Abstract
The research paper describes the genre of K-Pop with its main musical and visual characteristics, the main facts from its history from the moment of its foundation in 1990s and to its commercial popularity by the middle of 2000s. The Top K-Pop performers and their creation described and analyzed here as the examples of the provided reasons why the genre becomes more popular nowadays outside the Korean borders. The author concludes that K-Pop is the main competitor for the American Pop stage in gaining its popularity on the World stage, and it has enough potential to become the main challenge for US Pop to undergo.
K-Pop (or Korean Pop) is a genre of music first recognized in South Korea by its various diverse audio and visual characteristics. Despite the fact that the genre is supposed to mean all kinds of Korean popular music, the term itself is more usually seen as a depiction of a nowadays pop music of South Korea including pop ballads, dance-pop, R&B and many others. Its originality and diversity, graphic and musical individuality make the genre more and more popular during the last couple of years; moreover, the popularity of the genre in the Western countries grows day by day, especially in America, where a huge number of artists of worldwide popularity already represents the pop scene. The aim of this paper is to find out what is so special with K-Pop that makes it the first competitive to the American Pop scene and how the tendency with the genre is expected to go in the future.
Contemporary K-Pop was first introduced by the creation of the band "Seo Taiji & Boys" in 1992, as their experiments with a variety of styles and genres of music changed the Korean popular music scene drastically (Rothman).Furthermore, such improvisation and experimentation with western characteristics of music has already appeared to be one of the main characteristics of the genre. After the success of the Korean bands of 1990s, the genre started to gain its popularity abroad, and with the help of social networks and video sharing sources like YouTube it reached the level of subculture among the young people of Southeastern Asia. Since the middle of 2000s, the music market of K-Pop has achieved the enormous growth rates, as in the first half of 2012, it reached approximately of $3.4 billion (Maximum Exposure), that`s why the genre was labeled as "South Korea`s Greatest Export" by Time magazine.
Rolling Stone magazine recognizes the genre as a mixture of J-Pop (Japanese Pop music) and popular tunes of Western Pop that makes every listener remember the catchy choruses and repeated hooks; the genre itself represents the mixture of both singing and rap with the bright designs of the singers` outwear and complex synchronized dance moves (Benjamin). The fusion of many genres of popular music, like pop, hip-hop, electronic music, R&B and even rock make K-Pop as a globalized genre of music, as it is the mixture of European and American melodies with the Eastern attitude to perform it. Visual performance is an inevitable part of the genre also, as it includes the outlook of a singer or a band and the colorful and firm visual concepts of the music videos and live shows. The videos of K-Pop are mostly extravagant and colorful, vivid and bright; moreover, they could sometimes be considered eccentric, strange for a Western listener, and even shocking.
Dance is also necessary for every K-Pop song. With the performance of a band of several singers, they often change their positions on stage while singing and perform synchronized dancing moves at the same time. The trend started to take place after the "Seo Taiji & Boys", the pioneers of the genre mentioned above, as many other singers adopted such moves and that lead to a "formation changing" term that described the whole scheme of movements of the singers during the performance. Such scheme and the term itself became the turning points for the choreography of the Korean music and K-Pop, in particular.
Each year Korean Pop scene produces more than 60 boy and girl bands; however, the majority of them disappears after their first album (Yu). This makes K-Pop to be recognized as a "star factory" with highly competitive environment and fast developing. It produces the songs that are fast consumed by the listeners and deleted when these songs are replaced by the ones of the new performers. The songs of K-Pop are seldom noticed to save their high positions on music charts for several weeks. The main structure of the song is usually based on catchy choruses and easy dancing movements to follow, for example, "Sorry, Sorry" by Super Junior and many others similar performers. The pop artists complain that their music is performed only for a couple of months and replaced by some new bands and singers; that`s why they are not followed by their fans and listeners for long.
There are also cases of foreign direct influence on the producing of Korean songs, for example, when an American or European producer cooperated with a K-Pop artist. There are well known examples of such cooperation, Will.I.Am, Teddy Park, Sean Garrett and many other Western music producers are the confirmations of the trend. That can be a major explanation why the Korean Pop becomes more popular within the Western show business. However, we have to admit that the development of social networks and their impact on the popularity of the Korean music is also of a great measure. Today traditional media records are losing their positions among listeners, and the popularity of digital records and the establishment of Korean digital labels is growing drastically. However, taking into consideration the fact about the short lasting of K-Pop songs mentioned above, the recording companies started to produce the music in short singles` and or EP format. When they become popular, a label considers recording a long-play album; however, if the single fails to last long on a music arena, it becomes cheaper and easier for a label to forget about.
The current situation of the development of K-Pop is that it`s high popularity on the Eastern borders is unquestionable, and it`s growing more and more towards the European and Western listeners. One of the latest challenges for the K-Pop performers is the conquest of South American music arena: The band "U-Kiss" had its show in Colombia accepted by the listeners in May of 2012 and one of the most popular bands of K-Pop, the "Big Bang" visited Peru and Mexico in November that year. Even the hip-hop artist "The Drunken Tiger", who is considered to be to too sharp and old for a contemporary K-Pop, scheduled his show in Brazil (Russell).
There are several reasons why K-Pop becomes more and more popular in the foreign countries. As the American pop seems to be harsh and cynical nowadays with the themes and images of an unfair world and people. On the contrary, Korean pop tells about pure and innocent love, social connections and family values; it describes the world of luxurious cars and clothes; however, it remains of the high morality. "Korea has a way to promote very clean-cut and very beautiful artists who are considered ‘non-problematic' by adults," said Charlotte Naudin, a prominent Korean drama fan from Paris (Russell).
K-Pop singers are also loved by their creative presence on stage and their image. Their tunes are catchy and different from contemporary USA Pop with its choreography and moves that are hard to learn. The pretty appearance of the girls and boys in the Korean bands are also the strong sides of the genre. A survey completed by the International Korean Foundation of Cultural Exchange had questions for Brazilian people asking to choose the TOP 10 K-Pop bands leading in South America. Their voices divided this way: Super Junior (2137 votes), SHINee (1507 votes), BIGBANG (1471 votes), BoA (1351 votes), SNSD (1310 votes), 2NE1 (1090 votes), 2PM (1027 votes), f(x) (959 votes), Wonder Girls (887 votes) and 4Minute with 780 votes (Ho). The same bands were on the TOP positions by views on the YouTube from countries of Latin America, where these bands and all the other groups of K-Pop were asked to play their live shows there. The reason is that Brazil, just like the USA is a country with multiple nations living here including the Chinese, Japanese and Korean people, and, course, South American listeners love the Korean bright and colorful outlooks. The reason of freshness of the Korean music for Brazilian listeners mentioned above is also applicable here. They are totally tired of the USA repeating pop beats and melodies; moreover, they are charmed by the choreography and the moves of the singers that they`ve never seen and admire the emotions the Koreans put into their songs (Ho).
The majority of the K-Pop songs is dynamic and upbeat, as these are the two main characteristics of the description of such genre. Everyone, who listens to the K-Pop songs will remember these for sure whether they like it or not. With their choreography fitting the melody accordingly, the artists show their personality and their emotions to the listeners in a perfect manner, as the deep connection between the singer and a listener is crucial for K-Pop. The main themes, choruses and verses in the majority of the songs are simple to listen, easy to sing and remember. That helps the listeners memorize the lyrics of these songs even if they don`t know any single word on the Korean language. Moreover, you`ll remember the main tune and the lyric of the song even if you don`t like it, as the song has been designed for this purpose. Due to this, you even might like the song because you`ll keep it playing in your head for a long time. A listener doesn`t even need to understand the lyrics, as the emotional background of the song is more important. You should feel the song and the melody instead of just hearing the words the band sings, as the feelings are of global origin and similar for everyone. Moreover, many K-Pop songs have the English lines in the choruses to make sure that you do remember the main catchy part of the song. This is nowadays is found to be better than the same of American pop with their unclear emotions, as they sing the words.
Moreover, the K-Pop singers are more skillful in their performances. For example, when I watch Gangnam Style by PSY performed live I notice great set choreography, good vocal performance and the positive and energetic appeal to me, as a listener (PSY). Of course, there are many vocal linings, back vocals and sing-alongs; however, such details are acceptable for a live performance to make the vocals more catchy taking into consideration that it`s Pop, and not Progressive Rock, where everything is supposed to be as technical as possible. I can`t say the same for the Western Pop singers that can sometimes fail with their vocals and/or choreography, we should admit that.
The music videos of K-Pop are on their own level of quality, design and the video structure. They are more random in the scenes, new moves and looks of the artists, more colorful and bright, sometimes even funnier and more unusual for me, as a Western listener, and all of these make the Korean music videos more interesting and new to the European and American music lover and asking to watch them continuously. It is nowadays known how much time and efforts the Korean singers spend to become the stars of the Pop stage. They learn how to sing and dance for approximately 10 years at least before they come to the rehearsals for the recording studios; moreover, once they become singers and start gaining their popularity they spend the majority of their time performing on the different stages, taking parts on different music fests, taking photo shoots, constant filming of the music videos plus interviews and autograph sessions. The artists devote themselves to their fans completely, and they communicate with them with their songs at the stage and on interviews after the shows. Such dedication to the listeners is also charming and new to the Western listeners that have seldom seen the same of their native artists. This makes the fans support their Pop-Idols and give them their attention instead. Such communication is also crucial for a K-Pop performer to become famous and successful (Korean Class MASSIVE).
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