K-Pop

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      ‘Gangnam Style’ Brought K-Pop to the World, but Haunted Its Creator

      by

      In 2012, the song took over the internet, and it helped pave the way for the global success of Korean pop. But Psy, the artist behind it, spent years trying and failing to replicate the phenomenon.SEOUL — He may not look it, in a spiffy double-breasted suit and a coiffure secured with enough hair gel to reflect the ceiling lights, but the 45-year-old music executive confides a secret as he rubs his temples: He’s hung over.But he doesn’t mind nursing this headache, at well past 2 p.m. on a Thursday in Seoul. Some of his best songwriting ideas come to him, he said, in the malaise that follows a night of hard drinking.The man doing the creative suffering is Psy, the onetime global internet sensation whose 2012 viral music video and earworm of a song, “Gangnam Style,” became the first-ever YouTube offering to surpass one billion views and had the world galloping along with him.The outlandish but irresistibly catchy song and accompanying video — which has Psy doing the tune’s signature horseback dance move in and around Gangnam, an upscale Seoul neighborhood — achieved the breakthrough, worldwide success that had mostly eluded Korean pop acts, or K-pop, before then.The video, which now has some 4.6 billion views, was so culturally pervasive in 2012 that Barack Obama was asked about it on Election Day. NASA astronauts recorded a parody, and a North Korean state propaganda site evoked the dance move to mock a South Korean politician. But for several years in the aftermath of all his viral fame, Psy said, the song’s success haunted him. Even as he was thrust overnight into a Hollywood existence, getting chased around New York City by paparazzi, signing with Justin Bieber’s manager and releasing a single with Snoop Dogg, internally he felt the pressure mounting for another hit.Psy performing “Gangnam Style” live on NBC’s “Today” show in New York, in 2012. At the time, the video for the song had more than 200 million YouTube views; it now has more than 4.6 billion.Jason Decrow/Invision, via Associated Press“Let’s make just one more,” he says he kept telling himself.He moved to Los Angeles in an effort to get a global career going in earnest, an ocean away from his native South Korea, where he was both a fixture of the music charts and a source of comic relief on silly television variety shows. But none of the attempts came close to replicating the formula that made “Gangnam Style” a global success.Psy wasn’t alone in trying to figure out how to reproduce the phenomenon. In South Korea, not only the music industry but government officials and economists, too, were studying just what it was about the tune, the lyrics, the video, the dancing or the man that had vaulted the song to such singular levels of ubiquity.And in the decade since the song and video first put South Korea’s pop music on the map for many around the world, K-pop has become a cultural juggernaut, expanding out from markets in East and Southeast Asia to permeate all corners of the world.Artists like BTS and Blackpink command devoted fans numbering in the tens of millions, and the bands wield an economic impact that rivals a small nation’s G.D.P. The fervor has spilled over beyond music into politics, education and even Broadway.Some say Psy deserves much of the credit.“Psy single-handedly placed K-pop on a different level,” said Kim Young-dae, a music critic who has written extensively about the industry. The song was a “game changer” for the Korean music scene and paved the way for the groundswell of interest and commercial success that the South Korean stars who came after him experienced, Mr. Kim said.Now, 10 years on from his lightning-in-a-bottle moment, Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, is back home in South Korea, where he has started his own music label and management company and is trying to recreate the magic with the next generation of K-pop talent as one of the industry’s tastemakers.“Let’s make just one more,” Psy said he kept telling himself after “Gangnam Style” became a phenomenon.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“One of the things I love most about this job is that it’s unpredictable. We say among ourselves we’re in the ‘lid business’ — because you don’t know what you’ve got until you open it,” Psy said in an interview at the offices of his music label headquartered in — where else? — the Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul. “You don’t know which cloud will bring the rain.” With 10 artists under his wing, including a newly minted six-member boy band, TNX, Psy says he feels immensely more pressure shaping and stewarding other people’s careers compared to when he was responsible for his alone.And while he can give his budding stars advice based on decades of industry experience, what he can’t do is offer them surefire instructions on making a hit record.For all the years he has spent thinking and talking about “Gangnam Style,” he remains just as mystified as anyone by its success.“The songs are written by the same person, the dance moves are by the same person and they’re performed by the same person. Everything’s the same, but what was so special about that one song?” Psy said. “I still don’t know, to this day.”Psy performing on the grounds of Korea University in Seoul in May.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn global terms, Psy and his “Gangnam Style” are the epitome of a one-hit wonder. But in South Korea, he had been well-known as a rapper and musician for a decade before, carving out a path that differed from many of his fellow performers, in that he didn’t count on a boost from his physical appearance or shy away from courting controversy.He never had the chiseled look sought after in South Korea’s pop music industry, and from the release of his first album in 2001, he became notorious for his blunt, profane and at times ribald lyrics. “I Love Sex” was one of the tracks on his debut album, “Psy from the Psycho World!” which was slapped with a ban on sale to minors at the urging of the country’s Christian Ethics Movement.Despite — or perhaps because of — his unapologetic, iconoclastic ways, over the past two decades at home in South Korea, the college dropout has consistently logged chart toppers, best-selling albums and sold-out concerts.“It’s kinda sorta ironic he became so iconic — he went from being occasionally censored to widely celebrated,” said Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based creative services agency that offers marketing and distribution solutions to Korean music artists and their labels. “He irreverently winked his way from being the bad boy of K-pop to the golden boy of K-pop.”For a pop song, “Gangnam Style” also unleashed an avalanche of deep think pieces and analyses on the various aspects of South Korea and Seoul it was said to be lampooning: the hypocrisy of the nouveau riche, the superficiality of its social standards and the inequality exemplified by the opulent Gangnam neighborhood.Psy insists the song never intended to deliver any profound social commentary — he was just looking to give people a few minutes of mindless hilarity and a reprieve from reality.If anything, he said, he was poking fun at himself, because he doesn’t aesthetically fit the bill of a posh Gangnam local.A decade on from his lightning-in-a-bottle moment, Psy has started a music label and talent management company. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“It’s funny because someone who doesn’t look like he’s ‘Gangnam style’ says he is,” he said.Initially targeted for development in the 1970s to expand Seoul south of the Han River, Gangnam has became a coveted address where many of the capital’s wealthy congregate and the best schools are concentrated, an educational disparity likely to ensure that the inequalities symbolized by the neighborhood continue into the next generation.In the years since Psy made Gangnam a globally recognized, if oft-mispronounced, proper noun (“Gang” sounds closest to the latter half of Hong Kong; “nam” like Vietnam), the neighborhood has gotten ever more unattainable for the average South Korean. Nowhere have runaway real estate prices risen as steeply as in the Gangnam area.“If you say you live in Gangnam, people look at you differently,” said Jin Hee-seon, a former vice mayor of Seoul and professor of urban planning at Yonsei University. “It’s an object of desire and envy.”Psy, raised in the greater Gangnam area in a family running a semiconductor business, now lives north of the river with his wife and twin daughters and says he spends little time thinking about the place.A bronze sculpture in Gangnam by the artist Hwang Man-seok, modeled after the signature “Gangnam Style” horse-riding hand motion.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat he has recently returned to is his signature live performances.His concerts are legendary in South Korea for raucous good fun. His music — loud and energetic — is often accompanied by dance moves just as outrageous, requiring him to jump, kick and wave his arms wildly in the air. During his six-city tour this year, his first since the pandemic, he said he was surprised to find his joints and limbs as nimble as ever in middle age.In his latest album released this April, his ninth, he collaborated with the rapper Suga of BTS on a single titled “That That.” In the music video, Suga comically duels — and kills — the blue tuxedo-wearing Psy of the 2012 video. (That video has accrued 369 million views.)As for the chase of global fame that once drove him nearly mad, he says he’s made his peace with its absence.“If another good song comes along and if that thing happens again, great. If not, so be it,” he said. “For now, I’ll do what I do in my rightful place.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      For ‘KPOP,’ a Broadway Transfer Is More Like a Reinvention

      by

      The show’s creative team talks about revamping the immersive Off Broadway hit so that it moves “around the audience” at Circle in the Square Theater.Back in 2017, the musical “KPOP” had the kind of Off Broadway premiere that showbiz dreams are made of. The buzz around the production — which had the rare distinction of being about a specifically Asian pop-music style and having a largely Asian creative team — was so intense that desperate New Yorkers were pleading for tickets to its sold-out run at the small A.R.T./New York Theaters in Midtown Manhattan.Talk of a Broadway transfer started quickly thereafter, but, for a variety of reasons including the pandemic, it took five years for “KPOP” to finally make the jump. Now, at long last, the show is in previews, with an opening night set for Nov. 20.The musical Broadway audiences will see, however, is a very different beast from the one that opened in 2017: This is not so much a transfer as a reinvention.The original Ars Nova production, presented with Ma-Yi Theater Company and Woodshed Collective, was an immersive spectacle in which audience members followed a bunch of artists from room to room on two floors, and discovered how the Korean music industry relentlessly drills its stars (called idols) into poptastic precision.None of the 41 Broadway theaters could accommodate this sort of staging. But at least the one the show finally grabbed, Circle in the Square Theater, has a unique asset: It’s in the round.“I like to say it’s the world’s smallest arena — it’s a postage stamp of Madison Square Garden,” the director, Teddy Bergman, said. “For a show that traffics in pop, that collective energy and that collective effervescence felt like something we could capture like lightning in a bottle.”To preserve the sense that the audience is getting behind-the-scenes insights, the book writer, Jason Kim, altered the framing device: The show is now set up like a mockumentary about an upcoming American tour for a K-pop entertainment company’s roster — the boy band F8, the girl group RTMIS and the solo singer MwE.“At Ars Nova, the audience moved around and in this production we’re very much trying to move the piece around the audience,” Kim said. “I think the spirit of the show has been preserved, although it is a different format, and we are trying to engage the audience in very much a different way. We loved that the new theater casts an extra member, which is the audience.”The show is now set up like a mockumentary about a K-pop label’s roster, which includes the boy band F8, the girl group RTMIS and the solo singer MwEF8.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKevin Woo, center, in “KPOP,” now in previews at Circle in the Square Theater. There’s a “whole new appreciation and understanding and reception of this music in the States,” the show’s director said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnother reason for the transformation is the fact that the moment “KPOP” originally aimed to capture has changed dramatically. In 2017, most Americans had no knowledge of K-pop, save perhaps for the song “Gangnam Style,” by Psy. Nowadays, Korean acts like Stray Kids routinely top the U.S. music charts and in May a K-pop artist, AleXa, won NBC’s “American Song Contest” on behalf of Oklahoma, where she was raised.Over the past five years, Bergman said, “BTS happened and ushered in a whole new appreciation and understanding and reception of this music in the States.”He added: “We wanted to focus on what is the journey, the cost, the joy, the exhilaration, the sacrifice of these pathbreakers who are journeying into new territories and spreading this music. I didn’t have to come from a position of having to explain much, or really anything to the audience. It really freed us up to be able to dig deeper psychologically, emotionally.” (The show’s close relationship with South Korea means the deadly crowd surge in Seoul was deeply felt; the Broadway production made a curtain speech last weekend and had a moment of silence, and posted a statement on social media.)One beneficiary of this change in focus has been the character of MwE, played Off Broadway by Ashley Park and now portrayed by Luna, a South Korea-based actress and former member of the K-pop girl group f(x).“What I’m very excited about in this version is the examination of the female characters,” said Helen Park, who wrote the bilingual score with Max Vernon, and orchestrated and produced it for Broadway. “They all have different ambitions, different journeys, different histories, different characteristics. As an Asian woman, that’s something so special.”While MwE, only in her mid-20s, is already a battle-hardened music-industry vet, the new character of Brad is at the start of his idol career and struggling because he is being shunned by his F8 bandmates. Not only was he the last to join the band, but his being mixed race becomes a factor as well. The role had resonance for the actor playing him, Zachary Noah Piser, who has Chinese and Jewish roots: This spring he became the first Asian American actor to play the title role of “Dear Evan Hansen” full time on Broadway.“Brad’s whole situation is very kind of meta because it was very me — I was a newcomer to the Broadway production of ‘KPOP’ and he is the Asian white boy from Connecticut who gets plucked up and placed in this group,” Piser said in a video chat. Brad acts as an entry point into issues centering on identity — which were already present in the first version, but have since been retooled.“When we first started writing, the main idea behind the show was ‘How could K-pop cross over in America?’ — it’s what these Korean artists have to sacrifice in their authenticity in order to be palatable to an American market,” Vernon said on the phone. “Obviously K-pop crossed over, so we asked different questions, like, ‘What’s going on in these artists’ mental state behind the scenes? What kind of pressure is that exerting on their psyche, on their relationships with other people in their band?’”Luna, who got her start in K-pop before turning to musical theater in South Korea (starring in shows like “Legally Blonde,” for example), pointed out that “KPOP” nails the genre’s emphasis on rigorous training.“There are such detailed scenes that are really rooted in the reality of that world,” Luna said via an interpreter in a video conversation. “I feel that people who are actually K-pop singers or who are trainees will really relate. It also gives a sense of consolation for the immense amount of effort and hard work put into creating K-pop.”From left: Park, Kim, Weber, Bergman and Vernon.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesSUCH AN OVERHAUL of the show’s concept and characters also required a reshaping of the score, which The New York Times’s Ben Brantley described as being “as synthetically sweet and perversely addictive as the real thing” in his review. When asked about the balance between old and new songs, the creative team agreed that it was about half and half — “maybe more new than old,” Park said.She and Vernon also had to reflect the changes in the genre at large: The acts that were popular when they started working on the show, back in 2014, are different from the current ones, and fans were sure to notice dated references.“We were responding to Exo, 2NE1, Girls’ Generation, Psy, Big Bang, but K-pop music changes every three to four years so it would be like doing a show called ‘Pop’ and all the music sounds like Britney rather than Billie Eilish or whatever the great artists are that you’re listening to right now,” Vernon said on the phone. “Sometimes by the time musicals are on Broadway, it feels like they’re lagging 15 years behind the culture — we did not want that.”Similarly, the choreographer Jennifer Weber, who is also handling the Max Martin jukebox musical “& Juliet,” had to work within the specific parameters of K-pop dancing. Key elements are point moves, which are the visual answers to the songs’ hooks (one of the most famous remains Psy’s horse-riding gimmick in “Gangnam Style”).And because members of a group trade vocal lines at a quick pace, careful integration is needed to make the choreography work. “You have to almost break it down mathematically about who’s singing at what time,” Weber said on the phone. “You need to constantly be revealing who’s singing, so that person needs to pop out of the formation for their line — and that line could be as little as two bars.”Another way to assure that the show recreates the wondrous, kinetic excitement the best K-pop acts generate was to hire performers who had spent time in the trenches and could share their experience: In addition to Luna, the cast includes BoHyung, a former member of the girl group Spica; Min, formerly of Miss A; and Kevin Woo, once in U-KISS.“A lot of my questions in the first weeks were like, ‘How do you breathe? How do you execute this incredibly intricate choreography?’” Piser said. “The biggest response I got from the K-pop idols in our show was, ‘You’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to be good to yourself and you’ve got to trust the process.’”With “KPOP” now on Broadway, its creators are aware that the show is not just going up against other musicals but against actual K-pop artists — and this time again, the intimacy of Circle in the Square could come through.“We’re competing with Blackpink and BTS,” Bergman said, laughing, “but I don’t know where else you’re going to see BTS with 600 other people. Unless you’re Jeff Bezos or something.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Did Crush Snub Black Fans at a Concert in South Korea?

      by

      The singer Crush apologized for a “misunderstanding” after the exchange, which highlights what experts call K-pop’s uneasy relationship with Black culture.It happens so fast in the videos that you need to rewatch them to notice: As Crush, a South Korean R&B singer, high-fives fans during a recent performance, he avoids an area where some Black concertgoers have extended their hands.A fan on Twitter called the episode, at a music festival in Seoul this month, an act of discrimination. When others piled on, some of Crush’s supporters pushed back, saying that videos showed him skipping other parts of the packed audience and warning fans about overcrowding.Crush apologized last week for what he called a “misunderstanding,” telling his 2.7 million Instagram followers that he had avoided high-fiving some fans out of concern for their safety. He also told The New York Times that he loved and respected Black culture and had not meant to offend anyone.“I would never intentionally act in a way that would disrespect nor offend any individual,” he said.The debate over the episode has called attention to what experts call an old problem: the K-pop industry’s struggle to develop the level of cultural sensitivity that fans in the United States and elsewhere expect.The criticism also highlights resentment that has built up for years among many Black fans who feel that K-pop acts adopt their culture but do not respect them, just as earlier generations of white musicians appropriated Black music and reaped the riches.“There are Black fans who love K-pop so much,” said CedarBough T. Saeji, an expert on the K-pop industry at Pusan National University in South Korea. “But they also do have a bone to pick with the way that their fandom has been ignored, and the way that their concerns about things like cultural appropriation have also been ignored.”The Big PictureCrush, 30, whose real name is Shin Hyo-seob, is an A-list K-pop star at a time when South Korea’s cultural exports are winning legions of new fans abroad. As the K-pop industry becomes increasingly international, more of its lyrics are being written in English, and agencies that promote K-pop acts are opening offices abroad.Crush’s record label, P Nation, was founded in 2018 by the singer Psy, whose breakout 2012 hit, “Gangnam Style,” helped K-pop carve out an international profile.The label’s chief executive, Lionel Kim, said it had always tried aggressively to scrutinize its artists’ content for cultural sensitivity.“We want to reach as many fans as we can around the world,” Kim said in an interview. “We’re extremely cautious to ensure that our artists and music videos do not disrespect any ethnicity or culture.”The K-pop group Exo performing at the Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018.Sergei Ilnitsky/European Pressphoto AgencyBut gaps in awareness have been frequent in South Korea, an ethnically homogeneous society that has generally been slow to welcome other cultures at home.“Some people don’t even know what counts as racist or not — and that includes artists,” said Gyu Tag Lee, a professor of cultural studies at George Mason University’s South Korea campus.Members of Exo, a boy band in Seoul, have been accused of making racist remarks during a live broadcast in which they applied makeup that resembled blackface. And last year, the Korean American rapper Jay Park removed the music video for his song “DNA Remix” after fans noted that some of the performers, who were not Black, wore hairstyles that included Afros, braids and dreadlocks.A Rising StarCrush has explored R&B, hip-hop, soul, jazz and other genres in his decade-long career. He began writing rap lyrics in middle school and listened to Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, James Ingram and other Black musicians in high school, he has told the South Korean news media. In 2018, he released a song that paid homage to Stevie Wonder.Last month, Crush released “Rush Hour,” a hit single with the rapper J-Hope of BTS. The lyrics are a mix of English and Korean, the style riffs on funk and hip-hop, and the music video was filmed on a New York City-inspired set.But frustration toward Crush has been building among Black K-pop fans since 2016, when he performed on a Korean television show wearing a mask with dark skin, big lips and frizzy hair — and did not apologize after the backlash that followed.Some fans were also disappointed when Crush removed an Instagram post two years ago about his donation to a George Floyd memorial fund in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Crush’s label, P Nation, told The Times last week that Crush had archived that post, along with dozens of others that were not related to music, later that year. The FalloutAfter the high-fiving episode at the 2022 Someday Pleroma festival this month, some Crush allies seemed to backtrack on their initial support.J-Hope “liked” Crush’s apology on Instagram. Devin Morrison, a Black singer in Los Angeles who has also collaborated with Crush, wrote on Twitter that he had been astounded to see criticism of “an artist who has treated me and my (Black) friends with nothing but respect and kindness.”But J-Hope’s like and Morrison’s tweet later disappeared. Neither artist responded to requests for comment.Some Black fans took a nuanced view of the episode, saying that they were frustrated less with Crush than with the culture of racial bias that they feel pervades the K-pop industry.Videos of Crush “skipping over the Black fans seemed unlike him, but it didn’t seem like it was unlike K-pop,” said Akeyla Vincent, 32, an African American public-school teacher in South Korea. Melissa Limenyande, 29, a Black South African who also teaches in South Korea, said she believed Crush’s explanation that he had acted out of concern for fans’ safety.At the same time, she said, she has struggled to reconcile her enjoyment of K-pop with what she sees as its creators’ insensitivity toward other cultures.“I like these artists so much and I love their music and their personalities,” she said. “But if I can take my time to learn about their culture or where they come from, why can’t they do the same?” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      K-pop Queens Blackpink Hit No. 1 With CDs and ‘Signed’ Digital Albums

      by

      The girl group tops the Billboard 200 for the first time with “Born Pink,” which had 102,000 equivalent sales — including 64,000 on CD.It may be a streaming world, but getting to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart these days often comes down to selling a lot of vinyl LPs or even those semi-passé silver data platters known as CDs.Back in April, Tyler, the Creator catapulted 119 spots to the top when his album “Call Me if You Get Lost” came out on vinyl nearly a year after its initial release. The following month, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” had solid streaming numbers but relied on vinyl to nab the year’s biggest opening (still). And in June, the K-pop kings BTS landed at No. 1 with mediocre streams but big CD sales of a compilation album, “Proof.”This week, another K-pop group, the four-woman Blackpink, rockets to the top with physical sales.“Born Pink,” the quartet’s second full-length studio album, becomes its first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 102,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That total includes 37 million streams — a modest sum, representing only about a quarter of the group’s composite sales number for the week. The rest is attributed to old-fashioned purchases of “Born Pink” as a compete unit, including 64,000 made for the 17 different configurations of the album on CD.As Billboard noted, many of these CD editions came in collectible packages — with alternative covers, autographs and other goodies like postcards and stickers — that were initially priced as high as $50, but were discounted over the course of last week. Blackpink also sold a “signed digital album” through its website for $4.99, and marked its standard downloadable album down to $3.99.Those sales helped push “Born Pink” past Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” the streaming behemoth that has occupied the top slot on and off for 11 weeks. In its 20th week on the chart, “Un Verano” falls to No. 2 with the equivalent of 93,000 sales, mostly from streams.Another K-pop group, NCT 127, opens at No. 3 this week with “2 Baddies”; most of its 58,500 equivalent sales were for CDs, with the album’s 12 tracks garnering fewer than four million streams. By comparison, the 23-track “Verano” has been averaging 130 million to 140 million clicks a week for the last couple of months.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is in fourth place, notching its 88th time in the Top 10 since early 2021. Since the Billboard 200 began in 1956, only five other titles have appeared more times in the chart’s Top 10. All of them were movie soundtracks or Broadway cast recordings from 1965 or before, like “South Pacific,” with 90 weeks charting that high, and “My Fair Lady,” with 173.Also this week, the Weeknd’s hits collection “The Highlights” is No. 5. More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Blackpink and the Limits of K-Pop Maximalism

      by

      The genre’s more-is-more moment might be coming to an end, and younger acts like Aespa and NewJeans point a way forward.As K-pop was broadening its global ambitions in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it was also expanding its appetite, becoming the hungriest pop music scene on the planet. It feasted especially on American pop, hip-hop, R&B and dance music, alchemizing it all into a maximalist fantasia, creating an aesthetic of absurdist excess that became, for a while, that world’s most progressive and most popular approach.Acts like the YG Entertainment girl group 2NE1 thrived in that environment (along with its boy band compatriots BigBang), and helped set the stage for the genre’s worldwide takeover. Here was music — largely masterminded by the producer Teddy Park — that was curious, chaotic and cocksure. Other pop scenes seemed to dematerialize in its wake.Blackpink, the next-generation YG girl group that debuted in 2016, seemed poised to carry that torch with the early success of singles like “Whistle,” “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” and “How You Like That.” But by the time of its first full-length release, “The Album,” in 2020, the group’s music had become somehow more bombastic and more brittle than that of its predecessors, and the blueprint was showing its seams.“Born Pink,” the second full-length Blackpink album, is in theory an opportunity to innovate, both for the group and for the genre itself. And it finds Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, Rosé — at a crossroads: whether to continue its high-energy sonic collision; whether to fully embrace the English-language market; whether to dismantle its own house.The first single, “Pink Venom,” is classic Blackpink — which is to say, pandemonium stitched so tight it achieves its own internal logic, both caffeinated and fatiguing all at once. Jisoo’s singing is as rich and austere as ever, and Jennie’s rapping is flexible and dotted with clever little filigrees.“Pink Venom” plays like a theme song, more a jingle for the group than a pure musical statement. And it is something of a relief that the album doesn’t over-index on this approach, which has become a genre default.“Born Pink” is occasionally galvanic, and occasionally iterative. When the group does push into new territory — or more accurately, unshackles itself from familiar ground — it doesn’t leave much of an impact. “The Happiest Girl” is a brittle melodrama of a piano ballad, and “Yeah Yeah Yeah” is a cheerful ’80s pop simulacrum that also nods to the Weeknd and Daft Punk.Four of the songs are wholly in English, including “Hard to Love,” performed in full by Rosé (Blackpink is far more effective in this idiom than, say, BTS). And there’s cursing as well — not new for the group, but still a pointed gesture.Densely stacked production remains central to the group’s mission and positioning, especially on the songs Park worked on. And throughout the album, there is intense sonic layering, with G-funk swirls and classical music string samples and references that are so buried that they might not even be there at all. “Still Tippin’” on “Typa Girl”? “Mighty D-Block (2 Guns Up)” on “Pink Venom”? “My Baby Takes the Morning Train” on “Yeah Yeah Yeah”? Who can say?The smorgasbord of Blackpink, or 2NE1 before it, was at least in part a reaction to an earlier wave of girl groups that helped establish K-pop’s ambitions and scale, but whose dalliances with Western influences were more glancing.Last month, one of the crucial acts of that era, Girls’ Generation, released a new album, “Forever 1,” 15 years after its debut. More than a decade ago, Girls’ Generation was among the first, if not the first, K-pop acts to release an album on an American major label. But its ambitions aren’t as relentless as Blackpink’s.“Forever 1” is a refreshing throwback to a less agitated moment in the genre. The production is largely mellifluous and bright, and the singing is sweet and uncomplicated. It is redolent of an era in which K-pop was still establishing its own grammar, before it voraciously consumed everyone else’s. There are light flickers of hip-hop and new jack swing, as on “Seventeen” and “You Better Run.”But in the main, this is classicist music — the sheer brightness of the piano on “Closer,” the light sashay on “Summer Night.” It posits the music not as a world killer, but as a respite and a dream.As compelling as “Forever 1” is, it doesn’t feel of the moment, more like a rediscovered memento. That’s especially clear when it’s contextualized not simply alongside Blackpink, but also the intriguing wave of girl groups that has arrived in that group’s wake, identifying the contours of its success and building upon them.Of those acts, Aespa has been the most vital in recent years, and its recent EP, “Girls,” is one of the year’s most impressive K-pop releases precisely because of its dual mastery of the intricate and the elegant. That’s captured in its closing run: “Black Mamba,” a warrior stomp that channels flamboyant early 2000s pop, the throwback up-tempo ballad “Forever,” then “Dreams Come True,” which feels like a nod to K-pop’s earliest engagements with R&B.By contrast, Itzy stands out for its resolute quirk. Its recent “Checkmate” EP continues the group’s boisterous mayhem, with vocals that are intensely alert and jubilant, and production that seems to be bubbling in real time. “365” recalls industrial or avant-garde club music, and “Racer” sounds like Disney theme park music run through a glitter factory.Finally, and perhaps most promisingly, there’s NewJeans, which has just released a stellar self-titled debut EP that’s utterly cool and poised. The production is sensuous and restrained, and the singing is both lustrous and unhurried.On the surface, NewJeans harks back to an earlier, pre-2NE1, unhectic moment in K-pop. But its submerged references are deeply modern, especially the detour into New Jersey club music on “Cookie.” NewJeans deploys its contemporary reference points in service of a throwback idea, though. Or perhaps more pointedly, it’s learned all of the lessons the world has to offer, and is bringing them back home. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Emmy Success for ‘Squid Game’ Is Hailed in South Korea

      by

      After the dystopian Netflix drama picked up multiple wins, Koreans celebrated the awards as the latest example of their country’s rise as a cultural powerhouse.SEOUL — First it was the movie “Parasite.” Then Yuh-Jung Youn, the star of “Minari.” Now, “Squid Game.”The dystopian Netflix drama’s success at the Emmys on Tuesday — including the top acting prize for its star, Lee Jung-jae, a first for a foreign-language show — was greeted with cheers in South Korea and hailed as the latest example of the country’s rise as a cultural powerhouse.Major Korean news outlets such as MBC and Yonhap made the news the lead story on their websites. Chosun Ilbo, one of the country’s largest newspapers, said “Squid Game” had written a “new history in K-drama.”“It seems like South Korean productions are getting more and more recognized internationally, which makes me excited,” said Lee Jae, a commercial producer in Seoul, who binge-watched the series as soon as it came out last year.In the show, which was produced by Netflix and became its most watched series ever, 456 desperate contestants are pitted against one another to the death for a cash prize of nearly $40 million. Players must survive through several rounds of children’s games in order to win.After its release last September, the show skyrocketed to popularity, becoming a sensation in not only South Korea but also on a global scale. At the time, the series outperformed other popular non-English shows like “Money Heist” and “Lupin,” according to Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive officer and chief content officer for Netflix. At a business conference last year, he said that “Squid Game” was “blowing past all of them.”The show’s success is the latest in a string of international accolades for South Korean productions. In 2020, “Parasite,” the class satire directed by Bong Joon Ho, became the first foreign-language movie to win the Academy Award for Best Film. Last year, Youn, a veteran Korean star, the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in “Minari,” the film about a hard-luck family of Korean immigrants in the United States.Those earlier awards signaled a growing acceptance of foreign-language productions, said Daniel Martin, a film studies professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He said the success of “Squid Game” at the Emmys could be “a sign of hopefully a generational change.”While audiences might “go back to not caring about non-English content, ‘Squid Game’s’ win shows that viewers are receptive to Korean content, which is encouraging,” Martin said.South Korea has emerged as an entertainment juggernaut in recent years, captivating international audiences with K-pop bands such as BTS, as well as hit TV shows and critically acclaimed movies.Most recently, “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” a Korean feel-good show about a young autistic lawyer, has been the most watched non-English-language program on Netflix in the past several weeks.For “Squid Game,” the Emmys are only its latest achievement. In February, the drama scooped up multiple prizes at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, including lead performer honors for Lee and Jung Ho-yeon.Lee, who is considered one of the most successful actors in South Korea, began his career as a model before starring in a number of hit Korean films, playing characters including romantic leads and cutthroat gangsters. His directorial debut, “Hunt,” an espionage thriller, was released in South Korea last month.On social media and online forums, his fans poured on the praise.“To South Korea’s Lee Jung-jae! Congratulations on winning the best lead actor. You are an actor who gives his all into his work and to his fans. I applaud you, someone whose hard work deserves such accomplishments,” said one fan on Twitter.“Wow, Lee Jung-jae won the award for best actor. He really is amazing,” another fan tweeted.In his acceptance speech, Lee acknowledged the support of his fans at home and their love for the show. “I’d like to share this honor with my family, friends and our precious fans watching from South Korea. Thank you!” he said. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      DJ Khaled’s Latest All-Star Album, ‘God Did,’ Is His Fourth No. 1

      by

      The LP, featuring Drake, Kanye West and others, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States last week. The K-pop group Twice wasn’t far behind, with 100,000 at No. 3.Each new LP by DJ Khaled, hip-hop’s indomitable guru of positivity, is an all-star summit, chocked with A-list guest stars. “God Did,” his 13th studio album, which opens at No. 1 on Billboard’s latest chart, is no different. Its 18 tracks feature Drake, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, Roddy Ricch, Eminem, Future, Kanye West, SZA, 21 Savage and three Lils — Wayne, Durk and Baby — as well as a posthumous appearance by Juice WRLD.“God Did,” DJ Khaled’s fourth album to top the chart, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States in its first week out, including 130 million streams and 9,500 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Among the configurations of “God Did” in physical form is a $40 boxed set that comes with a Funko Pop figurine of the artist.Also this week, the K-pop girl group Twice opens at No. 3 with a seven-track mini-album, “Between 1&2,” with 100,000 sales that relied heavily on collectible CD packages (17 in all). Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” falls to No. 2 after its ninth time in the peak spot; the biggest album of the year so far, “Un Verano” has been bouncing between the top two slots on the chart for 17 weeks now.Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” which opened at No. 1 back in May, rises 20 spots to No. 4 after coming out on vinyl; of its 55,000 equivalent sales last week, 36,000 were on the LP format. At No. 5, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” notches its 85th week in the Top 10, tying the run set by Peter, Paul and Mary’s self-titled debut album from 1962, with iconic folk songs like “If I Had a Hammer.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Blackpink’s Genre-Clashing Return, and 8 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Blake Shelton, Chloe Moriondo and Madonna.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Blackpink, ‘Pink Venom’Over the four years leading to its 2020 debut album, Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, Rosé — became one of K-pop’s biggest global success stories: musically modern, engaged with pop from around the world, versatile. The first single from the group’s upcoming second album, “Born Pink” (due next month) has the comfort of anarchy.  Every four bars, a new approach enters — familiar K-pop elasticity, loose Middle Eastern themes, gaudy rock, West Coast rap, and more. It exists out where maximalism moves past philosophy to aesthetic. JON CARAMANICAMadonna, ‘Get Together’ (Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit)The remixes on Madonna’s “Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones,” out Friday, throb, zigzag and shimmer, highlighting the pop superstar’s deep connection to the dance floor — starting with her 1983 single “Holiday” and wrapping with “I Don’t Search I Find,” the glorious house standout on her most recent studio album, “Madame X” (its lyrics give the collection its name). As a full body of work, Madonna’s 2005 LP “Confessions on a Dance Floor” represents her most potent love letter to the form, and the Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit remix of its “Get Together,” available digitally for the first time, is a refreshing break from the (still great!) 4 a.m.-at-the-club pound that marks most of the set. Replacing its oozing synths with a snaking guitar riff, the track rides nearly like an indie-rock song that eventually glitches out and finds a way home again. CARYN GANZ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ), ‘[] vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ (۝ʅ(Ɵʅ():::()̵̳̗̊(Ɵʅ()vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ)’This garble of characters is an alias of the innovative electronic music producer Kieran Hebden (also known as Four Tet). His fleet and cheeky new song is indebted to sensual garage and boisterous house. CARAMANICAZedd, Maren Morris and Beauz ‘Made You Say’Like Zedd and Maren Morris’s previous collaboration, the unavoidable pop smash “The Middle,” “Make You Say” is the expertly engineered product of a whole cadre of collaborators: This time around, that includes co-writing credits from the sibling D.J. duo Beauz and the thirst trap aficionado Charlie Puth. All throughout, Morris hopscotches nimbly across Zedd’s syncopated arrangement and sing-songy melody, but the song is at its best when it really lets her rip, contrasting the grainy texture of her voice with the sleek surfaces of Zedd’s production. “You got your arms around her when you sleep,” she belts with alluring sass, “but I’m the one you dream about.” LINDSAY ZOLADZIsabella Lovestory, ‘Sexo Amor Dinero’An industrial post-reggaeton thumper about the sweat at the intersection of money and sex. CARAMANICAChloe Moriondo, ‘Fruity’The ever-evolving Chloe Moriondo — a young musician who basically came of age on her YouTube channel — makes an exhilarating pivot to hyperpop on “Fruity,” the first single from her forthcoming album, “Suckerpunch.” The song begins with Moriondo singing in her signature, sweetly muttered register atop some bright, pulsating synths, but as it builds in intensity her vocals become increasingly urgent and start to warp like melting plastic. “So close I can almost taste,” she sings of a “fresh and fruity” crush who she compares to a whole litany of sugary treats, building toward a chorus that’s deliciously hysterical and relentlessly catchy. ZOLADZPony, ‘Peach’It turns out that Pony, the tuneful grunge-pop band from Toronto, is quite aptly named: Earlier this year, the vocalist and guitarist Sam Bielanski announced a new gig: voicing a character in a “My Little Pony” cartoon. The charismatic pull of Bielanski’s vocals are on full display on the group’s new, ’90s-alt-rock-nodding single “Peach,” a bittersweet tale of love bombing and, eventually, cold clarity. “Picturing the salt of the beach,” Bielanski sings on the chorus, as a kind of personal reminder, “’Cause I don’t wanna drown in the taste of this peach.” ZOLADZBlake Shelton, ‘No Body’A sashaying splash of early ’90s power-country revivalism from Blake Shelton, a superstar who’s traversed many styles with ease in his career, but never quite owned one. Here he’s reviving a once-rowdy sound and nodding to Brooks & Dunn (“Don’t wanna scoot the boots with nobody”) — a convincing mimic, as ever. CARAMANICANick Hakim, ‘Happen’“Happen,” from the Brooklyn-based indie musician Nick Hakim, is a hypnotic, woozily romantic ballad that nonetheless contains flashes of melancholic darkness: The muted, sludgy acoustic guitar conjures Elliott Smith, while the close-miked, near-whispered vocals are faintly reminiscent of the softer side of the Deftones. That overcast sound, though, balances out the openhearted nature of Hakim’s lyrics, which are almost devotional in their description of a transformative love. “The sweetest angel fell into my world,” he sings. “She gives me reason, was lost for a damn long time.” ZOLADZ More