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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Honey Bee
I have a thing about songs with saxophone riffs. And that thing is: I can’t resist them. Honey Bee was a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between three singers from three very different girl groups: Luna from f(x), Hani from EXID, and Solar from MAMAMOO. Produced in 2017, the song—produced by Park Keun Tae—was an exercise in making…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Closer
When you’ve delved into K-Pop as deeply as I have (to be clear, this is not a brag), YouTube sometimes suggests artists, and songs, that you had no idea ever existed. This is how I found Haruna. I knew nothing about Haruna before yesterday. I still know basically nothing; English-language sites turn up zilch, and…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Mistake
Drug Restaurant (yes, that is their name) is a four-member Korean indie band that is perhaps most well-known for its lead vocalist, Jung Joon Young, who rose to fame through Superstar K, a popular music survival program. This eponymous album and their title track, Mistake, was their second album—and their first since they changed their…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Blue Moon
There are two instances of Blue Moon as a proper noun. One is a resoundingly mediocre beer that college seniors buy when they take their first steps into microbreweries. The other is this. Rest assured, this is not resoundingly mediocre. Kyungri has been one of the most popular and most well-known of all of the…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Downpour
How often do you see a new idol group that debuts with an expiration date already set in stone, even before their first performance? With I.O.I, that’s exactly what happened. This girl group was the product of a television show called Produce 101, and the premise went something like this: a bunch of agencies would…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lonely
When Sistar—the group behind a veritable cavalcade of summer hits like I Swear, Loving U and Shake It—announced they were hanging up their hats, fans didn’t quite expect this. Sister had never been known for their ballads, having a discography that ranged from summer-poppy to sultry-poppy to cheerful-poppy and back again. And yet, for their…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Take Me To The Place
When Bekah, one of the original members of After School, became the latest victim of the group’s “graduation” concept, she released a surprise digital single that left her fans with not a dry eye in sight. I’ve railed long and hard against Pledis Entertainment’s treatment of their original girl group, After School, in several long-winded tirades.…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Goodbye
Welcome to Goodbye Songs Week, where we go through some of the most heart-rending and saddening goodbye songs from K-Pop groups whose numbers came up before their time. When Goodbye released in 2017—a full three years after 2NE1’s last album release, Crush—fans already knew what was a long time coming: 2NE1 was over. For three…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Cruel Fairy Tale
It isn’t often that listening to a K-Pop track makes you feel like you’ve accidentally stumbled into a tilted Victorian horror movie, but IU’s Cruel Fairy Tale does exactly that. IU’s Real+ album was a 2011 follow-up to her 2010 Real album and its breakout title track Good Day, which we’ve covered previously. It’s not…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Voodoo Doll
What if voodoo dolls came alive and turned into K-Pop idols? We’ve all had that dream, right? No? Just me? Okay, then. VIXX debuted in 2012 and is well-known for preferring a slightly darker, moodier side to their album concepts than most of their contemporary boy groups, which is well-represented here with Voodoo Doll While…
By Seung Park
