Yours truly is easing back into things from a weeklong vacation, so let’s dip our toes back into the pool with a classic track that I already know backward and forward.
And by “classic”, I’m obviously referring to the late 2000s, as that was the era that I first dove headfirst into this genre and fell in love with it. Nobody came out in 2008 and cemented Wonder Girls’ reputation as the top girl group at the time, following their breakout hit with Tell Me one year prior. (They would lose that spot to Girls’ Generation in the ensuing years for many complicated reasons which I will dive into in a future column.)
Generally speaking, 2008 was a banner year for K-Pop. Apart from Nobody, K-Pop fans would also have the pleasure of hearing Jewelry’s One More Time, Epik High’s Umbrella, TVXQ’s Mirotic, and SHINee’s debut song Replay. If we bend the rules a little bit, we can also include January 2009's Gee, one of the most influential and successful K-Pop tracks in recent memory. Nobody was quite influential at the time as well, especially its retro aesthetic, which would be mimicked and homaged many times over the years by other groups.
Nobody’s humorous music video is also notable for starring J.Y. Park, the eccentric, eponymous founder of JYP Entertainment, the agency behind Wonder Girls. Park is quite the performer and artist himself, with hits like Honey and Elevator—both revolutionary songs in their day, especially the latter, which drew a stir in Korea at the time of its 1995 release for its raunchy, sexualized lyrics.