omonatheydid | PITCHFORK HAS K-POP, FANDOMS COLLIDE AND EXPLODE

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The first CD I ever bought was Spice Girls' sophomore album, Spiceworld, in 1997. It's the one with "Spice Up Your Life" and "Stop" on it; I can still remember pretty much all the words to every song. To some, the Spice Girls are a textbook example of a "guilty pleasure," but I've never felt guilty about liking bubblegum dance-pop or videos where a bunch of people in matching outfits dance in formation. So when I saw the shiny, happy, rainbow-colored clip for "Gee" by Korean pop group Girls' Generation, I immediately loved it.

South Korean pop culture (often referred to as "Hallyu", which means "Korean Wave") is a fresh-faced phenomenon. The record companies that currently dominate the country's music industry date back only to 1995, which means that K-Pop, as a genre and a business, is probably younger than you are. It certainly sounds young-- even if you ignore the fact that most K-Pop groups are made up of teenagers, there's a wild, enthusiastic spirit evident in the way their producers gobble up and spit out sounds like Britney/Gaga Eurotrance, Auto-Tune, rapid-fire rap, swooning Final Fantasy strings, breakbeats, and industrial-strength synths. This music can be flat, derivative, and sometimes really, really annoying. It can also deliver the kind of senses-shattering, hands-in-the-air euphoria that's a defining marker of great pop.

Released in 2009, "Gee" was a landmark event in the world of Hallyu. It set chart records in South Korea that have yet to be broken, and made history when a Japanese version of the song went double platinum and became the first single ever by a non-Japanese girl group to reach no. 1 on that country's notoriously insular pop charts. The group's parent company (K-Pop groups are usually assembled, managed, produced, and even housed by all-inclusive record label/talent agencies that make Simon Cowell seem hands-off) also used the song's runaway success as an opportunity to begin aggressively targeting international audiences by posting videos on YouTube, where "Gee" has accumulated more than 56 million views. (In comparison, Lady Gaga's recent "The Edge of Glory" video has attracted 43 million.) Since I first saw "Gee", K-Pop has developed a massive presence on YouTube, which overflows with high-budget, attention-grabbing videos and countless reality shows documenting the day-to-day exploits of the country's most popular groups. And that's not even getting into the fan-generated content, including hundreds of videos subtitled in multiple languages, "dance covers," and English cover versions by multilingual superfans who want to give Western K-Pop aficionados something to sing along with.

Recent articles in The Guardian and The Atlantic have extensively chronicled Girls' Generation's unprecedented success in Japan, and the U.S. is clearly next on the agenda. Last month saw the release of the group's first English-language single, "The Boys", as well as a performance at Madison Square Garden. To me, though, the Stateside commercial prospects of K-Pop are hardly the most interesting thing about it: Boy band JYJ made headlines last year when they collaborated with Kanye West on the English-language single "Ayyy Girl!"... and it was awkward at best. What's more intriguing is how the stuff you can already find on YouTube is being embraced outside of the mainstream.

Montreal-based art-pop artist Grimes recently described the self-directed visual for her song "Vanessa" as "a real K-Pop-influenced video." Perennial early adopter Diplo has already collaborated with with Korean rappers GD&TOP on a track called "Knock Out", which was banned in South Korea for fear of "damaging the national psyche," according to reports. Pictureplane and Teengirl Fantasy recently discussed the way that the worlds of trance-damaged U.S. chart pop and their own D.I.Y. dancefloor productions are starting to intermingle. So while the highly choreographed, prefab extravaganza on display last month at MSG couldn't be further removed from the torrent of homespun electronic pop shows from Grimes, Teengirl, or my own band, Elite Gymnastics, in other ways, maybe we're not so different. We all grew up on the some of the same stuff, we're all probably using the same software, and, against the larger backdrop of pop music, we're all kind of insurgents coming at the same big idea from different angles.

K-Pop's embrace of YouTube means that you don't have to wait for it to be reworked and repackaged to accommodate mainstream American tastes. Every K-Pop song you can think of is online, and most of them have videos, and the videos are usually wickedly entertaining and fun.

The author proceeds to list favorite k-pop videos (GD&TOP, Hyuna, After School); click to source to view. By James Brooks.

Pitchfork Magazine, effing Pitchfork Magazine is writing about k-pop. Hyuna is in Pitchfork. I'm fairly sure the world is going to implode. But I'm glad that they picked the songs that are featured- it's a good representation of Korean pop music that is friendly to international exposure.

Source: pitchfork magazine

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PITCHFORK HAS K-POP, FANDOMS COLLIDE AND EXPLODE

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