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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Show Me The Light
I just wrapped up three days’ worth of E3 conferences, so all I want to do is lean back, close my eyes, and put on some chill tunes. Anyone who’s followed this column for any appreciable length of time knows about my newfound and deep love for city pop and retrowave, so it shouldn’t come…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Swimming Pool
Summer is very nearly upon us. Here in New York, where Kotaku’s mothership is based, that means the advent of sticky, humid weather that has you aching for—you got it—a swimming pool. Swimming Pool is Bye Bye Badman (BBB)’s title track for their second extended play, 2013’s Because I Want To. BBB is a relatively…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Sorry Sorry
A decade after it was released, Super Junior’s 2009 hit Sorry Sorry remains one of K-Pop’s untouchable anthems. Blessed with a tremendously addictive chorus and an easily replicated choreography, Sorry Sorry is one of those songs that, if you count yourself as a general K-Pop fan, you just have to know. At the very least,…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Whatever
The opening chords to Exist’s Whatever kind of remind me of an atmospheric soundtrack to a Metroidvania or a roguelike, right before everything goes to hell. The rest of the song isn’t too shabby, either; I’m especially fond of the drums and keyboard, which is both minimalistic yet, together, conveys the full spectrum of emotions…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Get It
Last week, Pledis Entertainment announced Pristin’s official disbandment after a year of radio silence. Fans expected this to happen, but the finality by which the company hit the last nail in the coffin surprised many—especially given its waffling on another, similarly-fated girl group. Released in May 2018, Get It was Pristin’s last release, and even…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Mushroom Wave
Offing is one of those Korean artists that I randomly stumbled upon during my late-night YouTube listening sessions. You know the ones: where you pick a song for the mood and you let the website’s auto-next-song function dictate your night. No one else does that? Just me? I don’t know how YouTube found this obscure…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Really Really
I’ve become quite fond of the newbie group Cherry Bullet, despite their somewhat underbaked debut. Maybe it has something to do with their insistence on video-game-themed music videos. (That’s probably it.) Really Really is a much better title track than their first one, which struck me as having more in common with a demo song…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Girls’ Generation
This isn’t a song by Girls’ Generation, the iconic girl group. This is a song about Girls’ Generation. Stella Jang has consistently put out some great music, which has also led to her being featured on this column again and again with Vanishing Paycheck, Monsieur, and Beautiful. Her vocal and musical range continues to astonish…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Shampoo
Congratulations are due for Shampoo, which never fails to bring a double-take to anyone who hears the name for the first time. “This song is called what?” This 2011 track was a hard pivot for After School, who thus far had pretty much exclusively stuck to powerful, in-your-face tracks like Diva or Bang and had…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Wonder
English lyrics? In K-Pop? This might be the furthest we’ve stretched the definition of the genre so far, but Wonder is worth it. Don’t let this song’s lack of Korean lyrics fool you, or dissuade you from giving it a listen. ADOY is eminently a Korean indie band, formed in 2015, who just happens to…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: The Chaser
Out of the dozens upon dozens of boy groups that debuted near the beginning of K-Pop’s recognition on the world stage in the early 2010s, few have had more impact or have lasted as long as INFINITE. INFINITE released their first album, First Invasion, in 2010. They overcame a lukewarm debut to gain a reputation…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Summer Man
A common side effect of obsessively following a single music genre is burnout. My love for K-Pop has waxed and waned over the years, and in the interim, I find substitute genres to keep my ears busy. When I do come back to K-Pop (and I always do), I end up searching for music that…
By Seung Park -
K-Pop Pick Of The Day: Wee Woo
When I first introduced Pristin last year, I couldn’t hide my enthusiasm for their surely long and productive future careers. After all, their first couple of releases did great, right? It wasn’t like Pledis Entertainment would repeat the same mistakes they made with After School, right? What could possibly go wrong? Well, here we are,…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Cherry Blossom Ending
It’s springtime in Korea, and that means one thing: a resurgence in the nation’s collective obsession with cherry blossoms. In fairness, cherry blossoms are ridiculously pretty. Their longevity in Korean popular psyche can be traced not only with this perennial 2012 hit, but several others: IU and HIGH4’s Not Spring, Love, Or Cherry Blossoms is…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Galaxy
Bolbbalgan Puberty’s 2016 release, Galaxy, is a vertical slice of everything that I like in Korean indie: soothing vocals, acoustic instrumentals, and a general happy-go-lucky vibe, all wrapped up in colorful, springtime-esque visuals. Galaxy’s Korean title actually translates closer to I’ll Give You The Galaxy, but considering we just had a whole discussion about loss…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lazy
Something that I appreciate about the Korean language is its tendency to assign playful words to nuanced definitions of common thoughts and objects, and Son Ah Reum’s Lazy is a great example of that. The word “lazy”, directly translated, most often comes out as 게으름 (gae-euh-reum). However, the original title of the song in Korean…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Very Very Very
When I brought up Mnet’s Produce and IZ*ONE last week, it led me down a rabbit hole to taking another look at IZ*ONE’s predecessors, I.O.I. I.O.I (no, not the bad guys from Ready Player One) was the first project group to come out of the Produce series, and Very Very Very came near the tail…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Violeta
IZ*ONE is an absolutely massive Korean/Japanese girl group (12 members!) formed with the finalists from the latest season of Mnet’s Produce series of survival audition television shows. The premise of Produce is simple: dozens of idol hopefuls compete against each other to survive as long as they can, on the backs of public voting after…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Some
Some was the sleeper hit of 2014, beating out many big idol group comebacks to become one of the most representative songs of the year. As a collaboration between veteran hip-hopper Junggigo and Sistar vocalist Soyou, Some gathered a bit of pre-release hype, but no one could’ve expected the song to blow up as big…
By Seung Park
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