NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  SHINee ’s Kim Ki Bum , or simply Key , released his second full album, Gasoline , in 2022. Like “ Helium ” on his EP Bad Love from 2021, Key features an English song: “ Another Life .” Key is not the only Korean idol artist who sings in English. Today, I thought I would start a collection of K-pop songs that are entirely in English. Key’s English tracks are album tracks, not promoted as main singles in Korea or abroad. Other artists on the list released these English tracks as singles in Korea and abroad. Still, others recorded an English version of a Korean single to promote the single to international audiences. Whatever the reason, we’re glad to hear more from our favorite K-pop stars. Enjoy the list. Read the lyrics on Genius.

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

I’ll-It, later known as ILLIT , was formed with the winning members of the 2023 South Korean survival competition show R U Next ? The show was broadcast JTBC and streamed on Netflix and Wavve beginning June 30, 2023. Along with JTBC, the show was created by Belift Lab , a sublabel of Hybe , the label responsible for introducing the world to BTS and NewJeans . Six winners were selected by the end of the show and those members became ILLIT, a K-pop girl group who just scored a Billboard Hot 100 entry on their first single--an accomplish-ment, a first of its kind. “ Magnetic ” is one of the biggest K-pop songs now, and other songs from Hybe Corporation are charting high in Korea and other countries. But as the label has brought K-pop to its imperial phase, ILLIT has come under fire as an imitation of the label’s other successful girl group, NewJeans. I DON’T NEED ANY GOLDEN TICKET. Hybe Corporation began as Big Hit Entertainment in 2005. The label signed their first act, 8Eight in

여러분 안녕하세요? 오늘 새 플레이리스트를 소개할 게요. I'm going to introduce my second playlist-in-a-playlist, some of my K-pop recommendations that I've written about last year. Unlike 2021+, 추천한 K-pop will be a fluid playlist, updated as I write about other tracks. Again, I'll be restricting myself to one track per artist, but the artist may be featured on another track. For example, I had to choose between "Fake Love" or "Lights" by BTS, but I can add "My Universe" by Coldplay featuring BTS, without breaking the rules. The same goes for solo artists who are also part of a boy/girl band, so both EXO and Girls' Generation will appear along with their members D.O. and Taeyeon. Also, some of the tracks aren't in Korean, but they are made by bands that also have tracks in Korean.  I will list my original track list below and make a few comments, but I'll also leave a link to the original blog post. First, here is the playlist: 1. " Honestly " b

Last week when I blogged about BTS , I talked about my gateway drugs into K-pop. Shinee was one of them. The first song I heard from them was " Everybody " which oddly made me think of industrial rock. Later I heard their song " Stand By Me " when I started to watch the drama Boys Over Flowers . I'm sure I'll talk about my love-hate relationship with Korean dramas later. If you listen to " Stand By Me ," don't you hear hints of Rick Astley 's " Never Gonna Give You Up "? Then in 2015 one of the biggest songs in Korea was Shinee's song " View ." Some of the genius in Shinee's producers is making hit songs that sound vaguely familiar. Sometimes you can pin a pop song comparison, other times you're left racking your brain wondering where you heard that song before.  FOREVER YOURS. Key (born Kim Ki-bum) is one of the vocalists of Shinee. As the group's career started winding down, Key started acting and be