’t need the MR removed version anyway – there’s no studio version with a vocal backing track for Ailee to sing over the top of, therefore no reason to separate the parts. Whoever made this is just having a “look how good I can make an MR removed video sound” wank.
If we’re talking about the more typical k-pop scenario of a singer singing over a backing track that includes their own voice, then we’re straight back into shit-filled toilet bowl territory again, because there’s no way that bandpass filtering can tell the difference between the studio vocal track and the live one that’s been plopped over the top. Most MR removed videos therefore have to use a combination of stereo bandpass filtering and phase cancellation to bring you a result, which in turn butchers all the audio, including the stuff that you’re actually there to listen to:
You can hear the guitars and the snare drum bleeding through quite strongly – because these instruments are operating on a similar frequency range and stereo location to Lee Hi’s voice. Other instruments you can’t hear at all, they’re outside the filter range. However, what you also can’t hear is half of Lee Hi’s actual vocal performance, and what is there sounds like a bunch of warbly crap because half of what actually makes her sound decent has been ripped out along with all the other stuff. If you didn’t know who she was you could well be forgiven for thinking that she’s no better or worse at singing than anyone in Dal Shabet.
Here’s Ailee again, singing to a backing track of her own voice this time and you’ll notice half her voice is actually gone, from 0:40 the audio is a shitfest and she’s dropping in volume everywhere;
What a mess, right? Forgetting the fact that this is Ailee who we do actually know is a slightly above average by western standards but nothing to write home about good singer, if you didn’t know the song or the singer and closed your eyes and heard this for the first time, you’d think “whoever the fuck that is, they can barely sing, her volume is all over the place and she sounds strained… she must have nice ‘talents’ to get this far in the industry”. So the only reason why you know that this performance didn’t suck is because it’s Ailee and you already know that she can sing, not because the MR removed track actually “revealed” anything whatsoever, because if you were judging it on that alone you’d wonder why she lost her voice halfway through the first verse. In this way it’s easy to see how MR removed videos have just become a tool for either praising your bias to the skies or bashing whoever it is you don’t like (I could easily make an argument for either based on the Ailee video above), and reveal basically nothing of insight.
I hope this blog post has demonstrated to you how MR removed gadgetry doesn’t actually do the job it’s supposed to. Having said all that, even if it did work, you’d still be an idiot to evaluate someone’s vocals that way, for one very obvious reason – why should the way you are not hearing the performance in a live setting take primacy over they way you are hearing the performance in a live setting? Or to put it another way, if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it, are you a cunt for wanting to know the frequency of the sound it made when it fell over and killed a bunch of animals fucking?
Let’s be honest – there’s no such thing as someone who is anti-pornography. We all love porn, and those who are the most vocal about hating it are always the ones who secretly love it the most. Not only is porn fun and interesting, but observing how a society treats both its pornography industry and people who watch porn is a good litmus test of how much a supposedly free society truly values its freedoms once you remove the hype. The right to fap over media representations of other people doing kinky shit is something worth fighting for. Just look at the majorly sexually frustrated expression on this guy’s face – he understands the necessity of something that people in developed countries take for granted in this easy-access Internet age, and he probably hasn’t fapped over a nice pair of boobies in a while.
I’m glad that’s settled, then. Now that both of you who are anti-porn have stopped reading, let’s look at some of the k-pop groups who have discussed their porn use to determine who are the most dedicated to the noble art of fap, so we can give them our full appreciation and support.
SUPER JUNIOR
Relevant part starts from 4:25.
Eunhyuk gets busted watching porn and comes up with a lame excuse, and no-one else in the group wants to admit that they fap on the regular either, clumsily deflecting the interview team’s very direct questions. Stopped watching porn in grade 9? More like started – come on guys. These are not the people to lead our porn revolution – very poor form. Porn advocacy rating – 2/10.
ORANGE CARAMEL/AFTER SCHOOL
Most of you will know about Lizzy’s copious porn-watching habits as well as her extremely crappy “for research” justification which was along the lines of watching tons of adult films so she could learn how to act sexy for After School’s Flashback comeback. Never mind that Lizzy actually looks sexier in a fucking daggy stretchy jumper than in any OC or AS concept so far…
What got significantly less publicity was Nana’s interview on a TV show where she admitted going into an adult bookstore in Japan. However she insisted that the store wasn’t just for adult books, but just had an adult section that was curtained off that she didn’t go into. In what I’m only guessing is a sledgehammer Pledis damage-control move the video itself has been mercilessly scrubbed off every last corner of the Internet, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this happened, and watch this video instead and imagine Nana in the same scenes:
It’s a real shame I can’t find it because the look on Jungah’s face while Nana is admitting this is priceless and along the lines of “SHUT UP GIRL ARE YOU TRYING TO TRASH OUR CAREERS OR WHAT?!?”. Anyway, fuck lame excuses, just fess up, Nana and Lizzy. Porn advocacy rating – 2/10 for After School, 3/10 for Orange Caramel given OC has the higher percentage of porn-watchers.
MBLAQ
G.O. from MBLAQ apparently has a separate laptop dedicated just to pornography – clearly the sign of a true porn die-hard as any true porn freak will tell you that portable storage is all about being able to easily hide it when the girlfriend/parents/employers/police come. Of course, he didn’t actually admit that himself but had to get ratted out by groupmate Lee Joon, and he then returned the favour and talked about Lee Joon wanting porn on his MP3 player. One good turn deserves another I guess, but ultimately still a bit chickenshit in a bucket crab kind of way. Porn advocacy rating – 3.5/10.
SHINEE
This video of a radio interview has lots of shaming going on and a palpable sense of tension, I bet Taemin delivered some payback once those radio microphones went off. The video gets cut out before Taemin gets to either justify himself, deliver some lame excuse or go “so what” on air, but since it was edited out I’m going to assume that he didn’t do anything except grin insipidly and leave the rest to our imaginations – which is not what porn is about. I am disappoint. Porn advocacy rating – 3.5/10.
BIGBANG
The sun rises in the east, and Seungri likes porn. No surprise there. The “baseball” reference is because “baseball matches” and “porn” sounds similar in Korean. Once again it’s a pity G-Dragon had to rat him out and he couldn’t fess up himself but at least Seungri took it on the chin (much like the blonde girls in the videos on the laptop no doubt) and didn’t say to GD “but I only downloaded them because you asked me to”. Porn advocacy rating – 4/10.
DBSK/TVXQ
I couldn’t find a convincing source other than shady unsourced trivia lists and horrid fanfiction for rumours that Yunho was busted by his mother watching porn and convinced her it was for “an assignment”. However Changmin really came to the party on this one in the above video, he not only admits to watching porn just like “99.9% of people on Earth”, but his Mom even knows about it, and when asked to curtail her son she only says “watch good ones” – an instruction that I’m sure he won’t need to be told twice. That’s a bit more like it, however the notable embarrassment brings their porn advocacy rating down slightly – 6.5/10.
U-KISS
U-KISS also have a better attitude about it.
At least Kiseop admits it and doesn’t seem to care that much. Bravo – now I know why all you fangirls like them – it’s honesty that really melts a girl’s heart. Tell her you watch porn, she’ll thank you for it. Porn advocacy rating – 7/10.
“It wasn’t as exciting as I hoped it would be. The process leading up to making love has to be believable, but that didn’t happen in porn. There was no story line.”
That’s actually a really common complaint that women have about a lot of porn – an opinion like that proves that IU is legit as fuck, she clearly sat down with that motherfucking DVD rip and said “yep, I’m going to watch this from start to finish and give this an honest critique”. Kudos for that, I could never get most of my girlfriends through the opening credits. Porn advocacy rating – 7.5/10.
T-ARA
If there’s one thing T-ara know how to do and do well, it’s sticking a PR leg out in places where other groups fear to tread. From disciplining miscreant lazy members publicly on SNS to maintaining a steadfast public presence even when the entire Internet wants them to fuck off, this is one group that just doesn’t give a shit, a breath of fresh air in the Korean music scene as well as society in general.
Never mind Jiyeon’s lame handballing of the question [insert forced-meme Jiyeon webcam strip joke that we're all completely bored of here] – compare Hyomin’s courageous yet completely deadpan manner to the attitude of most of the gutless smirking men you’ve seen in this thread so far. Talk about not giving one solitary flying fuck what any asshole thinks, in the true T-ara style that would later become their trademark. Bad examples? More like role models. ‘Atta girl. Porn advocacy rating – 8/10.
BLOCK B
Block B are quite open about their massive porn stashes, freely admitting to hoarding porn in a radio interview and showing no shame whatsoever, plus displaying some wisdom that only the experience of curating an almighty porn library can bring – here’s some highlights:
Kyung: This is nothing to be shy over, though, since we’re all adults!
Zico: Exactly. That’s why I’ll have fun watching the porno Jaehyo hyung recommended to me last night.
Younha: Then what are some of your know-hows on keeping your porn stash hidden?
Zico: I usually put it in a folder with a lot of other video files so it’s hard to find.
Jaehyo: No wonder you were caught by me.
Kyung: That’s such an amateur trick. You can just right click the file, go to properties, and check ‘Hidden’. Without a trace!
Zico: The cool thing about Kyung’s computer is you can search up any porn title and it’s there in the results.
Kyung: These days, I have that hidden too. You know, since I’m an idol now.
Younha: It must be really difficult to find things on your computer, then.
Kyung: People that really want my (porn stash) will find it, though. They’ll find a way.
Zico: People like Bibum hung.
Jaehyo: U-Kwon actually just keeps his porn publicly all over his desktop.
Very good, and the tips are appreciated. Another fine example for us all. Porn advocacy rating – 8.5/10.
UNHASU ORCHESTRA
You’ve all seen this video and had a laugh, right? I bet you’ve all shared it to your friends – “Hey, look at North Korea’s shithouse attempt at competing with k-pop, ROFLMAO who do they think they are kidding” etc. Well, I’m going to share with you something that will make you look at this group in a new way.
In North Korea, times are tough – even if you’re a mega-celeb, there’s not much to go around. One of the singers of the above group, Hyon Song-Wol, had a little cottage business going on the side – making and selling homemade porn tapes. When North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (also her ex-boyfriend) found out about this, he did what I suppose would unfortunately be expected of a dictator in such circumstances – he had her shot by firing squad. He also shot the other 11 members of her group (who had nothing to do with the tapes), while family, friends and other music groups including North Korea’s other answer to k-pop Morabong Band (below) were forced to watch, and then he threw all the spectators in prison, thus destroying North Korea’s calculated answer to the k-pop explosion in one fell swoop.
Did she know when she started making porn tapes, that it could end her life and the lives of those around her if she was caught? Knowing the dictator as well as she did, it’s hard to believe she would have had any illusions – yet she did it anyway, because sometimes you just got to make a porn starring yourself and sell it, because that’s the way it is. Needless to say, porn advocacy rating – 10/10.
Don’t forget to light a candle for our fallen warriors…. or just find a really good porn and fap to it in their memory. It’s what they would want. If you’re not sure what the good ones are, just ask Changmin, he’ll ask his mother for you.
Imagine being IU for a moment. I know that might be tricky, but don’t worry – I’ll help.
I don’t mean imagine being IU right at this moment in her career, but imagine being her back in the twilight of “Nation’s Little Thinly-Veiled Sexual Fetish Object For Desperate Pedophiles Looking For Something To Fap Over That They Won’t Get Arrested For Sister” days. What might that be like? Let’s imagine.
There you are, sometime in 2012, singing and dancing to “Good Day”, “You And I” and all your other mildly-received hits at some gathering of Starcraft fans or whatever the fuck it is today. You don’t actually even know what the exact event is, this is just the sixth thing your label has on your agenda for today and you don’t care anyway – all you know is that you go up there and sing the twee songs that your songwriter wrote for you and act cute and entertain people. A gig is a gig, right?
The crowd of derpy sexually atrophied nerdboys and their drooling dads who just happen to be there because you’re the half-time entertainment are eating this up, you suspect not because of the music, but because you’re dressed in something like this:
The stares and catcalls from the rows of people who look like they have never seen a woman except for on TV before makes it feel like performing for an audience of sex-starved prisoners, but what’s worse is the odour of unwashed socks and shirts – it’s one thing to have to dress like a maid for these bullshit “cute” concepts, but to put up with the same workplace smells is taking things to a new level, and this isn’t the first time. Frankly, you’re fucking over this bullshit.
You can’t wait for all this fucking crap to be over so you can go to bed but before then you’ve got a couple of jobs to do, so you get down to them. Firstly, some after-show interview where some cunt asks you the same three questions you always get asked and you have to answer them like you’re doing it for the first time and pretend to be all “bubbly” and shit, something you can barely even do anymore. There was also a really insipid photo session that you barely got through without crying.
Once that’s over, it’s back to the hotel to open the latest batch of boxes of postal mail from your fans that LOEN just sent over – with the kind of mentally questionable fanbase you’ve been attracting lately, what could possibly go wrong?
No acid-spraying postal bombs this time around, but you’ve never opened so many bits of cardboard that smelled like stale piss, and that one letter with the pages glued together by a mystery substance had you dry-reaching. You probably would have actually vomited if you had anything in your stomach left to throw up, but your real diet is even less than what your character in Dream High ate, so there’s no fear of that.
It’s obvious that it’s all these cute concepts and the “Nation’s Little Sister” tag that is bringing in the pedos and making you a nerdboy psycho magnet. You’re 20 years old for fuck’s sake – fuck this shit. You’re no dummy though – you know that there’s a pot of gold in this and there’s no way the label is going to let you stop doing this shit until you turn about 30 and can no longer pull off the cutesy look. Fuck waiting that long – you’ll be hanging from a rope long before that eventuates.
The solution to preserve the last fragments of your decaying sanity is obvious. You get on the phone to your good friend Eunhyuk from Super Junior – you’re not feeling so good, a visit might make you feel better. So might taking a photo together, “accidentally” uploading it to Twitter and completely blowing the shit out of your relentlessly annoying public image in a way that no label’s PR department can do anything about.
However, their influence only goes so far. Meanwhile, you don’t say shit to anybody. You wait and cross your fingers.
Months go by. The crazy letters become crazier and full of heartbreak… “how could you do this?” etc… and then a wonderful thing happens – the absolute hardcore crazies stop writing. You still get correspondence from concerned fans, but nothing creepy like before. It’s actually fucking working, these unwashed pedo freaks are leaving you alone. Also, LOEN doesn’t know what the fuck to do with you anymore so you get to go on a little hiatus from schedules while they work out exactly how they’re going to rejig your image, it’s not like the old style will still work. They’re talking about sexing up your image a bit but they’re still trying to figure out exactly how. Great, you get a break and when you come back might get to wear proper adult clothes for once, that’ll be nice.
While this is happening, a new kind of letter starts arriving in your mail. Here’s what it looks like, with minor variations:
You don’t know which groups are sending you these, but every time a group discards their usual “cute” concepts for a “sexy comeback”, you nod and smile to yourself – you know why, that glazed-over expression in their faces is all too familiar, it’s wasn’t so long ago that you were in that place. Surely the next one of these letters has to come from APink – they seem to have resisted longer than most. Perhaps they secretly like it?
Oh well, that’s their problem. In the meantime, it’s time to be happy.
The moral of the story: whether you find IU sexy or not, IU is quite possibly the root cause of all the sexy comebacks in k-pop lately. Thank you, IU. If my make-believe scenario has even a grain of truth in it, the Fapgod has a special seat in heaven reserved for you. He’ll even wipe it before you sit down.
I live in Australia, but I’m not a “patriot” (ewww gross) or a “proud Australian” (bleuuurgh), because anyone who is a “proud Australian” actually isn’t culturally Australian whatsoever – they’re a fake, a tryhard. We don’t even have people like that. If you ever see a group of drunk Australians watching a sports match, and the Australians are winning, and the drunks start cheering and shouting “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi”… those are not real Australians, they are “decoy Australians” deployed by our government to fool potential terrorist threats so they hopefully detonate the bomb in the wrong spot. If you catch a Southern Cross tattoo on some exposed flesh that just means they’re part of the “elite decoy unit”. There probably isn’t even real beer in those glasses but some kind of flame-retardant liquid (or maybe it’s Fosters, unquestionably not a real beer but a British beer that nobody in Australia even drinks).
All countries have their wacky cultural traditions (just take Korea’s nutcase “keeping up appearances” bullshit for example), and one of Australia’s strong and not-very-logical cultural traditions is that of backing the underdog and the loser. For example the main military action that we celebrate as a defining coming-of-age moment of our nation is not a victory but an incredibly crushing, humiliating defeat, because celebrating victories and success is for other countries, we don’t do that here. Australian school students after a test usually only talk about who had the lowest marks – saying “I aced that test” will have people saying “that’s nice” but it’s actually highly offensive, whereas saying “I really fucked that up” is considered more polite post-exam conversation and will gather you more friends. We even have our own terminology for these loveable fail-happy douchebags. The culture of celebrating failure here is so strong that not only are our failures celebrated and encouraged, but if people start showing great success and making a noise about it, they are quickly cut down to size. The whole idea is to get everything even – boost up the failures, and take the successes down a peg. Is this right? Maybe not, but it’s a cultural tradition that stems back to Australia’s history of European settlement – “rooting for the underdog” is endemic to Australian culture and shows no signs of changing.
As an Australian, I am therefore a product of this kind of national cultural upbringing, so I always barrack for the clearly identifiable underdog where possible, just to even things up. And you simply can’t get more underdog right now in k-pop than Dani. Let’s take a look at Dani’s pop culture history and see how many underdog points she can collect.
Firstly, Dani was recruited into T-ara by k-pop overlord and figure of fun Kim Kwang Soo last year in a “I saw her across the street and even though she was only 13 I knew she was the one” scenario which probably seems charming and old-school to someone of KKS’s age and Internet literacy but looks disturbingly Pedobearesque to the rest of us. This type of “street casting” is actually pretty normal in k-pop (for example SNSD’s Seohyun was discovered in exactly the same way, at exactly the same age, which nobody ever says shit about) but this didn’t stop every 13-year old fangirl who secretly wished it was them being picked instead from hating on Dani anyway, and this was even before it was trendy to hate T-ara. She’s already collected +1 underdog point and she hasn’t even done anything yet, so naturally I liked her before I even knew what she looked like.
Of course, then when I DID find out she looked like this:
…another underdog point was assuredly collected. Oh, and she’s American? Throw an extra point in there, just for being from the same country as pseudo-Lovecraftian horror creation Chad Future.
Then I was excited to find out that Dani scored an acting role in k-drama “School 2013″ – wow great, I’d finally get to see my favourite most-hated k-pop starlet doing something besides being speculated about in press releases and rumour mills! However, I was overly optimistic – try as I might, I wasn’t able to sit through any episode of the ultra-trashy k-drama long enough to actually get to a part where she had a scene in it, but word on the street is that she just threw in the odd English word here and there and that her performance was…
…somewhat lacking in the subtleties required of TV drama. I didn’t know that this cheesy, superficial, morally vacuous “let’s pretend we care about the hot issue of school bullying to get some ratings but offer no insight into the real problem or any workable solutions” bullshit TV show had such exalted standards but whatever. +1 underdog points for you, Dani.
Then T-ara had a comeback with Sexy Love, and it was a great song, but… where was Dani? Looks like she hasn’t even been added yet. “Gee, I hope they don’t ever add her”, I hear every single T-ara fan unanimously say. So wait… not only do the T-ara haters hate her, but the hardcore T-ara fans who stuck with the group even when it was trendiest to hate them also hate Dani? Well, fuck me if Dani hasn’t collected another underdog point just by existing.
Of course, it’s not like a talented overachiever such as Dani to rest on her laurels and just sit back and collect these points. With such an impressive track record already on the boards, Dani then firmly pushed her status as “that girl everyone loves to hate” to the next level:
Too convenient to be mere coincidence, Dani clearly researched “which American celebrity is most hated right now”, came up with “Chris Brown” as a result and immediately went about forming a business relationship for the T-ara N4 comeback to consolidate the group’s underdog status. These are the kinds of networking skills that money just can’t buy. +1 for the meetup, +1 for going to Hooters and another +1 for the fan backlash against Dani when N4′s pool party performance hit rock bottom faster than Sulli’s underwear backstage at a Dynamic Duo concert. Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.
Then, to cap it all off, she recently debuted as a guest performer with the new bastardised line-up of 5Dolls (which is now called F-ve Dolls, I guess because, er, there’s six of them).
Of course, now many of the F-ve Dolls fans are butthurt and wish she’d just go away, probably because they can’t work up much of a fap rhythm to Seunghee before Dani appears and kills the boner. There’s plenty of YouTube comments floating around like this one, where the writer is clearly struggling with the “guest performer” concept:
So another underdog point is acquired for pissing off seemingly every single member of both T-ara and F-ve Dolls fandoms combined and Dani has 10/10 points – the perfect score.
Statistically it’s clear that Dani is awesome, and in fact she’s awesome for the same reasons that everyone hates her:
* 14 years old and already debuted in k-pop and living the dream while you’re still in school or Uni taking shit from teacher, guess it sucks to be you
* In the most hated k-pop group ever that you wish would flop but they keep appearing on the charts and on TV and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it
* Obviously hasn’t had plastic surgery but is up there doing it anyway, that must burn you uggzillas who looked just like her and then got PS so you could have a shot at this idol crap, guess you could have told your parents to save their money
* Plucked straight off the street, she didn’t choose the idol life, it chose her – guess it’s just her destiny, unlike you, you fucking failure who will never get a break like this
I had a cool conclusion to this blog where I was going to make a bunch of other points, but fuck it – if you’ll excuse me I’m going to listen to that F-ve Dolls song another 67 times – just Dani’s rap bit, because it is PURE RAP PERFECTION.
Yes, it’s the return of the KPOPALYPSE LIVESTREAM!
Q: What is this livestream thing? You’re not really going to squirt me with a hose, are you?
A: Unfortunately it’s not quite that interactive. Basically you’ll just be watching some dude who is probably way older than you yet creepily into k-pop for some fucked up reason (it’s probably the titties) answer your questions in front of a laptop webcam for a few hours. Sound good?
Q: Wow, sounds fantastic! I can’t wait to see you embarrass yourself shamelessly! When is this amazingness happening?
There will be two streams, 12 hours apart:
7:30 AM Sunday 27th October
and again at
7:30 PM Sunday 27th October
Times are in my timezone which is Adelaide, Australia (GMT+10:30) - use http://www.worldtimezone.com/ to work out whatever that is where you live.
Q: I am not worthy! But I’ll watch it anyway! What’s the link?
Q: Gosh, do I need one of those webcam thingies too?
No. It’s me who is going to be streaming my ugly mug, not you. Participants will be asking questions and talking to me via a text bar. If you want to do more than just watch and actually ask questions, you will need a justin.tv account – this is free. If you don’t have one, you may wish to go to http://justin.tv and make one pre-emptively so you’re not rushing around doing it at the last minute on the day.
Q: But I don’t know what to ask! Got any suggestions?
Why not look at my ask.fm account (click the picture of Crayon Pop’s ChoA on the right sidebar, just scroll down a bit to find it —-> ) and you’ll be able to see the kinds of questions that other people have been asking me. Hopefully that will inspire you. If not, then maybe there’s no hope for you hahahahaha – but that’s okay, you can just watch others ask questions if you want.
Q: I’ve tried watching stream before but my connection lags like a bitch. Please help me oppar!
A: Right click on the stream while it’s playing, and try changing the “quality” setting from high to either medium or low. Also click “settings” and try checking “enable hardware acceleration” (left tab) and also making sure you allocate at least 100kb of storage with the slider thingy (middle tab). Also check “global settings” and “advanced” and make sure you’re running the latest Active X. If none of that helps, blame your Internet provider – it’s what everyone else does.
Q: I’m watching your stream but you keep dropping out, why?
A: I live in Australia, where our stupid fail government here has guaranteed at least another 3 years of shithouse Internet, basically nobody in my country has a good connection. Don’t worry – the dropouts never last more than a few minutes, if I suddenly vanish, stay tuned, I’ll return!
I’m sure getting some blog value out of IU lately. If I ever meet her I’ll have to offer to go down on her. I owe her that much. I won’t even ask for a handjob in return (although I admit I’m also considering where that hand has been).
So, the latest allegation concerning the “Nation’s Little Troublemaker” is that IU’s “The Red Shoes” rips off part of Nekta’s “Here’s Us”. Here’s the video that’s circulating:
When I saw this video I thought “I wonder if netizens will just brush this off, or wade into this issue with absolutely no knowledge and make themselves look utterly stupid and uneducated”. Then ten seconds later I thought to myself “what am I thinking – it’s Korean netizens we’re talking about here, OF COURSE they will just wade in and look stupid!”. Sure enough, they’ve all got an opinion, and as usual, it’s the most cynical and least informed opinion that they could possibly have. My favourite comment:
I love this comment because this is a straight-up admission that netizens really are heavily stroking themselves off over some witch-trials bullshit, and that popular opinion actually matters more to them than facts and truth, which is everything that’s wrong with netizen culture the world over. No, you fucking douchebag – plagiarism, just like murder, theft and arson actually has to be proven in a court of law. Also, kill yourself, but make sure you buy a machine gun and lots of bullets so you can take the 1257 people who upvoted you along for the ride before you turn the gun on yourself.
A portion of the melody for ‘Here’s Us’ and the melody of the second measure [B part] in ‘The Red Shoes’ sound similar but the chord progression of the two songs are totally different.”
“‘The Red Shoes’ uses a B-flat minor scale chord progression with a B-flat minor-bm7-cm7-cm6-f7sus4-f7 but ‘Here’s Us’ uses a dominant scale chord progression of B-flat major. Also, the chorus and first measure [A part], the song’s latter-half bridge part, as well as the overall melody, composition, and instrumental arrangement reveal it to be a totally different song.”
Now, since I generate most of my music-related income these days by being a music teacher, and seeing as how a lack of education about music terminology seems to be the underlying issue preventing any sensible dialogue, I feel like it’s time for me to step in and bring some sanity and knowledge into this debate.
Firstly, it’s interesting that this topic comes up NOW. Nobody raked IU over the coals back in 2012 when she released “Sea Of Moonlight” with Fiestar, a song that blatantly rips off (and in my opinion vastly improves on) Swedish pop group A-Ha’s 1980′s hit “Take On Me”:
Oh but netizens turned a blind eye to that, because they loved her back then because she still had the “Nation’s Little Sister” image and hadn’t rimmed Eunhyuk’s asshole accidentally uploaded a picture of her and some guy on Twitter yet, so everything she did was golden. Now things are different – IU has emerged as a threat to the crushes of stupid fangirls, so they will reach for whatever is convenient to take that oppar-stealer down a peg, no matter how factually incorrect.
Now here’s where this blog is going to get a little bit technical.
LOEN’s statement about the chord structure of the two songs, while technically correct, is actually a little bit cheeky. Chord progressions can’t be copyrighted, so they can’t be plagiarised by definition. There’s a reason for this - most songs use the same chords all the time. There’s thousands of possibilities of chords, but there’s really only a few combinations that people actually like to hear, so they tend to get recycled all the time. Watch comedy troupe Axis Of Awesome demonstrate this perfectly with the common pop music progression I-V-vi-IV:
Let’s not get on our high horse about how unsurprised we are that pop music is super-generic though, because this isn’t just common to pop music. Blues music recycles the same chords so damn often that they even have a special term for it – the “12-bar blues“. which any blues or rock guitarist should be familiar with and which refers to a progression of I-IV-I-V-IV-I. The majority of blues songs use this progression (or a very slight variation) exclusively. Jazz music favours slightly more complex chord structures but is equally guilty of recycling the same chord progressions all the time. Classical music isn’t exempt either – the same types of progressions are stunningly common and music of the classical period follows some fairly strict pseudo-mathematical rules.
Another thing that can’t be copyrighted is rhythms. Just like chords, there are only a few rhythm combinations that sound good to the western ear and that people actually like to hear. Even in very rhythm-centric music styles like heavy metal, where you might expect a lot of variety, the same rhythm forms are actually recycled all the time with only minor variations:
What however CAN be copyrighted is melodies. If hypothetically Nekta were going to sue IU, for the charge to stick, the style of the song is irrelevant. So they’re both “swing” songs, well, so fucking what, there’s plenty of swing songs. The chords used doesn’t matter either, the drumbeat, the type of backings… none of that matters. What needs to be proven is that the same melody is used for a “reasonable portion” of the song – a reasonable portion is not a timeframe legally set in stone but we’re talking a fair bit of time here, more than just a few seconds. So, are they the same?
No they’re fucking not.
Since I know nobody will believe me unless I go into some form of detail, I took the liberty of transcribing the melody as both singers sing it, so you can see the differences visually. Here’s seven bars of both songs.
IU’s singing part is on lines 1 and 3. Nekta’s part is on lines 2 and 4. Since I’m not going to assume that any of you can read music, I’m going to break down all the differences:
1. Nekta adds a lead-in note before the start of the bar (also known as an anacrusis) in the first and third vocal phrase. IU adds one only on the second vocal phrase.
2. IU raises the pitch of the third vocal phrase up by one semitone, to F#, whereas Nekta stays on F.
3. IU oscillates between E and F in the first two phrases with very accurate pitching (possibly Autotune-assisted but we don’t know this for sure), while Nekta has more of a talking kind of delivery and just stays on F with a bit of natural pitch bend.
4. IU moves a high Bb into the beginning of the second phrase, Nekta does this at the start of the third phrase instead.
5. The melody in the fourth phrases is different, Nekta hits four distinct notes whereas IU hits three. Nekta also starts on the low Bb before climbing up and then down, whereas IU starts on the highest note of the phrase, the F, and plateaus there for longer before moving to the other notes.
Then you’ve got to add the effect of the backings. Even though chords in themselves can’t be copyrighted, the effect of chords and basslines underneath a melody does change the way you hear a melody, and the chords and bass in the two songs are substantially different. Think of a plane flying in a straight line at 1000ft. Now, if the ground under the plane rises 500ft because there is a hill or something, is the plane still cruising at 1000ft above ground even though it’s still going straight? No. Even though the plane (melody) hasn’t changed what it’s doing, it is perceived as relatively “lower” because the ground (bass and chords) underneath it has risen. IU’s harmony has a rising structure, Nekta’s is more flat.
That’s why netizens are wrong and why IU’s songwriters will not have any legal problems with this. It’s also why they were able to get away with “Sea Of Moonlight” being similar to “Take On Me” – the melodies are substantially different. Is it similar to the other song? Yes, of course – but it doesn’t matter. You can use the same textures, rhythms and concepts all you want – if the melody is different, it’s a different song, and that’s all there is to it. Otherwise Black Sabbath could sue pretty much every single heavy metal band that ever existed between 1970 and 1984, and John Lee Hooker could have sued about three generations worth of blues guitarists.
If you didn’t understand all that technical shit, remember this: for a song to be considered as plagiarised, it doesn’t have to sound the same, it has to actually be the same, to a very substantial extent. These are two fairly different things, especially when accounting for all the different ways that different people hear music. Someone vocally trained would have easily noticed the differences between the two vocal lines without me having to break it down, but to a layperson it might just indeed sound exactly the same. Just like two different chocolates might taste the same to someone who has never tasted chocolate before but might actually be pretty fuckin’ different.
I hope this wasn’t too boring for you. Here’s your reward for sitting through this.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
I like how that left hand just keeps moving after she gets busted jerking off the guy who is just out of frame. She doesn’t even care that the camera is there. Can you believe she was going to be in T-ara? That would have accelerated the fapworthiness of that group into the fuckin’ stratosphere.
I get misunderstood a lot when I talk about Korean netizens. People always misinterpret what I say as if I’m picking on the poor Korean Internet users and putting netizens from other countries on some kind of pedestal. To show you what I’m talking about, here’s the latest example of many, taken from the comments section of some Netizenbuzz article about some girl supposedly getting dick from EXO members or whatever.
* I didn’t actually say KOREAN netizens in my post, or specify race or culture at all – other (chickenshit anonymous) people brought up the race issue. And then I get called the “racist” one. Irony, no?
* When I refer to “these ones here” I was referring to the netizens who commented on that article specifically, I wasn’t referring to Korean netizens as a whole, but that’s a subtlety that I’m sure the people commenting missed because they all got worked up into a little tizzy of “LOOK HE IS NOT AGREEING WITH EVERYTHING THEY SAY, QUICK, WE MUST PROTECT OUR PRECIOUS KOREAN FRIENDS!!!!!!1!1!”.
* If people stopped acting like a hive-mind, maybe I’d stop talking about them as if they were acting like a hive-mind, now there’s a fucking thought
But hey, if these people wanted to convince me that they are just as stupid as any other netizen from any other country, then I guess they can proudly say “mission accomplished” because I think they just fucking convinced me.
So it’s in the spirit of equality and racial/cultural harmony that I now bring you my thoughts on international netizens, in tried-and-true Angsty Korean Netizen meme format. To differentiate this new meme from the old meme, I’ve flipped over the image (because it’s a different part of the world so they’re looking in a different direction which is a neat metaphor for cultural difference, oh wow you’re so smart Kpopalypse oppar are you single yet) and given the new image a refreshing green tint to indicate the jealously of these people because they weren’t born in Korea. Enjoy.
Image may be NSFW.
