-
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Magic Carpet Ride
Jaurim is one of Korea’s longest-running bands, having officially debuted in 1997—and active in the indie community prior to that date. The above is the highest-quality video I could find of Magic Carpet Ride, part of their 2000 album The Wonderland, from an official source. If you’d like to see the music video, albeit in…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Dolls
Nine Muses is one of those groups that exist in that uncomfortable grey area between success and failure: never really achieving breakout status, but also never stumbling badly enough that their agency decides to cut its losses. So they struggle on, quietly debuting one solid bop after another, hoping for the day when they will…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: You Are A Girl, I Am A Boy
If your exposure to K-Pop so far has only been through title tracks and their accompanying music videos, you’re missing out on some premium quality pop. Here’s an example of what I mean. B1A4 designated Sweet Girl as their title track for their sixth extended play album in 2015. The song is… fine. It’s a…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Power Up
Red Velvet is very quickly becoming one of my favorite groups, and Power Up might just be their best song yet. When they debuted with Happiness in 2014, I had a hunch that they would turn out to be one of K-Pop’s more unique and inventive artists, and I was right. From their spins on…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: I’m A Loner
I’m A Loner is an uncommonly good debut track, and it set the tone for CNBLUE’s rise as one of the premier rock bands in South Korea. As with many other K-Pop groups, CNBLUE debuted with a gimmick: every member stood for a letter of the word BLUE. He wasn’t just Jonghyun, the guitarist; he…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: One More Time
Ten years ago, before Twice and Red Velvet and Girls’ Generation and 2NE1 and Wonder Girls, there was Jewelry. In the mid-to-late 2000s, Jewelry was all the rage; coming hot off the successful Superstar three years prior, they would release, in 2008, one of K-Pop’s watershed tracks: One More Time One More Time embodied Jewelry…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Soulmate
Block B’s rapper Zico has had one of the more interesting careers for a mainstream K-Pop artist. He actually got his start in Korea’s underground rap world, becoming a respected rapper alongside several crews before his debut as an idol. Soulmate, his latest solo track, is a collaboration with IU (who we’ve covered in this…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Dance The Night Away
The last time I featured Twice, I asked someone to wake me when they decided to show some progression in their music. No one followed my directions, it seems, because I was asleep for this one. Dance The Night Away is a refreshing change of pace for Twice, long known for their addictive, cutesy hook…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Mr Chu
Korean girl group concepts exist along a spectrum of cute to sexy. There are outliers, and a group may move up or down this spectrum along the course of their lifespans, but generally speaking, most of them can be neatly categorized along this line: they’re either on the cuter side, or the sexier side, and…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Dream High
K-Drama soundtracks are often hidden gems for picking out great K-Pop tracks. And when said K-Drama in question is about K-Pop, well, you know you’re in for a treat. Dream High was a 2011 drama about a fictional performing arts high school, and the students who came from various backgrounds to achieve their dreams. We’ve…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Step
Along with Wonder Girls and Girls’ Generation, KARA was one of the most iconic girl groups active in Korea in the late 2000s to the early 2010s. While they were the first to disband among them, their influence on K-Pop (and J-Pop) trends can’t be underestimated. Although Mister was the track that gave them the…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Loner
If I followed any random group of young Koreans to a karaoke room in the late 2000s, I would bet my bottom dollar that this song would find its way into the rotation before the end of the night. Loner was, and is, somewhat of a rite of passage for karaoke excursions. The song’s lyrics,…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: My Copycat
If Where’s Waldo? crossed with K-Pop sounds intriguing, this is for you. My Copycat is one of the most wildly creative and inventive K-Pop music videos I’ve had the pleasure to see. At brief points throughout the music video, it invites you to find the hidden differences between the two images on screen; the number…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Abing Abing
One of the more interesting quirks of K-Pop is the brand endorsements. Many of these deals between brands and artists go beyond mere commercial appearances and lip service at events, blossoming into full-fledged song releases—often touting some form of fried chicken or a cell phone. When done well, brand songs can join artists’ discographies with…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Bangkok City
Bangkok City is probably Orange Caramel’s least-known single, which is a crying shame; it’s one of their best, and definitely their most transformative. At this point in their careers, Orange Caramel had released Magic Girl and A-ing, two very addictive songs with an incredibly similar J-Pop style that garnered them a sizable, if very niche,…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Magic Girl
This is Orange Caramel week, an entire week dedicated to discussing one of the more fascinating girl groups to ever exist in K-Pop. (And, incidentally, one of my favorites.) This trio of Nana, Lizzy and Raina was an offshoot of After School, a girl group under Pledis Entertainment who were known for their powerful, no-fucks-given…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Rock Island
We’re doing something a little different today. Please enjoy this 1984 ballad while you continue to read the rest of this column. It’s a good backdrop. True democracy in South Korea is only about three decades old, having blossomed in the 1990s with the Kim Young Sam administration. One of the seminal moments leading to…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Into The New World
We’ve shared two songs from Girls’ Generation before, and if you’re internally complaining that I seem to have a bias, you’re god damn right I do. Into The New World, Girls’ Generation’s 2007 debut song, is hopeful, uplifting, and just a little bit naïve—everything the group sought to symbolize as the next wave of girl…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Shine
Last weekend, I visited KCON, one of the biggest Korean pop culture festivals in America. This song came over the speakers, and you bet I Shazam-ed that shit ASAP. I’m ashamed to admit that my knowledge of recent idol groups—and specifically, boy groups—are severely lacking. The pinnacle of my K-Pop fandom was in the late…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Saturday Night
Let’s disco, baby! Solo artist Son Dam Bi’s greatest hit came in the form of this instantly addictive 2009 ode to disco, Saturday Night. This song swept Korea upon its release; you couldn’t walk a block without this nostalgic melody blaring out of every InnisFree and Caffe Bene. Dam Bi would follow up Saturday Night…
By Seung Park
Seung Park
Seung Park's posts