NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

 

I arrived in South Korea at the end of August 2012, about a month after Korea’s biggest viral hit had been released. I taught elementary school, and I was aghast to hear a chorus of  7-year-olds dancing the horse dance and singing in English, “Hey, sexy lady!” I was teaching at a Christian school among other young conservative missionaries. I thought about how sheltered the Christian schools were that I grew up in. I had arrived in South Korea, the land of electronic boy and girl Idol groups--boys and girls who had dieted, trained for years under questionable conditions, and undergone plastic surgeries and treatments to look magazine-worthy, yet it wasn’t BIGBANG , SHINee , Girls’ Generation or  2NE1 who popularized K-pop for the world. It was Park Jae-sang .  LONG TIME, NO SEE, HUH? Psy ’s “ Gangnam Style ” was simultaneously the quintessential K-pop song and the most anti-K-pop song ever recorded. Psy was a Korean rapper and only achieved modest airplay in South Korea before his v

It seems like after BTS topped Billboard ’s Hot 100 with their solo tracks and their features, K-pop has become an unstoppable force in America and Europe. Of course, BTS didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. With over three decades in the making, Korean idol pop music has slowly made strides first in Asia and then to Western audiences. One of the ways that K-pop was able to take hold in America was through collaborations with American recording artists. Singer BoA collaborated with English boyband Westlife in 2003 on the song “ Flying Without Wings .” Artists such as Omarion , Lil’ Kim , Snoop Dogg , and Missy Elliott were just a few examples of Western artists collaborating with K-pop idols in the ‘00s and ‘10s. When a Western artist collabor-ated with a Korean artist, the massive K-pop fanbase fell in love with the non-Korean artist, but only a few of the Western artist’s fans became a fan of the Korean artist due to limited marketing outside of Korea. MAKIN’ EVERYONE JEALOUS LIKE

BTS ’s international success didn’t happen without precedent. One of the biggest international Korean pop successes before the boys in  Bangtan Sonyeodan topped Billboard ’s Hot 100 was YG Entertainmen t’s BigBang . The group has been called the “ Kings of K-pop ” especially with the hit singles following their 2006 debut album BigBang Vol.1. The group has had 11 number 1 singles in South Korea. The group has taken several lengthy hiatuses; however, each comeback proved the group’s lasting impression on Korean popular music. Throughout the group’s career, though, the members have endured scandal, from drugs to an infamous case of prostitution .  HONESTLY, THE WORLD AND ME DON’T MATCH.  BigBang’s status right now is uncertain with all members fulfilling their contracts with YG Entertainment and being removed from the label’s roster. Seungri (승리)retired from music following his scandal in 2019. T.O.P (탑) left the group when he fulfilled his contract with YG. Remaining are Taeyang  (태

Back in 2010, we learned that yes, a pickle can get more likes than  Nickelback , a band that had become the most hated  "butt rock"  band in the mid-'00s. In fact, the conclusions of the social media study found that a pickle had more likes than Oprah Winfrey or other beloved figures. It turns out that internet users' hate outweighs Internet love, or the terrible outweighs the good. In 2014, the most hated rock band would become  U2  after their release of  Songs of Innocence   was forced into every  iTunes user's library. People tried everything to scrub the songs from their shuffle. Today, people have mostly forgotten about Nickelback, and Apple Music no longer comes standard with that U2 album, so people have other musical axes to grind. Justin Bieber has grown up and is no longer blaring in our cultural continuousness. So who is the most hated band these days? After the 2019 Super Bowl,   Maroon 5 , for taking to the stage when the NFL was in the middle of ra

TOMORROW X TOGETHER , or TXT called by their fans, were the first group from Korea to headline Lollapalooza. The group has been one of the biggest K-Pop boy bands since their debut in 2019. Signed to Big Hit Entertainment , home of BTS and the first boy band signed to the label since the Bangtan Boys, TXT debuted five years after their label mates. While the lyrics of today's song, " Lo$er=Lo🩷er " touch on the bleak state of Millennials and Gen. Z, especially due to financial status, TOMORROW X TOGETHER's music is born out of optimism. The band's motto as it appears on their website is: "Come together   under one dream in hopes of building a better tomorrow."  

Music promotion is very important, especially since there are more and more albums, EPs, singles, music videos, limited-edition vinyl pressings, and deluxe editions all cluttering our Spotify updates.  One of the most common ways that artists grow interest in their albums is by pre-gaming their listeners with singles.  Back when radio was the primary way listeners heard pop music, an artist may have released a single shortly before the album dropped. Sometimes delays in the release would cause the artist to drop another single to keep up momentum. These days artists commonly release three or four singles, sometimes up to half the album before the album’s release.  "Lady Lilith" by Dante Gabriel  Rosetti.  I DON'T NEED A FUCKIN' INTRODUCTION. In 2021, when Halsey released her record If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power , she decided to forego singles, instead releasing the album at once. Lyrically, the record is filled with statements of empowerment. Musically, producer

It's pretty easy to think of only the frontman or front woman when thinking about bands like  Coldplay .  Chris Martin  is featured prominently in the band's music videos. He is certainly the most charismatic during the band's live performances. He's kept himself in good shape and is arguably the best looking band dude in Coldplay. However, this didn't give the band's fearless leader complete creative reign for their seventh studio album,  A Head Full of Dreams .  When Martin presented the idea for a late-night club hit "Drinks on Me," influenced by  Flo Rida , the rest of the band shot Martin down. LIFE IS A DRINK AND LOVE'S A DRUG.  Every February or March, the first full-moon day of spring according to the Hindu lunar calendar, cities and towns in India shutdown for a very colorful celebration that lasts two days. This festival is called Holi, or The Festival of Colors and this year it was celebrated on March 8 and 9. During this festival, every

A few years ago, I remember (shamefully) having a conversation with my students as to why K-pop would never fully make it in America and my argument had to do with how American radio stations rarely played music in a foreign language. But K-pop proved me wrong, albeit, it didn’t hurt that BTS sang some of their major hits in English. But just as BTS was ascending to international fame, a legal barrier threatened the band.  AN UNENDING HISTORY. Last October, BTS announced that they were taking a break from releasing new music together, which promptly caused Hybe Corporation 's stock, the band's record label, to plummet. Each member of BTS would release solo records, and they would reconvene in 2025 to assess future projects as a group; however, Hybe Corporation's chairman Bang Si-hyuk (방시혁) expressed some doubts about the timeline as a renegotiated contract hadn't been discussed. The reason for this musical break had to do with South Korean law. All able-bodied males m