NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

BTS  went on hiatus in 2022 in order for its seven members to complete their military service as required by South Korean law. The boy band has been the most successful K-pop act to date, conquering not only Korean charts but also  Billboard’ s Hot 100 . However, the height of their success coincided with the members approaching their late 20s. Normally, South Korean males are conscripted before the age of 30. BTS’s success prompted lawmakers to question whether or not pop stars could join the list of those exempted from serving their country in the military because they served the country culturally. Olympic gold medal winners, for example, are exempted from military service.  WE’VE NEVER MET, BUT SHE’S ALL I SEE AT NIGHT . In 2022,  Jin  was the first BTS member to join the military.  J-Hope  was next in April, and then  SUGA  in September. In December,  Jung Kook ,  V,   Jimin , and  RM  enlisted. This June, J...

 

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 Kore...

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 a...

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 w...

In February of 2014, Nell released their album Newton’s Apple , culminating in a theme the band had explored on two EPs starting in 2012. The band broke their conscription-imposed hiatus in 2012 with the album Slip Away , released in April. In December, the band returned with a four-song EP Holding onto Gravity , the first in their gravity series. Next, the band released the EP Escaping Gravity in 2013. Newton’s Apple was the band’s full-length follow-up to 2012’s Slip Away. Released as a two-disc album, the first disc contained new songs, and the second one contained the two EPs Holding onto Gravity and Escaping Gravity , making 21 songs loosely based on gravity. The title track , was an electronic ballad in English, comparing falling for the subject of the song "like Newton's apple hit the ground." IT WAS  LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER OF NEVER ENDING QUESTIONS.  formed in 1999 after the four members failed the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT or suneung / 수능 ). The test...