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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Wedding Dress
All of the five men that comprise Big Bang have gone on to enjoy solo careers of various levels of success. While G-Dragon may be the most prolific (and successful), one of my favorite songs to come out of their solo experiments is Taeyang’s Wedding Dress I love pop songs that feature piano in a…
By Seung Park -
The Faster A Video Game Treasure Chest Opens, The Better
About one hour into my Assassin’s Creed: Origins playthrough, I came upon my first treasure chest in an out-of-the-way cave near Siwa. As I walked up to it, I pressed the E key and braced myself for that everlasting example of minor gameplay annoyances: the chest-opening animation. But it never came. Instead of sitting through…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Return
Lee Seung Gi may be one of the most prolific Korean celebrities of our generation. He started off as a singer but soon branched out to find success in both variety show hosting and acting. You might’ve recognized his face from popular shows like 1 Night 2 Days, or from K-dramas, like the rom-com My…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Knock Knock
I’m sure some of you were wondering: when the heck is Twice going to appear on this column? Well, the time has come, and here we are. Twice debuted in 2015 under JYP Entertainment, one of the “big three” K-Pop agencies (next to SM and YG Entertainment), and rocketed into stardom almost immediately with a…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Chau Chau
If you’ve watched any sort of Korean television show in the past ten years, chances are you’re familiar with this 1997 track in some form or another. Deli Spice is a pioneer of modern Korean indie rock, bringing light to this genre at a time when the commercialization of mainstream, produced K-Pop was fully underway.…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lucifer
Ahh, SHINee. SHINee, SHINee, SHINee. Where to begin. Among the three songs I’ve introduced to you as my K-Pop gateway drugs, Lucifer was probably the last one that I was exposed to, and the one that firmly cemented my entrance into this crazy world. SHINee may have one of the most balanced, high-quality discographies of…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Tell Me Your Wish
Here’s the second of three K-Pop songs that pulled me into the fandom, and it’s the first time we’re repeating artists (this isn’t going to be a regular thing, I promise). I suppose it does show the influence that Girls’ Generation wielded in the industry for a good half-decade, though. For a few years between…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Bonamana
Every K-Pop fan has that one song that sucked them in. I have three. For the next three columns, I’ll be sharing them with you. This is the first: Super Junior’s 2010 release, Bonamana I still vividly remember playing this music video over and over, entranced at their precise footwork. K-Pop prides itself on taking…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Madonna
One of my favorite idols from back in the day has just seemingly gone the way of the dodo, so pardon me for indulging in my nostalgia and sharing yet another blast from the past. SECRET used to be one of the bigger K-Pop groups in the early 2010s, before they began a slow but…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Final Fantasy
Hey, did you watch Tim Rogers’ latest video in his series on Final Fantasy VII translations? He briefly mentions a K-Pop song (at around 9:15) based on the game’s Cosmo Canyon soundtrack, and didn’t really say much about it except to call it really, really bad. Well, never fear, because your intrepid social media editor…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Oh NaNa
KARD is one of the rare K-Pop groups that features both men and women (the industry, borrowing from educational terminology, refers to these groups as “co-ed”). I can count the number of co-ed idol groups on one hand. The only other one that comes immediately to mind is the ill-fated Coed School; if you can…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Do You Want Some Tea?
I have a soft spot for any song that riffs from Pachelbel’s Canon, so I do like this song from the early days of Hello Venus a lot. That’s not why I chose to showcase it today, though. One of the qualms I have with idol K-Pop sometimes, and why it all starts to feel…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Loving U
Did you know it was practically summer in New York today? It’s not just us; cities up and down the Eastern seaboard have reported record-high temperatures. That’s bad for the Earth, but good for me, who was yearning to finally put away his coats and jackets for the season. It’s also a great time to…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Beautiful Night
The story of Ulala Session is a tragic one. It begins as many other quasi-indie K-Pop acts do: a meteoric rise via a reality show, amassing huge amounts of hype. The start of an adoring fandom and a respectable stable of well-performing releases. The future seemed bright. That is, until their leader, Lim Yoon Taek,…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Bom Bom Bom
Spring is in the air! Or, at least, it doesn’t seem as cold as it used to be, and I’ll take all the hopeful signs I can get. Here’s a slightly premature celebratory song. (Bom means spring in Korean, by the way.) Roy Kim rose to fame in 2012 through the music competition show Superstar…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Sunset Glow
As someone who — by the sheer definition of his profession — has to stay plugged in to the goings-on of the world, today has been particularly stressful. Luckily, I have a “feel better” playlist that includes several cheerful, happy-go-lucky, and generally uplifting tracks. Boy, do I need it. Big Bang’s Sunset Glow is actually…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Umbrella
Sorry, Rihanna. Different Umbrella. (But yours is good, too!) It’s been a drizzly and cold week here in New York, which puts me in the mood to share some appropriate music. Try playing this song through headphones while a steady drizzle falls around you; it’s deliciously melancholic. Bonus points if it’s dark outside and a…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: KOREA
In the interest of timeliness, here’s an Olympics-related one from way back in 2012. Psy, of course, is most famous for Gangnam Style, which became a viral sensation in the same year. I did enjoy that song, although I must admit it kind of lost its luster when I witnessed a gaggle of Midwesterners perform…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Midnight Circus
Never say that K-Pop is only bubblegum pop and guyliner, because it sure isn’t. Sunny Hill’s Midnight Circus is chaotic, frenetic and dreamy. The lyrics are a not-so-veiled indictment of Korea’s idol studio system. The music video is creeptastic Of course, that’s all speaking relatively, because at the end of the day, Sunny Hill is…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Good Bye
Trot is a uniquely Korean genre of music that hit its heyday in the 70s and 80s, but there are still artists new and old who focus on this nostalgic era. One such artist is Hong Jin Young, who has released a string of hits that combine traditional trot melodies with modern elements. Here’s her…
By Seung Park
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