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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 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Vanishing Paycheck
Whimsy and innocence? In K-Pop? Stranger things have happened. We’ve heard Stella Jang before, first with the wonderfully moody-cum-jazzy Monsieur, then with the 1980s nostalgia trip that was Beautiful. Vanishing Paycheck is more contemporary than either of them, but that doesn’t mean it’s anywhere close to mainstream K-Pop. It opens with a solitary accordion trill,…
By Seung Park
