Actually this is a post just to let you know that the “2NE1 shittiness survey” results are now in. Click the sexy A.KOR bitches below, then scroll down to the conclusion to see the results!
I must say though, it’s great that Jessica left SNSD because now I can write whatever bullshit I want over the next few days and as long as it’s not about her nobody will bother to read it and there’ll be no repercussions for me! Awesome!
Some of you folks have noticed that I’ve got a “best of 2012″ list on my blog, but not a “worst of 2012″ list, and have asked when will I do a list of all the shitty stuff from that year. So due to popular demand as well as a desire to be a completist and scratch my OCD-itch here’s a massively-belated list of what I believe to be 2012’s biggest k-pop stinkers.
The reason for the omission of a “worst of 2012″ list until now is because when I first started blogging it was around the end of 2012, and I hadn’t figured out back then that people would actually prefer me to take a gigantic dump on their faves than praise them. I only ever wanted to write nice things and be happy and say how great everything was… but these awful songs probably helped pushed me over the edge until I became the blogger that I am today.
Warning – this list has 30 YouTube videos and might get laggy on slow computers. Give it a few seconds to load before you start scrolling down and crashing your browser, you impatient cunt.
A few rules for this list:
Must be a feature track (either has an MV or is a lead single that is performed live – no album filler)
No Xmas songs, songs for sporting events etc (because otherwise this list would be nothing but Xmas songs and songs for sporting events which belong in their own special category of anus)
Songs by Korean artists for the Japanese market do count, because k-pop is defined by the industry that drives it, not the language it’s sung in. Nobody calls American pop music “English pop” just because it’s sung in English. I’ve mentioned this before but just repeating this super-obvious point for the numbskulls.
Do I really need to insert something here about how I like k-pop really, how I don’t really hate your fave, how I’ve also got a best-of list, etc? No – you’re smarter than that. Or maybe you’re not… but if you’re a dumb bitch that’s really not my problem.
Let’s do this.
30. G-Dragon – One Of A Kind
I liked Big Bang’s songs in 2012, and I also liked GD&TOP’s album; I thought “Knock Out” and “High High” were both pretty decent. So when I heard about a new G-Dragon solo coming out and that it would be kind of a rap thing, I thought “well, how bad can it be?”. In retrospect I should have been smarter than this, in light of the below quote which I was actually well aware of before this song came out.
Right now, to know that lots of fans around the world are listening to music from our tiny country, it’s got to have a huge effect on the Korean music scene. But, as the situation changes very rapidly, the scene’s got to develop just as fast. – G Dragon, during GD&TOP promotions, 2011
Translation: “at YG we’re noticing a lot of nugu groups emerging with a modern sound so we’re going to have to step up our game and latch onto as many rubbish nu-school trends as possible to set us apart from the emerging pack, be prepared for our music to start turning into trendy bullshit clones of Drake and Soulja Boy soon”. Vision in hindsight is 20/20, and what a shitball this song is. Does anyone honestly sing that irritating electronic “hellloooooooooooooooo” line in the chorus ever, except ironically to laugh at how bad it is? Excellent sonic production can’t save the total lack of a decent song here and “One Of A Kind” is as good a place as any to mark the point at which YG Entertainment decided to give good tunes a rest for a while and really start embracing the suck.
29. Spica – I’ll Be There
The problem with k-pop’s constant habit of concept changing is that when a group hits on a really fucking good thing, they almost never stick with it – simple probabilities alone virtually ensure that your fave is going to release a fuck-up song like this eventually. This video demonstrates the problem of concept dice-rolling aptly and sure is one hell of a nasty bait-and-switch. “I’ll Be There” starts off with a grim, rainy dark setting deliberately evoking Spica’s excellent previous songs “Painkiller” and “Russian Roulette“, making you the listener think you’re going to hear another song of similar quality. “Oh goody I can’t wait for the music to start, this is gonna be kick-ass” you start thinking to yourself… and then the camera pans off to the sky to do some cheap CGI bullshit and before you know it, you’re in a stupid pastel room listening to a Z-grade clone of Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”. Fucking cunts. The video doesn’t even get the clothes right – not only do those white shirts with the letters look terrible, but they’re obviously supposed to spell out the word “Spica” and nowhere during the entire choreography routine do the girls actually line up in the correct formation for that to happen. I guess the choreographer and the costume designer over at B2M (Butthole 2 Mouth?) Entertainment weren’t on speaking terms on the day that they shot this video, or perhaps neither of them gave a fuck and just rushed everything out as quickly as they could so they didn’t have to hear the song too many times during the course of the day’s video shoot. Who can blame them, I wouldn’t want to be trapped all day in a room listening to this shit either.
28. The Seeya ft. Haeri (Davichi) – Poison
You might expect a quick potted history here of how CCM fucked off their old group Seeya and then remade the idea into this group with new members by lazily tacking a “The” onto the front of the group name (an achievement in group-naming laziness only matched by CCM themselves later when they transformed “5Dolls” into “F-ve Dolls”) but actually I don’t give a shit about any of that stuff. I only care that this song sucks, and suck it does. CCM usually get ballads right so I bought The Seeya’s mini album expecting the usual great standard of CCM ballads, and… no. The only good song on it is “Be With You“, everything else on it is a crappy worthless turgid excursion into mundanity that sounds like it was piped directly from a Chinese restaurant foyer sound system to your ears. “Poison” doesn’t even accumulate any fap points by including the wrong member from Davichi, who is actually filmed in this video sitting in a studio control booth with a disdainful expression (that’s her in the header image at the top of this post), clearly as devastated as I am by what’s coming out of the speakers. I just want to reach into the frame, hit the “off” button on the control desk, give her a hug and say “there, there… it’s okay, the bad man who wrote this is gone, you don’t have to sing anymore… also, do you have Minkyung’s phone number?”.
27. Stellar – UFO
There’s a reason why you probably didn’t know anything about Stellar until “Study” and “Marionette” appeared and it’s got nothing to do with fetish-friendly school uniforms or milk carefully dribbling over exposed cleavage – well, okay, maybe it does have something to do with those things, but it’s also because everything they did before then was fucking garbage. The backings of this song remind me of the times that I’ve wandered into my local music store and checked out the digital gear section on a day when it also happened to be a school holiday. There’s always some schoolkid in the store who has found the most bad-ass expensive digital workstation keyboard in the whole place and has dialed up a cheesy slightly off-kilter dance rhythm track. Then some other kid on some weird Kaoss pad style contraption hears it and grooves along, fucking around making noise and random chords over the top while the other guy hits the “fill” button periodically and changing up the rhythm. I strongly suspect that this song was written using a similar process, as the backing track harmonies and the vocal melodies sound like they were written by two different people in two separate soundproof rooms who were told about the structure and tempo of the song but were also told they could make up the rest of it however they wanted. There’s random chords and noises sticking out all over the place on this arrangement, it’s probably one of the weirdest listens in k-pop and weird is fine sometimes but I don’t think the producers were quite aiming for this level of strange. At least the girls look great, so this video still has some value with the sound down.
26. Girls’ Generation – Dancing Queen
Apparently “Dancing Queen”, an unfortunately-titled (because it invokes ABBA’s far superior song of the same name) remake of Duffy’s “Mercy“, was recorded about five years before SM actually released it, back in 2008. The release date was then held back until 2012 for unknown reasons, and while the music business expert in me suspects that maybe that’s how long it took to get a copyright clearance because Duffy’s label didn’t want a near-identical Korean version stealing their shine while Duffy was still hot in the marketplace, the music appreciator in me believes instead that maybe SM just had this song, “Oh!” and “Gee” all in the same “consideration pile” and were like “should we release this Dancing Queen shit over these other two songs, are you fucking kidding me? Dancing Queen can fucking wait”. If you click over to YouTube’s comments for “Dancing Queen” you’ll see a whole bunch of idiots arguing over the relative merits of SM’s version vs Duffy’s version, which came first, which is better and so on, but it’s a pointless argument because both are virtually identical and suck roughly equal amounts of ass. The clearer crisper production and expertly-layered sonics of the SNSD version arguably makes it a slightly superior listen but it’s a double-edged sword as it only means that the terminal suckitude of the song’s melody and harmony becomes even more obvious and irritating. I get the feeling when listening to this nondescript waffling blues-based trash that SM waited until they used up all their really good material for SNSD and then just chucked this song out there as a simple throwaway “warm up” release before hitting fans in the beginning of 2013 with SNSD’s far superior main feature material… oh wait.
25. She’z – UU
Many years ago I went out for a short while with a girl who was pretty careful about contraception and insisted on both condoms and a diaphragm during sex. Fair enough I guess, after all you can’t be too careful – no woman in her right mind wants to pick up after baby Kpopalypses running around crying, yelling and smearing their shit and vomit everywhere, and it doesn’t sound like a very appealing prospect to me either. She was weird about it though – for some strange reason that I’ve never been able to figure out, she was really keen on having me insert the diaphragm into her instead of just putting it in there herself, maybe she had a fetish for it or something. I tried to explain that it’s probably better that she do it instead because it’s her vagina and only she can feel what’s really going on so she’ll be in a better position to know whether it’s sitting in there correctly or not, after all there’s no point being all serious about contraception if you’re going to be careless about these things. She’d then be like “what, are you afraid of my vagina?” or some other pseudo-feminist bullcrap about evil patriarchal guys being secretly afraid of the cunt that I can’t quite remember and I’d be like “I’ve been dicking it for the last few months, trust me I’m not afraid of it, it’s just that my x-ray vision doesn’t work so I’ve got no idea about the plumbing really, I’d rather leave it to the expert who knows her own body better than me”. I’d still give it a try anyway sometimes if she was insistent so as not to kill the bedroom mood and also to try to set her mind at ease that I wasn’t a horrid evil woman-oppressing vaginaphobe but inevitably I’d fuck it up somehow by inserting it the wrong way or whatever and then she’d get all pissy about it and there went the bedroom mood anyway and suddenly she didn’t want to fuck any more. Anyway the name of this song and the U shape on the shirts reminds me of the confusing U-shaped diagrams on the back of the diaphragm box that told you how to correctly apply the thing to your lady parts and brings me back to the days when I was going out with this stupid bitch and her illogical bullshit emotionally-blackmailing deluded gender politics from fuckheadville and that’s enough reason for it to get on this list. The song being shit is just a bonus.
24. GPBasic – Edge
This is the sort of video that you’d probably be expecting to find in my Nugu Alert series, except that somehow this particular track has gathered over 100,000 hits, thereby disqualifying it from the “less than 20,000 hits” entry requirement for Nugu Alert. I guess that’s the benefit of being put out on CJ&EM instead of on some nugu label, but you certainly wouldn’t know that GPBasic had major label backing just from looking at the video itself. The terrible styling, eyesore white shirts (with no Ice Bucket Challenge in sight) and budget video effects that look like they’re straight out of Windows Media Player’s “visualisations” function all make a bad impression but the real crime here is obviously the music, a disturbing 2NE1-esque clanger that’s as terrifying as the close-ups on these girls’ ill-fitting eye makeup. Still, it’s hard to hate them – any group able to conjure up a like-dislike ratio even more polarised than T-ara’s “Sexy Love” (the #1 certified trendy-to-hate-even-though-the-song-kicked-ass video of 2012), probably deserves some kind of Kpopalypse merit award for underdog status – it’s just a shame that the song is too shit for me to really get behind because I’d love to stan this one just to shit people.
23. B.A.P – Crash
CEO of TS Entertainment, August 2012: “How’s our new boy group, B.A.P doing since we debuted them?”
A&R person: “Their excellently cheesy metal/rap/pop hybrid songs such as “Warrior“, “Power” and “No Mercy” have been well-received worldwide by k-pop fans and have allowed the group to gain momentum in the marketplace. B.A.P are well on their way to gaining a reputation as k-pop’s heavy metal kings. They could become really popular if we keep taking them down this path.”
CEO: “Well, that won’t do. Groups on our label getting too big is against company policy. Quick, rush out a shitty lightweight pop song that sounds a bit like One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful”, but with more vocal layering and a bit more fairy-floss sounding for the tween market.”
A&R person: “I’m on it sir.”
22. Rainbow Pixie – Hoi Hoi
Rainbow’s Jisook recently did a great interview (relevant part at 14 minutes in) wherein she dismantled all the acres of hypocritical bullshit from netizens and the equally moronic k-pop media about “sexy concepts” in only a few short sentences:
Jisook: “What I’d like to ask foremost is: we released a cute unit album as Rainbow Pixie, then we have the Rainbow Blaxx sexy concept. Do you even remember the Pixie unit?”
Some guy: “No, not for me.”
Jisook: “Right. Why would that be?”
Some other guy: “…isn’t that a brand?”
Jisook: “It’s because it wasn’t provocative. With the cute concept people want the innocent look and say they want us to focus on our music, but all you remember is the sexiness of Blaxx rather than the cuteness of Pixie. That (double-standard) is the problem with girl groups.”
She’s right of course, and her strident “give no shits” manner in the interview really impresses me, but she forgot to add one little detail – Rainbow Pixie’s “Hoi Hoi” was a fucking shitty attempt to do a subunit like Orange Caramel and it failed miserably because their feature song was an annoying mess that sounded like “Magic Girl” played at half speed by the female equivalent of The Hooley Dooleys. There’s a fine line between “appealingly cutesy and bright but with good music and can still fap to” and “entertainment for drooling 4 year olds who can’t speak or hold a fork”, and Rainbow Pixie definitely got in on the wrong side of that line. True, the lack of overt sexiness probably didn’t help matters at least commercially, but even the sexiest video in the world probably wouldn’t have saved Rainbow Pixie from the confines of the nugu dungeon, where they justifiably reside to this day, simply because nobody in their right mind wants to listen to this ass.
21. 2BIC – Made Yet Another Woman Cry
Disgusting worthless vocal-wank ballad songs that are built purely for showing off singing ability but have zero musical value in their own right are essentially nothing more than vocal warm-up exercises foisted cruelly on the public as poor substitutes for actual songs. Most music fans who are not trained singers have never heard a vocalist doing pre-performance warm-ups, and that’s because vocalists doing warm-ups don’t sound any fucking good, and neither does 2BIC here. However there is still some value to be had – songs like this often have great drama music videos with surprisingly dark themes and “Made Yet Another Woman Cry (for her poor eardrums)” is no exception. There’s good reasons for the high quality of ballad drama MVs – entertainment agencies that house k-pop idols often also employ actors and if you’ve got a bunch of actors lying around that you can use on the cheap it’d be silly not to make a drama video occasionally. Also, if the song is such complete boring predictable piece of trash like this that’s so middle-of-the-road that you visualise a double-yellow line almost as soon as you hear it, at least the song plus the MV combined still represent some kind of audio-visual entity from which some small “entertainment object” value can be extracted. I think it would have been even more entertaining still if when the soldiers crashed the building in this video they just shot the fucking guy mid-money note and then the song would just stop there and then, now that would have been a cool twist worthy of Janet Leigh’s turn in Psycho.
20. CHAOS – She’s Coming
The most notable feature of this song is that it uses exactly the same wolf howl sampled intro as EXO’s horrid 2013 disasterpiece “Wolf“, but it actually predates “Wolf” by over a year, proving that not only was EXO’s song completely awful, it wasn’t even particularly original. I’m guessing that “Wolf” was cobbled together in a pretty lazy fashion if the songwriters couldn’t even be bothered to go out and find a real wolf to record but had to swipe a wolf noise from some other less successful group’s song, which is a good a demonstration as any about how much care and attention songwriters across the k-pop genre actually pay to generic boy-group productions such as this. CHAOS show much more determination however, not only using an original wolf noise, but they even shot part of the video in the logging yard where they found the wolf, which is pretty fucking impressive if you ask me. The tracksuit pants that are worn by one of the group members also bring much entertainment value because they’ve got these two yellow things on each thigh and if you squint while watching, it makes it look like he’s got balls infected with elephantitis, which is hilarious. Pity the song itself isn’t much better than “Wolf” itself but I guess you can’t have it all.
19. Girls’ Generation – Flower Power
Never mind Jessica leaving the group, Taeyeon getting smothered in jizz from all 12… oops, 11 members of EXO (who can keep track of all these SM line-up changes damn) or Yoona… not leaving the group, the release of “Flower Power” for me marks the true descent of Girls’ Generation from “wow this is a cool group and their MVs are amazing” to “hmmm… actually this is some kinda tossed-off bullshit”. Not much about this song makes sense. What’s with the completely creepy soundless intro that looks like there were supposed to be sound effects dubbed over it later but either the video editors ran out of time or just nobody could be fucked? Why does the chorus say “butterfly root the spider” and conjure up visions of inter-species sex acts due to the double-life of the word “root” as Australian slang for fucking? Why is most of the dancing shot in a dimly lit room where I can’t even see what’s going on, except the parts that are shot in a room so bright that I also can’t see what’s going on? Why does Sunny’s rap sound so awkward that I can’t even get a boner despite it being Sunny and Sunny having the second nicest boobs in k-pop (hi Martina if you’re reading)? Most importantly, why couldn’t SM find a better song than this for their flagship girl group? Maybe these questions have to go without an answer for now, but in the meantime let’s not listen to this song because it sucks.
18. M.I.B – Celebrate
I didn’t even know that gas-mask fetishes were a thing until I met someone who was really into it. Apparently it’s something to do with not being able to see the person’s eyes and facial expressions that gets people off, thus reducing them to a sexy object for fun objectification purposes (and yes the person who I met who digs this shit is female). Personally although I understand the appeal theoretically, in practice I’m not into it – I’d much rather see someone’s eyes while I’m jizzing on their face because eyes are the “window to the soul” and that’s important. Nevertheless, if that gas-mask sort of shit does in fact turn you on, consider yourself well catered to in this song by M.I.B, a nugu group so consistently crud that they’re determined to get onto these lists of mine each year. You may also appreciate the song and video if you like people getting orange chalk dust thrown on them, shit music, guys with sticky shiny fake tans, paint fights, shit music, singlets, greasy wavy 80s-inspired hair, and shit music.
17. Goddess – Farewell Party
You know that even the record label thinks a song is complete and utter garbage when they spend over half the MV trying to drown the thing out with loudly overdubbed motorcycle noises. Of course these girls look way too young to even be in the same room as a motorcycle unsupervised let alone ride one so creative editing, stunt riders, pedestal fans and CGI are used to convey all the blistering fast-paced motorbike action. This group had such a short career that they didn’t even make it to a second MV release (it was teased but it never came out) and it’s shame because I would have liked to see them in something better than this incredibly annoying, unlistenable trash. I bet they’re all working in bars or convenience stores now, having wasted years of their life pursuing dreams of k-pop stardom instead of university. It’s enough to make you scream for no apparent reason like the motorcycle guy does in what has to be the most amusingly bizarre drama interlude in a k-pop video ever. The aforementioned very weird drama interlude also fades down the actual music to almost nothing, no doubt deliberately. The video editors didn’t want to hear this 2NE1-meets-Europop crap any more than you do.
16. G-Dragon – Crayon
The title is a contraction of “get your crazy on” which is surely a clue that G-Dragon was just taking the piss with this horrid and surreal excuse for a pop song that wouldn’t even pass quality control at Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em HQ. I can understand rabid one-eyed G Dragon fans being fooled into thinking that “One Of A Kind” constitutes semi-acceptable music, but can even the most nutty BigBang fan really get behind “Crayon” in any seriousness? I think G Dragon is testing his fanbase – when he’s got as many fangirls as he does, he probably feels that maybe if he could lose a few it might make navigating airports a bit easier, so fuck it let’s just wind up the stupid analog synth riffs and lame trap beats as far as they go and see what happens. Of course, the fangirls probably just accepted it as more proof of his “musical genius” and listened to it 83 times until they started liking it, because when you’re 11 years old and your diet is 100% idol pop your mind is pretty easily blown by small details like someone who you’ve got a crush on getting a synthesiser and twiddling a knob a bit and going “widdly-widdly-wee”, which is musically about all that’s going on here of any interest.
15. Secret – Poison
CEO of TS Entertainment, September 2012: “How’s our girl group Secret doing these days?”
A&R person: “Their excellently cheesy doo-wop/60s pop hybrid songs such as “Shy Boy” and “Starlight Moonlight” have been well-received worldwide by k-pop fans and have allowed the group to gain momentum in the marketplace. Secret are well on their way to gaining a reputation as k-pop’s retro-pop queens. They could become really popular if we keep taking them down this path.”
CEO: “Well, that won’t do. Groups on our label getting too big is against company policy. Quick, rush out a shitty lightweight pop song that sounds a bit like Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love”, but with more vocal layering and a bit more fairy-floss sounding for the tween market.”
A&R person: “But didn’t we do this with B.A.P last month to the disappointment of music fans everywhere?”
CEO: “I’m CEO because I know what makes money around here, I got this company to where it is today. Don’t question my logic unless you want to go back to refilling coffee machines – just do it.”
A&R person: “I’m sorry. I’m on it sir.”
14. Xia Junsu – Uncommitted
It’s sad to see the members of JYJ constantly getting ignored, pushed out of TV appearances, neglected in k-pop publications etc as SM Entertainment does their very best to try and write JYJ and the infamous TVXQ split out of history. I don’t think SM are busy making phone calls to fuck them over though – companies are probably just afraid of featuring JYJ because of the possibility of what they think SM might do in retaliation, rather than anything that SM are actually doing. Not so Kpopalypse, who has no fear, is free of such machiavellian influences and is more than happy to include Xia Junsu here on a worst-of list just to show that I care about being all-inclusive in spite of what the big corporations of k-pop might think. Take that, SM! “Uncommitted” is typical mushy ballad garbage and not noteworthy in any aspect apart from just generally sucking and being fucking worthless tossed-off junk, but the video is notable for the unusual distinction of having more black bar above and below the image than actual video. I guess the video director felt that it looked more “cinematic” or something and perhaps implicitly raises Xia’s suggested importance as someone on “the big screen” but I think there’s a point where the black bar business actually becomes legally actionable because it’s cutting into promised content. I think that there has to be some kind of required minimum standard by law for how much of a music video is actually a video with moving images as opposed to a black border before it can actually be legally called a video, and I don’t think this one meets required standards (this is also why a lot of fancams annoy me with their vertical letterboxing – so much wasted space). The way I see it, if you clicked on the Xia video and an advert played, that advertiser now owes you money… but then at least the ad probably sounded better than this song so maybe you should be grateful.
13. Noel – Things That I Couldn’t Say
Here’s a quick list of some of the “things that I couldn’t say” about this song:
I love it when a k-pop ballad has a nice soft piano intro, it’s so relaxing
There really aren’t enough male k-pop ballad groups out there doing material like this
This song doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard piped through a food court sound system before
Gee I really didn’t expect that build-up part at 3:43, how enjoyable and refreshing it was
It’s just as well this video is mainly in slow motion or I might get too excited by it
The sound of this song doesn’t particularly make me want to bash my head against a wall
I hope a bunch more songs get released that sound just like this soon
12. Six Bomb – Chiki Chiki Bomb
For anyone curious about what I’m talking about when I say boy groups tend to have boring and uninteresting melodies, then go straight to the chorus of this song which is exactly the kind of limp blues-based crap that the boy groups usually get. Bravo for gender equality I suppose… or something. At least there’s plenty of entertainment to be had here observing the girl with the hilarious rooster-style mohawk, I guess Dara’s stylist does a bit of freelancing in the slow periods between 2NE1 comebacks. As for them being called Six Bomb when there’s actually only five of them, I can deal with that. Even though I think it’s always a mistake to name a group after the amount of members it contains because there’s always going to be awkward times if anybody drops out, if I can deal with F-ve Dolls being six members, it’d be unfair for me to criticise Six Bomb for being five members. The hideous song on the other hand is another matter, I guess at least the company got the “bomb” part of the group’s title correct, now that was some foresight.
11. Girls’ Generation – All My Love Is For You
Aside from being a rubbish ballad equal in worthlessness to any trash from syrupy annoying western R&B artists over the last few decades, “All My Love Is For You” also takes top honours as quite possibly the most awkward-looking k-pop video ever created. The vacant, glazed-over stares into nowhere in particular, the pointless mannequin-style standing around, the hilariously-staged walking across the room as if they’re really going somewhere terribly important, the occasional cringeworthy forced interactions between members to make it look like they’re “having a deep, meaningful moment together” and most of all the cheesy vacuous overdone smiling… it all adds up to a one-way ticket to awkward-town. Best/worst of all is that Taeyeon seems to be engaged on behalf of the group in some kind of “fashion design” activity – oh the sweet irony. She’d better drop that sketchpad fast and get back to singing and dancing before her manager walks into the room if she knows what’s good for her, SM will have absolutely none of that kind of caper. Even Sunny’s amazingly well-presented boobs can’t make me watch this trash any more than the required number of times needed to write a review of it – if that doesn’t speak volumes about the awfulness of this, nothing does.
10. T-ara – Round And Round
“Round And Round” isn’t a song originally written for T-ara but it doesn’t stop it from being a complete pile of crap anyway, nor does it stop me from including the song in this list. My likey-likey-dis and likey-likey-dat of T-ara is well documented so this inclusion should appropriately confuse all you morons who think I’m just on a cruel bash-fest and hate every group I list in my “worst of” lists with some kind of burning passion. Released early in the year during Hwayoung’s “Amber 2.0″ period, the group’s resident manicurist-in-chief certainly looks like the odd one out and removing her from the group just seems like a logical common-sense reaction to having to watch her in this awkward performance, not that her exit would have helped the song any. The real problem here is just that the source material is just no damn good, and this is a song that should have never been remade but instead rightfully consigned to the dustbin of history. There’s more than one good reason why the Hallyu Wave is happening now and didn’t happen in the 1980s. Mind you T-ara’s version is miraculously even worse than the awful original, dumbing down the harmony and squaring off the rhythm to the point where the whole song sounds like a Dance Dance Revolution machine taking a shit. Only a truly hardcore fan could stomach this crap, and if you ever want to separate the normal mentally well-adjusted T-ara fans from the crazies who will lap up a puddle of dirty water if you told them it was Boram’s piss, just ask them what they think of “Round And Round”.
9. Bikiny – Dance Party
When you add up the costs of feeding, housing, training, recording and dealing with the personal issues of an idol group in training over multiple years plus hiring composers, choreographers, costume designers, secretaries, PR staff, hair stylists, set designers, caterers, accountants, drivers, road managers, studio engineers, teachers, gym coaches, janitors and coffee-machine changers, it typically costs the equivalent of millions of dollars to debut a group into k-pop. So when that group finally does debut, don’t be a little bitch about their first MV and complain that they just threw a handicam into the gym and did a choreography video on the cheap, just be thankful instead that it’s not your money on the line for this shit. So what if it’s hard-Autotuned to fuck – maybe these girls can sing or maybe they can’t, but each one of them represents a seven-digit investment so nobody’s taking any fucking chances with any notes out of place here, that’s for damn sure. Just complain about how the song is yet another “we’re going to try to do 2NE1’s ‘Fire‘ but our agency couldn’t find someone with the songwriting skills to pull it off and who is also willing to work with us for what little amount of money we had left” disaster and move on.
8. A-Prince – Hello
Christ, this is horrible. Melody lines straight from children’s TV shows, bits that don’t fit together, a chorus so excruciating that it will make you want to saw into your own fingers with a rusty blade just to take your mind off it – what a nightmare. Not a Nightmare on Elm Street though, more like Friday the 13th because one of the guys is actually wearing a shirt with a picture of Jason Vorhees’ hockey mask on it, completely undercutting any and all attempts at aegyo from this group. Thanks to that particular fashion choice I can now only picture that guy singing the impossibly annoying “Hello hello baby / hello hello girl” chorus while chasing fangirls with a butcher’s knife – no doubt while also maintaining the same insipid forced grin he’s displaying in the video. Mind you any die-hard fans of this group are probably already mentally dead on the inside, so perhaps he’s just putting them out of their misery. When I listen to this I sure sometimes wish someone would put me out of mine (that’s a rhetorical statement, not a legitimate suggestion, just noting this for any crazy fangirls offended by my G Dragon comments above).
7. C-Real – Joma Joma
The creepy YouTube description from the company “The full love wish list of pure girls aged 17 on average!” smacks of pimping for creeps with virgin-fetishes and gives you a little insight into how k-pop companies view their product but amazingly this isn’t even the worst thing about “Joma Joma”. No, the real sin here is that the song incorporates elements of tap-dancing and line-dancing. After School did tap-dancing too, but After School’s attempt was actually reasonably fluid and impressive, and didn’t sound like something that you’d hear on the radio at an old-folks home. Even line-dancing style country jigs got a (slightly) better k-pop adaptation later in 2Yoon’s “24/7“, when C-Real do it the result just sounds like some shit your grandmother listens to. People love to try to troll me about how I’m a k-pop fan at my age but even I’m still a generation or two too young for this shit. To legally hear this song in it’s entirety you should be over 70 years old and have ID.
6. JYJ – In Heaven
The CEO of SM Entertainment must have been thrilled when JYJ’s “In Heaven” came out. Not only is the song total generic ballad crap from Yawn City, ensuring that JYJ will continue to remain not-a-threat-what-are-you-kidding-don’t make-me-laugh to TVXQ’s market domination, but Xia Junsu gets killed in the MV! Talk about Christmas coming early for Lee Soo Man. The SM staff probably have popcorn and DVD nights every month and play this as the intro. While the song is playing maybe they have a drinking game going where you have to skull a drink for the duration of when Xia does his big heroic leap to save the girl, and if anyone cheats by not completing their drink in time they have to do karaoke to this song while the rest of the room laughs as punishment. I’m sure that they don’t actually bother to listen to the song itself though – they’re probably too busy munching snack food and drinking soju and laughing and cheering to recklessly engage their ears with something this horrid.
5. P.O.P. Con – Nol Ja Go
There were actually quite a few girl groups out there in 2012 all doing the Crayon Pop style concepts, but the reason why you haven’t heard of many of them is because they all had terrible songs like this one here, and then promptly vanished into thin air soon afterward. This song is nightmarishly bad and does the “bounce bounce” refrain even more annoyingly than JJ Project managed to do (their horrid mess of a song “Bounce” only narrowly escaped inclusion on this list and JYP can thank P.O.P. Con for that). This screechy unlistenable salvo of noise masquerading as a pop song must have sounded even worse in the shopping mall type place (or whatever it is) that the video was shot in – I can only imagine how this trash sounds bouncing and resonating around that bizarre curved stage wall. Anyway this song worked out so poorly for them that the group later changed their name to Queen B’z, probably to avoid any guilt by association with this shithouse song, and also so they could start again with a fresher, much sexier concept, instead of whatever “Nol Ja Go” qualifies as. With the 240p resolution on this video muddying up the issue I’m not even all that sure what the concept of “Nol Ja Go” even is, but something tells me that I might have dodged a bullet here.
4. EXO – What Is Love
Usually when I announce blog posts in advance, I get lots of feedback and assistance from the online community keen to make sure that I haven’t missed anything – hell, I’m still getting k-pop ass gifs posted to me many months after nominations closed for the “ass article“. So it seemed odd to me that when I announced that I was going to do a “worst of 2012″ list a few months ago, EXO’s “What Is Love” was the only song suggested by anybody for inclusion on the list. A few days ago I mentioned this list again and that it was nearing completion, and still, EXO’s “What Is Love” was the only song anyone mentioned. I wondered why that was… then I heard this song and it all made sense. Guys, I totally get it now – the hilariously overdone vocal parts alone would get this song high enough to chart onto this list, but add to that the hideous multi-layered wall of sound which destroys any attempt at subtlety and the maddeningly repetitive guitar riff which never changes and what we have here is a ballad so bad that it barely even meets the musical criteria to be a ballad in the first place… basically, this is “Growl” at half speed. The song really is shockingly awful and I honestly thought I was going to have to put this straight to the #1 spot with a bullet until I remembered the existence of the following three songs…
3. Super Junior – Spy
Super Junior often gets criticised for milking their megahit “Sorry Sorry” to death, and I’m as sick of them doing that song over and over with a different name as the next person, but honestly if this is the alternative maybe they should go straight back to ripping it off. The musical thieves who created “Spy” left “Sorry Sorry” alone for a change and instead nicked horn parts from the “Peter Gunn” theme (not James Bond as suspected by many, although they certainly got the visual concept from there) and also the chorus melody from some other Mariachi-esque bullshit song the name of which escapes me at the moment, influences that the majority of k-pop fans probably wouldn’t know or give a rat’s ass about. I certainly don’t give a fuck about what songs they stole especially when they’re mashed together this awkwardly – who cares who steals what as long as the end result sounds alright and this particular result definitely does not sound alright. Anyway, the low quality of this song was so notorious that it greatly upset Super Junior fans who infamously staged a boycott of all SM Entertainment products until the label promised to stop adding one extra shit song like this to releases a month after they come out to compel the completist deludu fans to buy hastily repackaged albums again with all the same songs on them… oh wait, no, that didn’t happen at all. Sorry, I must have still been thinking about that parallel universe that I wrote about in my last fanfic where all k-pop fans are discerning and act rationally.
2. SM TOWN – Dear My Family
Dear My Family,
Today, I had to cut vocals for some horrid trash song, it was so bad, honestly. It’s a good thing that I got the parts right on the first few takes because I didn’t want to listen to that garbage any longer than I absolutely had to. I think the label are trying to make it sound like some big collaboration “all the stars in one room” thing like “We Are The World” (even though we all recorded it separately anyway) but the difference is that we’re not trying to feed the poor or anything, we’re just trying to make SM some fucking money and also make it look like we’re one big happy family for this lame “I AM” CEO-cock-stroking documentary. Can you believe that the fangirls willingly swallow this marketing bullshit that SM puts out about us being all “SM Town” and buddy-buddy and shit? They must live some pretty sheltered lives if they think that we’re all chums, I know I especially can’t fucking stand Jessicunt, what a drag to be in the same group as that fucking stupid bitch and have to pretend that we’re all best friends for life all the time, ugh. f(x) are mostly moles too and don’t get me started on Shindong, he’s always trying to grope my ass whenever he sees me. I’d take the sexual harrassment up with the CEO but his wandering hands are even worse. Still, some of those EXO kids are pretty cute, so there’s a silver lining. Anyway, if you see that film “I AM” advertised, don’t go to see it, it’s fucking crap and you’ll just have to sit through two hours of me pretending to be nice to bitches like BoA and Luna while dying inside.
I hope they never make us sing this song live. Standing on the same stage as all of these fuckheads at once and performing a whole song would truly be the limit. God I can’t wait to get out of this insipid idol gig for emotional cripples and do something else for a more mature audience who have a collective mental age above 10 years old. Pray for me.
Your dearest, Taeyeon.
1. Busker Busker – Cherry Blossom Ending
You knew it had to be this one. Don’t get me wrong – I like Busker Busker – as people. I especially like Brad Moore, both for his kick-ass interview with Vice (compulsory reading for any k-pop fan, honestly) and also for favouriting my shady Tweets about how I think his group’s music is fucking shit. He’s obviously a good sport and that’s great, my respect for the guy is huge, and good on him also for playing hardball with the Korean music business, they probably got signed to some of the only decent record deals in the entire country thanks to Brad not taking their shit. However, the fact remains that for me Busker Busker represents everything that is musically bad about not just k-pop but in fact all music that is bad anywhere. This song was a massive, massive hit and trust a still-grappling-with-the-remnants-of-the-previous-generation’s-ultra-conservatism country like South Korea to go nuts for something so incredibly fucking bland and nondescript… but then maybe I’m not giving Koreans enough credit. Think about it: every spring since it’s been released this song has charted in Korea, now imagine a bunch of people standing around watching some plants grow in the spring after a cold winter:
Gardener 1: “Wow, watching this fucking grass grow is like, so boring, dude.”
Gardener 2: “Yeah I know, fuck this shit bro. Why are we even watching these plants.”
Gardener 1: “We’ll get in trouble with our employer if we don’t supervise the weed, man. Yang Hyun-Suk said these plants were important.”
Gardener 2: “I guess… hey dude, you know what? Watching these weeds grow reminds me of that shit Busker Busker song, that ‘Cherry Ending’ or whatever, man.”
Gardener 1: “Yeah, no kidding. That song was just as boring as doing this shit… hey man FUCK YOU now I’ve got that song stuck in my head! Fuck you, dude, what’d you do that for?”
Gardener 2: “Sorry dude. Hey, now it’s in my head too! Fuck! I’d better go and download it again because I deleted the shit song before, because it was that shit, like I didn’t want it taking up space on my phone. But if I don’t listen to it for real I’m scared it’ll be stuck in my head forever. Imagine that! Negative vibes, man.”
Gardener 1: “Whoa dude – scary. You’re freaking me out right now. Let’s just go download and listen to this crap song one more time so we can then get our brains back to normal. I wish we didn’t have such boring jobs that reminded us of this sucky music, hey. What a drag.”
That’s my theory on why Busker Busker charts every spring. They’ve literally made the soundtrack to live-action horticulture.
That’s it for the 2012 worst-of list! More pointless lists like this for you to get mad at and shake your Internet-fists in indignation over will be coming your way at the end of 2014!
It’s a rainy day indoors with a bunch of your friends who are all k-pop fans, and suddenly the power goes out. What to do? Time to forget about the Internet and entertain yourself old-school style with the only board game in the house, Monopoly.
Of course, today’s k-pop lovers can’t do anything for more than five seconds at a time unless it’s related to k-pop somehow, so this post will show you how to customise your Monopoly experience with k-pop fun! Here’s how to set up Kpopalypse Monopoly for that rainy day!
I’m aware that the idea of combining kpop and the Monopoly board game has in fact already been done, with some iterations being really quite good, and some others being reasonably shit (Allkpop cards, eww), but nobody else’s version had the same level of music industry nihilism which I think is a requirement for something like this.
Fortunately you don’t have to change much to make Kpopalypse Monopoly. All the rules can stay the same and I’m not going to boringly recap them, they’re at this link if you give a fuck. You’ll need a new Monopoly board though, I suggest this layout:
Print it out and away you go. If your favourite group isn’t included tough shit. You can always get out your MS Paint and edit the board to include your bias group if you must.
Don’t bother making new pieces, just use the existing ones for their hidden k-pop meaning:
You definitely do need new “chance” and “community chest” cards though, so I’ve given you some new ones that you can print out and keep ready to use. Here’s your 17 “chance (to not flop)” cards that you can substitute for the old “chance” cards:
Apparently, the Kpopalypse has arrived, and (for once) it’s got nothing to do with me. People have actually been trying to trend #kpopalypse on Twitter lately, and a lot of this has got to do with many of k-pop’s biggest groups suddenly starting to fall apart.
Honestly I don’t really care about any of it, but it seems to be an issue for a lot of people, so I thought a blog post about how and why line-up changes happen might be useful to give people who are freaking out about this shit a little bit of context, as well as an appreciation for why oppar doesn’t want to play “ulf nega ulf” anymore.
So firstly, why wouldn’t I give much of a shit about my faves leaving a group? Well:
I care about songs, and in k-pop the performers generally don’t write the songs, so it won’t affect my appreciation of the music any more or less to have a member leave
Members who leave are still celebrities in their own right so they’ll get followed around by cameras everywhere and I’ll still get to see them in photos, therefore fap value is unaffected
Line-up changes in any musical group of any type is a really, really fucking normal thing
I remember back in my “extreme metal” fan days (back when the style mostly sounded good before so many groups started embracing “emotional hardcore” whining and “nu-metal” hip-hop suck) reading my favourite weekly headbanger’s gossip column. Without fail, every single week there would be brand new information about line-up changes. It seems that the global metal scene couldn’t go a week without the guitar player of Anal Cunt leaving to start a new project called Agoraphobic Nosebleed or whatever it was that week (and no I’m not making those titles up, that actually happened). It got to the point where I’d just get used to the idea that anything could happen to my favourite group at any time, and I’d just take it in my stride. So why can’t k-pop fans do the same? It’s a question some of you considered worth asking:
The marketing of k-pop music fosters an emotional attachment to the idols that other less commercially-focused styles don’t really bother with trying to cultivate to the same extent. Indeed, if you’re feeling a bit emotionally attached to someone like Seth Putnam when listening to Anal Cunt, then you’d probably be perceived as a bit strange by other fans, or perhaps even gay (but that’s okay – according to them, everything was gay). Conversely, in k-pop emotional attachment is considered a very normal state of affairs by fans and is actively encouraged, therefore with line-up changes comes a great deal of fandom-sanctioned trauma as people’s imaginary relationships with their idols are shattered. As someone very experienced in “my faves had a line-up change again” I feel very equipped to help out fans who may be suffering. As it can’t be a mentally healthy situation for anybody, let’s now discuss line-up changes, how they happen and why, so you can be more emotionally prepared for your idol to exercise his or her perceived right to earn more than two cents per day.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Line-up changes within groups in the western world tend to fall into three broad categories. Let’s examine each of them in turn to see how relevant they are to k-pop fans and what it could mean for your faves.
1. CREATIVE DIFFERENCES
You’re in a band that plays reggae but you’re bored of it – reggae has lost its appeal since you joined the group and you’d really rather be playing ska (aka reggae at twice the speed). One day at a band meeting you bring up the topic of playing something faster and less reggae-ish, but the rest of the band don’t like it – they shoot your idea down in a puff of green smoke more potent than G-Dragon’s special stash. You’ve got a few choices at this point:
Put up and shut up, try not to let it bother you too much
Leave and join another group or start your own project (and then have to deal with whoever you recruit potentially not liking your musical direction)
Continually try to convince the others and be a thorn in their side until you get your way, or until they get pissed off enough to kick you out
“Creative differences” is politically correct music industry press release code for “I’m trapped in this band because it’s my bread and butter but I think this music sucks fucking dick and if I have to play this crap for the rest of my life I might end up killing someone”, and the decision to stay or leave involves weighing up the factors of personal fulfillment in music vs how much you give a fuck about the money. It’s not always an easy decision for someone to make, because most musicians do aspire to making a living from music, and most of them also do want to play music which doesn’t lick a dead rhino’s ballsack… but you can’t always have it both ways, unfortunately.
How relevant is this to k-pop line-up changes? Not much, because k-pop groups don’t get to decide their musical direction anyway, so they’ve generally already accepted the deal of “sing this song exactly the way we tell you, I don’t care if you hate how it sounds”. There’s nobody to have a “creative difference” with except management, because they’re the ones who are deciding your musical and creative direction, so this isn’t a factor that makes k-pop groups fall apart, but rather one that pits the groups against their managers. Think of the fights between HA:TFELT and JYP as a recent example, and there’s a good chance that Block B had creative control issues with their previous company as well – think about how their sound has changed since leaving. You can rest assured that your bias didn’t leave his or her group for this reason though, if anything it probably solidified them against their company. Let’s move on to:
2. PERSONAL DIFFERENCES
No person on the planet gets along with everybody perfectly, and people with very similar or very different personalities can clash often. Personality clashes that may not bother you with a friend, or even a close friend, are exacerbated greatly by having to work together as a musical unit, because the amount of personal space you get from each other is severely diminished. Months of continuous travel together sharing the same cramped spaces (only absolutely A-list groups travel in anything approaching luxury) can turn someone that you care about into someone who you’ll really rather just get the fuck away from. “Personal differences” is politically correct music industry press release code for “I can’t stand those fucking other cunts”, or “fuck that stupid retarded bitch, let’s kick her out”…. and when you hear about a group splitting because of “creative and personal differences”, then you know that shit really hit the fucking fan one day in the practice room.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
How common is this in k-pop? Probably not as much as you might think – remember that the groups experiencing instability lately are ones that have been active solid units for a long time. Any k-pop group that makes it through the typical three-year training process and then onto another three to seven years of an actual k-pop career has probably gotten used to the other members’ picking their toenails at bedtime, masturbating with the toilet roll holder, downloading scat porn onto the studio laptop or whatever other weird quirks the members might have. Also if the unit has been going strong for a number of years with some popularity and nobody has any creative investment that can be ruffled, everybody has a vested interest to keep things smoothly running along no matter how much they might personally dislike each other. This is why ostracisions are common in groups but genuine schoolyard-style bullying is extremely unlikely (and if you think ostracision IS bullying, you’re an idiot – by that definition I’ve been bullied by at least 98% of people I’ve ever met). Any bullying rumour about any group at all you can largely discount straight off the bat, because of the context of how musical groups operate, that’s why I smelled a rat about the T-ara rumours even before they were debunked. At most, Hwayoung probably experienced some talking-down-to (like those Tweets) simply by virtue of her being the youngest (remember Korea’s “respect your elders” culture) and was shunned a bit for complaining about the treatment and generally being an arrogant cunthole. Anything more extreme than that in T-ara or any other group for that matter isn’t likely simply because it’s the music industry which is a job and the stakes (and the debts) are super-high, astronomically high. Nobody wants to fuck it up just because they don’t like someone. I’ve been in plenty of groups where I didn’t like one (or usually more than one) member, I never bullied anyone but I sure did ignore the shit out of some of them, because things would have gotten extreme if I hadn’t, and who wants to rock the boat if it’s sailing correctly? I tolerated the “personal differences” for the good of the unit, and that’s what generally happens in groups that do well but have personality clashes.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Now we move onto the fun one, which is…
3. PROFESSIONAL DIFFERENCES
Whenever “professional differences” is cited as a reason for line-up changes, know that the term is politically correct music industry press release code for “I’m being fucking ripped off here, fuck this shit”. I’ve already written extensively about how contracts for musicians are extremely one-sided across the globe, and it’s even worse in Korea than in many other countries. How likely is this shit a reason for your faves breaking off with each other? Very fucking likely. Your favourite groups mostly make no money, and I mean literally no money. At all. Sit back and imagine that shit for a moment.
Imagine that you’re a member in one of the biggest groups on one of the biggest labels in k-pop. When you pass auditions and start training, you think “wow, it doesn’t get bigger in k-pop than this – if I’m lucky enough to debut here I’m going to be a rich man, this is my big break”. You look forward to this day, as do your parents, so you train extra hard and you do whatever it takes. You go through many years of training, and then finally, you debut. Your first few songs are released and they’re huge hits, but no money yet. A year goes by, and then another. Your fame increases, your fangirls are nuts, your songs consistently chart highly in Korea and you’re making inroads into China and Japan, you’re a recognisable celebrity face across the whole Asian subcontinent, you can’t walk through an airport without a security detail, you’re practically a prisoner in your dorm because you can’t even go out for a coffee without it being on Twitter ten minutes later… but still no decent money. What the fuck?
You start to get disgruntled – “I can’t write my own songs and be creative, but I’m fine with that as long as I get paid….but I’m not getting paid either… I just wanted to make a living from singing and dancing, but why am I bothering with this when I’m in the most advantageous position possible and working non-stop but getting nowhere?”. You have a conversation with the other group members about how unfair the situation is within the group. A couple are kind of feeling it like you are, but not to the same extent, they’re like “we know it’s hard bro, but chin up”. Another member isn’t having any of it, he’s looking at the bigger picture and saying “stop complaining, get into line, you should be grateful. Do you think it’s any better for any of the other groups? Would you rather make a living doing this or working in a factory somewhere?”. You’re livid – “Are you kidding? This IS a factory!” you reply. It’s alright for him to be content – he’s getting endorsement money that has so far eluded you. You continue to bounce the thought back and forth between the members and argue a while longer, but each time you bring up the topic, the debate gets heated and nothing gets resolved. After a while you stop trying to argue the point; feeling exposed and vulnerable, you keep to yourself a little more.
Meanwhile, something else starts happening… every time you go to China, you’re meeting other people in the Chinese entertainment world, and they may not be household names in Korea but they’re still mostly richer than you. They’ve all heard of you, of course, and many of them are fans. You tell them about the details of your contract and how much money you’ve made so far and they’re horrified. “You’re an Asian megastar, but I could make your income working in a restaurant”, they say. One starlet with a crush feels especially sympathetic towards you and in exchange for a night of hotel room shenanigans she agrees to put you in touch with a manager over there who might be able to help you out. The manager says that he’d love to sign you to a contract of his own. He says he’s willing to negotiate very favourable terms with someone who is already a reputable household name and virtually guaranteed to generate income for his label. “Just a pity…” he says “…about that inconvenient contract you’re already signed to. If you ever lose that baggage, come and look me up, I’ll be waiting. I’ve even got lawyers, if you need some help with that. Just saying.” He asks you to consider your options carefully.
You don’t tell him yes or no. The next day you fly back to Korea, to 20 hour work days every day, no days off, strict diet, no freedom… and no money. It seems like a world apart. You start to spend lots of time thinking about your future. The other group members begin to say that you’re becoming cold and distant, but it isn’t true – you’ve just got a lot on your mind. You don’t exactly ever get time alone, so you think during schedules, during gym, during dance routines – it’s all automatic muscle-memory by now anyway, you no longer need to engage your brain for any of your idol work, so it’s good to keep your mind occupied. Then you start to get sick, but your label continues to make you work anyway, and now that really gets you thinking. Surely a new deal could have a clause negotiated where you could break for illness? You feel more and more like the clock is ticking on your days as an idol in the Korean system, now that you’ve seen how it could be different elsewhere. You don’t know when you’ll reach breaking point, but you know it’s not long now.
-
Someone asked me a while back “why would a member leave a group at their peak?” and the answer is that when your group is peaking, you’re more valuable. Offers like the ones in the hypothetical scenario above may be more likely at that stage, and you’ve got a better chance to sign a deal with favourable terms if you’re already hot in the marketplace as opposed to the newcomer with no bargaining power that you were when you first started training. It’s not uncommon to see the most ambitious members of a group start getting itchy feet especially in the Korean system, because not only are they mostly making fuck all money, they’re all aware that you can’t be an idol group member forever. Eventually your fanbase will mature, someone younger and prettier than you is going to take that “idol” spot, and if you don’t have a backup plan, you might not end up with much. Of course there are no guarantees, but broadening the net is just good business sense, whether it be trying to go solo, getting a degree, getting a fashion label, getting into music production, or even getting into organised crime (or disorganised, as it may be). Dahee from GLAM apparently had a $300,000 debt when she tried that extortion business… and that’s not an unusual sum for someone to be saddled with at all once you factor in the expense of training, housing, feeding etc over multiple years plus those expensive MVs. Every participant in a k-pop group is taking a huge gamble, one that only ever pays off big for a small handful.
Hopefully this post will put some of those line-up changes that have rocked the k-pop world lately into some sort of understandable context for you. Maybe you might even understand how some of them could potentially feel about the tough decisions that they’re making. My point is, when your fave leaves a group, if you really must give enough of a fuck to have any discernable emotions about it at all, be happy. They’re quite possibly finally going to get to do a little bit of what they want for a change. Who knows, if they’re really lucky they may even get paid.
It’s a constant source of embarrassment to me that I DJ a k-pop radio show yet I can’t speak a word of Korean. I’ve got no plans to go to Korea or anything like that, but it sure would be nice to be able to read CD album liner notes and pronounce track titles correctly. Also, it’d be great not having to rely on shady Netizenbuzz articles with creepy anti T-ara editorialising from NB herself in them for my netizen translations – it’d be especially nice to cut that particular umbilical cord. Learning Korean language has been on my to-do list for a while now, but the trick is – how to get motivated to learn this shit as well as fit it into the rest of my busy schedule? So I thought I’d make myself a blog post about it.
I always find that I memorise things much better if I’m forced to write down or type out the stuff, so by making this little alphabet post, it’ll (theoretically) help me to remember the Korean characters and how they sound. So this affair isn’t one-sided and you the reader also get some value out of this even if you don’t necessarily give a shit about learning Korean yourself, I’ll use each letter as an excuse to extrapolate a bit on some things that are Kpopalypse-related that I’ve been asked about or that may be of interest to readers (or not).
Note: your browser/computer obviously needs to support Korean text reproduction or you ain’t gonna see shit.
Before we get started, intrepid language learners may also want to check out Anti Kpop-Fangirl’s excellent series on learning Korean language, click the following links for parts one, two and three. Honestly, start there first if you haven’t read them and you’re seriously keen to do this language learning business, because unlike me who is ultra-noob AKF is actually a fluent Korean speaker and he has good advice. On the other hand, if you don’t really give a fuck about learning Korean and are just reading this for entertainment, or if you already know Korean and are curious to see how wrong my noob ass got it, read on!
Consonants
Consonants are all shapes instead of just single lines.
ㄱ G/K – ㄲ KK
G and K are the same character. The K can be doubled.
Examples:
Seo In Guk: 서인국 – Third character has a G, then a U, then a K, from top to bottom.
Park Ji Yeon: 박지연 – K at the bottom of the first character.
G is for Go Fuck Your Mother or the C in Cao Ni Ma which is what the K sounds like when you say it. Speaking of which, Sulli has been living it up lately. She’s been spotted lately out and about on the town partying it up and having a few drinks:
Of course netizens are having a cry about it but who really cares about those assholes? They’re just jealous because Sulli is enough of a megastar to demand the days off and get them, meanwhile poor netizens still gotta pull 18-hour shifts at school or work. Support freedom, support Sulli.
ㄴ N
N looks like an upside-down G/K.
Examples:
Park Ji Yeon: 박지연 – N at the bottom of the third character.
Nugu: 누구- N at the top of the first character.
N is for “Nugu Alert“. The nugu alert series is still going and will go on for as long as I’m still interested in writing about nugus, which definitely means for the forseeable future as good musical things sometimes happen in nugudom. Feel free to send me your suggestions but remember that if their YouTube videos get over 20,000 hits they’re not nugu enough.
ㄷ D
D looks like C, but less round.
Examples:
Kim Dani: 김다니 – D on the left side of the second character.
Kang Daesung: 강대성 – D on the left side of the second character.
D is not only for Dani, reigning rap goddess of k-pop, but also for her difference in determination levels (a reference to the infamous T-ara Tweets of righteousness). Did you know that Dani never forgot her rap lines on stage like E.via? Did you know that Dani turns 15 in December 2014? I probably experienced the lions share of my own bullying at about the age she’s at now, so I can relate to her and her group getting picked on. Kpopalypse approves of all things Dani and has enough determination to support her.
ㄹ L/R
L and R are the same character and the sound seems to be somewhere in between as well.
Examples:
Lizzy: 리지 – L on the left side of the first character.
Raina: 레이나 – R on the left side of the first character.
Oh Hye Rin: 오혜린 – R on the top left side of the third character.
Oh Hye Rin is Raina‘s real name, and I must say that I really lucked out when I picked up my copy of Orange Caramel’s “My Copycat” single album and the photocard was this great picture of Kpopalypse #1 bias Raina bending over and her boobs hanging down.
Many faps were had that day. Pity Raina’s new solo single sucks just as much as her last one but I calmly accept this excellent photocard as an apology. Sorry about the scan lines, my scanner has issues and can’t scan images this hot without fucking up. If anyone’s got a better quality version of this picture let me know.
L on the other hand is for livestreams. I don’t do them a lot these days because I’m so busy and they are quite time consuming, but you can probably expect a livestream once every few months or so, I definitely am planning on a livestream around Christmas time. If I do them too often I think they cease to be of much value.
ㅁ M
It’s a box! Like all Korean characters, the box can be stretched to fit.
Examples:
Jeon Boram: 전보람 – M at the bottom of the third character.
Kang Minkyung: 강민경 – M on the top left side of the second character.
M is not just for Davichi’s Minkyung but also Japanese AV star Maria Ozawa and Eat Your Kimchi’s Martina, all of whom meet required standards. Martina obviously reads Kpopalypse blog now because Eat Your Kimchi is starting to get more fanservicey plus she’s even taken on board some of my educational fashion advice:
I can’t tell you how many people told me about this video when it came out. I got Ask.fm tipoffs, private messages, personal emails, Skype calls, you name it – people did everything they could to get the message to me that Martina was wearing a striped top and bouncing a lot.
For this, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who alerted me to this important information. May the fapgods watch over you.
ㅂ B/P – ㅃ BB/PP
Looks like a sheep’s face with horns that goes “baa”, that’s how I remember it… even though it’s said more like P, or perhaps somewhere in between B and P.
Examples:
Jeon Boram: 전보람 – B at the top of the second character.
Park Ji Yeon: 박지연 – P at the top left of the first character.
Crayon Pop’s “Barbarbar”: 빠빠빠 – note the double Bs, they’re actually spelling it “bba bba bba”.
B is for boobs, a big feature of my blogging. I asked my ask.fm followers for the best boobs picture of a k-pop girl that they could come up with for this post and here it is:
S looks like the shape your tongue makes when you press it against your mouth to make the S noise. A lot of Korean character shapes are related to the mouth movements used to pronounce them, apparently. Clever, hey?
Examples:
Sulli: 설리 – S on the top left side of the first character.
Krystal: 크리스탈 – S on the top of the third character.
Sunny: 써니 – double S on the left of the first character. Not sure why Sunny gets a double-S, maybe it’s a subtle reference to other things of interest that Sunny has two of.
S is for SM Entertainment, it’s also for suing your label, which is a fun activity that can happen when there are unresolved professional issues between labels and their employees. Protip: labels usually win, and even when they don’t, they tend to just shrug their shoulders and go “oh well, that’ll dent our end of year financials by about 0.002%”.
ㅇ – silent/NG
Okay, this is a complicated one. When this circle appears at the start of a character, it’s just there to fill up space, because in Korean text you must always start with a consonant even if there’s no consonant sound at the start of your word, so you shove this circle in there instead of leaving a gap. On the other hand, when the circle is at the end of a character it’s to show the “ng” sound.
Examples:
Ham Eunjung: 함은정 – the circle is at the top of the second character, because the second syllable is a vowel, but a consonant still has to be included at the start of every syllable in Korean text, so the “blank” circle is there to fill up the space. The circle is also at the bottom of the third syllable but for a different reason, this time it’s not filling up space, it’s denoting the “ng” sound of “jung”.
Park Ji Yeon: 박지연 – silent at the top left of the third character because “yeon” begins with a vowel sound.
NG is for NGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG which is sound that a lot of people make when confronted with pictures like this one:
Whereas “silent” isn’t a sound at all but is in fact the sound of you shutting the fuck up, which is what you should do if you don’t like posts that you see on the Internet. You know, rather than linking them everywhere and telling people how horrible you think they are and boosting the web traffic, you dumb attention-seeking fuck.
ㅈ J – ㅉ JJ
When you pronounce a J, your tongue smacks the roof of your mouth a bit. I think that’s where they were going with the shape of this character.
Examples:
Jeon Boram: 전보람 – J at the top left of the first character.
Park Ji Yeon: 박지연 – J at the left of the second character.
J is for Jiyeon, k-pop’s cyclopean overlord. Jiyeon is called the cyclops because her eyes are very close together. That’s why she wears smoky eye makeup all the time, to balance out that shit by giving the impression of extending her eyes out to the edges.
This makes Jiyeon and her smoky-eye accomplice, Brown Eyed Girls’ Gain, the spiritual opposites to SNSD’s Taeyeon, Rainbow’s Jisook and Japanese AV star and SHINee fan/cock gobbler Hitomi Tanaka. Forget North and South Korea, one day a great and epic war will break out in k-pop between the “close eyes” and the “far eyes” and few lives will be spared.
ㅊ CH
Like a J but with a line on top, just because.
Examples:
Choa: 초아 – CH at the top of the first character.
Chanmi: 찬미 – CH at the top of the first character.
CH is for “Check 1, 2” which is what you say when you’re testing a microphone, a device that most Korean pop stars don’t know how to use correctly, especially if it’s a vintage-style model. The reason for the phrase “Check 1, 2″ being used by sound engineers testing microphones is that the “ch” sound and the “k” sound in “check” are fairly high frequency for the human voice, the “whu” noise in “one” is middle frequency and the “oooo” in “two” is lower frequency, so by saying this phrase you’re testing the entire speech spectrum of human voice through the speakers and making sure no stray noises feed back. Of course there’s always some smartass in the audience who says “three, four…” because OMG SO RANDOM LULZ but you just ignore those people. This post’s random audio engineering educational content, you have now read it.
The C in CH is also for the coffee machine, which frequents a lot of my posts and has gathered a lot of questions. The coffee machine is a running music industry in-joke. People trying to impress others with their music industry resume may like to show off and say that they “worked in a music studio” but in fact they may have no qualifications and possibly never even touched the mixing desk, they may have only refilled the coffee machine. Technically, they’re not lying, they “worked in a music studio” changing coffee machine filters, so “music industry studio experience” is what goes on the resume of these sneaky fucks.
ㅋ K -ㄲ KK
“But we’ve already had K?” Just to make things confusing, here’s another K. Enjoy its existence. I’m not sure about when you use one versus the other. I’ll figure it out in a future post perhaps, or somebody can enlighten me in the comments.
Examples:
Qri: 큐리 – actually spelled “kyu-ri”. K at the top of the first character.
Jessica: 제시카 – K at the left of the third character. Ignore how the bottom is a bit bendy, that’s like no big thing, apparently and it happens with the other K at the top of this post as well, such as
Kang Minkyung: 강민경 – note the bendy K’s.
K is for Kyu-ri (Qri) doesn’t care, just like I don’t care whether the K is bendy or not. Here is a picture of Qri for no reason other than that she’s pretty.
Q is a pretty useless letter in the English language when you think about it, but Qri isn’t useless, because she’s pretty and in k-pop being pretty is a use.
ㅌ T – ㄸ TT
Note the similarity to D, above. I think the D can sometimes get used as a T. Or something. Fuck, I dunno.
Examples:
T-ara: 티아라- T at the left of the first character.
Tahiti: 타히티 – T at the left of the first and third characters.
T is for Trufax, which is what this post is (I hope). The word “trufax” comes from the English science fiction book Riddley Walker, where the protagonist of a post-apocalyptic scavenger era speaks in a bastardised future dialect of English with many words simplified and shortened.
ㅍ P
Double-ups again, notice that B/P above. No, I don’t know when to use this one and when to use the other one. Maybe I’ll teach you this stuff next time, but for now remember that the popular Korean surname “Park” is always the B/P that looks like ㅂ, not this ㅍ one.
Examples:
Puer Kim: 퓨어킴 – P on the top of the first character.
Spica: 스피카 – P on the left of the second character.
P is for Project Luhan, which is one of my many deranged fiction stories and which people keep asking me to do sequels for. I wasn’t initially going to do a part 3, but since the situation with EXO has become so interesting, I think that’s a good opportunity for me to write a third installment. It will happen at some point soon in the future, probably once Luhan himself has some stability in his career path so I can conveniently write that into the story somehow.
A circle thing with a couple lines above it. Not to be confused with that other circle.
Examples:
Hyomin: 효민 – H at the top of the first character.
Luhan: 루한 – H at the top-left of the second character.
Lee Hi: 이하이 – H on the left side of the second character. Actually spelled “Lee Ha Yi”.
H is for Ham Eunjung, who I get mistaken for daily because my ask.fm and Twitter profile pics as well as the top-right picture of my blogsite all have her portrait on it. I think this is hilarious.
It’s a good test. If you’re a k-pop fan you’ll probably recognise Eunjung straight away or at least twig that it’s someone in a group if you don’t know her. Her picture weeds out the people who don’t care about k-pop, and probably also weeds out a few of the Eunjung haters. I can live with this. Observant folks will also notice that Eunjung is wearing a hat, this is a reference to the hat that I wear on the livestreams and the fact that AKF always draws me with a hat in his MS Paint porn pictures.
Just to break things up before the voewls section, here’s the picture that I used of Eunjung as my header and display picture before I started using my current one.
All vowels are made purely of horizontal and vertical lines. Note that vowels always have a consonant before them, or a ㅇ silent consonant to fill up the gap.
ㅏ A
Examples:
Jungah: 정아 – A on the right of the second character.
Ahyoung: 아영 – A on the right of the first character.
T-ara: 티아라- A on the right of the second and third characters.
A is for Anti Kpop-Fangirl and Asian Junkie, two sites which I write for and which are both great. If you’re reading my posts on one of these two sites – congratulations, your taste in Korean pop sites does not suck a smelly goat turd! Asian Junkie always have the best and most rational level-headed news analysis that I can actually read without feeling like my braincells are atrophying from lack of use, meanwhile Anti Kpop-Fangirl is funny as shit and has awesome satirical content and laughs that I can enjoy without the impression that I’m being treated like I’m 8 years old. I don’t even go to [insert corporate dick-sucking k-pop website here] anymore because these two sites neatly distill most of what I want to know from the k-pop world, and the rest I usually get told about anyway or I find out through “research”.
ㅑ YA
Like A but with two hangy things to the right instead of one.
Examples:
Dal Shabet: 달샤벳 – YA on the right of the second character. Spelled “Dal Sya Bes”.
Shannon: 샤넌 – YA on the right of the first character. Spelled “Sya nuhn”.
Waveya: 웨이브야- YA on the right of the fourth character.
YA is for Yayaya, the shittiest concept that T-ara ever did and a low-quality benchmark for shit k-pop concepts everywhere. Anyone complaining about the sexier concepts in k-pop and saying “oh the poor girls getting forced into dressing sexy, tsk tsk exploitation, objectification, [insert other words ending in 'tion' here]” – sorry, but no. Last time I checked (and I check often) most girls I know like to dress sexy. What girls don’t like is dressing like this:
Some people thought it was racist of their company or whatever to do them up like that, but the real problem was that they were just fuckin’ fugly costumes and whoever thought to put such attractive girls in these weirdo dayglo wheat-sacks needs to get out of the whole costume design game and go refill the coffee machine. The song wasn’t any good either.
ㅓ- UH/EO
A vertical stroke with a hangy to the left.
Examples:
Seohyun: 서현 – EO on the right of the first character.
Shannon: 샤넌 – UH on the right of the second character. Spelled “Sya nuhn”.
Double hangies to the left. It’s always the same sound but it hovers between “yeo” and “yuh” to my ear.
Examples:
Hyewon: 혜원 – YEO/YUH on the right of the first character.
Hyuna: 현아 – YUH on the right of the first character.
Taeyeon: 태연 – YEO on the right of the second character.
Yeo is for “Yo Ye Yo” which is the only decent song on the “Blue Album” by Jiggy Fellaz. Everything else on that fucking CD is fucking shit. First person to write me a bitter rap response to this blog post can have my copy. In the meantime listen to this song and save yourself some money.
Fun trivia: the girl in the video is LE from EXID, doing what she does best – not rapping.
ㅗ O/OH
Line with one spike going up.
Examples:
Oh Hye Rin: 오혜린 – OH on the bottom of the first character.
Jeon Boram: 전보람 – O on the bottom of the second character.
O is for Open World Entertainment. Every crybaby in 2012 was whining about a whole bunch of completely minor shit that didn’t matter and which hopefully now seems lightweight-as-fuck compared to some of 2014’s K-pop tragedies. Some random examples of shit from 2012 that you cared about but really shouldn’t have:
G-Dragon puffs a bit of weed? That’s pretty normal behaviour for a musician, honestly. Do you know how many people I’ve met in the business who smoke that shit, either regularly or just on occasion? More than the amount of characters in the Korean alphabet, that’s for sure.
IU and Eunhuyk take a happy-snap in bed together. Did they fuck? Wait, since when is that any of your fucking concern, you fuckhead? I only care that IU hasn’t fucked ME yet. Come on IU, get with the program.
The other girls of T-ara got fed up with Hwayoung’s laziness and let off steam via Twitter? Good. So would you if your group mate pulled out of a fucking concert and lied about the reason – fuck “settling it in private”, why not let people know she’s a lazy cunt, some public shaming might be the only thing that actually gets the slack bitch into line for once. Pity it didn’t work out that way but damn it was worth a shot.
In the meantime Jang Seok-woo, the CEO of Open World Entertainment, was raping female trainees at his agency. Not just one or two, but dozens of them. Of course, one 51 year old CEO’s dick only goes so far, so when he wasn’t actually doing the rapey himself, he was getting his male performers to help out, directing it via text and watching it all from CCTV in his office like some kind of cross between a Bond villain and that creepy guy in the trenchcoat who always hangs around your school oval when it’s break time. Oh and some of the trainees were underage. And when he was caught he denied everything. Then later as the evidence mounted he had to plead guilty but appealed for a lighter sentence because “I supported Hallyu and gosh that’s gotta be worth something in all this“. No, really. If that’s not enough, the idols involved (which would be either The Boss, X-5 or Jun Jin, the only active performers on Open World at that time) got off on a technicality as apparently the evidence against them was inadmissible because there’s a 12-month statute of limitations on rape charges. So there’s guys still in k-pop now who maybe gang-raped a bunch of girls and got away with it. Oh and this is apparently common enough to warrant massive police action (or at least the appearance of massive police action) as many agencies just operate as fronts for the sex industry. Nobody really cares though, so this kind of thing is still happening right now, and lots of your favourite groups are probably involved in some way in sexual abuse, and they’ll get away with it too, because you’re too busy being concerned about two idols supposedly dating to even notice. Now tell me again that G-Dragon, IU and T-ara had the scandals that mattered in 2012, you dumb bitch.
The biggest crime of all – only one stock photo of the Open World CEO that was any good seemed to exist, so I had to see this same fucking photo of him in his orange parka over and over again in every article. Ouch, my eyes.
ㅛ YO
Line with two upward spikes.
Examples:
Hyoyeon: 효연 – YO on the bottom of the first character.
Eunkyo: 은교 – YO on the bottom of the second character.
YO is for YOLO which is actually the name of a song released by a nugu group called Madtown, to the collective groans of all k-pop fans all over the world with a mental age above 9 years old. Do not listen to this tragic song, instead check out the web cartoons YOLO and YOLO 2 which will give you a complete cultural understanding of Australian life. We haven’t invented teleporting yet but other than this, the cartoons are quite realistic and portray an honest depiction of what you can expect from a night out on the town around where I live.
ㅜ U
Line with one downward spike. Pronounced “oo” as in “you smell like poo“.
Examples:
Luhan: 루한 – U at the bottom of the first character.
Sooyoung: 수영 – U at the bottom of the first character.
Jisoo: 지수 – U at the bottom of the second character.
U is for the secret CCM underground jelly arena. I can’t tell you any more than this, because it’s a secret. Although it may be called the secret MBK underground jelly arena now that CCM have merged or whatever the fuck.
ㅠ YU
Line with two downward spikes. Pronounced “you” as in “you smell like poo”.
Examples:
Yuri: 유리 – YU at the bottom of the first character.
Qri: 큐리 – YU at the bottom of the first character. Spelled “kyu-ri”.
Puer Kim: 퓨어킴 – YU at the bottom of the first character.
Puer Kim has gigantic boobs, by the way. I feel like I haven’t really highlighted this in this post enough, so here’s a video of Puer Kim which is great but I really wish it was zoomed in a bit closer.
If k-pop overall started featuring more girls with this kind of figure, I’d probably turf out some of my AV collection to make more room for girls in k-pop videos.
ㅡ EU
A horizontal line. Pronounced “ewwww” as in “ewww, gross, you smell like poo”.
Examples:
Eunkyo: 은교 – EU in the middle of the first character.
Eunji: 은지 – EU in the middle of the first character.
Naeun: 나은 – EU in the middle of the second character.
EU is of course for Eunkyo from F-ve Dolls. Devotees of Kpopalypse blog will know that the site features an attractive hot fappable picture of gorgeous Eunkyo and that it takes the clicker to a random weird site, and I change the destination every so often when I feel like it. One day I’ll list all the Eunkyo sites in a post…. but not today. For now here’s a picture of lovely Eunkyo, get your hand off your genitals, you’re supposed to be learning Korean.
A vertical line. Pronounced as E but interchangeable with I as most English uses I with an E sound anyway.
Examples:
Sulli: 설리 – I on the right of the second character.
Krystal: 크리스탈 – I on the right of the second character.
T-ara: 티아라- I on the right of the first character.
Tahiti: 타히티 – I on the right of the second and third characters.
I is for interviews. Did you know that it’s really hard to find people who want to do a Kpopalypse Interview? Did you also know that I’ve already got another Kpopalypse Interview ready to go and that it will be published soon (it’s been ready to go for months but I wanted to publish the Sarah Wolfgang interview first to give it some context)? Did you know that if you’d like to be interviewed and you’re doing something interesting in k-pop, you should get in touch?
I is also for iljins, also known as “people who relaxed and had fun at school and occasionally drank soju and smoked a cigarette or two while I studied hard and was miserable instead”.
I is also for the Korean website ilbe, which is really just like a Korean mutation of fun-filled Internet humour site Encyclopedia Dramatica and nothing to be concerned about. Korean pretend to be all “oh, I don’t visit that site” but they all fucking do – otherwise, why would the know that it was such a supposedly horrible place?
COMPLEX VOWELS (DIPHTHONGS)
These vowels are made by squishing multiple vowels together, so they’re a bit harder to remember. They’re also a bit harder to find examples for and write shit about but I’ll do my best. Note that complex vowels always have a consonant before them, or a ㅇ silent consonant to fill up the gap.
ㅢ UI/UEE
If you squish together ㅡ EU and ㅣ E/I and you have ㅢ UI/UEE.
Examples:
Sohee: 소희 – UEE at the right and bottom of the second character.
Dahee: 다희 – UEE at the right and bottom of the second character.
UEE is for After School’s Uee, and I know what you’re thinking, but, Uee from After School doesn’t have connected vowels and so her name is spelled the long way: 유이. People are wondering when After School will come back but remember they had a great Japanese album earlier this year that they promoted, so it’s not like they haven’t been busy. Plus imagine how overworked the Orange Caramel girls are going to feel, straight from After School to four Orange Caramel promotions in a row, and then more After School? I’d hate to be them. Complaining when groups come back that they’re being overworked, complaining when groups don’t come back – nothing ever pleases k-pop fans, they always gotta complain even when they’re getting the gold star treatment and idols are practically dropping dead trying to please them. STFU and wait three years between comebacks like fans do in other genres you whiny fuckbags. Here’s a picture of Uee who seems to have a bit of a headache, probably from reading all your pointless fuckbaggery.
Stephanie: 스테파니 – EH on the right of the second character.
Sehun: 세훈 – EH on the right of the first character.
EH is for “eh eh eh eh eh eh ehhhhh, 2NE1” a great k-pop group that suddenly turned shit. I’m still in mourning. Maybe one day we’ll get great songs out of them like “Fire”, “I Am The Best” and “Hate You” again. But probably not.
ㅖ YE
If you squish together ㅕ (YEO/YUH) and ㅣ(E/I) you get ㅖ (YE). Pronounced like the “ye” in “Yes, you smell like poo”.
Examples:
Sunye: 선예 – YE on the right of the second character.
YeEun: 예은 – YE on the right of the first character.
YE is for YES as this character word actually does mean “yes”. It’s a formal “yes”, so you use it when addressing your elders (like me), because you respect them so much (like me). So be nice to me, cunts.
ㅒYAE
If you squish togetherㅑ(YA) and ㅣ(E/I) you get ㅒ(YAE).
I couldn’t find a good example of this shit to share with you. It seems I lack determination.
ㅐ AE
If you squish togetherㅏ (A) and ㅣ (E/I), you get ㅐ AE. Pronounced the same as ㅔ EH (eh eh eh eh eh ehhhh 2NE1).
Examples:
Taeyeon: 태연 – AE on the right of the first character.
Jiae: 지애 – AE on the right of the second character.
AE is for the Aeolian mode, a seven-note diatonic scale that most of the best k-pop songs are built from. It’s also known as the “natural minor” scale, or the major scale starting from scale degree 6. Piano students learn the bastardised versions of this scale, the “harmonic minor” and “melodic minor” scales first, because they’re considered more important and useful in classical music harmony, but natural minor is the real shit. You can’t have Roly Poly without an Aeolian mode.
ㅙ WAE
Squish three vowels: ㅗ (O/OH) withㅏ A and ㅣ (E/I), and you get ㅙ WAE, which sounds like the start of the word “when”.
No examples here but WAE is for “why” because this word actually means “Why” in Korean. I often ask myself “why” many things, such as:
Why people still visit Allkpop
Why Chad Future didn’t return my email asking for an interview
Why people are always asking me shit about why Anti Kpop-Fangirl or Asian Junkie does this or that – protip: ask them, not me, don’t make them blog about your chickenshit dumb pussy ass
ㅘ WAH
Combine ㅗ (O/OH) withㅏ A and the result is ㅘ WAH. Sounds like the W in “what a wanker, why doesn’t that person wash their ass, they smell like poo”.
Example:
Hwanhee : 환희 – WAH in the middle and right of the first character.
WAH is for “wah wah wah” which is all I ever hear out of k-pop fans when I browse forums and such. As long as music is still getting created that you enjoy, none of the rest should matter. Go back to complaining about how your new phone bends or whatever other bullshit you think is important this week.
ㅞ WE
Squish together ㅜ (U) and ㅓ (UH/EO) with ㅣ (E/I) and the result is ㅞ WE.
Example:
Way: 웨이 – WE at the bottom and right of the first character.
Of course I have to include Way in this post or Way’s Girls will probably take out a contract on my ass. Don’t be fooled by Way and Choa’s fap-friendly bouncing to the decidedly average Strawberry Milk track, these girls might have cans but don’t fuck with them or they’ll put you in the can. Way’s gangster resume is a mile long and no need to recount it here.
Here’s a picture of a rival company’s building burning down just to remind you of the powe..
Oh wait sorry for the delay I was just on the phone. Anyway I’d just like to reiterate that Way is in no way responsible for the incident in the photo depicted above and when I say “gangster resume” I just mean that she’s got really bad-ass fashion and stuff. Also you should all go out and buy Strawberry Milk’s “OK” as soon as possible, wow, what a great track it is. Song of the year. Maybe you should buy multiple copes and give some to your friends. Thank you. Let’s move on quickly.
ㅝ WO
Squish together ㅜ (U) and ㅓ (UH/EO), and the result is ㅝ WO.
Example:
Kwon Yuri: 권유리 – WO in the middle and right of the first character.
Wonder Girls: 원더걸스- WO in the middle and right of the first character.
WO is for Wonder Girls of course and I remember when I was first buying k-pop stuff in my town the lady behind the counter introduced me to Wonder Girls and said “this group are SNSD’s main competition in the USA”. Ah, the lies that people behind the counter will tell you to buy stuff. Still, at least the music was good, and I didn’t get stiffed as hard as my friend who specifically went in there asking for girl bands (because he’s a pervert like me) and they sold him the new ZE:A album.
ㅟ WI
Combine ㅜ (U) and ㅣ (E/I), and you get ㅟ WI. Pronounced like the “wee” in “I hope next week you don’t still smell like poo”.
Example:
WINNER: 위너 – WI at bottom and right of the first character.
Because WI sounds like “week” it’s for weak-ass comebacks from established groups, and we’ve sure had a lot of those in 2014. I hope that you guys like nugus because that’s mainly what my best-of for 2014 list is going to be. But why are the comebacks from the big names mostly so shitty? It’s the topic of a future blog post, expect it fondly.
ㅚ WEH
Combine ㅗ (O/OH) with ㅣ(E/I) and you have WEH. Don’t ask me about the logic behind that, I have no idea. Sounds like the “weh” in “on wendesday you smelled like poo, and you still do now”. It also sounds like “whe” in “when is this post going to end” and the answer is right now. Thanks for reading, hopefully I got all the Korean right (but probably not) and Kpopalypse will be back with more posts soon! For now enjoy this video of k-pop’s Tura Santana, Puer Kim, who really isn’t in this post enough, and her excellent “Manyo Maash”.
I’m in the middle of working on a very long post which is going to take me multiple days to finish. In the meantime, to keep you entertained while you wait, here’s a list of (almost) all the websites that were featured on the clickable sidebar Eunkyo over the past year (or however long I’ve had her there, can’t remember exactly but it feels like about a year). Just in case you missed any of the fun. Enjoy!
Ever since I did my big boobs in k-pop guide post, I’ve been inundated with people complaining that my list left out their fave. I knew this would happen, after all such an exhaustive topic is never going to be “complete”. Not only did I leave out some people, but several new performers have also emerged as possible contenders of interest, so it’s time for a follow-up post to address these concerns and educate the general population in the virtues of k-pop boobs.
WARNING: before you click to read more – this post is bigger than Puer Kim’s rack. Prepare your browser appropriately for a large deluge of images of k-pop boobs.
Note that we are once again grading female boobs in four separate key areas:
Size – the amount of raw “pearly volume”
E Factor – enhancement using push-up bras, padding, etc
PS factor – surgical enhancement, also that “other” PS, Photoshop
Fanservice – if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear, can it be said to have made a sound? Likewise, if a k-pop girl has busty assets but never shows them in a positive light, is she in fact busty at all? The answer to both of these questions is obviously “yes, so stick your Zen Buddhist philosophical wank up your ass” but we’d still like to see more fanservice from k-pop girls.
All k-pop girls will be given a final score for boob fapability which is a combination of all the above important elements.
Nominations were taken from ask.fm and also I added a few picks of my own. I included most of the nominations but not all, so if your fave isn’t here it’s probably because I’m ignoring them either because they didn’t meet minimum bustiness requirements, or maybe I neglected them deliberately just to be an asshole. Feel free to complain about that on some forum somewhere or whatever. I do not claim this list to be complete, merely the best that I am motivated to do. Anyway here we go and we may as well get started with our header image k-pop schoolteacher:
Also featured in the blackboard image at the top of this post, Puer Kim’s assets are so formidable that apparently jealous netizens have been campaigning for her to get a breast reduction. As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to hate the hive-mind, there’s one more. It’s safe to say that Russ Meyer would have started a k-pop agency if there were more girls in Korea with figures like Puer Kim. Her broad shoulders suggest that the boobage is legit, too (natural boob volume is often related to shoulder span). The question is though – how much of this is push-up?
Maybe some extra volume is added from the industrial-strength underwear required to hold such boulders, and why wouldn’t she want to present them positively.
In her “Purfier” teaser (which unlike 99% of teasers is worth a look because none of the footage is replicated in her actual feature tracks), Puer Kim lays a bunch of fruit out on the table and asks you to guess the most likely size of her tits. Even though the photos sometimes show rockmelon-worthy dimensions, I’m picking the orange as the closest raw volume equivalent. But who’s complaining? The only thing keeping her away from snatching Martina’s crown is that I haven’t seen any bounce yet.
When I first saw someone nominate Woohee for possible inclusion in this post I was like “you must be kidding me, she ain’t all that”. But then I did some research and found some recent pictures that made me understand the nomination more clearly:
I decided to make ex-members of groups eligible this time, and what a good decision that was, because I now get to include Viki in this list. Viki quit k-pop seemingly to pursue a career in the “erotic film” industry, and you can read more about that plus view some video links to exposed idol boobies here courtesy of Asian Junkie. Don’t forget to bring your popcorn.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
What you will notice when you start watching the videos at the link however is that Viki’s boobs are very much a surgical creation (I think the popcorn picture was from before she “upgraded her appearance”). Viki also gets shopped quite a lot, such as in this cover for Maxim which very obviously has some severe shop work on the boobs:
Jaekyung was chosen for the Rainbow Blaxx “sexy” subunit and it’s easy to see why. She also sure takes a lot of motherfuckin’ selcas. Some look like this:
Maybe it’s all in the angle. Who knows how much boob is really there? It could be one of k-pop’s greatest mysteries, but the variance in boob size probably rules out surgery in favour of different types of support. What’s less of a mystery is that Jaekyung looks good so nobody really cares.
Rainbow groupmate Woori also meets required standards and is happy to display cleavage, a sight which is thankfully becoming more and more common in k-pop due to trainblazers like her. She also looks pretty busty in the photo above but there’s clearly a bit of smoke and mirrors going on, this casual selca while sleeping on the train probably reveals the correct proportions:
It’s still quite an amount even in worst case scenario, and hopefully the above image fulfills your JAV-style public transport molestation video fantasies. Now that’s fanservice on another level.
Rounding out our Rainbow trilogy is Hyunyoung, who probably has had her cleavage Photoshopped slightly in the above photo for Maxim (who should be required by law to photograph all k-pop girls) but here’s a sleepytime photo to give you a better idea:
Posture is of course very important when displaying boobs so for someone to still look busty and maintain most of her volume even in this decidedly not-glamourous photo with a crappy hunching over position is impressive! It means that we’re dealing with the real deal and not a Photoshopper’s fantasy.
Clara was excluded from the first boobs list because she wasn’t in k-pop at the time, but since that list came out she’s done a song with House Rulez and she’s also working on a solo song of her own apparently, which I’m sure is going to set the k-pop world on fire, or at least apply to it some significant warming friction.
We all know Clara is going to score big in this list here especially with regard to fanservice given that that’s largely all she’s famous for up until this point. The big question is however – are they real?
Looking at video evidence, I see a lot of firmness and I don’t see a lot of bounce happening even during very bouncy dance routines, so I’m tipping some hefty implants (even though she reckons she just “got prettier“). Still, it’s not like I gotta feel them when I go to sleep, so I don’t care that much if they’re real – their positive impression during photoshoots is still real, and my thirst is still real.
Ivy was some k-pop singer who had a controversy so she went on a career break for a few years to “reflect” as netizens are so fond of making people do – then she came back a few years later and netizens resumed the bashing anyway like she never left. Just goes to show that nobody should ever listen to those pieces of shit.
Don’t ask me what the controversy was about – I think it was some bullshit because she fucked some dude when she wasn’t supposed to or whatever, but I dunno. Add it to the ever-growing list of things I really don’t give a fuck about, a list that some of you have noticed is getting pretty long:
I DO give a shit about some things though, such as spreading the cause of boob appreciation, hence me spending days of my life selflessly making this post for your enjoyment and entertainment. I thought that would have been fairly obvious to everybody but I guess some things are never obvious enough for some of you deadshits out there. Anyway here’s a picture of Ivy plus some dude.
That should please any of you people craving some saucy man-meat objectification to balance out all the female-perving. You can’t even see his face – can’t get any more “reducing ‘em to an object” than that. Don’t ask me who the guy is though, I’m too busy staring at Ivy’s boobs anyway. To think that she retreated from the public eye for years due to netizen cyberbullying, denying herself a career during k-pop’s lucrative golden age and denying me fap value… and then netizens have the hide to go and accuse others of bullying, like the hypocrites even have a leg to stand on, while this hottie gets locked up without even a webcam to strip in front of. It’s a crime, I tell you. How pathetic is k-pop internet culture, pathetic enough for me to blog about it, that’s for sure. Support Ivy and troll a netizen today. Or if you can’t manage that, at least fap to Ivy and ignore a netizen today.
I’m pretty sure Dahye is most people’s fave in I-can’t-believe-they’re-not-nugus BESTie, one of those great new groups where everybody meets required standards. Unfortunately, Dahye insists on wearing 2267 layers of clothing in every photo of her ever, so determining true breast size is difficult. This means we have to go to selca land to get a true indication.
Even these photos, which is about as much cleavage as I’ve ever seen from Dayhe, don’t really tell us a lot of accurate information. It’s just as well that Dahye is cute and therefore easy to forgive.
Someone needs to tell this girl that “There’s Something About Mary” was just a film, not an instructional video. I’m suspecting a fairly modest boob size, but then maybe Dahye is just playing them down so as to not make the other members of the group feel jealous. Not that any of them are really all that far behind her in terms of hotness.
Qri may be hot enough to get on my bias list but that doesn’t mean that she actually has boobs of note – if anything it just goes to show that you don’t need to be busty to be considered hot by Kpopalypse (it’s just an advantage, so there is hope, non-busty Kpopalypse fangirls!) . I can’t believe Qri was even nominated for this, surely she’s the least busty member of T-ara, certainly in terms of proportionate height-to-boob ratio. I mean okay, some of you linked this photo, and her boobs do look huge in it:
But so does her hair braid, and her lips – and even the button on the dress, so that should tell you something about the illusion that the camera is generating here. And these are the only photos of her with anything even vaguely resembling cleavage.
She can layer up with thick leather and bras on the outside of her clothing in “Sugar Free” all she wants, nobody is fooled. Well, almost nobody. You guys nominated Boram too, but I’m not even gonna go there. Come on now, are you that easily hoodwinked?
Even more ridiculously, nobody nominated Hyomin. Look at her smiling like the cat that swallowed the cream, she’s all like “ha, it’s so hilarious that I’m so fucking hot and I’m promoting my new song “Nice Body” and it says “Nice Body” on my shirt, can you uggzilla haters feel the burn yet?”. Even the other hotties in her own group are jealous, I can only imagine how everybody else feels.
She’s even got her fucking measurements on her clothing. It’s like she knew she was destined to appear in this post and only wants to make my job easier.
Looks at the shadow under that shirt, outstanding boob clearance. If she did the IBC the result would be similar to Sunny’s, but unlike Sunny, Hyomin hasn’t really grappled consistently with fanservice yet, which is a shame and maybe why she slipped under your radar. Or maybe you folks didn’t nominate Hyomin because you just felt that her inclusion was a foregone conclusion. If so, you were right!
I was going to write about T-ara’s ex-manicurist-seeker and bathwater-hogging specialist Hwayoung, but then I remembered that she has a sister with far more determination who at least two people still actually care about, so I thought I’d write about Hyoyoung instead. They have exactly the same rack anyway. The key difference, of course, is that Hyoyoung hasn’t really discovered fanservice yet, which is a pity, she’s another k-pop girl with nice boobs who is determined not to show them, she’s always hiding behind 6872 layers.
Hwayoung on the other hand flops out her heavily propped-up titties for the public at any opportunity given to her, usually when T-ara are having activities at the same time so she can ride off the T-ara fame a bit more, probably because it’s literally the only thing she’s known for these days besides having a piss-poor attitude. But you’ve already seen all Hwayoung’s pics and videos because she’s thrusting them in your face all the time in desperation so no need for me to link any of them here. Maybe Hwayoung could teach Hyoyoung a thing or two about being determined to show tits, and Hyoyoung could them return the favour by showing Hwayoung how to play nicely with others.
As the most busty practitioner from the group who most heavily flew the “sexy concepts pay the bills so STFU” flag in 2014, Minhee was heavily requested and it’s easy to see why. Her boobs are so nicely displayed that even other group members can’t keep their hands off them.
However I do suspect a lot of padding, because Minhee wasn’t rocking this much boob until recently. It’s true that she may have “got prettier” but Minhee’s “Marionette” outfits even incorporated exposed padded bras into their design.
Hyoeun from Stellar was also requested, and although I actually find Hyoeun a lot more attractive generally, she’s got a long way to go to reach Minhee’s level of cleavage exposure… and so do most idols, unfortunately. Let’s hope Minhee can keep blazing that trail and doesn’t get closeted back up with some stupid concept where she has to wear hanbok and do heart signs and shit.
You can tell that Nam Gyuri is another brilliant KKS recruitment choice, does the man have the eagle eye or what? Of course, she had some issues with him or whatever so she’s no longer part of Korea’s second-most-gangster record label, and that’s a shame because I’d like to see more of this in music videos:
This dress looks straight out of Stellar’s “Mask” video. However such a loose-fitting dress plus very firm boobs underneath also leads me to suspicions of an “upgraded appearance”. We may not be sure but we can certainly speculate on it and write blogs as if we know what we’re talking about for the amusement of others.
Choa and Way informed me in no uncertain terms that they heard that I was doing a boobs post and that they wanted no part in my shady objectification schemes. They mentioned that any such postings on my part highlighting the boobs of Crayon Pop members might lead to other poorer people in the vicinity of my dwelling suddenly becoming somewhat richer at my expense due to them accessing wealth redistribution services. Being a friendly, cooperative sort who likes his life uninterrupted by mishap, I hastily agreed to not include Crayon Pop in my boobs post. Also note that Strawberry Milk’s song “OK” is really good, why don’t you click on this YouTube link and play it a lot, make sure you disable your adblocker so Chrome Entertainment makes maximum revenue, and note that there is nothing to see in this video that is boob related. At all. Also don’t forget that if you ever see a Crayon Pop girl in a CF, you are legally obligated to purchase that product or service. Thank you. Moving on:
EXID have been wearing a lot of form fitting clothing lately and that’s a good thing. I especially like Hyerin’s form, sure she’s muffin-topping it a bit but I honestly like that too.
Super cute. Of course those turtleneck sweaters mean that there could be literally anything under there, but that’s okay, I can just imagine that I’m this teddy bear:
Hani definitely isn’t as busty as Hyerin, and she’s also not exposing any more than her, but you people seem to all like her a lot so here she is anyway, because I’m all about pleasing others.
Fast gaining a reputation in k-pop circles as “Big Boobs Wendy”, the bustiest member of SM’s replacement girl group for the laughably redundant and utterly shithouse vocalfag wank-group CSJH The Grace, Wendy at first slid quietly under the radar of k-pop boob appreciators. This however all changed quickly when she took on board some advice from yours truly and was snapped out and about in the following clothing:
I think her true bustiness is yet to be proven however. Never understimate the power of horizontal back and white stripes when applied correctly as per Kpopalypse instructions to enhance boob volume. So far other official photos have not yet backed up the busty impression of this street shot, suggesting that her company is playing their cards close to their chest… or at least too close to Wendy’s chest to let us get much of a peek at it.
Whether Wendy will continue to remain of interest to boob connoisseurs remains to be seen, but I think she’s off to a promising start. It’s early days yet! Did anyone notice Sunny’s boobs all that much back in “Into The New World” days? It’s doubtful, so let’s give Wendy time and see what the future holds.
I’ve always liked both Gangkiz and Haein, and I can’t believe that I left her out of the initial boobs post. Gangkiz flopped incredibly, but why? The only thing wrong with them was that they were a marketing mis-step, Gangkiz had great songs and great girls but insecure fangirls don’t want to know about a mature-age sexy girl group like this. Also maybe “Honey Honey” was just a little too similar-sounding to T-ara’s “Lovey Dovey“, which had just been a huge hit so people probably felt like they were being sold the same song twice and understandably said no. But who cares about that for now, let’s talk about tits.
Haein is genuinely busty – you know someone’s got serious boobs going on when they hunch over in a poor posture and it actually enhances rather than detracts from their boobpearance (that’s a new word I invented just now, feel free to use). Her body shape is the kind that you see on more busty women too, so surgery is unlikely… and she looks busty in every photo, even the ones where she’s got her arm in the way:
According to the wiki page on Gangkiz, there’s only two girls left in the group and Haein isn’t one of them, but even that’s optimistic – chances are they’ve been permanently disbanded. I can only hope that Haein gets in some more bikini videos like the crappy one she was in for T-ara last year.
“G is for Guess” according to the shirt, and IU has been a popular nomination for this post – it seems she the one who’s been making you all guess as to whether she is a late bloomer, “got prettier” YG style or is just wearing more padded bras lately to fit in with her more mature post-illness image.
I’m tipping the third option. Girls can do amazing things with bras, pads and tissue paper – but that’s okay because I can do amazing things with my penis when I look at the result.
IU approves, look at that smile. Or maybe she doesn’t, I don’t care. May she be continue to be hot and enjoy her “close relationship” with male k-pop idols.
Ah, that’s better. Okay, it’s a pretty safe bet to say that there’s no padding in this photo. Her boob profile pretty much fits those of natural boobs too, i.e there’s a lot more weight at the bottom of the boob. If only all k-pop stars were this helpful.
Nam Young Joo is a relatively new singer on the k-pop scene, who some of you may not have heard of. I certainly hadn’t heard of her until she was suggested for this post, and so I promptly did some research to see if she was eligible. The results were…. amusing:
Someone over at her agency is clearly in love with Photoshop’s “liquify” filter, because every official Nam Young Joo photo has got crazily obvious Photoshop all over it..
I can’t fap to this, my brain is too confused, it’s like fapping to that Dali painting with the melting clocks. Please stop messing with her proportions, whoever you are.
They’re probably a bit shopped in this photo, or she’s arching her back a real lot, but hey whatever. At least the shopping if it’s there actually looks reasonably believable, Nam Young Joo’s photographer take note.
I like Wassup because they don’t play the game by the k-pop rulebook in a lot of ways, such as their commitment to fanservice which goes above and beyond what most k-pop groups and individuals can muster. They seem to be pretty focused on an international audience only, and I say good. Never mind Korea, send these boobs directly to Kpopalypse, thank you.
Wassup’s best kept secret is Dain and she is cute as shit, and her boobies are fucking nice. I know she’s a well-kept secret because Nada got tons of nominations for this list, but Dain got none. Even this duckface photo above is tolerable.
Ex-Jewelry member Seo In Young’s boobies are just fucking weird. They always look bizarre in every single photo. I’ve tried to figure it out and I just can’t, I honestly don’t know what’s even going on in that dark space between her boobs which is at least as scary as Taeyeon’s.
Maybe it’s Photoshop, maybe it’s a botched surgery, maybe she’s one of those girls who has had really fluctuating weight in the past and it’s altered her chest area a bit, or maybe it’s a portal to another dimension. We can call it The Large Hard-On Collider.
Look at her all-knowing stare – only Seo In Young knows the secret, and she’s not telling. In the meantime, she continues to taunt us with her cleave, prodding the deepest wells of our subconscious, inviting us to stare through the gaping chasm of flesh into the void beyond. A creation Lovecraftian in scope that pure science cannot comprehend.
Yewon from Jewelry is here with her magic wand of boob appreciation. She should probably turn her magic abilities to helping her group not flop for a change, but hey if she’s not going to act in her own best rational self-interest and instead is just going to show us her boobs I’m not complaining.
She seems pretty happy about it. Yewon isn’t shy of a bit of fanservicey underwear modelling and certainly does a better job of modelling for Yes than Hyosung who won’t even show us both bra cups.
Even selcas come up very nice thanks to sensible Kpopalypse-approved application of horizontal black and white stripes. I never really paid much attention to Yewon before so thank you to whoever nominated her, for making me aware. Also I am a bad person for not supporting this girl more.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I don’t think Gain’s boobs are really all that big. I just think she’s very, very good at presenting what she’s got appealingly.
Gain’s especially good at presenting herself appealingly for molesters and perverts to fantasise about her. Lots of her music videos seem to depict people forcing themselves on her and doing rude and legally ambiguous things. Here she is defending herself against an attacker with a vicious guard dog. Gain’s body language and the scary dog’s gnashing teeth say “no” but the mind of the viewer (represented by the sign on the left) says “yes”.
Another picture taken after the molester/viewer has attempted to have his/her (not all perpetrators of sex crimes are male, you know) way with Gain, tearing off half her clothes off and exposing her boobs before the guard dog’s gnashing teeth finally sent them on their way. Gain’s face looks sad and dejected, and the guard dog also seemed displeased having been unable to protect Gain from a thorough humiliation. However the sign saying “yes” still remains, suggesting that in the mind of the attacker she really wanted it. This is fanservice on a completely different level, known as “rape fantasy”, or in k-pop as “classy sexy” (and just to clarify I think “rape fantasy” is okay as long as it’s with consenting folks and doesn’t become “rape reality”). It must all be the same thing, because Gain gets called “classy sexy” all the time, and never gets hate for her sexy concepts. It’s probably because she gets raped in a lot of them, therefore in the minds of crazy fangirls who can’t separate fantasy (aka their “young emotional story”) from reality she’s being ‘punished’ for being such a ‘slut’.
Gain has tapped into the thinly-veiled misogyny that underpins k-pop and psychologically mined it to come out on top of everybody in the slut-shame-game. She’s five steps ahead of you at all times. She knows what you’re thinking, before you think it. She’s already put your hate letter in the mail to herself before you even picked up the pen to write it. She’s already made you jizz yourself before it even occurred to you to unzip your pants. Are you even reading this? Probably not, which just proves my point.
Kota impresses me as a Gain 2.0 with a similar sexual vibe, bigger boobs and great potential but unfortunately nowhere near the same level of fanservice, which is a pity almost as enormous as her rampant boob squeezing in the visually fantastic “Monday Blues” video.
Appealing and fanservicey Kota boob exposure is extremely difficult to find anywhere. Somebody needs to get on the phone to her agency and tell their company that we need more of this type of thing and less of… not this type of thing.
Here’s Kota dialing the emergency red phone to boob appreciation HQ, demanding more fanservice and Maxim shoots. We hear you, Kota! We’ll do our best here to influence the k-pop loving population!
Baek Ji Young has been in the k-pop as well as the k-entertainment game for a while now, and guess what? You guessed it, she’s got some bustiness going on, so here are some pics of her.
This picture was shot in Australia, and for a brief second it looked like she had a pistol-grip on some kind of weird space gun before I realised that it’s just her beach shawl or whatever behind her right hand creating a very strange illusion in my overactive mind. A massive disappointment, I’d love to see a film where Baek Ji Young runs around in a bikini showing this level of skin exposure and saves Australia from space aliens. Somebody with money and the right connections please make this a thing that happens.
I don’t know much about her singing career, I got the vibe from the photos that it’s mainly a bunch of shithouse ballads but this isn’t really true as it happens (thanks AKF!). Her boobs look nice so maybe I’ll consider listening at some point. Yes, the entertainment world has come to this, I’m just more honest and candid about the reality of it than most folks.
It’s often been overlooked by all but the most courageous boob appreciators, but CL has been busty ever since 2NE1’s debut. Time to delve into the latest extreme sport sweeping the k-pop world, a pasttime so extreme and dangerous that it may never receive full safety accreditation from sporting regulatory bodies – “extreme CL perving”.
I guess it’s fortunate for me that CL’s boobs are on display very rarely; it’s telling that a Google image search for “CL 2NE1 boobs” mainly brings back pictures of Bom. However when CL does decide to show the world how good it feels to be bad and bring out the gizibe cleaveage, she arguably out-busts all her groupmates with clearly natural assets plus copious amounts of push-up.
I know what you’re thinking – “Kpopalypse, how can you be so certain that CL didn’t get a boob job”? Come on, of course I’m sure – think about it. If CL was even remotely inclined towards any plastic surgery at all, surely she would have started with her face?
The cute singer of “Love’s Battery” has amazing boobs. Hong Jin Young clearly appeals to the older boobs pervert demographic so I guess that would be me. Yeah trot music certainly gets a bit repetitive but then so does fapping and I enjoy that, so why be fussy about it.
I don’t know what else to type, I’m kind of busy right now.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Oh that’s right – this girl releases like one song every four years or some shit. She needs to get out and about in front of cameras some more. How come she has hardly any good MVs. That’s all, really. Sorry I don’t have much blood in my brain right now.
I was surprised to see Sojin nominated so heavily by Girl’s Day fans for this blog post. Yep, Sojin was definitely the Girl’s Day member with the most nominations, no doubt about it, which was weird because along with Minah (who wasn’t nominated at all and won’t be included here despite being my fave in Girl’s Day) I always felt that she was one of the not-so-busty members. I mean sure, sometimes in photos Sojin looks like this:
Sojin’s bustline is never very consistent, and always bigger in still images for modelling than for stage shots, which is a sure sign of large amounts of shopping. Every day might be Girl’s Day but it’s still not every day that you can fool Kpopalypse!
I really don’t think Hyeri is all that busty either, she just has a really skinny frame which makes her boobs look bigger in proportion. I’m just including her here anyway though for the sake of being a completist as much as is possible and making sure I didn’t leave out anyone obvious. After all, I wouldn’t want anybody complaining.
And that’s it! Nope – definitely didn’t leave anyone important out this time!
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
That coffee girl in Bikiny’s “Take On Me”
I don’t know their names so I can’t do specific ratings but that girl making coffee from 0:25 onward is an iconic moment of extreme k-pop push-up boob fakery and needs to be included in this blog.
Also I like that other girl in Bikiny with the face that looks like a rabbit. Rabbit faces are cute. If you’ve got more information please leave in the comments below.
Juhyun/Sihyun, Narae and Bohyung of Spica
Noticing that Jiwon was in the prequel to this post, everyone hurriedly nominated all the rest of the girls in Spica.S, the subunit that was created so Spica’s BoA could take time out to go and get a boob job to keep up the boob volume pace with the other members. You might think that’s just my wishful thinking but when the full group comes back in a few months and she’s got an “upgraded appearance” remember Kpopalypse called it first. Anyway here’s Spica.S for your fapping pleasure just because it’s too much work to do an entry for all the Spica.S members, they’re all about the same anyway in terms of fap. This post took multiple days as-is so I’m being lazy here.
Anyone who is or was in After School
Yeah. Just me being lazy again. I write about those girls enough as it is and I don’t wanna do like 5 entries. You all know what these girls look like anyway. Here, have a video.
AOA (Areolas of Angels)
Nobody from AOA was nominated, which is good because they all look damn fine and I don’t want to do a post for all these members either. Also, Jimin isn’t that busty, don’t let this group’s expertly-deployed optical illusions fool you – she’s just short. And hot.
Anyone who is or was in Nine Muses
Fuck no. Half the female k-pop trainee population of Korea has been through that group. I’ll be updating this post every week for the next six months if I commit to putting Nine Muses members in it.
Apink
Hahahaha no.
Oh wait… wait… stop the presses! There’s just one more girl that I remembered to include just now:
Seriously though, try searching for boobs of any other Girl’s Day members besides Yura and good luck as Yura keeps appearing in the search results anyway. She certain has an ample rack. Some might say it’s surgery but I doubt it judging by the high amount of jiggle-friendly footage out there (I won’t link any because I’ve linked several Yura jiggle GIFs before and you’ve already seen them all). I think she just eats boob-enhancing food more than other group members.
I’ve been ignoring Yura for months in fap posts and it must have been the idiotic and borderline-illegal behaviour of Yura fans acting like spoiled, entitled children that temporarily erased the will to post Yura ever again from my brain. Don’t make me get the law involved.
Okay so that’s it. Don’t ask me to do a third one of these posts before at least two years have passed. This shit fucking took forever! Happy fapping from Kpopalypse!
For this episode Kpopalypse is interviewing Cheonsa. Who is she? Read on and find out.
When I interviewed Sarah Wolfgang (ex-Tahiti) I also conducted another interview simultaneously with Cheonsa, an unknown just starting out on the long road that is attempting to enter the world of k-pop. The thought behind doing both interviews was that I felt it would be interesting to get the perspectives of people on both sides of the k-pop process – those who are leaving it behind them, as well as those who are trying to enter. Due to the closed-door nature of the k-pop industry, it’s incredibly difficult to secure interviews with people while they are actually part of that system (as I’ve found out), so I’m hoping that by highlighting people while they are on either side, I can provide some insight by showing how perspectives can change. Here’s Cheonsa’s interview – enjoy!
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Hi, how are you? Answer in as much or as little detail as applicable.
HELLO! I’m great~ Although generally speaking I’m always great. So, maybe more so then usual?
Please tell us a little bit about Cholee & Cheonsa. Just some short biography-type information.
Cholee & Cheonsa is a a duet group that’s of my friend and I. We’re actually only 18 and 17 (respectively). The two of us live in the US and have been friends for a few years. As you probably know, I enjoy k-pop as does Cholee.
The plan for the group is to start off singing covers & making videos/cover music videos. After we are more comfortable and have some sort of fan-base then we’ll begin the process of creating our own music. Neither of us speak Korean but we can both read and write it. So we just have to learn to actually understand it and work on pronunciation.
While we will have photoshops together, the summer (maybe longer) will mainly be spent for our training. Both of us have different things to work on as well as some of the same so we hope to bring it up to levels where we are okay with releasing something. I, personally, plan to release some covers very soon in the mean time.
AND FUN FACT: We’ve already coding and started practicing for a vocal cover of BoA’s Only One as well as two dance covers for newer groups Wings & Skarf. So when everything is further decided I’ll update you with official links. That way when we get together to practice together, you’ll be in the know for practice videos and what not.
What was the initial drive that made you want to start a group? Obviously love of k-pop is a factor, but what was the trigger where you went from just liking k-pop and being a fan into wanting to make a serious attempt at the style yourselves?
That is actually a few things. I’ve always loved to sing. Does that sound typical? Anywho, usually the people when I’m around know what they want to be and it’d be something in a “usual” field. Others don’t know. My mom was never in the “usual” occupation field. It felt like nature to choose something that wasn’t typical. Since about 5 I’ve known the main thing is to sing. They’ve been other ideas like a lawyer or a doctor, but always a singer was number one.
Another reason is that I always see online collab groups and forums dedicated to the genre & cover the music and/or dances. That’s when I’ve starred trying to learn dances & also joined some of those sites. And since 2012, when I started joining collaborations, I’ve greatly improved vocally. I just thought that it was about time I tried to put myself out there as an artist. Of course, I’ve tried making cover groups but at times the members always kind of disappear. So I said why not go solo or go debut someone who I know & can trust to not drop it after a month or two.
The biggest for me is probably race. I don’t really enjoy bringing this up but it’s a goal for me. Neither me or Cholee are Asian, let alone Korean. Our names are just nicknames among friends that we use and an alias for me. We are both African-American. I think if k-pop really wants to expand then they should definitely look to non-Asian/half-Asian potential which has happened in cases of ChoColat, SKarf, Michelle Lee, & many more. I think it should be based on talent THEN looks & race (but not saying they aren’t important). And I do have talent, it just needs to be fine tuned.
Then just the style in general. I love much of the style in K-Pop. I think it’s both cute, sexy, and mature depending on who you’re talking about. I also think that it’s not hard to imitate. You can easily find pieces that match the style or theme as well as clothing that matches what you see in many music videos even if it isn’t the actual piece. Just simple to obtain especially for covers.
Those are my reasons. I know many may not agree with them, but they are personal opinions and I believe them.
Have the activities of Michelle Lee, Skarf etc changed your perspective on what is or isn’t possible for a non-Korean trying to enter the world of k-pop? Do you feel that it’s a positive thing? Are there any negatives?
They have. And, as I’ve said, it’s not easy. They are newer and still have time, but many K-netizens do reflect negatively on the artists purely for not being 100% Korean or Korean at all.
It is a positive and a negative. The positive is that they have enough courage to enter an industry where being a different race, even if only a tiny bit, is mostly frowned upon. I especially look up to Michelle Lee for going on KPop Star & making it as far as she did. And even more for debuting despite the comments that some people have thrown at her. I also look up to SKarf and ChoColat for debuting. It’s sad people look down on these females just because of something so small.
Which brings me to the bad. There will always be negative comments. People will always find something to complain about when it comes to these artists. Well, really when it comes to any k=pop artist. It’s just nature. You can’t like everything about everyone. If these things were thrown at me, I would try my best to not take them heavily. But that’s what I say now. When it does, we’ll see. I hope to be strong as many other artists are/look.
The Korean idol system is notoriously harsh in many ways. If the opportunity ever presented itself, would you consider getting involved with that kind of system directly via signing to a Korean agency, or would you prefer to stay on the outside?
This has actually come across my mind a few times.
If I were to sign to a company in Korea, I would definitely try to have some terms added into a contract if they were not there already. One thing would be some creative control. I would like to occasionally be able to use my work. But if I were to leave, then I want to keep what is mine. Another would be protection. There are accounts of sasaengs and antis doing the insane things to artists. I want to be sure that if something were to happen to me, that they would take care of me or that they will try to prevent it from happening. I’ve also thought of signing to a major label versus a smaller label. The upside of signing to a major label is that the odds of being known and better promoted are higher than with a smaller. But with a smaller the odds of me being ignored are lower. Bigger companies have groups that you rarely see promoted. They usually do their biggest artists. In reality though, I believe it all comes down to the quality of what is offered to me if they decided to sign me.
If I were to stay independent, then a lot would be harder. Promotion would be hard. Getting myself out there definitely would probably be the biggest hurdle. I have actually talk to my mom about it. That’s a negative along with releasing material. Usually there are people for that but I’d have to do it myself (with help of course). The upside is that I can choose what music and lyrics I want to sing. There’s really no one to say that I can or cannot do something. I get to use my own judgement and actually give fans what they would want.
There’s also the probability of signing outside of Korea, but then it would kind of be a mix of the ups and downs that I have listed.
The dilemma with contracts with an established label of any size comes down to negotiating power. How do you reconcile the desire to be treated fairly as an artist with the reality that if the label doesn’t want to provide you with creative freedom/protection/whatever, that they can just ignore you and sign up one of the other thousands of hopefuls?
Of course I will feel heart broken. You win some, you lose some. Sometimes you have to make choices depending on what your needs & wants are as well as the needs and wants for those involved. Whether that’s money or any of the things I listed previously. When it comes down to if, I’ll consult with my mom. I fully believe in the saying that mothers know best. If she thinks it can be negotiated or a compromise could be reached, then we’ll try until the other party stops making offers & accept ours or when they retract the contract. If they retract then we can mourn over it but there are others. If she believes that it would be best to go on what they have is good enough, then I’ll most likely will sign if my heart feels right about it. Honestly, in my opinion of course, you have to give up something to be an artist. I’d be giving up staying with friends & family to go to another country and produce work most of them have never ever heard of in a language farthest from their mind. It’ll be my goal to show them I can make it and that it was worth it, and that might mean signing away some freedoms.
Can you describe the type of music that you intend to be making? Do you have any kind of vision of what it will sound like, or specific influences in mind at this stage?
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.I’m greatly influenced by older pop groups. I also really like traditional music and rhythms. What I want to do is create music that incorporates the older artist and new artist styles as well as create music that incorporates the traditional aspect. I don’t really see that much and I think it’ll be something nice to here in k-pop. I look up many Hello! Project groups for this. They seem to do it quite a bit. I also really want to incorporate more retro/vintage sounds into the music. Usually it’s just for a single concept but I want to do this on a regular basis.
Tell us about your musical training. Do you play instruments? Are you self-taught or schooled? Also do you have any audio engineering or production knowledge?
I have two acoustic guitars! And every time someone asks if I can play, I have to say no and everyone (myself included) start to laugh. It’s apparently funny. But I am trying to learn. I guess you can say I’m self-teaching. I have the lessons and what not but with usual school work it’s not exactly easy to work in. So that’s going to be part of my training over the summer. I want to take a Berkley summer program so that’s always exciting.
As for production knowledge, I do know the process of creating the music and lyrics, putting them together, going into a studio to record, and then putting together what you have. This was part of a 10 week program that took place for 3 hours, 3 days a week. So I have actually gone through the process and even have performed on stage! That was nerve racking but it felt good when someone came up after and said they were looking for me because they enjoyed my song. Yes, 10 weeks on one song! Some squeezed two in but many only got one. Now I see why artists are so tried. Fitting that in a shorter schedule or fitting more into that schedule plus dancing & rehearsals. I plan on going back though. It was a nice experience.
I can play so I think you should give me one of your guitars.
You can definitely have one. Two is just a bit much when you can’t play.
How do you think you would cope with a hypothetical (and if my sources are correct, fairly typical) idol promotional schedule of 2 hours sleep per night and no time off?
Oh, I hate sleeping anyway. And I have too much free time!
No, but all jokes aside. I don’t know how I’ll handle it. At first I think I’ll be okay. It’ll be hard to handle but I’d get used to it. Yet after a bit I do believe that I’ll be come tired and will miss the time that I used to have. And who knows, I might even shed some tears or become sick. But if I want to succeed then I’m going to have to endure it. One of the lyrics to a song by my favorite Japanese group Berryz工房 (Berryz Kobo) when translated to English, is along the lines of “I live everyday with the pride of having given up my youth for this.” Even though it’d be late in my youth, it’s a sacrifice to make but if you work hard and succeed, then you should be proud of what you’ve accomplished. I hope to do just that: succeed and make myself as well as everyone else proud of it.
If you could change something about the idol system as it exists in Korea, what would it be?
Hm… Just one? I just thought about this carefully. I would change how the artists are promoted. Especially in bigger companies. Some companies have great artists, yet they only promote the most popular or do more promotions for one and less for another. I can think of three companies with amazing groups – new and old – but they just don’t promote equally against artists. I believe the groups have amazing members yet the companies just do not give them any/enough spotlight. They’ll pop up, do some promotions, then go away. You won’t hear from them for about a year and a half or more but their seniors or newer groups will have two or three releases a year. It’s not really fair to me.
What kind of aspects do you believe companies are factoring in when they make these types of decisions about promotions?
I can think of a few. One being popularity. I think that probably plays a big part. Groups like that everyone has heard of at one point or another are usually the biggest and one I think everyone can think of is SNSD. They are known as the “queens” & are known as “Asia’s Biggest Girl-group.” They promote pretty much year round and release two or three things in a year. Whereas f(x) is popular, yet not as much and they promote between once a year & maybe even less.
Another is what they are trying to go for. Say a company has two groups where one has a sexy concept and one has a cute concept. The company may decide to promote the cute group more than the sexy because that’s what they want to sell. So the sexy group would get less to no promotions compared to the cute group.
And of course, money. Money has always been and will always be a factor. Whatever artist/group has made the company the most money, will be the artist/group that they promote the most.
The interesting thing to me is that f(x) release either a mini album or a full album every year without fail but by the standards of every other commercial music genre in the world, that’s considered highly prolific. Very few western artists have a release schedule anywhere near that busy, however in k-pop, it’s a common complaint that groups such as f(x) who pop out only one comeback per year are being deliberately neglected. Why do you think this is?
Well, the western market if a bit different. In the western market, generally the artists can release when they feel like it. Their comebacks aren’t announced (or maybe even planned) a year in advance. When an artist is going to release something you may know a month or two in advance or in Beyoncé’s case, not at all. And they don’t spend months/years training and trying to compete with others just to debut the same was k-pop artists do. On the side of being called neglected, I think that it is due to the lack of/strength of promotions. Pink Tape was released almost a whole month after both of EXO’s albums. So people were still buzzing over that. But then the repackage came out a month after f(x). Even with the addition of a few songs, f(x) was nearly forgotten about. The least SM could’ve done was to strengthen f(x)’s promotions so that they wouldn’t have been overshadowed so much. I saw more people talking about EXO instead of f(x). And the girls’ comeback, in my opinion, was amazing.
Do you think the industry encourages a situation where k-pop fans have higher expectations?
I do. Companies release great teasers and hype it up, but when the actual content is released, some people feel let down. Whether it be from a different concept shown, a different song played, or just not as “cool” as it has seemed. I have probably felt this way once or twice.
Tell me your k-pop biases. No interview would be complete without this!
Ohh. Biases? Okay. Let’s see how many I can list. Then maybe explain one in particular.
For females there’s Michelle Lee, Ferlyn (SKarf), Hyoyeon and Seohyun, Amber, Jiyeon, Bom, Jia, Gayoon, Ailee, Yoonji, G.Na, Nana, Jimin (AoA), Choa, Way (Crayon Pop), Miryo and Gain, Nari, and Myeongji (Tiny-G).
For males there’s JB and BamBam (GOT7), Kris, Lay, Luhan and Tao from EXO, TOP and GD, C.NU, Zelo (BAP), G.O, Hyunseung, Siwon, Aron and Ren (NU’EST), Key, Minho, and Woohyun.
I have a lot. I’m not even sure that’s all of them. I usually don’t list them. Now I know why. But I really like Hyoyeon and Jia because of how great dancers they are. I want to be able to move like them and still look pretty.
I caught up again with Cheonsa briefly a few months after doing this interview to see how she was progressing. I also wanted to show her the interview that I did with Sarah Wolfgang and see if she had any thoughts about it. Here’s what she said:
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To be honest, it made me think a bit differently. It’s probably the most honest interview I’ve read that an ex-trainee (even ex-idols too) did. A few things caught my attention specially, like how things are sometimes over exaggerated or how trainees are shut off from the world for example. It’s interesting to hear how Sarah didn’t know if her vocals were on in the songs or not because of how altered the voices were. It just goes to show how much editing is involved.
Has your project has made any progress since we last talked?
As far as my project is concerned, it has sadly not happened. My friend and I have lost touch since we last talked. But on I’ve been more focused on practicing vocals, dance, and language as a result. I’ve also been doing collaborations with online coverists so that I can asses how I sound with others and to figure my range better. Next year I’ll be old enough to audition for companies without parents permission so I’m working forward towards that. So although it didn’t happen, it did allow me to focus more and get in contact with others.
Hey folks, it’s Kpopalypse here. As someone a little older than the average k-pop fan with lots of experience in the ups and downs of life, I’m aware that a lot of younger people read my blogging, and therefore I feel a certain sense of obligation to them to impart wisdom and valuable life lessons. Of course if I just go around saying things like “bike safety” and “don’t play with matches” nobody is going to pay any fucking attention, but that’s where k-pop comes in – this post is all about some of the fantastic things we can learn through k-pop music videos!
Please note that the discussions of these videos contain plot spoilers, so be sure to watch the videos first (if you haven’t seen them) before reading about the important life lessons that they contain! Let’s get started and learn things!
Davichi – Don’t Say Goodbye
In the Iraq war, a bunch of American snipers got themselves into some deep shit doing something very naughty. They laid out electronic items like wires and 9-volt batteries on the ground in certain areas where Iraqi insurgents were known to operate, and then shot and killed any people who picked those items up, using the shaky rationale “if they tried to leave with the items, this was a sign that they were going to use them against US forces“. Of course, the snipers had no way of really knowing whether the people collecting the planted items were going to make a bomb with it or were just hoping that they could get their Duracell Bunny going for a few more hours, so a bunch of innocent people probably got murdered, but never mind the wacky and arguably illegal logic of the US forces Asymmetric Warfare Unit for now. The important lesson is this: if you see some shit on the ground that isn’t yours and is kinda valuable, don’t pick it up, because people don’t just go around leaving valuable shit lying around out in the open for no goddamn reason. Somebody is probably deliberately fucking with you, so watch out.
If the guy in Davichi’s lame Carpenters soundalike song “Don’t Say Goodbye” used the aforementioned logic, he could have saved himself some trouble with Korean society’s undesirable elements. Common sense alone should have dictated to him that nobody would throw a Minkyung out in the trash just for the hell of it. If he felt guilty about just leaving her there he should have alerted the proper authorities by dialing his local “Lost and Found Minkyung Helpline” and then left the situation for the properly trained experts to handle. But no – like most young and dumb guys he immediately starts thinking with his penis and has to play the hero due to his massive ego. Sure enough the mob gets in touch and inform him that they want their Minkyung back, but it’s okay, they say – they’ll swap her for a Haeri. Clearly the loser in this equation, our male protagonist calmly accepts the situation because he doesn’t want to get brutalised by a bunch of angry mobsters. That’s what you get for poking around in other people’s garbage and touching things that aren’t yours, now he has to listen to Haeri practice irritating vocal improvisations and whine about being the less pretty member of Davichi for the rest of his days.
Chocolate – What To Do
Many years ago I found myself living in a three bedroom house, all by myself. The rent for such a big place was fairly high so when one of my friends announced that he had a girlfriend who was looking for a place to live, I jumped at the opportunity to let her stay in my house and split the rent and bills. I know what you’re all thinking, and no she wasn’t unattractive, but neither of us were going to go there because on top of her being unavailable I was a scungy skinny long-haired metalhead and she was a prim and proper type who liked buff footballers – it was certainly nice having the eye candy around the house though. Anyway the sudden presence of my friend’s girlfriend still left a third bedroom unoccupied. “Mind if I use it?” she asked me shortly after she’d moved in. “Sure” I replied, after all I wasn’t using it for anything and rent was low enough now that I really didn’t need to bring a third person in – plus if she was using the third bedroom that means she’d have to clean it, saving me the trouble. The next day when I got home from work she’d converted the third bedroom into a sewing room. She had a big electric sewing machine in the center of it, plus a big ironing board, portable clothes hangers and fabric and clothes everywhere. She loved sewing, ironing and dressmaking, and I don’t think I’d ever seen her happier than at that moment.
This girl’s boyfriend didn’t really seem to understand her much. She was a domestic girly-girl who liked pretty things and he was a footballer who liked alcohol, and they’d always fight. I never really knew what any of the fights were about, because it was none of my business so I didn’t really care or pay any attention, but it was certainly an up-and-down kind of relationship that they had. He was always buying her the most thoughtless gifts too (usually alcohol, which he’d often just end up drinking himself), and she’d politely feign interest in the gifts but it was obvious that he didn’t really understand her needs and eventually they broke up. It occurred to me while watching “What To Do” from flop nugu k-pop girl group Chocolate (not to be confused with Chocolat, a different flop nugu k-pop girl group) that if he’d mustered up the courage to get her a clothes iron as a present like the guy does at 1:05 in the MV, she would have been so happy, and would have probably reacted just like the girl does in the video, bouncing with glee. It may have even made their combined domestic ride a bit smoother. This video is often laughed at for being unrealistic due to the girl’s elated “oh wow – now I can iron all your shirts!” reaction to receiving the gift, and sure enough you can’t buy stuff like that for girls these days without people getting all uptight about it and saying that you’re an evil patriarchal oppressor chaining the poor girl to housework… but what if she likes ironing? I find her reaction quite realistic because I’ve met people like that, people like the girl I lived with all those years ago, who burned through an iron once every six months and really could have used a new one at any given moment. The lesson here: don’t let the politically correct police stand in the way of you doing what makes you and your partner or the people you care about happy – your personal relationships aren’t the business of some crusading Internet dickheads who think that one size fits all and that they know what’s best for everyone. If she really tells you that she wants an iron, don’t question it – just get her a goddamn iron already.
KARA – Wanna
Communication is handled very differently between boys and girls during childhood, and whether it’s the fault of social conditioning, brain chemistry or genetic predisposition is up for debate but the fact remains that whatever the reason, the communication styles between the genders during the early stages of life are very different. Boys are often taught that power can be attained through force of will, so usually a conflict in the schoolyard will escalate into a verbal shouting match or a physical fight which continues until the lesser party gives up or a third party intervenes. Boys for this reason tend to take communication situations on face value. Girls on the other hand find that power through force doesn’t work as well for them so they physically fight less overall, but instead compensate by learning how to get power ‘around the edges’ – advanced social skills such as forming allegiances and cliques, gossiping, and the language of non-verbal communication. Hence the stereotype of boys being “dumb” and girls being “bitchy” – neither of these are strictly true, rather boys are mostly locked out of the secret world of female non-verbal communication so they just work with what they have, whereas girls become accustomed to subterfuge sometimes at the expense of a degree of openness because this is often the most effective avenue of power available to them.
When puberty hits, the tables are turned and the old rules of direct application of power translating to a direct result no longer apply. Boys suddenly find that they now have a reason to talk to girls, but the lack of non-verbal knowledge bites the unprepared boys hard and makes it tricky for them to navigate socially at the girls’ higher level – “how do I talk to girls” is a question that many young male teenagers struggle with. Girls on the other hand by this stage essentially have codified a secret language which they can use until the boys catch up… and which many of them never do. Unfortunately for girls, often they don’t realise exactly how far ahead they are. A good example of this is “flirting” – flirting is classic non-verbal communication which is all about getting power around the edges without ever applying it directly by using the subtle power of suggestion, hoping that the other party will reciprocate with a more direct approach. The problem with flirting is that for the intended result to transpire, the other party needs to know that flirting is happening, and to the male mind trained on direct communication and face-value situations, the subtleties of flirting are a completely new language in which they have no experience. “Why doesn’t she just come out and say what she really wants from me?” the boy asks. Meanwhile the girl asks “how fucking more obvious can I possibly make it for this moron?”.
KARA’s “Wanna” provides the solution. The girl is sad at the start of the video that she can’t seem to get the guy to understand that she likes him. No problem, the girls wait until the guy leaves his house, trash the place and make it as dangerous and non OH&S-compliant as possible, ensuring that when he returns, he breaks his fucking legs. Fuck subtlety, guys don’t understand that flirting bullshit, you gotta snap the guy’s fibula in three places and then draw a love-heart on the cast if you really want some true love action. He’s gonna stare at that love heart every day for weeks while the leg heals, and sure you gotta have some patience but eventually the thought will probably twig inside his pea-brain “hey… I just had an amazing idea… what if she drew that heart on my leg because she likes me?”. Then he’s yours. Try it sometime.
Chaness – SeSeSe
While you can safely ignore most idiots blathering on about “rape culture” (when someone steals from your house they don’t call it “thief culture”, do they?) it shouldn’t be downplayed that rape is a big problem in society. Rape is statistically the cause of 100% of rape victims, 90% of annoying roleplayed screaming in Japanese adult videos, and at least 1% of k-pop CEOs going to prison plus it’s just generally horrible on a “nobody likes to be raped, because rape is by definition something that you do not want” level. One of the worst things about rape is that it’s a crime difficult to conclusively prove and that rape victims have a terrible time being believed, the ordeal of going through a harrowing courtroom procedure and reliving the awful experience in exacting detail for the jury can be as traumatic as the experience itself. It’s little wonder that so few rapes get reported and even fewer result in a conviction.
The MV for the song “SeSeSe” from LPG subunit Chaness demonstrates such a dilemma. The scumbag rapist in the MV gets rip-roaring drunk and decides to get his rapey on with a disabled woman. When her carer tries to intervene, she find herself on the receiving end of the rape instead. The carer girl however is no dummy – she knows that the South Korean legal system is pissweak and probably won’t back her, and that a rape trial that doesn’t turn into a conviction can not only see her rapist walk free to rape again but can also result in a counter-suit for perjury and false accusation. Fuck all that noise, who wants to go through all that? Not our female protagonist, that’s for sure – she instead decides to invite him to dinner, and then kills him with a drink spiked with RapeOff (slogan: “Kills Rapists Dead”) or some other similar anti-rapist repellant. The rapist should of course be grateful for such a subtle, aesthetically pleasing method of death, a less kind person would have burned off his genitals first, but I guess that would have lifted the video from a mere 15+ rating for drunken rape sex to a 19+ for genital mutilation and therefore unbroadcastable on Korean TV. It might have also blown out the special effects budget a bit too, ask any horror film director and they’ll tell you that convincing genital mutilation effects are a tricky thing to get right and require much “outside the box” thinking. God knows k-pop music videos are expensive enough as it is, I guess we’ve got to leave the genital gore to the death metal bands. Anyway the lesson here is that if you’re a creepy dude inclined towards rape, you might think you can get away with it because the legal system is so shit regarding rape in most places in the world but don’t get too comfy because someday someone will get sick of your bullshit and forget about the legal system (just like you did) and you will get fucking killed. Just watch JAV instead, there’s plenty of pretendy rapes you can watch in JAV and get your rocks off without actually harming anyone in the real world… or if you want something that feels a bit more real ask your consenting partner to do a rape roleplay with you or something. Feel free to use “Kpopalypse” as a safeword.
Hyomin – Nice Body
Inquiring minds still want to know what I think about trendy butthurt T-ara hate in 2014. Although the answer’s probably fairly obvious to most of you by now, it’s always worth a good revisit.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The girls don’t hate T-ara because of the scandal. The girls hate T-ara because the guys love T-ara, the scandal is just a convenient excuse which enables their hatred – the catalyst, but not the root cause. I’ve extrapolated on this before in fanfiction format, but it basically boils down to T-ara being way hotter than they are, and them feeling threatened – and nobody’s more aware of this than the songwriters and concept designers who have been working with T-ara members lately. Bravesound are no doubt T-ara fans (after all, they’re male) and likely just as sick of netizen bullshit as the next rational person, so they made sure that Hyomin’s “Nice Body” amps up that threat to female self-esteem to absolute fever pitch.
The video starts off with a chubby netizen (no netizen was shameless enough to appear and actually portray themselves so instead we get Boram in a fat suit) taking a break from typing out rows of “T-trash ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ” to eat some nutritious doughnuts. Upon spying a particularly luminous doughnut covered in what looks like gold paint thinner, she hastily scoffs it despite the fact that it’s been rolling around on the dirty floor and who knows where else it’s been. The psychoactive chemicals in the gold paint take effect quickly, and the netizen promptly hallucinates for a few minutes that she is as hot as T-ara’s Hyomin. Eventually she wakes up and feels sad as she plummets back to reality, then discovers a newfound commitment to weight-loss via hula-hooping. A quick summary of the song and video’s key points:
Hyomin is hotter than you, because you are lazy and eat poorly
You can only have a body like Hyomin through exercise and healthy diet
Hyomin wants guys to desire her sexually
Guys desire Hyomin sexually
Guys like girls with nice bodies
Hyomin has a nice body
Hyomin’s measurements are 34-24-36, we’ll even put that on her clothing just so you don’t forget
This is an even bigger broadside to haters than T-ara N4’s “Jeon Won Diary” was. Instead of asking “Why U Hatin?”, “Nice Body” instead asks “why don’t you get off your computer keyboard and get some exercise, you ugly fat fucking slag?”. Now I’m certainly not one for fat-shaming and I’m actually quite a well-documented chubby chaser, but I still appreciate a good insult directed at netizens when I see one. The lesson here is that insults are justified when the target thoroughly deserves to be insulted, a subtlety that politically-correct taking-the-fun-out-of-language “omg you can’t say that” types always miss whenever they complain about how you can’t use “cunt”, “faggot” or any other offensive word. If I call someone a “faggot” for example, it’s not because I hate gay people (I definitely don’t, and I’ve probably got more gay/lesbian/bi friends than straight friends), but because I know that that particular person who I’m calling a faggot will be bothered by being called a faggot (even though I personally think it’s fine to be faggy). It’s a way of saying to them “I know you’re insecure about your own sexuality, so I’ll call you a faggot because I know that this bothers you because you’re so lame”. On the other hand if you’re not offended by homosexuality but instead are offended by chairs and tables, and you’re being a dick about something, I won’t bother with the “faggot” insult and instead I’ll call you a fucking piece of furniture. Offending the target is the whole point of an insult, if the insult wasn’t offensive to the recipient in some way, it wouldn’t even be worth using. It’s all very well to say “don’t insult people” but some people are just cockbags and really need to be insulted, it’s a healthy thing and it’s good for them to feel bad if they’re being jerks or whatever. As long as it’s richly deserved and I’m not the one who started it, I feel totally justified in letting people have it with both barrels – and so should you. There’s a time to be nice to people and a time to call someone a cao ni ma.
That’s the end of your K-pop life lessons with Kpopalypse! Remember to use your newfound wisdom and knowledge for good, not evil!
Entering the music industry on any level in 2014 is exceptionally difficult, yet there are many people who wish to become pop stars. With the steady rise of k-pop’s profile globally, Korea and k-pop is positioned in the hearts and minds (mainly the hearts) of young people around the world as a desirable field to hopefully break into. How realistic are their dreams? Are k-pop hopefuls being delusional, or do they have a realistic (if slim) chance of realising their goals?
Most importantly of all, if you were someone wishing to make a serious giving-it-100% attempt at breaking into the k-pop industry, what are the really important things that you would need to know? As someone who has spent quite a while in the music business in various capacities, I’m now going to give you the dirt on these important questions, so read on if you dare!
TEN THINGS THAT ASPIRING K-POP STARS NEED TO KNOW
(I hope you all appreciate that I didn’t make this heading the post title for clickbait purposes. I could have easily done this, you know.)
1. Korea’s music market is tiny
I think this is something everybody knows, but are you aware of just how tiny Korea’s music market really is? To put the incredible teensy-tiny smallness of Korea’s music business in perspective, let’s take a look at the global music market share figures from the annual report of the RIAJ (Record Industry Association of Japan), which shows the top 10 countries for music revenue as of 2012 – the year when PSY’s “Gangnam Style” was huge and barnstormed across the world. The revenue displayed in the following graph is a combination of physical and digital sales, plus performance rights revenue (royalties) and synchronisation revenue (licensing for TV shows, movies, computer games etc), all together:
USA and Japan are on top, no surprise there, then we have some other countries, and…. hang on, where’s South Korea? Oh – it looks like the industry there is so small that it didn’t even get on the chart, they’re somewhere in that “rest of world (less than 1% each)” section in bright red. Even with the help of “Gangnam Style”. Oh shit.
Looking at this graph, it should be obvious to anybody why Korean artists and labels are desperately trying to crack the Japanese and American markets – there’s a pot of gold there compared to Korea, those industries are literally dozens of times bigger and even marginal cult-level success in the US or Japan would net more income than a #1 Korean hit. It should make perfect sense why your idols are going overseas and doing stuff all the time. Fans don’t get it of course, they’re all like “oh, Group X flopped in Korea so they have to go somewhere else”, or “why doesn’t Group Y concentrate on Korea, they are messing up by going overseas” – fucking dumbass fans don’t get it. Every time your faves escape Korea, you should be happy – there’s at least a reasonable chance that they might be actually making money for once.
A k-pop hopeful from any random country would be statistically better off moving to The Netherlands and pursuing a career in Europop than trying to break into the k-pop market. Unless of course, they already lived in The Netherlands, or any other of those countries listed in the top 10, in which case if they were going to move to enhance their music career, they should move to a country higher in the top 10. And if they already lived in the US or Japan? Holy shit girl – stay right where you are because you’re already in the best possible place that you can be if you want to pursue a career in music. Nobody from Japan is desperately trying to crack the Korean market, and nobody from the US or any other country in the graph above should be either.
This chart is working on two-year old data – China is likely closing in on the top 10 countries, and Japan has probably now overtaken the US. Nevertheless, in strict money-making terms as far as the musical product goes, assuming all other factors to be equal, it’s pretty clear that South Korea is not at the top of the list of “places you can go to make lots of money in the music business”.
2. You have almost no chance of making decent money
Of course, all other factors are not equal. Any industry that carries with it a certain amount of fame (acting, singing, modelling, professional sports, etc) is considered a “glamour profession” and these occupations always have a far greater supply of people wishing to ascend to a sustainable level than there are positions within the industry to contain them. The result of demand for positions being far greater than supply means that a massive imbalance of power is generated – wages and therefore realistic opportunities are driven downward, because people with their eyes on the prize are desperate for a leg up over their competition, so they will often accept compromise now if they believe it will help them get closer to their long-term goal of career sustainability later. And guess which part of the pop music industry has a lot of competition right now?
The above graph shows the amount of k-pop debuts (not comebacks, just new artists, solo debuts and subunit debuts only) between 2007 and 2013, with a trend line inserted so you can also see which way things have generally been heading. Since 2009 until now there’s been a steady stream of at least one new solo performer, group or subunit entering the k-pop scene each week. Almost all of these people are native Koreans, and therefore they don’t have to deal with any other nasty little hurdles like cultural adjustments, language barriers, racism etc… and if you’re a k-pop hopeful all of these people are competing for the same market share that you will be, assuming you even get far enough to debut.
Physical sales are declining fast, and while other income streams such as digital sales are definitely increasing, they’re not increasing at anywhere near the rate needed to cover the gap. So if you’re trying to get into k-pop, you’re:
Aiming for success in a relatively tiny music market…
…in an industry that has been in recession for over a decade…
…with tons of competition from people more qualified than you…
…that is known for racism against people who are not Korean…
“Fine, fine…” I hear you say “…if I have to live with no income and a horrible debt, I can handle it. I’m doing it for the love of music and performance! Kpopalypse oppar, please stop trying to talk me out of it, because I’m convinced that I want to do it anyway, and give me some advice that I can actually use!”
Okay then, so you really want to go down this road and maximise your 0.0001% chance at this. Here’s some advice for that.
3. Start as young as possible
Remember when everyone made a fuss over complete k-pop noob Dani being recruited by KKS at only 13 years old? “Gosh, that’s a little young to school someone in the k-pop system, what about her regular schooling”, said all the concern-trolls and general morons. You might think that 13 years old is the minimum age that somebody would make a start in pursuing their k-pop dream… sorry, nope – it’s more like the maximum age. Add another zero between the decimal point and the 1 for each year that you delay working on your k-pop goal beyond the age of 13. If you’re starting training at high-school leaver’s age, your chances of success as an international entry into k-pop have already diminished from 0.0001% to about 0.00000001%, you might as well just fucking forget about it with odds like that. The maximum viable female debut age in an ageist society like Korea is probably about 23 or so years, and someone debuting at 23 has probably been training within the company since they were at most 19 years old and probably been training themselves outside of the company since they were 13 at the oldest. Try to debut any older than that and… well, we all know how well Gang Kiz did. Does anyone who got into k-pop from 2013 onward even know who they are? Males might get a couple more years, at most.
4. Don’t sign any shit without a lawyer present
Not just any old lawyer, either, but specifically a music industry lawyer. The garden-variety lawyer who helped you with your grandmother’s will and helped settle a dispute that one time when your drunk friend mooned a college girl from a limousine that your dad was driving and the girl’s parents sued the limo company who then fired your dad is way out of their depth with your music industry contract. Why? Because there are terms in music contracts that have vastly different meanings and implications from other types of legal documents and a normal lawyer will advise you incorrectly. I’m not going to go into details here, and in any event you don’t need to know the details anyway, just know that you need a fucking lawyer and they have to be music industry specific.
A lawyer to look over contract terms and conditions is so important that in the western music business, major labels have recently taken to the practice of forcing new signees to have a lawyer present to represent their interests at contract negotiations, no matter what, even if the artist doesn’t want them there. If you try to sign a contract with a major label and you don’t have a lawyer, nowadays they won’t even accept it, they’ll say “get yourself a lawyer to look this over, then come back, because we don’t want you claiming in the future that we misled you or that you didn’t understand the contract or that we denied you the right to legal representation or fucked you over in some other way”. In previous years a few isolated artists have managed to get messy contracts terminated simply by claiming to the judge “I didn’t know what I was signing because I was high as shit” so the business wants to put a stop to that so artists can’t just walk away from binding contracts scot-free. As for Korea, I’m not sure how this plays out, I suspect they’re not that far advanced yet and they’ll probably just not give a fuck and make you sign shit on the spot anyway. Don’t do it – don’t sign anything legal that you don’t fully understand without someone qualified there on your side, hired by you to explain to you exactly what it means. The “get away with it by claiming to be high during signing” excuse probably doesn’t work that well in Korea, for obvious reasons…
5. Learn to be ‘morally flexible’ and tolerant
The first time I went electric guitar shopping on my own, I was probably about 14 years old. I went to a local music store that was run by industry types and was attached to teaching rooms and a studio. I was fascinated by the Ibanez guitars with custom paintjobs that they had on display at the front of the store and that my family on our one working class income had no way in hell of being able to afford. I was told by my music teacher at the time that the Squier Stratocaster (the el-cheapo Fender-endorsed Asian-built copy of the iconic USA Fender Stratocaster which looks, plays and sounds about the same but retails at a fifth of the price) was an acceptable quality guitar for my budget, but I couldn’t find any in the store. I only saw the expensive Ibanez guitars plus a bunch of other cheaper stuff that I had never even heard of, so I went up to the front counter for some help.
“Excuse me… do you have a… Squier Stratocaster?” I asked the curly-long-haired guy at the front counter.
The man rolled his eyes with familiarity – this was obviously a common question. “No, we don’t stock any Fender-related stuff at all.”
“Oh… why is that?” I asked.
“Fuck Fender, they’re a pack of wankers.” came the reply. I jumped back a bit – a store attendant, talking like this? I was only used to swearing from adults when my dad was mad at me. Was the store attendant mad at me? His language said yes, but the tone of his voice said no – he was smiling at me and basically had a friendly disposition.
Another store attendant doing string-changes on another counter piped up: “The Fender reps don’t like our discount policy here. We discount everything store-wide, but the Fender guys have set prices that they want us to sell things at. They’re total cunts about it too, they won’t budge. Fuck ‘em.”
The guy serving me laughed. “Oh they sure do suck. Pity though, that Fender rep, she’s fuckin’ nice…” – he turned to the other guy, and gave him a slight wink.
“I’d give her a discount.” the string-changer guy replied.
The first guy continued: “Go to [another store in the city] if you want a Squier. Tell ‘em I sent you, they’ll do you a good price. Tell ‘em Fender are dickheads for me, too – then they’re definitely know for sure that I was the one who sent you!” He laughed, but I could tell from the way he looked at me that he wasn’t joking.
“O-kay… thanks!” I said, and walked on out the door, feeling somewhat awkward.
If I was an uptight prudish sort I suppose I could have made a fuss about this. I think if my parents were in the store with me they probably would have said something, but I let it slide, and it was just as well because he was actually doing me a favour – I went to that other store, passed on the message “that guy doesn’t like Fenders much” (at that time I couldn’t bring myself to say “dickheads” to a store attendant) and received a hefty discount on my first electric guitar with a knowing grin from the staff. That was my first encounter with a strange music industry phenomenon; people in the music business swear and talk dirty – a lot. Some people don’t like my writing because I use words like “fuck”, “cunt” etc. but it’s a music industry habit, and I actually have to converse with people like that from time to time just to get them on-side in professional situations. If someone is in the music business and they don’t swear much, they are generally not trusted by others in the business. Why? Maybe it’s because people will think that they’re an undercover cop, and why would that be a problem? Well…
6. There is a distinct crossover between the music business and the organised crime business
I can’t talk much about this except to say that you should be streetwise at all times. Don’t just blunder around thinking that everybody you see has your best interests at heart – they do not. Pay careful attention to details and what’s going on around you. Say ‘no’ to situations that make you feel uncomfortable. You will probably see drugs around you from time to time, learn to say no to them. You will hear about illegal shit happening around you all the time, learn to not get involved. Especially be aware that organised criminals are directly involved in prostitution and prostitution is everywhere, so you can expect to see it in the music business too, especially in a place like South Korea where prostitution is HUGE, and by extension…
7. The “casting couch” (or variations thereof) is real
Some true music industry stories, with names removed:
Singer B is recording a track for her album, she’s a well-known sex symbol with a “sexy but cute” persona. The studio engineer in the recording session notices that she’s having a little bit of trouble getting into the mood for the part. “I just can’t get the right vulnerable feeling for this particular ballad”, she says. The engineer talks B into removing her clothes in the studio and cutting the vocal part completely naked. “If you want to sound vulnerable, feeling vulnerable and exposed may help you get into the right feeling for the part” he says. B complies and records the song without any clothes on. She certainly feels vulnerable with the engineer looking at her, and indeed records the perfect vocal part, for what becomes a standout song on the album. Later on in a TV interview after the album is released, the host asks about her performance on that track. Noticeably embarrassed, she tells the story of how she recorded it to the host, to the complete astonishment of him and everyone else present – the host laughs and remarks “I’d like to meet that studio engineer, he sounds like a genius!”
Female-fronted Group D are hot in the marketplace and have a significant media buzz going. They are negotiating a record deal with a large label. The manager of the label is K, a male celebrity in his own right and ex-member of a well-known group. Negotiations are going well, until K mentions “there’s just two things; firstly, you have to change your band name, it’s stupid and long-winded, nobody is going to remember it. You need something short and punchy that sticks in people’s heads. Secondly, you [he points to the singer] need to get your tits out more. There’s no use hiding behind all those clothes, we need to see some cleavage, because tits sell records, we need to see them.” Group D are horrified and offended, they unanimously reject both suggestions out of hand. K says “fine – but don’t forget that I’m very powerful in this town – I won’t sign your group and nobody else is going to sign you either, it’s me or it’s nothing”. Group D say “get lost, creep”, leave the negotiating table refusing to sign anything, and quickly discover that he’s right – their media buzz quickly fizzles out, no other labels show interest, and Group D disbands shortly afterward.
Singer J is a young hopeful wishing to make a start in the music business. Lacking much in the way of characteristic attributes but very determined to succeed as a singer in a cutthroat industry, she makes a plan to “date her way to the top”. Fully aware of the “power of the casting couch” before entering the industry, J sleeps with several people who she knows can directly enhance her career, and as each person opens a door for her she walks through it, dumps them and moves onto the next person. She starts firstly with band members who have valuable connections, then switches to DJs and studio producers as she transitions from a member of a group to a successful solo artist making electronic music. J is still active in the music industry today, and doing quite well!
How to avoid running into “casting couch” kind of situations, while also not letting it impact your career negatively? It’s a good question with perhaps no definitive answer, but I will say this – just because someone won’t give you an opportunity if you don’t sleep with them, doesn’t mean that they will give you that opportunity if you do. Some “casting couch” type schemes do represent a genuine opportunity, but most are really just designed to keep stringing you along giving people free blowjobs for as long as possible until you wise up.
8. Don’t be a whiny bitch
On the one hand, you shouldn’t have to put up with any sexual exploitation as part of your career (which doesn’t mean that people won’t try it anyway, especially in Korea). On the other hand, if you start complaining about things which you really shouldn’t be complaining about, you’ll get a reputation as “difficult”, and this can be fatal to a nugu’s prospects. Realise that the music industry operates on a kind of Chinese-whispers system, lots of people know lots of other people, and that anything you say which is negative, even if said innocently or without any true malevolent intent, could have a real impact on your career. The “prima donna” types that you read about in blind articles on other websites who are impossibly rude and get away with it already have a large degree of success. Until you’ve banked your first million, try not to be a cunt. Same goes for any walk of life, really.
9. If you are delusional, nobody will tell you the truth
Everybody reading this post, as soon as you’ve finished reading this post, go immediately to your favourite website for tracking down movies and try to find and watch an obscure and sadly almost-impossible-to-find Australian “mockumentary” film called Bigger Than Tina. The film tells the story of an aspiring solo performer who’s convinced that his career is on the up-and-up and that he’s going to be “bigger than Tina” (referring to moderately-successful Australian singer Tina Arena, not Tina Turner). It’s obvious right from the first few minutes of the film to the viewer that the singer is delusional and has nothing special about himself whatsoever which would translate to a pop audience, and that his chances of vast commercial success are as good as nil, yet he has a steadfast belief in himself which is outright comical. Many critics of the film have commented that the lead character seems hammy and exaggerated, but he definitely is not! Having met several people just like him in my real life, I can confirm that the portrayal is eerily reminiscent of many different people who I’ve met who all believe that they could “make it” in the industry and that their time in the spotlight was just around the corner. It’s a perfect portrait of complete delusion.
Such delusion is exceedingly common but how does it propagate so vastly within the industry? The answer is that it happens because if you’re a musician and you suck flat out, it’s in nobody’s interests to tell you the truth that you have no hope in hell.
You parents love you and would never tell you that you suck, they’re biased and love everything that you do. In the rare cases where the parents hate you and would tell you you’re crap, you probably hate them back and won’t listen anyway
You boyfriend isn’t going to say that you’re crap, he doesn’t want to start a fight or be dumped – he knows how much your dreams mean to you, why rain on your parade just for the sake of being right? Also, upset girls don’t give blowjobs quite as often, rest assured you will never get the truth out of your boyfriend or girlfriend or partner of any sort as long as you’re putting out
Your friends won’t tell you the truth for the same reason, they’d like to remain your friends, at least for now
If you’re crap your enemies will definitely tell you the truth, but they’re your enemies so it’s only natural that they’d say that you suck just to hurt you – they’re not the best judge, so you’re not gonna listen to those trolls
Your music teacher’s job is to make you better so she can’t be negative, she has to keep you coming back to lessons so she can improve you, she’s not allowed to say “you’re crap” even if you are because you might get upset and give up
Anyone you work with in a studio cutting a demo or whatever, you’re paying for the studio time so they’re paid to get the best result possible out of your ability, they’re not going to tell you that you’re shit and make you cry and cancel the session, that would do no good, it’d just be cruel
That’s why when people get on crappy talent shows like X Factor, etc. and the Simon Cowell or whoever the designated “cynical bastard” on the panel is says “hey you’re actually quite fucking shit”, they contestants always look so disbelieving. The girl in the video above isn’t faking that look of astonishment – literally nobody has told her that she sucks before. She’s had her ego propped up and boosted by everybody around her so of course she thinks the judges are just being assholes. It couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with her, after all the people she cares about wouldn’t lie to her. Would they?
You bet they fucking would.
10. Have a backup plan (for fuck’s sake)
In the highly entertaining late 1980s video documentary “The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part 2: The Metal Years”, several complete nugu metalheads in shitty 80s glam rock bands that would shortly be all swept into oblivion thanks to the change in music fashion and the rise of Nirvana and grunge, were asked in separate interviews if they had any backup plan should their music dreams fail. The results are terrifying, and show just how common delusions of “making it” really are.
If you’re an aspiring k-pop star or starlet and you only take one single lesson from this blog, make it this one – don’t be like these people in the first 90 seconds of the above video. Half of them are probably dead in a ditch somewhere by now. While it’s definitely true that perseverance is needed for success, it’s also true that even if everything else in this blog post is wrong, and I’m just a horrible pessimist and you’ve actually got everything in your favour much more than I’m letting on here, your chances of success are still extremely marginal at best, and you need to think about what the fuck you’re gonna do if it doesn’t work out.
One thing that that netizens do that really shits me, apart from all the other mountains upon mountains of things they do that shit me, is that they criticise idols for getting university degrees. Even the most successful idols of all know that nobody is an idol forever, they’re making sure they’ve got some other qualifications so that if something should happen to fuck up and their dream ends tomorrow, they’ve still got something to fall back on and they’re not going to be making their bed under a bridge with rags and cardboard boxes. And don’t give me that “but they never go to uni” crap, there’s a such thing as a correspondence course – any complaints about “they never set foot on campus” are just netizens being bitter that they don’t get bragging rights from meeting their precious celebs in the flesh and taking proof selcas. Can you imagine being an idol and actually consistently turning up at university? You’d get hounded so often by entitled me-generation fuckheads that you just wouldn’t get any work done. Idols are being smart, and so should you – pursue your dream if you must, but have a solid backup plan, just in case you’re completely nuts and you don’t realise it yet.
This concludes this educational post about how much the music industry sucks! Hopefully you aspiring stars can get somewhere meaningful and sustainable without ending up with the inside of your mouth coated in jizz and nothing to show for it! Good luck out there!
Well, 2014 is nearly over and most people are happy to put it behind them. It hasn’t exactly been an outstanding year for k-pop, with so many controversies, scandals and tragedies. So what can we look forward to in 2015 and beyond? Hopefully something better, right? It’s a good thing that I have my fantastic powers of ESP readily available to find out the truth of what the future holds!
My mother always claimed that she had Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP), specifically, the power to forsee the future and know that which is hidden. If she guessed something to happen in the future and she was right (like the mass surveillance that Edward Snowden exposed – my mother was about a decade in front of Snowden himself on figuring that one out), she’d say “look, that’s my ESP kicking in”. On the other hand, if she was wrong about something (like Australia electing a sensible leader instead of embarrassing arch-fuckwit Tony Abbott) she’d say “I still have ESP, but it just wasn’t working that well on the day that I predicted that – I’m not perfect, you know”. Here’s a picture of my mother, focusing her ESP powers through a mysterious crystal, which should totally convince you that she’s legit:
Well actually, that’s a picture of T-ara’s Boram, but they look very similar, so it’ll do. I didn’t have a good picture of my mother holding any mystical crystal shit handy so let’s not get too fussy over the details here.
My mother was also a big believer in the power of hereditary genes and mothers passing on their talents to their offspring. No doubt this was an appealing thought to her at least in part because it means she got to take some credit for my achievements – I was good at music, and so was her grandfather, so it follows that it’s because she passed on the genes that I have musical ability, so therefore I should thank her and be appropriately grateful. Although the power of genetic transference of all sorts of positive qualities was obviously a convenient belief for her to have, I’m not a genetic scientist qualified to dispute it – I’ve got no reason to doubt that she was right, so I’m going to run with my mother’s thinking and claim that I also have ESP. This means that all the following predictions that I make are absolutely 100% true and correct… unless of course, I’m having a bad day and my powers are a bit shaky in which case they may not be. It’ll still probably be more correct than whatever bullshit Allkpop predicts.
This post should also please people who were sad because they couldn’t figure out my blind items in my “aspiring k-pop stars” post or complained that they weren’t specific enough, because these predictions are so specific that it hurts. Here we go.
Kpopalypse’s completely 100% accurate and legit* predictions for the future of k-pop
Girls’ Generation will continue – sort of. Having transformed from The Divine Nine to The Hateful Eight (probably as a tie-in to Tarantino’s new film), the illusion of picture perfect happiness will be anathema to young fangirls living in la-la land, and their audience will gradually decline. The members of the group will gradually become less active, transitioning into full time entertainment media roles. Just because it’s easier to get three people to co-operate on a regular basis than eight, SNSD will undergo an “Orange Caramel” effect – TaeTiSeo will gradually become more popular and active than the full group.
EXO as a group will remain popular – and underpaid. In the meantime, Kris and Luhan will give the Chinese industry a red hot go. They’ll have varying degrees of success but they’ll still make more money in China than the rest of EXO put together.
Hyorin from Sistar will lose much of her hair. She’ll cover it up with wigs and extensions of course, but the endless abuse of hair-care products will take its toll. Expect to see more misshaped Hyorin cranial action in the future as the thinning out of her scalp reveals her “upgraded” skull shape to all. Meanwhile Sistar’s popularity will nosedive as the group’s fans transition to AOA and Girl’s Day. Soyou will have the most success in the group, continuing to do well releasing limp “Love The Way You Lie” clones with male rappers.
Apink will be fucking up and down the house. The “cute” group concepts will stay, but behind-the-scenes they will become notorious as the go-to girls for a good time, they will be in and out of Shinsadong Tiger’s bangbus on the regular, getting dick from male k-pop stars big and small (in every sense of the word). Eventually, one of them will get busted, maybe by the paparazzi or maybe they will take a seemingly innocent selca and somebody will notice incriminating details, like suspiciously stained clothing, or Seungri towelling himself down reflected in a vanity mirror.
Sulli won’t give a cao ni ma. She’s always hated standing in line to please industry fuckwits and she’s had a gutful of idol bullshit in general. She wants nothing more than to stay home and iron Chioza’s shirts before Dynamic Duo concerts, and she’ll continue to skimp on schedules and be sketchy as fuck with nearly everything else until her contract expires, upon which time she’ll ride out of the k-pop scene on an alpaca to be with her one true love and live happily ever after. In the meantime f(x) will come back again in the middle of 2015 like they always do reliably each year (you’d think fans freaking out about f(x) not getting comebacks would have realised this pattern by now, but then k-pop fans aren’t the brightest lot), with “Yellow Piss” (they’re going around the colour wheel).
Qri still won’t care. You think fangirls hate T-ara now – just wait. Eventually it will be revealed who some of the other girls are dating, and netizens won’t like it – just like with Soyeon, it will be discovered that they’re dating completely respectable and desirable guys in the entertainment business, with good upstanding reputations! Fangirl fury will be intense, many cyber-eggs will be thrown, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth (not to mention selectively-translated Netizenbuzz articles documenting the worst of it while ignoring the ever-increasing amount of morerationalopinions) and T-ara’s new CEO at MBK will laugh it up while collecting all the website ad revenue.
Woollim will take those who spread the Jisoo rumours to court – and win. Having already completely shot their credibility to shit by fabricating most of the “evidence” against Jisoo, the judge won’t believe anything else that the rumour-spreaders say either, once they are found and reluctantly dragged in to court to testify. Woollim will walk away with the case with little effort and Jisoo will go down in k-pop history along with Tablo and Eunjung as yet another k-pop idol who had their career messed with just because someone woke up on the wrong side of bed one day and decided to spread lies to gullible kidlets with no capacity for critical thinking on the Internet.
Ladies Code will come back – but it won’t be the same. Realising that the girls are now more famous than ever before, their CEO will give them a short respite and then get them straight back into another Starex to make that money. Their music will change from the sound that their fans from before the accident loved – upbeat songs will no longer be considered appropriate, and the new song will be a ballad, with deliberately ambiguous lyrics that could possibly be interpreted as an ode to Rise and Eunbi. Fans will appreciate the thought and sentiment but wonder why the company didn’t just change the group name as well if they were going to dump the old sound.
Way’s Girls will become more active. Crayon Pop will remain in the public eye as a popular group, meanwhile the amount of detractors and haters online will gradually decrease, despite the group accumulating scandal at roughly the same rate as everybody else in k-pop. This syndrome will be noted and regular online haters being gradually won over by the cuteness of weird concepts despite the appearance of multiple scandals and baseless rumours will start to be dubbed the “Crayon Pop effect”. Nobody will notice that the haters aren’t actually being won over at all, they’re vanishing.
Raina will collapse at an event and get admitted to hospital. The poor girl isn’t traveling as well as the other OC members, with constant group, subunit and solo comebacks. Soon her body will give way during a scheduled event and she’ll end up in hospital where it will be revealed that she’s been massively dehydrated and underweight for weeks. Meanwhile After School fans will still whine for a comeback with all eight members even though the group already released a full album this year.
IU will complete her transition to a “more mature image”. She’ll go onto that same TV show that Eunjung was on and blow everybody’s minds (and loads) with her complex and nuanced understanding of sexual relationships, indicating an obvious wealth of experience.
Shindong will get bullied out of Super Junior. K-pop fans of all ages and genders worldwide will continue to unanimously love and adore Shindong as a trailblazer for the acceptance of different body images in k-pop. Meanwhile odd bruises will start to appear on his body, and he’ll stop appearing at schedules. Eventually he will leave the group to concentrate on variety TV and it will be revealed that the other SuJu members have been taking out their frustrations on Shindong physically – they’ve been bullying him because they’re all on strict idol diets whereas Shindong can eat what he likes!
SM Entertainment will keep fucking with everyone else’s shit. Willing to stoop so low as to blackmail an author to take JYJ out of a worthless crappy coffee-table picture book, it’s clear that SM is the k-pop company equivalent of that jealous possessive ex-boyfriend who still thinks you’re cheating on him when you date a new guy a year after the relationship is over. Intellectually neanderthal guys like that never learn that they’re just sabotaging their own chances of happiness, and neither will SM. Watch them fuck mercilessly with everybody and continue to get away with it. Remember SM are so powerful that they can even control Google when they want to, don’t expect anybody in authority in Korea to do anything any harsher to SM than give them the equivalent of a speeding fine.
Han Ye Seul and Teddy’s relationship will deteriorate, boosting Teddy’s song quality. The honeymoon phase of the relationship will soon be over and they’re going to be entering the “stop hogging the remote” phase soon. Filled with newfound angst, Teddy will then channel his lack of getting his tip wet into his art and start writing better songs once again. This will come too late for 2NE1, with Bom now languishing in apoplexy at the bottom of an opium den and CL embracing crass all-American suckitude, but the next girl group to debut on YG will be the beneficiary.
JYP will position GOT7 to replace 2PM as his main money-earner. He’ll try both self-penned and outsourced songs, but none of them will really light the fire under GOT7 that is needed. Then one day, he’ll have an epiphany – “I’ve stopped doing pointless cameos in my group’s MVs, plus I’m not saying JYP anymore, what happened to me?!?“, he’ll cry. The next song that he releases after realising the error of his ways and re-inserting the beloved “JYP” shout/whispered intro into his new songs will reignite his fortunes and GOT7 will ride high from this moment onward.
K-pop will continue to not take over the world. Small victories here and there will continue but the much-anticipated cultural takeover will not happen. K-poppers will continue to dream of western fame and them flop dramatically after much investment. Mega-concerts will continue to be optimistically promoted and then cancelled at the last minute due to lack of bums on seats (plus shady event organisers who skip the event’s country with ticket money, hello Naureen Gana if you’re reading). It’s destined to be a cult phenomenon only in western countries, sorry folks.
Massive amounts of prostitution will jeopardise at least one record label. Some nugu girl group is going to be discovered supplementing their income stream with streams of jizz from fanboys willing to pay top dollar for idol spelunking. Fans will be able to go to the agency-run brothel and choose not only the girl but their favourite MV concept, which said girl will then recreate in private rooms. Of course gays and hetero females reading this will be pleased/horrified to know that the guys aren’t exempt either, and a similarly floptastic boy group will also be busted hiring out their meaty abs for executive-class fangirl hen’s nights.
AOA will bring back the band concept, but you won’t like it. The label, not eager to kill the newly found source of golden eggs, will aim for a “halfway” band concept that consists of 10 seconds of band footage plus 3 minutes of the group shaking their asses, and the song will still be written by Bravesound so it’ll sound just like all their other new shit anyway. Not that it matters whether they play instruments or not – they’re just some fucking girl group with manufactured songs but fans are acting like they were Led Zeppelin or something. Still, I’ll be grateful for Youkyung’s release from the dungeon so I can resume fapping to her.
I’ll leave the last exciting prediction for AOA themselves:
Today -’ve found out today someth-ng wh-ch -’ve suspected for a wh-le but wh-ch has now been conf-rmed – F-ve Dolls have d-sbanded. The label haven’t released an off-c-al statement yet, but none -s needed; the label’s new webs-te doesn’t l-st them as an act-ve group, and w-th several members hav-ng left the company, -t’s easy enough to see what’s happened.
S-nce – felt that F-ve Dolls’ f-nal -ncarnat-on d-dn’t really get enough attent-on when they were act-ve, -’m now go-ng to overcompensate w-ldly by wr-t-ng my f-rst k-pop album rev-ew!
-’ve never done an album rev-ew before s-mply because – mostly don’t see the fuck-ng po-nt. -f you want to hear any mus-c by anybody these days, you can just pull up your -phone or go to your favour-te p-rate webs-te and hear -t for free anyt-me. All the art -s also ava-lable somewhere onl-ne should you care to search, and let’s be honest, the album -sn’t really even the product anyway, -t’s the g-rls themselves and the -dea of them as enterta-nment ent-t-es that you can love, cher-sh and fap over. However s-nce probably no more cop-es of the F-rst Love m-n- album are l-kely to be made -n the future from the company beh-nd th-s flop group who have now d-scarded them and left them on the nugu trash heap, -f you’re a F-ve Dolls fan you may just-f-ably wonder; -s -t worth p-ck-ng up one of the last rema-n-ng phys-cal cop-es? Let’s answer th-s -mportant quest-on w-th an…
ALBUM REV-EW: F-VE DOLLS – “F-RST LOVE” M-N- ALBUM
Released -n 2013 by: Core Contents Med-a (now MBK Enterta-nment), d-str-buted by KT Mus-c – KTMCD 0292
Phys-cal product d-mens-ons: 195mm x 140mm x 24mm
Phys-cal product contents: CD -n box w-th 24 double-s-ded photocards and foldout album cred-ts
Let’s start th-s album rev-ew w-th the most -mportant th-ngs f-rst. S-nce -t’s the members of the group wh-ch are the real commod-ty -n any k-pop release, we’ll beg-n there. So, who are (were) F-ve Dolls?
- f-rst suspected that F-ve Dolls m-ght be d-sband-ng when – heard last week that Nayeon had left the group and now res-des -n Ch-cago. Amer-can readers, look out for a Nayeon near you! Nayeon has qu-te good command of Engl-sh apparently, so -’ve asked her about maybe do-ng an -nterv-ew somet-me but – th-nk she’s busy study-ng so probably doesn’t have t-me for my bullsh-t. Oh well. -’m here and ready -f she changes her m-nd!
Seunghee -s very attract-ve, fresh-faced, off-c-al Kpopalypse b-as l-st approved and has apparently reta-ned her contract w-th MBK. We’ll probably be see-ng more of Seunghee soon -n terms of s-ng-ng, mus-c v-deo cameos (l-ke her great turn play-ng the slutty wench -n The Seeya’s “Tell Me” MV), act-ng or other act-v-t-es and -t’s just as well because – th-nk -’m gett-ng some ser-ous blue balls.
Hyewon certa-nly has someth-ng -nterest-ng about her v-sually and w-th her short ha-r g-ves off a v-be s-m-lar to Hae-n from Gangk-z – she doesn’t possess qu-te the same -mpress-ve rack, but she’s also not as far off as you m-ght th-nk -n that department (see “You Cheated”, below). She’s also an exper-enced model and actress and has a cameo -n T-ara’s “Love Dovey Zomb-e vers-on” MV as well as T-ara N4′s “Jeon Won D-ary“. Hyewon has now reportedly left the company but here’s hop-ng that she’s landed on her feet somewhere n-ce (l-ke my house).
Yeonkyung -s cute and also a member of The Seeya, so even though F-ve Dolls are no more, you’ll st-ll get to hear lots more from Yeonkyung -n the future, assum-ng that The Seeya have some more comebacks planned. Ballad groups l-ke that tend to have a longer shelf l-fe than -dol pop stuff so -’m opt-m-st-c that MBK w-ll trans-t-on The Seeya to more and more of a Dav-ch- style d-rect-on, wh-ch m-ght be quest-onable for mus-c qual-ty purposes but w-ll be a pos-t-ve development for Yeonkyung fap.
Hyoyoung -s notor-ous among k-pop c-rcles as the s-ster of T-ara’s Hwayoung, Korea’s #1 net-zen troller and hyg-ene advocate. Let’s not let Hyoyoung be overshadowed though, she’s st-ll w-th MBK and has been bu-ld-ng up for herself qu-te an act-ng resume, and -’m not talk-ng about act-ng l-ke her leg -s hurt m-nutes before go-ng onstage. She also has some n-ce boobs under that hanbok, hopefully she’ll learn from her s-ster’s -mpress-vely slutty ant-cs and we’ll get to see them a l-ttle more -n future.
Last but not least, who can forget the lovely charms of Eunkyo? She’s so adorable that – made her a cl-ckable -con on my personal webs-te, know-ng that no human al-ve can res-st the urge to cl-ck on the Eunkyo and be taken to wonderful and myster-ous places. She’s left the company now and also deleted her Tw-tter so who knows what the future holds but s-nce K-m Kwang Soo has also left the company – wouldn’t be at all surpr-sed -f he’s kept Eunkyo all for h-mself. Too conven-ent to be mere co-nc-dence, they’re probably cuddl-ng on a deserted -sland somewhere far away from Korea’s tax -nspectors as you read th-s.
Oh and yes -’m well aware that there were other g-rls -n F-ve Dolls but they’re not on “F-rst Love” so – don’t g-ve a fuck. Th-s -sn’t W-k-ped-a you wh-ny cunt. Anyway, now that we’ve gotten to know the lovely g-rls of F-ve Dolls, let’s move onto…
THE PHYS-CAL PACKAGE
Now we move onto the packag-ng, wh-ch -s -mportant. After all, -f you d-dn’t want the package, why would you buy -t at all? -t’s not l-ke all mus-c -sn’t ava-lable completely free these days.
Here’s a great unbox-ng v-deo w-th a m-n-mum of fuss and wank that shows you the contents of the box and all of the photocards, =t’ll save me some ty-ng. Yes, there’s even a photocard for “F-ve Dolls fr-end” Dan-!
The package -s the same s-ze as T-ara N4′s m-n- album and only a few m-l-metres smaller than m-ss A’s “-ndependent Women part 3″, but a very s-m-lar des-gn to all of these. -t’s not the eas-est des-gn from the po-nt of v-ew of acces-ng the contents but -t’s better than most k-pop package -deas for keep-ng safe frag-le photocards.
The unbox-ng v-deo makes reference to s-gned ed-t-ons of th-s m-n- album. These ed-t-ons are probably by now very rare, they’ve certa-nly sold out on YesAs-a a long t-me ago, – know th-s because – bought one. Here’s a scanned copy of my s-gned album cred-ts foldout, sorry for the scan qual-ty, my scanner -sn’t -n the best shape and leaves ugly l-nes on everyth-ng.
Lastly, let’s take a look at the songs on th-s m-n- album. There are s-x songs -n total, and they are:
1. CAN YOU LOVE ME?
Eas-ly one of the best feature tracks of 2013, “Can You Love Me?” was the song that Ap-nk have always threatened to do but have never qu-te managed for some reason, and -f Ap-nk had actually released th-s song -nstead of that rubb-sh “Secret Garden” crap, -t would have no doubt been huge for them. What makes “Can You Love Me?” work where other songs l-ke th-s often fa-l -s that although the song -s -n ballad cloth-ng -t’s not really a ballad at all; the tempo -s actually qu-te br-sk, plus suspended harmon-c movement -s explo-ted a lot more often than -n most songs of th-s type wh-ch tend to go for a lame nusery rhyme harmony -nstead. Dan-’s guest rap (wh-ch -sn’t techn-cally a rap at all but whatever) -s the -c-ng on the cake and far more smooth sound-ng than anybody had a r-ght to expect g-ven that she couldn’t even speak Korean at the start of 2012. -’ve just started learn-ng Korean now and -f -’m a tenth as good as her -n the aount of t-me she took to learn that song -’ll be very happy. To top -t all off the v-deo -s great and del-vers ample schoolg-rl fet-sh fap.
2. YOU CHEATED
Although not qu-te h-tt-ng the h-gh standard of “Can You Love Me?”, “You Cheated” -s st-ll a very sol-d m-d tempo song -n a s-m-lar ve-n and -s only enhanced by a v-deo des-gned spec-f-cally to portray the g-rl’s boobs -n the best l-ght poss-ble. The jumper colours as well as the f-tt-ng of the suspenders-and-pants combos have been carefully selected to a-d boob percept-on, mak-ng th-s one of my favour-te “under the radar fap fest” v-deo concepts. Observe carefully how Hyweon at the top left of the screen always has her body on an angle so her boobs catch the stud-o l-ght and the-r volum-nous prof-le -s always clear, that’s surely no acc-dent but clearly extremely f-ne fanserv-cey v-deo d-rect-ng. She was no doubt told to stand exactly l-ke that for th-s reason and – only left Hyewon out of my boobsposts so – could drop th-s Easter egg here -nstead and blow the m-nds of unaware boobs perverts everywhere.
3. LOV
The f-rst of two non-feature track songs, “LOV” comes from the pen of k-pop h-tmaker Sh-nsadong T-ger, and you know that a m-n- album has got some qual-ty mater-al on -t when T-ger wr-tes a song for -t and that song doesn’t even end up mak-ng the grade for feature track status. The “l-ke this” interludes sound a l-ttle b-t daft (remember th-s -s the same songwr-ter who “l-key l-key d-s and l-key l-key dat” so – guess he just can’t help h-mself) but everyth-ng else -s great. Espec-ally awesome -s that h-gh synth no-se that descends every two bars, -t’s the sort of th-ng that you can po-nt out to people -n order to -rr-atate them and the cont-nually s-ng when they’re around to p-ss them off, always a worthy cause.
4. NONONO
Here’s the second feature track and -t’s absolutely fantast-c, the sort of end-of-concert torch pop song that a group can trot out as an encore and make the aud-ence super-sad that -t’s the-r last song and they have to leave for the next show soon. You can almost hear the tears of fans -n the m-x and -t’s just a p-ty that F-ve Dolls probably never played a concert where they could have used the tune for -t’s clearly -ntended purpose. Oh well, you’ll just have to l-sten to -t at home, turn down your l-ghts and wave your c-garette l-ghter or glowst-ck -n front of your computer screen -n t-me to the beat. Cons-der -t a goodbye song for the ent-re group before they sa-led off -nto the Sea Of Nugu -f you l-ke.
5. SOULMATE #1
The f-rst feature of the revamped F-ve Dolls wasn’t “Can You Love Me?” but “Soulmate #1″, a d-sco number that comb-nes several aspects of T-ara’s “Roly Poly” w-th the horr-ble “Funky Town” by L-pps -nc. -nto an overproduced mush to create a result that -s unfortunately completely screechy and unl-setnable. They get the -mage r-ght w-th an appeal-ngly retro-styled v-deo cl-p, but the horr-d repet-t-ve chorus comb-ned w-th way too much vocal layer-ng all throughout d-lutes the song’s few good qual-t-es (a decent br-dge, some cool d-sco rhythm textures) and the result -s just not good. – guess every album’s gotta have a dud on -t.
6. SOULMATE #1 (L-STEN 2)
A typ-cal worthless rem-x -n the extens-ve trad-t-on of po-ntless CCM rem-xes where they only s-gn-f-cantly change the song’s -ntro and leave just about everyth-ng else pretty much the same. A total waste of t-me even -f you l-ked “Soulmate #1″, you’ll be h-tt-ng the “sk-p” button to go back to the f-rst track every t-me th-s comes on your CD player.
Overall, – th-nk -t’s one of k-pop’s best m-n- albums ever. A 66% good song/bad song rat-o m-ght sound l-ke not much of a recommendat-on but for me -t’s a pretty good h-trate for any k-pop release at all, and the good songs are really, really fuck-ng good. More -mportantly, the g-rls are hot and the package -s h-gh qual-ty. So, should you buy th-s? Honestly – couldn’t g-ve a fly-ng fuck, that’s between you, your wallet and how much you l-ke fapp-ng to photocards. Hopefully you’ve at least enjoyed read-ng th-s self-ndulgent rev-ew just as much as any of the other garbage that – usually wr-te. Maybe -’ll rev-ew another album one day -f – can f-nd a just-f-cat-on for do-ng so… but – probably won’t. Unt-l next t-me, fap safely!
The regular blog series where Kpopalypse brings you fresh/stale nugus for your enjoyment and/or bemusement! Read on as I shove down your fucking throat another group of k-pop performers that you don’t care about and will probably forget the names of as soon as you’re finished reading this, in the name of good humour and a misguided unrealistic belief in music industry equal opportunity. Let’s get started!
Observant followers of Kpopalypse will notice that I don’t like k-pop ballads very much. I don’t understand the fascination others have with ballads – uptempo cool songs were what got every single one of you reading this right now into k-pop in the first place so why some of you people actually pretend that you want to spend more than five seconds of your time listening to ass-felching shit-gorging turd-munching slow tender love songs for vacuous brain-dead superficial fuckwits is beyond me. But hey – I’m all about catering to popular opinion and not wanting to offend any stupid fucking cuntholes so I can be as most liked as possible by everybody at all times, so here’s some random ballads so I can be more popular like Zico and G-Dragon.
Usual Nugu Alert rules apply: less than 20k YouTube hits, less than two of your friends know/care about them. Let’s start with:
Atomic Kiz – Lovers
The word “Kiz” seems to be the stamp of nugudom for any k-pop group, and any startup k-pop agency would be wise to not bother putting the word “kiz” anywhere in their debut group’s name lest they jinx them heavily. Let’s look at the track record of groups with “kiz” in their name:
So it’s a bold agency that debuted Atomic Kiz, the latest cookie-cutter five-member boy group that will probably be erased from your memory by this time next week when some other near-identical cookie-cutter five-member boy group comes along, if they haven’t already done so by the time you read this. The super bland acoustic ballad certainly doesn’t help their cause to become known, nor does the fact that they look like they’ve all been dressed by their mothers and that whoever’s controlling the camera seems to have trouble keeping them in focus for some of the group shots. Maybe the plan was to go for some sort of 80′s soap opera style soft-focusing to increase the romantic mood but the overall effect just looks like one of the boys themselves set up the camera depth himself before pressing “record” and bumped the focus control a little bit too far before running back to stand with the others. I bet it was that guy wearing the sunglasses indoors who no doubt can’t see shit, because he also seems to be having some trouble getting his dance moves in sync with the rest of them.
Atomic Kiz furthermore carries with them the ultimate nugu stamp, that defines all nugus as nugus in the true k-pop industry sense of the word where music sales don’t mean shit but attracting sponsors is everything:
Lack of sponsorship. Where the arrow is pointing, the logo on the headstock of this guitar has been pixellated out. The guitar has the design of an Ovation guitar but chances are that it’s a cheap copy by a Korean company like Crafter that nugus tend to use because who’s got the bucks for an Ovation… either way, they get no promo from Atomic Kiz because they didn’t want to help fund this MV. I don’t know why not – judging by the way the finished product looks it would have cost them less than the price of changing the strings on that instrument.
YouTube views at time of writing: 8674
Notable attribute: entire group and song so dull that they are upstaged by an unusual-looking bookcase in the final scenes
Nugu Alert rating: high
Hawon – Silence
The title of this song is weird because after the first bass drum hit there is actually a second or two of silence before the snare drum comes in. I thought for that tiny second they were going for a very literal interpretation of the song title like John Cage’s “4:33″ but then the actual song kicked in with proper music (kind of) so I guess not. The whole thing isn’t bad musically if a little dull, and it even has some seriously oddball heavy guitar in the loud bits that sounds a bit like a doom metal group got together with a k-pop singer and they had a bit of an argument about musical style so they all decided to meet each other halfway, which sounds like the latter-day careers of a lot of doom metal groups now that I come to think of it. I guess it might make an impact on you if you’ve never heard anything like this before, but I think if you want shitty half-assed doom-pop you might as well forget Korea and go out and buy something from The Gathering or whatever. The video is boring as fuck though, with lots of pointless wandering through the small hill with a few trees just up the road from the recording studio deep mystical forest, pouring water on things, mutilating the local flora for no apparent reason and general angsty standing around looking at nothing in particular. Also, did you know that there are over 9000 moving parts inside a piano? You soon will, because the video director of “Silence” seems intent on showing you each and every one of them.
YouTube views at time of writing: 2114
Notable attribute: singer’s boobs carefully obscured by hair and/or camera angles in every single shot – the ultimate tease
Nugu Alert rating: very high
Magic Flow ft. Rumble Fish – Blah Blah
The guest Rumble Fish isn’t completely nugu and quite a few of you older k-pop fans will have heard of her (or her band of the same name), but Magic Flow sure is straight from N-town. Do you know how hard Magic Flow is even just to find? A search for “Magic Flow” on YouTube just got me a bunch of Mexican rap kids and some stupid hippie Earth-mother ecstasy-taking bullshit music, but luckily my powers of nugu detection were up to the task so I can now present to you this distinctly average and forgettable ballad, which won’t be stuck in your head after you play the video because it’s not catchy in the slightest. Mr. Flow only managed about 15k hits even with Rumble Fish’s nugu-boosting help, and 15k might seem like a lot compared to the other videos here but this isn’t AsianDreamVOD, the perfectly-titled-given-its-quality “Blah Blah” has been sitting on mega-distributor 1theK’s YouTube channel for over three and a half years. That averages out to about 10 hits per day, and it’s such a low priority for 1theK that they couldn’t even be fucked subbing it into English like everything else on their YouTube channel. You can tell that this video is a few years old too because there’s actual lip-to-lip contact in it, something that k-pop videos seem terminally afraid of these days. In 2011 a guy and a girl could politely peck each other on the lips in a music video, but not anymore – why so puritanical, Korea? Maybe there was a massive herpes simplex epidemic in Seoul that I hadn’t heard about, and struggling to contain the outbreak, the government decided that all they had to do to contain the issue and ensure that their problem would solve itself easily was to remove fictional representations of relationship skinship in music videos. Even this hardcore relationship-porn with an established star didn’t do much to help Magic Flow achieve his k-pop stardom dream. 1theK learned the true power of nugu-boosting a few years later when they teamed IU with both Fiestar and HIGH4, but their skills came too late for Magic Flow who is probably busy right now magically flowing some tap beer into pint glasses to pay off his nugu debts.
YouTube views at time of writing: 15183
Notable attribute: wedding ring at the start of the video probably represents majority of the MV budget
This concludes another edition of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, the blogging series that you love to hate to love! This is also the last Nugu Alert for this year! Kpopalyspe will return with more nugus to annoy you in 2015!
Idol life is tough. There you are, sitting on a chair in a fake backyard by a fake white picket fence, holding a fake ice-cream made by food stylists with coloured frosting and powdered sugar, shooting a promotional music video. The video shoot sure is dragging on, it’s 4AM and you’ve been awake for 26 hours straight, yet it’s your duty to look alert and extra cheerful for the cameras – what a chore. You sure wish you were doing something else, but this is what being an idol is and you’re stuck with it for now. On take 153 of your lines in verse 2, a thought pops into your mind… but what could it be?
“CUT!” the director yells. He gets up from his chair and walks over to you. “Raina, can’t you concentrate? Come on, we need the perfect take this time, let’s do it again. Take 154, people! Come on, let’s do this! ACTION!” You sigh internally and try not to let it show. It’s going to be a long shoot.
I’ve often been accused of being very gender-biased in my blogging, and that as a heterosexual male I haven’t been doing a lot of catering to those who would like to see some hot sexy men being reduced to objects for the voyeuristic pleasure of readers.
Since I’m obviously guilty as charged, let’s rectify the situation immediately with a hunky k-pop guy post for all you heterosexual women and gay men out there!
When writing a post like this, I run into an immediate problem, and it’s a problem that has stopped me writing about this kind of topic many times in the past – as a heterosexual male, I can’t “see” sexiness in other guys, and therefore I have no idea what their sexiness looks like. I have no doubt that they have it, I just can’t detect it reliably without help. I know for instance, that Johnny Depp and David Bowie are considered more or less universally attractive amongst women, but I only know this because heterosexual women tell me this all the time, so it seems to be true (and don’t argue with women about this stuff if you know what’s good for you). I also know that Steve Buscemi is generally not considered to be attractive because he has buggy eyes or something, but I only know this because women also tell me this too, I wasn’t able to detect his ugliness without their help. However, I don’t understand the qualities that makes one attractive and the other not – why are buggy eyes unattractive? How buggy do they have to be? If Johnny Depp had buggy eyes would he also be as ugly as Steve Buscemi? If not, why not? If Steve’s eyes suddenly “got prettier” like Minzy’s nose, would he then be considered attractive? If not, why not? What qualities offset what other qualities by how much? What’s the perfect combination of qualities that makes a man attractive, or ugly? These questions and dozens of others like them, I can’t answer. People often insist that my inability to determine this stuff is just wilfull ignorance or homophobia but really it isn’t or I wouldn’t be making this post. It’s not that I don’t want to answer these questions, or that I’m afraid of answering them, it’s just that the part of my brain that can answer them doesn’t exist.
However, what I do have at my disposal is experience talking to a lot of female friends and partners over the years who all have strong opinions about what they like to see in guys, plus I know quite a lot of gay guys too (what can I say, I work in the music business) and I also frequently get their opinions on the art of guy selection. Through conversations with these people of discernment and taste I’ve managed to distill the information that they’ve presented to me down to some key points which I believe we can use to locate the ideal k-pop guys.
CONFIDENCE
Confidence. This is a big one for all people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Taste in appearances vary wildly, but all straight women and gay guys tell me that “confidence is sexy”, this seems to be a universal truth and I can’t find a single man-seeker anywhere who says that they would prefer a man who isn’t confident in himself. If confidence is therefore sexy, I think we can safely say that JYP is a very sexy man.
Look at those pants. I know you’ve probably all seen this image before, but really look at them this time (you know you want to). How much confidence would you need to be able to wear those pants and strike a pose like that… and pull a facial expression like that while doing it? And then have that image be distributed all around the mediasphere – with your blessing? More confidence than 99% of you reading this, I’ll bet.
If that’s not enough confidence for you, did you also know that JYP did a whole Disney-esque movie about The Wonder Girls breaking into America?
I only just found out about this shit today. As if any of this was ever going to fly in the States… but JYP is completely oblivious, he’s putting in his best effort anyway, acting his heart out and giving the girls the benefit of his worldly wisdom with important life instructions:
Imagine the shame of telling your friends that you were even in some shit cheesy movie like this at all even as an extra let alone “I made my own Disney-ish movie about some girl-pop group and I also star in it”. You need some balls-out confidence for this shit, and JYP has it.
Girls prefer to clean themselves off after sex – they don’t want you to do it, it’s enough that you got them all dirty in the first place, they can sort the rest out thank you very much. Seungri knows this and is willing to provide you with the right equipment to get the job done but you’re not getting any more help than that, because he’s a forward-thinking masculine guy for the new millenium who isn’t afraid to take charge of things (like where his cum lands) but also wants you to be independent, empowered and in control (of the toweling-down). No “oh I’m so helpless, please help me get this spunk off” for you – this is 21st century choke-sex for the new generation of empowered spunk-catchers. Seungri is a man’s man.
SENSITIVITY
Sure, masculinity is important BUT… that doesn’t mean that male-seekers don’t also want some sweet, tender lovin’ in between all the jizz-wiping. I never had a relationship with anybody who didn’t like cuddles and being cozy on the couch every once in a while. I know a girl who started dating a guy when he was a bit overweight and had a beer gut and actually got a bit sad when he started losing the extra pounds and getting all buff. “He’s not as cuddly now, I don’t like it as much!” she said. So who’s the coziest, most tender, most cuddly man in kpop?
As the sole representative for “cuddly” in idol pop, Super Junior’s Shindong has all the bases covered. Not only does he have the right physique for the task, he’s also in touch with his emotions:
Shindong doesn’t care about your society’s taboos, if he’s gotta cry he’s gonna cry and you’ll just have to deal with it. This is the kind of manliness that people want these days – the man who is so secure of his own manliness that he doesn’t have anything to prove to anybody. No fake image here, just direct emotion straight to your soul. Can you handle the raw emotional power of the ‘dong?
FINANCIAL STABILITY
Strange as it may seem, being gainfully employed and financially stable makes men sexier. It’s not just simple money-siphoning greed on the part of their would-be partners, it’s more the fact that a man is sexier when he’s on a mission and has a purpose in life, and gradually wasting away his months and years climbing at seismically slow speeds out of acres of debt is a purpose. Of course, the more money there is to go around, the better, because anyone with rational self-interest at the forefront of their mind would naturally ask themselves “why live like a pauper when you can live like a princess“. So which man has got the financial security to make potential partners happy?
SM Entertainment’s ex-CEO Lee Soo Man has your financial needs covered. If you’re worried about your future fret not because he’ll look after you, even if it means you have to sign something that looks a bit fishy. Sure, you might be signing your life away, but if you’re going to sign a slave contract it might as well be with the big guns rather than some nugu agency who can’t do anything for you anyway.
Don’t think he’s all work and no play, though. He still knows how to have a good time with the boys:
You’re assured a good night out on the town with Lee Soo Man, he’ll pay for all your drinks and party with you until the early morning…. for the next 13 years, exclusively with him. Or else.
INTELLIGENCE
It doesn’t matter how much butt-fucking and sperm-catching you’re going to be doing with your man, you’re still probably going to be spending more time talking to him than doing anything else, so it’s important that he can cut the mustard in the important area of intelligent conversation. So who do we know for sure has got the smarts to cut it in any conversation? Yang Hyun Suk, CEO of YG Entertainment, that’s who.
Think about all the shitty songs his label has been putting out lately, that people just lap up like a dog laps up another dog’s piss. This guy actually put out trash like Akdong Musician and WINNER and managed to get people to buy it and think it was the latest and greatest thing ever. Clearly he’s a fucking genius beyond compare.
You’ll have some amazing candlelit dinner conversations with this guy over a bottle of red and a perfectly-cooked steak. “Tell me again how you managed to get people to like literally any old garbage as long as it has your label’s logo on it”, you’ll say, and he’ll tell you all his secrets… or maybe just a few, to get you hooked, and draw you in closer to the spider’s web…
The adorable prankster of k-pop, Core Contents Media CEO Kim Kwang Soo has been laughing it up for years at the expense of everybody. Imagine having him as your partner! It would be a chuckle a second!
“Hey, let’s tell everyone that we’re going to put a 12 year old in T-ara! The reactions from everybody will be hilarious!” he tells you, while gently stroking your hair.
“But you’re not really going to, are you?” you reply, in between sloberring on his throbbing knob and tickling his asshole.
“Don’t be silly – of course not. I’ll just tease it a bit here and there until they figure me out, it’ll probably take them a few years. But imagine the comments!” – you both start laughing so hard that snot starts coming out of your nose. You wipe it on his dick as lubricant and get back to work.
This man caused so much hilarious butthurt that CCM doesn’t even exist anymore and he hasn’t been in charge for a very long time now (he quietly stepped down over a year ago!) and people are still whining like little babies about everything he does, as if they know anything at all about what he’s even doing or even what’s actually involved in being a CEO of a label. But one thing’s for sure – he’s funny as fuck, and that shit gets people hot and hornier than anything else. You are turned on right now.
So that wraps up my list of k-pop’s hottest guys! I hope this has pleased those of you who are into hot sexy men and that you are able to now reduce these multi-faceted hot guys with hopes, dreams and aspirations into mere objects for your sexual pleasure so you can fap smoothly and safely! If your fave isn’t here, maybe you can suggest some other hot k-pop guys below in the comments – but it’ll be tough to beat this lot! Bye for now!
It’s a good question, and I think it’s definitely important enough for a post of its own so here it is. We all know that sex sells, but does more sex sell for more? This post has the answer!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.In a previous post I’ve compared the state of the current k-pop industry to the operations of the American Motown record label in the 1960s and 1970s. However, there’s another analogy that also works for explaining the inner machinations of the k-pop business, and I’m not the only one who’s been able to single it out.
This is all trufax, however the analogy for the purposes of this post isn’t to explain the fake personas and shitty-ass contracts of the k-pop business (because I’ve already been there and done that) but instead to understand how the “studio system culture” impacts representations of sexuality, and what this means for fap.
In the very, very early days of the Hollywood system, tits and ass were everywhere and films were quite risque and brazen. This era was known as “Pre-Code Hollywood” and during this time there was little meaningful censorship of films with adult content. This all changed in the 1930s when public pressure to clean up Hollywood’s scandaloous reputation at the time allowed censorship to gain weight and the Motion Picture Production Code came into force. Here’s a list of things (sourced from this book) that you strictly weren’t allowed to show on screen in your Hollywood film according to the Code or your film would get permabanned:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Holy fucking dick, that’s pretty draconian (and you definitely couldn’t say “holy fucking dick”, by the way). And here’s a bunch of other stuff that you had to be really careful with; use of these topics in non-approved ways could also get your picture easily banned by the censors:
Wow that’s a lot of stuff to think about. Note that point 2 actually prevented Hollywood directors from making several anti-Nazi films in the 1930s. Oops! But what did the Code specifically have to say about sex?
All this extreme clamping-down on any type of sex in cinema at all had a few interesting effects. The first effect was that people became extremely sensitive to various types of sexual content, and started to eroticise things which would normally not be considered quite as erotic. In other words, cinema trained them to become sex fetishists.
Think about the common sex fetishes and porn themes in America and then think about how they relate to the Code and you’ll see patterns forming. When plots for pornographic films do exist, infidelity is probably the most common theme, because it has a history of being forbidden on screen as well as being a real-life taboo and is therefore “naughtier”. “Interracial porn” doesn’t even exist in many countries (when two people of two different races fuck on screen most countries just call it “porn”), but because it was forbidden to show sexual relations between whites and blacks by the Code, nobody could see mixed-race relationships on screen in America so people started to specifically long for that and fetishise it, so it later became a specific category within porn to cater to the demand. Boobs were previously shown on the cinema screen in the Pre-Code era, but now they were always completely covered up, thus making them more desirable, thus meaning that people wanted to see them even more than usual. Pornography after the Code came into practice had a lot more focus on boobs than it did before this time, for precisely this reason – they were catering to a higher demand for tits. By starving the public of boobs the Hollywood Code had the opposite effect to what was intended by its creators – instead of making society more pure, they just made it more pure on the outside while simultaneously making it more perverse on the inside.
Here’s a picture of Qri that she put up on her Instagram the other day before she very quickly realised that it exposed a little too much by stupid Korean fangirl cunthole standards, and removed it. (Thanks to the sneaky cao ni ma Queen’s who screencapped this moment in boob-history before it went away and forwarded it to me.) Most hot girls that I know who also have reasonable-sized boobs wouldn’t think twice about posting an Instagram pic like this. However, k-pop fans make a big fucking deal out of it because it’s a k-pop star and they don’t usually show cleavage, so when it is shown, people suddenly start blowing their loads at extraordinary speed. Congratulations, you have been “resensitised” to boobs by k-pop. Suddenly, less is more.
Kind of, thoughtful Raina. Why is there so much porn concerning nuns? Because almost nobody gets to see under a nun’s clothes in real life, it’s one of the ultimate forbidden zones. Likewise, if you think people in the Middle East aren’t interested in porn or fapping to boobies like crazy, think again – the data shows that they search it even more than westerners do and it’s probably got something to do with women in public wearing clothing that covers more parts of the body than in the west. On the other hand in certain African societies where women walk around topless all the time, those people don’t find breasts to be much of a turn-on at all. If you can always see it any time you want, it’s no big deal anymore, but if you never get to see it, suddenly it’s a lot more interesting. Therefore as k-pop boobs are a forbidden zone, prurient interest is heightened; that’s why there’s so much interest in idol tits and why the posts of mine that trend the highest and get the most hits are the ones with boobs in them. Or the promise of boobs in them. Or ass. Or whatever it is that you want to see that k-pop normally doesn’t want to show you.
The dance routine for AOA’s “Miniskirt” was changed in Korea because it was “too racy”… but what’s the most raunchy thing about the dance? Why, the girls unzip their skirts…. not take them off, just unzip them a little bit. You see maybe two more extra square inches of flesh on the side of each girl’s leg than you otherwise would… which is nothing, really… yet it’s hot as fuck. Meanwhile, in America:
Lady’s video is over-the-top, hilarious fun, but it’s not that sexy… whether you like the ladies on offer here or not. It’s closer in spirit to a workout video than something that somebody would fap to.
All the censorship in Hollywood also had another effect – it really pissed off movie directors. Frustrated by Joe Censor (and yes his name really was Joe) stepping in and forcing them to re-write scripts and even change endings to comply with the ludicrous censorship requirements, directors started to become sneaky cao ni mas and sneak in their sexual content around the edges.
The most well-known example of this is Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious“. The Code stated that over three seconds of actual continuous kissing in a kissing scene was considered “excessive and lustful” and therefore cruising for a banning. Hitchcock worked around these rules and trolled the censor magnificently by interspersing kissing with dialogue in the above scene and stretching out the passion to over two minutes – Joe Censor couldn’t do shit about this because Hitchcock was able to work the loophole. After the late 1960s when the Code was removed, Hitchcock lamented its passing, because of the fun he had pushing boundaries like these.
The 1960 film “Spartacus” depicted life in ancient Rome which was a city of vast and liberal homosexual cockgobbling gayness, but you couldn’t talk about a preference for slobbering on knob instead of eating out pussy on the screen, so Stanley Kubrick got his actors to talk about oysters and snails instead of vaginas and dicks. This way he was able to slip his “inference to sex perversion” (as the Code called it) past the censors of the day… and most of the audience too, although anyone who was gay probably understood the reference, because they would have been looking for and hoping for just such a reference in a “two guys in the bath” scene. The political sphere has a term for when this type of tactic is applied to convey one message overtly and another different message to a specific subgroup – dog-whistle politics. I’m not sure if the k-pop world has a different term for the same thing happening in the entertainment sphere, but observant types can see dog-whistle-something happening in k-pop music videos easily enough.
Sometimes it’s fairly obvious boundary-pushing going on with not too much hidden:
Anyone not extremely naive will know that Stellar’s “Marionette” is using fresh milk from the fridge as a substitute for fresh milk from a guy’s nutsack. However, there really isn’t that much skin exposure going on in the milk-dribbling scene, it’s the colour of the liquid and the specific angles and presentation which lead the mind to the most dirty thoughts possible even though not much is really happening except a bit of sloppy drinking. The video director is exploiting your brain to make you see more sex than what is actually present – a classic envelope-pushing tactic in the Hitchcock tradition. Let’s now look at a more complex example with dog-whistle messages in full effect.
The sexual references in the MV for EXID’s sleeper hit “Up & Down” flash by so quickly that they’re sometimes hard to discern. Anyone naive and innocent will just see some girls playing around with balloons, fruit and some magician-stuff, but general perverts will notice the phallic balloon-blowing, genitalia-esque fruit still-life and erection-creating. More advanced perverts have another layer to unravel.
If you understand this picture after reading my red text, well done, you are a perv. If you understood it instantly even before you read the red text, and also understand exactly which subgenre of pornography it’s referencing (a clue: not foot fetishism) then you are the type of Kpopalypse-grade pervert that EXID’s dog-whistle message is directly targeting. Congratulations, you sick fuck. Also, if you’re a new reader I’d just like to say hello and welcome and tell you that I think you’ll enjoy my writing in general.
Even SNSD got in on the act, and their dog-whistle got under the radar of nearly everyone including the majority of their own fanbase and quite possibly even the girls themselves:
“SNSD never did a sexy concept”… yes they did – this is it, right here. The specific lighting, the specific design of the room-shaped set, the clothes, the boots, especially the hats… Joe Cocker had something to say about those hats… yes that’s right kids, this is a fucking peepshow stripper concept. Little rectangular holes in the walls or one-way mirrors would have made it too obvious and given the game away thus drawing the ire of Korea’s censors but anyone familiar with the more elaborate peep show setups will see the inspiration for their concept instantly.
Why do you think they chose this type of concept for a song called “Show Show Show”? Because whoever thought it up is insinuating that SNSD is going to “show show show” you some tits and ass. If you’re now thinking “but… you’re only seeing that because you’ve got a dirty mind!” you’ve just understood exactly how these kind of messages work.
But the real question is, does this puritanical shit that Korean video directors constantly have to edge around and dog-whistle under actually make k-pop more popular globally and help fappers? The answer to this question is a definite “yes” because all these daft rules make k-pop more exportable. One of the reasons why k-pop has exploded to become a global cult phenomenon whereas pop from other countries has not, is that you can export k-pop’s high quality and sexually tease-rather-than-please visuals to almost anywhere in the world. Some country where the population is 99% brainwashed by some ultra-conservative organised religion like fluffy-unicorn-worship probably can’t handle Lady and they probably can’t handle AKB48 either, but something like EXID will get through the net. The smart agencies know how to toe the line betwen fapability and conservatism, getting away overtly with what they can and sneaking the juiciest fap content under the radar of prudes in foreign markets using dog-whistle tactics, and they’re good at it precisely because their home market is so prudish that they’re used to thinking this way. The results are far more fappable than they would otherwise be, plus whole countries wouldn’t get the content at all otherwise. In this way, we can see that censorship backfires – it allows the sexy content to spread further, reach more people and it generates more interest in whatever content is presented. Here’s a picture of Hyosung that I stole from an Asian Junkie article, who’s boobs look really hot here precisely because she’s got some transparent cloth obstructing her cleavage.
I’ll finish up this post with another unrelated tale of censorship failure – censorship doing exactly the opposite to what the censors want (which it always does). A few years back, the Attorney-General of South Australia was Michael Atkinson. Michael was one of those “protect the children” family-values types and was pretty keen on censorship, he was instrumental in making sure that Australia didn’t get an R18+ rating for computer games until very recently. Because we didn’t have an R18+ rating, computer games that would normally get that rating snuck in under the MA15+ rating instead, meaning that younger kids got to play them. Oops! Mike also snuck a nasty piece of legislation into South Australia which stated that all R18+ DVDs and BluRay for sale in regular DVD stores had to be either sold in plain packaging, or consigned to a special section of the shop just for them. It just goes to show how behind-the-times our politicians are – legislating on physical movie product in 2010? The young people who he wanted to protect don’t even go into a video store anymore, so this change doesn’t even affect them. It’s got a great effect for me though – I no longer need to go browsing through an entire DVD store to find what I want, all the smutty and violent films that I’m interested in are all grouped conveniently together on the same shelf! DVD stores couldn’t be bothered with unappealing and costly special plain packaging so instead now every DVD and BluRay store in my city is legally forced to create a special signposted R18+ section so I can easily find the films that I want, or they can be fined $5000 for not catering to my specific taste! Awesome, high fives to Michael Atkinson and his outstanding work in the field of helping perverts like me choose films wisely!
Anyway that wraps up this blog post, and just as a heads-up for all you lovely readers to prepare yourself for my next post which is going to be all abou…
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In k-pop the music video is often as important as the song. I’d even go out on a not-very-dangerous limb and say it’s a lot more important than the song in most cases, and for a bunch of different reasons, ranging from building a brand, to building interest in the performers, to product placement, to connecting to global audiences and more. K-pop is at least as much of a visual phenomenon as it is an auditory one, this much is obvious. What’s a little less obvious to a lot of people is how much money and effort is involved, so that’s what this post is going to discuss… hopefully in a way that doesn’t bore you to shit.
What makes a music video “cheap” or “expensive”? How do I tell which is which? Attentive readers will note that one of my recent Nugu Alert posts touched on the topic of video expenses. However I didn’t go into a lot of detail in that post, and I’ve been getting requests to write something more in-depth about music video costs ever since, so here we go.
Let’s start off by saying that k-pop fans have a funny idea about what the word “cheap” means, k-pop fans will call just about anything that they don’t happen to like “cheap” just because they fell out of the wrong side of the bed that morning or mummy didn’t put enough milk in their breakfast cereal. The average k-pop video costs easily two or three times as much as the average major label western music video, and the average major label western music video costs between $50k and $150k. Expensive high-gloss productions from the likes of SM, YG, CUBE, MBK, JYP, TS etc… you’d be lucky to see any change out of half a million dollars in terms of total expense.
So, what’s costing all that money? Let’s look at some of the various aspects of making a music video so we can get a picture of where all the money is going.
STAFF
Firstly, you need some people to actually make the shoot happen, obviously. What does the typical staff list on a music video shoot look like? A k-pop film crew may contain most or all of the following:
Director – the head creative person, who oversees all creative elements and makes creativity-based decisions.
Assistant director – usually in charge of schedules, making sure shit runs on time etc. On very large shoots there may be multiple assistant directors.
Producer – think of a producer as a “filming manager” who organises all the staff to turn the creative vision from something inside the director’s head to something that actually happens.
Production designer – in charge of the look of the film set. Very important for “box” videos where an entire set is fabricated from scratch.
Art director – oversees the making of props, scene paintings, pretty stuff, to make sure that it meets required standards as laid out by the production designer. The art director says “hey there production designer my art team made a 50 foot gold-plated dildo for Hyuna to dance under as per your diagram” and the production designer looks it over and says “I calmly accept”.
Set dresser – makes sure the cookie hovering over Raina’s head is sitting at the right angle for the camera to see it.
Camera operator – self explanatory. May be multiple camera operators, and may have assistants depending on the complexity of what’s being filmed.
Grip – there are several types of grips, a grip is basically a technician who works with any specialised camera movement. They do things like build train tracks and vehicles for moving cameras around smoothly (known as “dollies”), organise lifts and contraptions, etc.
Crane operator – sometimes you need a big-ass crane for a camera or a light, these are common for k-pop groups where getting a fast mobile overhead angle is beneficial to filming a dance routine.
Drone operator – for big outdoor events with lots of people and traffic cluttering up the area sometimes a crane isn’t the best solution. Increasingly camera drones are being used in the music video industry (if you want to see confirmed drone use in action try Wonder Girls “Like This” MV where drones were used to shoot the wide outdoor flashmob dance scenes). Drones are fairly new technology and they are not cheap.
Steadicam operator – whenever fast action on-the-ground movement-tracking scenes are required, steadicam is often used, it’s basically a wearable camera that tracks movement smoothly.
Boom operator – a boom is a big long stick with a microphone on the end that is used for recording dialogue, often used for any MVs that involve dialogue. Some poor sap has to stand there and hold that thing above your favourite idol while he’s pretending to cry in the rain over his lost love in some stupid drama MV. Yes, boom operators’ arms get tired.
Gaffer – basically, an electrician. Because all that equipment needs power somehow. Also handles lights, although in some countries this is handled by a grip (not sure about Korea’s rules here).
Electric – any assistants to the gaffer, they do stuff like working out where all those fucking wires are supposed to go. Important – technical fuck-ups can delay a shoot significantly.
Stylists – hairdressers and makeup artists. A typical k-pop shoot has a small army of these people.
Costume designer – Makes clothing happen. Obviously critical for k-pop where the look of each individual artist is taken very seriously, EXO’s tribal lycra spacesuits need to look just right.
Wardrobe – manages the workaday aspects of getting EXO in and out of their tribal lycra spacesuits.
Digital image technician – videos aren’t shot to film anymore, it’s all digital. The digital image tech makes sure that all the digital stuff is happening as it should, so the editor’s got the files he needs in the right format and order to piece everything together once the shoot is complete.
This is by no means a complete list, just the basics for a high-production music video, like the ones you see in k-pop. All of these people obviously need to be paid, usually at hourly rates, plus the equipment they use needs to be hired, usually at daily rates, or sometimes you pay a flat daily rate for a person and their equipment together if they have special gear (a crane or drone operator is a good example of this). Given that these are specialist fields, the wages aren’t cheap, you’re looking at a bill of several thousands of dollars just to get the above staff members together for one day of shooting. Most video shoots are done in one day around-the-clock (i.e no sleep until complete) but if the shoot stretches over multiple days, then double or triple the fees.
LOCATION
Location shoots obviously require access to a location over a consistent time period (several hours) with no interference. There aren’t very many good “free” locations that would work well for any type of k-pop music video (which is why you see certain ones reused in different videos a lot), landlords of prime locations know this and will rent their weird and wonderful areas out to k-pop film crews and rake in the cash. Access to a good location therefore requires one of two things – connections, or money. Even apparently “free” locations can contain a large hidden expense – walking down a street in Gangnam might be free but having a 4-12 member group do their dance unobstructed in that same street so they can look cool and trendy requires a city permit to block off the traffic, which requires money.
The above pic is a still from nugu group TREN-D’s “Candy Boy“. We can see that a street has been blocked off from traffic access. Also look at the angle of the shot – from way above. They’ve either hired a crane operator, or used a drone to get this shot. We’re already talking thousands of dollars for just this scene alone which is one of several in the video, all of which occasionally feature sweeping high camera angles. They might be a nugu group but their video doesn’t have a nugu price tag.
FABRICATION vs CGI
K-pop “box” sets such as the ones many SM Entertainment artists dance in are often the prime target of people who like to complain about k-pop music videos being “cheap”. In truth, these sets require extensive fabrication (i.e they need to be built out of some real stuff), or they require extensive CGI (computer generated imagery) whiz-bang effects. Neither are exactly dirt-cheap (if you want the result to look any good, that is), but what’s the most common option for k-pop these days? Let’s take a quiz with some popular high-technology box MVs!
How many did you get right? Almost all of the videos have completely 100% physical sets. Only Super Junior’s “Sexy, Free & Single” made heavy use of CGI and even in their case, the CGI wasn’t completely green-screened in but added as extensions to existing physical props that were already quite extensive. Now think about the amount of staff needed and hours of labour required to design and build each of those sets, as well as the materials and the scale involved. It’s more than a bathroom renovation (and a typical domestic bathroom renovation costs about $10k). Never again will you think of an SM box video as “cheap” – the fabrication costs for these videos are insanely high and a large percentage of the total budget.
LOGISTICS
Introducing one of the most expensive k-pop videos of all time: “Honey Honey” by Gangkiz. This video’s expenditure came in at about $900k, just under T-ara’s “Cry Cry/Lovey Dovey” and B.A.P’s “One Shot” which were a cool $1M each.
What is it that makes “Honey Honey” so expensive? Various scenes in the film were shot in three different European countries, and there’s multiple locations for each country. Now take another look at that staff list above. Every time you pick up your k-pop girls from one location and plonk them down in a new location, all those other people above have to go with them, plus all their equipment. In music video industry terminology this is called a “company move”, and “Honey Honey” would have had dozens of company moves before the shoot was over. The MV might look like one cute rented Kombi van full of hot k-pop girls trekking around Europe but there’s probably another rented Kombi plus a minibus behind it driven by far less attractive people and full of all the tech gear.
On top of all this, when you’re shooting your music video all those people in the list above, on top of your idols, are all getting hungry and thirsty. They need to be fed, however if you’re shooting in a snow dune or a desert somewhere or whatever, it’s not like you can go down the road to the local milk bar and get a malted. Even if there was a milk bar there, time is money and there’s not time to be spent acquiring snacks on a busy film set. The answer to this dilemma is “craft services“, friendly guys and gals who provide all-day snack food for your video shoot so your camera guys don’t get grumpy and Krystal doesn’t faint. Of course, they don’t do this for free – from the perspective of anyone wandering onto the film set it’s “free food” (and worth stealing), but it isn’t really because the agency still pays for craft services to be there. And of course, if you’re doing a company move, craft services have to move too or there is no food and Krystal faints again.
So you’ve got your video shot at great expense but now what? Well, assuming that your digital image technician had their shit together during the filming process, you should immediately have a bunch of hot sexy video files ready to post-process and turn into a music video. You guessed it… it’s time to pay another bunch of people a chunk of money to do a bunch of stuff!
Firstly there’s the editor, and you probably all know what this is but I’m going to explain it anyway for those that don’t. The editor chops up the footage from the initial long cuts into something that today’s kids raised on crappy Michael Bay films actually have a mild chance of paying attention to. The more cuts, the longer this takes. Yes, T-ara’s “Sugar Free” would have taken a fucking long time.
Some poor sap had to sit there and make all those edits one at a time. What do you mean you don’t fucking like it? The editor slaved away for days getting this just right so you could whine about it like a little baby.
Then there’s the colourist, and no that’s not another word for a racist (a colourist may be racist as well, but if so that’s just coincidence). A colourist is someone who makes sure colours match between different takes and different cameras and angles, and that the footage is correctly colour-graded. This is super important because films without the right colour grading look seriously amateur-hour, and stuff with good colour-grading (i.e everything SM has done in the last 7 or 8 years) looks hot as fuck. Most people don’t know about stuff like colour-grading in any detail so here’s a short and fun video explaining it visually.
Then you’ve got visual effects design. This mainly means CGI these days, there are other types of visual effects but they are used increasingly rarely, and probably almost never in the high-tech world of k-pop. CGI in most k-pop videos is fairly subtle when it appears – as covered above, many videos have some CGI content but surprisingly few are just a group dancing in front of a pure CGI backdrop. CGI when it appears is usually the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.
Lastly, you have sound design which is adding the music content (obviously) and also anything else that may be needed. A lot of k-pop videos have extensive preambles, sound effects and other stuff that needs to be inserted.
I haven’t even discussed other things like teasers, photo sessions and other promotional expenses tied to music videos, this is all just the basic stuff. By now you probably have realised that even the most basic k-pop music videos are in fact very expensive and you’ll be no doubt asking yourself…
HOW DOES ANYONE AFFORD ALL THIS FUCKING CRAP?
It’s no secret that the music industry has been on the downturn and there isn’t much money to be had. So where are k-pop companies getting the money for this shit? From other industries that do have money, that’s where.
AOA’s “Like A Cat” is an expensive fucking video, I don’t know the exact cost but I’d ballpark it as within the $300k-$500k range (and I’m possibly being a little conservative). It’s got more than one expensively-fabricated “box”, some melee action, hot outfits, sexy props and set design… and a couple scenes where the AOA girls pass time playing a computer game on their phones. The amount of money that the computer game company paid the k-pop agency for that promo probably paid for a good chunk of the video’s expenses. If you ever see a k-pop video where there’s an easily identifiable product, like a computer game, or a phone with its logo clearly visible, or a conspicuously-displayed (and always rented) car, now you know where the money is coming from. Phone and car companies love k-pop because it’s like an ad that consumers actually want to watch! Think about how many videos have performers singing in front of cars… that half the time they’re not even old enough to drive, let alone rich enough to afford.
The above still (from EvoL’s “Get Up“) looks more like a car advertisement than a music video – and that’s no accident because in reality, it’s actually both. Sure, the product placement is cheesy and obvious, but without it the high-end productions of k-pop probably couldn’t continue to exist.
That’s not to say that you can’t theoretically make a video for $500… with today’s technology and a bit of outside-the-box thinking you certainly can, but it won’t look like a k-pop production, it’ll look like something you created for $500. I’ll leave you with my favourite $500 handicam video of the year, and I know most of my readers have already seen this before but I don’t care, I’m going to shove 912 Crew’s “Roller Skate” down your throat again and again until you like it. Peace.
Thanks to everybody who did the 2014 end-of-year mega-survey! Over 850 responses were collected, breaking the current record for Kpopalypse survey participation – wow! Here’s all the results for you, the lovely readers!
Most people were good and answered this open-ended text question accordingly. For those who asked how I am, I’m great, thanks for asking! Some people didn’t believe that I would care about how they feel but I care about all the nice people who bother to do my surveys. To prove it, here’s some answers to some questions that you had:
The boredom is strong among Kpopalypse readers, nearly outweighing those who actually wanted to do the survey for fun reasons. Or maybe you all just really like clicking things a lot, which would explain the high levels of participation. Either way I’m glad this survey met required standards. About 9% of the respondents didn’t enjoy the survey at all, but did it anyway so whatever.
Question 3: How often do you read Kpopalypse posts?
The largest chunk of readers figured out that I make a post about once or twice a week, and there’s not much point checking any more than that. Sorry that I forgot to add an option for the Kpopalypse RSS feed, because RSS isn’t something that I use so I tend to forget that it exists because I’m such a self-absorbed cunt. What was really interesting to me is that my amount of email subscribers and haters seems to be about the same! I think there’s a connection there, folks…
Question 4: Do you feel that Kpopalypse has a holier-than-thou persona?
Most people thought that I had a holier-than-thou persona but many were able to look past it because they felt it was also stupid enough to get a giggle out of. About a quarter of readers suspected that I may not have a holier-than-thou persona due to the large amounts of self-deprecation in my writing… could they be onto something? I’m too holier-than-thou to give you the answer, plus too self-deprecating to be bothered trying to lift up my shitty reputation as someone who is holier-than-thou, so let’s move on to…
Question 5: Do you think Jisoo from Lovelyz is really a delinquent who did all the 27 things people are accusing her of?
Just over 15% of respondents thought that Jisoo was a rapist and a blackmailer and an animal abuser and a delinquent and a sasaeng and a bully and a buttplug-inserter, the rest of you either think it’s all a transparent character-assassination attempt, or you just filed all those articles in your fap bookmark folder for later use and didn’t really read them.
Question 6: Rate this anonymous comment directed at Kpopalypse: “Get a life you pathetic piece of shit, you’re here all day wasting your life on doing this pathetic garbage. Does it turn you on to act like a child on the Internet?”
Never mind that the answer to the anon’s question is an obvious “yes”, I probably skewed the results here because I associated each response with a catchy Kpopalypse lexicon phrase. Also, the original person who told me this also told me to kill myself but I left that part out of the question because I was worried that it may have triggered some kind of filtering that shut the survey down completely. Still the results show a clear indication that my haters are marked by a difference in determination levels.
Question 7: Your favourite sexy girl group concept of 2014 – disregard music, judge on visuals only. Tick all that apply.
I fucked up here – I actually meant to put in Hyosung instead of Jieun, quite a few of you noticed that and pointed it out in other question responses. I blame “Good Night Kiss” for being such a completely forgettable song that I actually managed to get it mixed up with Jieun’s songs. I also forgot EXID and maybe some others but oh well. Anyway regardless AOA scored an easy victory here (with “Like A Cat” fresh in people’s memory they may have had an advantage), and Spica-S fared the worst, a group so irretrievably destined for nugudom that even sexy concepts can’t help them.
Question 8: If you don’t like sexy concepts in k-pop, why not? If you do like them feel free to skip this question, or put an amusing anecdote about a sexual experience that you had while fapping to sexy concepts.
Quite a few of you responded with “I’m female” but I consider that dodging the question as I know that you ladies fap too. Ultimately though, I didn’t give a shit about what you think of sexy concepts, I just wanted some funny fap stories to repost here. So here are some:
I was watching Stellar touch each other and legit shot to the ceiling. It was difficult to sneak the step ladder all the way upstairs from the garage to clean it.
I make my boyfriend fuck me to sexy concept songs even though he hates Kpop, I think that his discomfort of hearing girl voices while we fuck turns me on
Girlfriend walked in on me cos she forgot her shirt in shower n let’s just say she lost determination to keep me sexually frustrated cos obviously it ain’t working.
I was once going through my folder of female idol boob appreciation pics and gifs (lots of which I have thanks to you), when my dad came back from the market. Of course I didn’t hear him sneaking up behind me. When he saw what I was looking at, he was so happy, yelling “Oh thank God you’re a lesbian, I won’t have to give you up to some boy. I don’t trust today’s generation of boys.” Since, I did not have the heart to come out as straight with just a fascination for sexy female bodies to my Dad.
I once masturbated to a pixelated gif of Key eating a popsicle. It went swimmingly.
I like sexy concepts. Butthurt netizens bitching about them is pretty amusing. I was fapping to the Korean version MV of Hot Summer (the Japanese version is a decent fap too), with my main focus for the fap being Victoria that particular time. I like to vary my fap focus a lot because I like variety and that’s why you fap to kpop, right? Even one decent group has those different tastes for different moods and sexual tastes, and you can multiply that by however many groups you like to fap to. I think it’s great, and I’m really glad I was introduced to kpop for this reason. The music is good too, but for me personally it was my fap life and sexual fantasies that benefited the most from kpop. But I digress. So, I was in the mood for some umma lovin’ and was primarily fapping to Victoria while I watched Hot Summer. She was so fine and I was just about to climax, then suddenly fucking Amber’s rap part started and I got a dreadfully long closeup of her man face while I jizz all over my keyboard, unable to aim properly from the shock. As I lay panting in my post-orgasm depression, I thought dark thoughts of how I can get my revenge. To this day I still fear and hate Amber. Afterwards I visited Kpopalypse Hyung’s ask.fm and told him briefly about this experience and asked him if he had lived through a similar horror. He said that he got an idea for a blog post from my question. I expect it fondly.
once i fapped thrice in one day to the same gif.
To that last anon, that GIF must have been good. Maybe you should share.
Question 9: What’s Sulli’s favourite activity?
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Most people (50.9%) picked nightclubbing as Sulli’s favourite activity, and a sizeable chunk of you felt that she wants nothing more than to iron Choiza’s shirts. Less than 1/8th of respondents felt that Sulli would prefer to be performing in f(x).
Question 10: I get the most positive feedback from my music industry posts, but the most web traffic from my fap posts. Why do you think this is?
Perhaps all valid theories, but the most popular one was that people return to fap to the same images multiple times. Noted! I guess that means I’d better put another Eunjung GIF here.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Question 11: Which one of the following attractive women would you like to see a Kpopalypse article about? Tick all that apply.
Youngji walked away with this one. This of course doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to get an article, just that I now know stuff that I previously didn’t know so I can customise content to suit (whatever that means). Park Jimin wasn’t popular so Jimin if you’re reading feel free to drop down to Adelaide and I will calmly accept you for a date with some ice cream and a hug.
Question 12: Rate this hate-comment about Kpopalypse. “He’s over 30 years old? Wow, that makes his blog so much more pathetic and embarrasing than it already was.”
This was almost neck-in-neck but the cao ni mas won the day. Thanks to whatever douchenoz originally said this on Netizenbuzz (can’t remember exactly where the original comment lives but who cares), coming up with these questions isn’t easy.
Question 13: Rate the following k-pop intro/breakdown lyrics in terms of iconic status.
The iconic power of JYP emerged as the clear leader despite him not having said his own name at the start of a recording for the entirety of 2014. In the meantime nobody gave a fuck about Hi Suhyun, or maybe you were all just trying to blot that song’s existence out of your brain.
Question 14: What did you think of the Sorasora uniforms worn by Pritz? Not all answers are mutually exclusive so tick all that apply.
Most people didn’t care that much, probably a healthy reaction. A lot of you thought the trolling was amusing, the rest of the options got a roughly equal response, with Nazi fappers scoring lowest of all. Somehow I doubt this is true and you’re all just too ashamed to admit that you jerk it to girls in cute sexy Nazi dresses.
They’re so adorable, nervously clutching their microphones, I don’t mind admitting that my genitals did the Hitler salute over this look. All my sperm had a “white race” to see which one could make it out of my dick the fastest.
Question 15: Important sexual experience question of important importance!
I wanted to know about how much sexual experience you guys and girls had because I was wondering what sort of sexual experience levels I should be pitching my more explicit writing to. If I talk about a “dirty sanchez” or “felching” in a fanfic will I be understood? Would a breakdown of Seungri’s lovemaking techniques be useful? The results of this survey question make me think that maybe I need to give you guys some assistance in the basics first before we progress to the advanced levels.
Question 16: List your five favourite k-pop groups or soloists, or if you can’t decide exactly, just five that you really like.
Always good to know what people listen to and like. Because this is a free text question I don’t have a sexy pie chart for it, but just from scrolling down the list quickly the names I saw the most were T-ara, AOA, Girl’s Day, Orange Caramel, Dal Shabet, SNSD, f(x), 2NE1, and quite a few nugus especially BESTie and Mamamoo who you all felt were being horribly neglected or something. As for guy groups BigBang and SHINee headed the list, Block B, Beast, Infinite, U-Kiss and EXO were also popular choices. Nugu guy groups mostly didn’t make the list at all, apart from BTS who were quite a popular pick, although a few k-hiphoppers crept in.
Question 17: What type of content offends you, the reader?
Hopefully this question wasn’t too offensive for you. But don’t worry – Kpopalypse will never be insensitive to Raina fans!
Question 18: Tell a joke! Win a prize!
Here’s the best one-liner jokes:
Two guys walk into a bar. The third one ducks.
Have u heard of the movie called “Constipation”.. No, cause it hasn’t been released yet. (multiple people had this joke)
How come Barbie never got pregnant? Because Ken always came in another box.
What do you call a black man flying a plane? A pilot, you racist!
What’s the hardest thing for a Paedophile to do? Fit in.
How can you find Will Smith in the snow? Look for Fresh Prints
Q. Why did Sara fall off the swing? A. She didn’t have any arms. Q: Knock Knock Who’s there? A: Not Sara.
….but most of you didn’t have any jokes at all and just said you weren’t good at jokes. Or, you had some meta jokes like “Kpopalypse”, “this survey”, “[insert artists you don’t like here]’s career/sales/chart performance” etc. The most popular meta-response was actually “CL” so in the spirit of CL here’s a completely groan-worthy but nevertheless impressively original k-pop themed joke:
Rainbow walks into a bar. After waiting 3 hours they angrily storm out and run into After School on the street who happened to be just heading into the very same location. “Do NOT go into that bar,” they warned the AS girls, gnashing their teeth.” They have shit ass service and no one’s buying us drinks.” After School were dubious but decided to send in Orange Caramel to double check. After 15 mins they came out wasted as fuck with multiple phones numbers. “WTF.” Rainbow wailed. “This doesn’t make sense. Let’s go back in.” They barged into the bar and screamed angrily at the bartender. “WHY THE FUCK ARE THOSE BITCHES GETTING SERVICE AND WE’RE NOT. WE’VE BEEN HANGING AROUND HERE FOR JUST AS LONG AS THEY HAVE” The bartender laughs. “Oh haha. I didn’t see you guys at all. I guess rainbows are only visible after rain(a).”
I’ll let you decide whether it’s bad meaning bad or bad meaning good.
No I wasn’t collecting your addresses for nefarious purposes, but unfortunately nobody had a funny joke AND an address. I might send out a prize or two anyway just because I can. Also I just want to take a moment to acknowledge all those of you who wrote massive long jokes that gave me a laugh but that didn’t make the cut for this post. Yes I do read every single response, your effort isn’t wasted!
Oh and to the person who mentioned a certain phone interview that they did a few years ago… you know who you are. I’m interested! I couldn’t find your email, so please get in touch.
Question 19: Choose from three meaningless options.
Most of you picked the second option, followed by the third, then the first. Human psychology revealed!
Pretty much what I expected, but it’s good to have some confirmation. Note that the percentages on the right aren’t a true reflection of the stats so ignore them, the survey calculator has some funny math with multi-choice questions like this.
Question 21: Were there any that I missed? Name them.
I added this question because I knew that I would miss tons of good sites, I put together the above list at 2am when I was really in the mood for a big runny dump and I didn’t really have my mind on the job so I thought “fuck it that’ll do”. Also now I get to compile a list of lesser-known but quality sites that you can click on and therefore I do a favour to some folks who could use some of my web traffic. Here’s the main ones you guys mentioned:
kpopkfans – comment translator site, like NB minus T-ara hate
Question 22: List your favourite nugus of 2014. If you don’t have any favourite nugus of 2014 use this space to whine about how there are too many new groups these days making songs to entertain you and enhance your life
Most people had the right attitude which was good to see.
Most common female nugus were Purfles, Minx, 4Ladies, Mamamoo, Lipservice, A.KOR, Pritz, Badkiz. Most popular male nugus were GOT7, HIGH4, ZPZG, K-Much, B.I.G, Hotshot, JJCC.
Question 23: Would you like to see the Kpopalypse Nugu Alert series continue though 2015?
The reason why I asked this question is that the Nugu Alert series is consistently the least popular of all the different types of post that I do. I was curious whether people were getting value out of this content. It seems that the answer is yes so it will continue…. although if the answer was no I might’ve continued it anyway just for a laugh. Expect more nugus fondly in 2015!
Question 24: for how long did you think that the picture of Eunjung that’s used as a header on my website/ask.fm/Twitter was actually a picture of me?
About two thirds of you knew what was up, as for the rest I guess it just goes to show how easy it is to fool people even when making no special effort to do so… although I reckon most of you who clicked the last option probably did so for the lulz.
Question 25: do you own physical copies of k-pop albums?
Most of you said no. About 40% of you own a few of just your faves and only about 5% of you are rabid collectors.
Question 26: Rate this criticial comment in response to my blogging. “Kpop blogs are to entertainment journalism what 50 Shades Of Grey was to novel writing; self-indulgent fanfiction based upon a barely legitimate story. It’s not just the Kpop blogs and their wannabe writers that I have no time for – the fourth estate is dying. Everyone would rather read this kind of unprofessionally written trash and just subscribe to whatever opinion they are peddling rather than get an impartial run-down and come to their own conclusions. This is how 10 years later, complete morons get elected to run countries – because half-assed media tells everyone what their opinion is and everyone has become too damn lazy because they aren’t being challenged to think for themselves by impartial journalism any more.”
The original comment is one that I’ve linked before in previous posts, and of course the source is that great bastion of integrity in journalism, Allkpop. According to the logic of this comment, it’s my fault that Tony Abbott got elected. I’m sorry, Australia – I will reflect and return with a more mature image.
Question 27: Is it okay for Zico to call someone a faggot bitch? Not all answers are mutually exclusive so tick all that apply.
The results were mostly pretty even here, but many of you ultimately decided that Zico wasn’t a card-carrying racist fuckwit, just a typical teenage douchebag (except he’s 22 at time of writing).
Question 28: Your preferred subject of the next original (not a sequel) Kpopalypse fanfic?
SNSD just scraped through into the lead, facing down stiff competition from AOA vs T-ara jelly wrestling. Of course, just because something got voted highly doesn’t mean that it will happen and my fanfiction tends to thrive on the unexpected… so we’ll see. The next original fanfic could be any one of these, or something else entirely. But you ARE getting a Project Luhan part 3, eventually.
Question 29: If Kpopalypse had a fanmeeting in Adelaide, would you go?
Out of 850-900 respondents I’ve got 15 people going! I don’t know when/where/if this meeting will ever happen so no promises but if it does I will post about it.
Question 30: Thanks for doing the survey! Any further thoughts, add below!
Some responses to thoughts:
Quite a few people mentioned enjoying my writing but feeling a bit excluded because they were female. I guess that’s understandable as I do write from a heterosexual male point of view, but I can’t really help that I’m afraid. Now you know how I feel whenever I read 90% of k-pop content on the Internet ever.
The Little PSY with the brain tumour isn’t the same Little PSY who did “Show Time”.
Yes, in every survey response you could in fact tick all of the responses if you wanted. Which is exactly the same as not doing the survey at all. Save your mouse finger next time!
Some people wanted more surveys, some wanted less. But be aware that for every survey I do I also do a big long-ass results post like this and these posts take forever, so don’t expect more than one really big survey per year… or two at most. You may get mini-surveys on pertinent topics of interest though.
Someone asked me if I would do a 2015 predictions post – you must have missed this one.
Yes nobody lives in Adelaide but me and about 15 others. It’s nice though, especially if you enjoy the challenge when the weather and the wildlife tries to kill you.
Any comments positive or negative about Anti Kpop-Fangirl or Asian Junkie, not much point telling me about it. I don’t have any say in how those sites are run, I’m just one of many different writers with many different opinions that they kindly allow to publish there from time to time. Give any feedback directly to the site owners.
Red Light Mission Part 3 (the collaborative fic between me and AKF) hasn’t been forgotten. But when part 3 will be done, I don’t know.
I’m not done with 2014 yet! Best and worst lists of 2014 is coming and will be published on Jan 1st and not a minute before (although it’ll probably hit most countries sooner due to timezone variations), as is Christmas roundup list, and some other pointless lists and other bullshit in the meantime for cheap clickbait and fap purposes. Hey at least I’m honest about it.
That’s all for now! Kpopalypse will return with more posts soon! Expect them fondly!
When f(x)’s “Red Light” came out, I thought it was great. So did Anti Kpop-Fangirl… and as it seems, few others agreed! Noticing the less-than-enthusiastic reaction from most k-pop fans, we decided to get together and write a collaborative fanfiction so we could rant and rave about how great it was and subtly shade everyone who didn’t like the song. We took turns writing the story and also providing images, so the final products are a blend of our writing and image styles. The results are also extremely fucking weird… but you should expect that anyway.
Although I don’t want to repost the “Red Light Mission” story in its entirety from Anti Kpop-Fangirl to here, I thought that regular Kpopalypse readers who maybe didn’t catch this story on Anti Kpop-Fangirl before would potentially enjoy it, as it’s never been linked from here before and I contributed quite heavily to it. So here’s the links if it sounds like something you’d like to check out:
Image may be NSFW.
