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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lollipop
This intensely catchy song was a promotional track for the purposes of marketing LG’s Lollipop flip phone, which were still en vogue back in the faraway year of 2009. Even today, the Lollipop still looks pretty sweet; they came with an integrated display built in to its front cover that would allow for some really…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Picks Of The Day: Chocolate Love & Chocolate Love
This is Brand Song Week, where we pick out some of the best songs to come out of K-Pop endorsement deals. In 2009, LG—still one of today’s premier smartphone makers—partnered with two girl groups from SM Entertainment to launch their new lineup of flagship phones: the next-generation Chocolate. LG went all-in on the marketing campaign,…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Turned Off The TV…
Going into the weekend, one craves for a melodic, optimistic pick-me-up from the workweek. I can’t think of a better one. Look at that thumbnail! It’s so pleasantly blue! Turned Off The TV… is one of the promoted tracks from Asura Balbalta (stylized as *checks notes* AsuRa BalBalTa), Leessang’s penultimate album before their breakup. The…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Pray
Behold: the best K-Pop music video of 2011. We’ve covered Sunny Hill before, with Midnight Circus. That alone should’ve been enough to clue you into what sets this group apart: their embrace of the macabre, of vaguely Lovecraftian settings, a particular brand of dreamy horror that doesn’t exactly shock, but instead, perpetuates a kind of…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Illa Illa
It’s a bit late for a spring-themed acoustic track, but what the hell, it’s a good song. And good songs are always in season. When Juniel debuted in 2011 under FNC Entertainment, the same company behind the rock bands CNBLUE and FT ISLAND, the agency made a big push touting her as the “next IU”,…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Up
It’s Tuesday, a.k.a. Honorary Hump Day. Let’s perk ourselves up a little bit. I’ve covered Epik High before, but I’d yet to delve into their modern discography (“modern”, in this case, defined as the moment when they signed their contract with YG Entertainment, completing their transformation from an indie band to joining Korea’s mainstream). Their…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: IDOL (feat. Nicki Minaj)
Uh… hmm, okay, so this is a thing now? Cool. Cool cool cool. This is definitely not the first time an American artist has collaborated with idols before, and the track record isn’t exactly spotless. Akon had a brief fling with the Wonder Girls (whose grand plans to advance into America failed), and famed producer…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lil’ Touch
Girls’ Generation just doesn’t know when to stop. That’s a good thing. Despite recently going through a brutal round of contract negotiations that would see any other, lesser girl group call it quits, the remaining five members of this era-defining group coalesced under a “subunit” label, and announced a comeback as Girls’ Generation-Oh!GG. The subunit…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Supa Dupa Diva
An interesting K-Pop quirk is the creation of fandoms for not artists, or labels, but the producers themselves. In some cases, the producers become well-known enough to become the driving force behind entire girl groups; Dal Shabet, and their debut song, is one of those cases. Supa Dupa Diva was composed by E-Tribe, an incredibly…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: This And That
This And That by 5dolls is the product of a long and tortured history, even considering the amount of drama that goes on behind the scenes in K-Pop. After the idol group Coed School unceremoniously crumbled in 2010 following drug and rape allegations against one of its members, their agency split the group into two…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: It’s Okay
After School member Raina has quietly built up a respectable solo discography after, and even prior to, the group’s radio silence since 2014. It’s Okay is her first solo track in more than a year, and it’s a good one. Raina has chosen to focus on romantic ballads, which is a great fit for her…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: IDOL
BTS fever is back. Bangtan Boys, stylized in the West as BTS (after their Korean name, Bangtan Sonyeondan), is a tour de force of the Korean music industry. Unlike the country’s girl group lineup—which is currently seeing many different artists jockey for the “top” designator—the boy group situation has no parallels, and everyone agrees: BTS…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Sixth Sense
If the opening chords to 2011’s Sixth Sense sound familiar, it’s because the same melody was used as the intro to 2008’s Alles Neu by the German artist, Peter Fox. Both songs are sampled from the fourth movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No.7 in C Minor. While 2009’s Abracadabra remains Brown Eyed Girls’ most well-known…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Hello
Cho Yong Pil is one of the titans of the Korean music industry, having debuted in 1968(!). He has a staggeringly long list of hit songs, awards, nominations, and accolades too long to list here; instead, let’s listen to one of his modern classics, Hello Hello was the title track for 2013’s eponymous album, his…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: A
Yes, this song is literally called A. That might make things a bit confusing for us, but bear with me, because it’s Rainbow’s best. Rainbow debuted in 2009 under DSP Media, which also managed the very successful KARA before them, and therefore brings forth the question: how did they fuck it up so badly with…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: I’m A Butterfly
Let’s kick start things with some rock-n-roll. If I’m A Butterfly doesn’t get you psyched to tackled the rest of the week, you’ve got issues that music can’t solve (and those are grave issues indeed). YB, formerly as the Yoon Do Hyun band, debuted in 1997 under their eponymous lead vocalist. Like so many of…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: I Swear
Sistar was, is, and always will be, the undisputed queen of the summer song. I Swear is just one example of their dominance when it comes to the season of swimsuits, pool parties and sunscreen. There’s also Loving U, with its dazzlingly saturated music video, and Touch My Body, and Shake It, and we would’ve…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Breathless
We’ve all wondered what it would be like to be a bottle of soda at some point in our lives, right? If this music video is accurate (and why wouldn’t it be?), we’d all be happy-go-lucky pop idols livin’ it up in air-conditioned comfort until we, uh, get drunk by a cute girl with pigtails.…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Hot Summer
Apt title for these dog days, don’t you think? (I never went outside today.) Korean entertainment agencies have a curious fascination with debuting groups set up as “counterparts” to others within their company. YG Entertainment did it with 2NE1 and Big Bang, JYP Entertainment (perhaps most egregiously) with 2PM and 2AM, and SM Entertainment with…
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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Darling
Welcome to Summer Songs Week, where we attempt to stave off the heat that’s slowly killing us all with beachy, refreshing tunes. Yup, it’s summer. You know what that means: popsicles, beach days, A/C on full blast… and the annual dose of K-Pop groups clamoring to nab a slice of that sweet, sweet summer release…
By Seung Park
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