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Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Bbi Ri Bba Bba
Halloween is nearly upon us, and for the rest of this week, I’ll be dropping some tracks that fit the mood. First up: this very-awkward-to-properly-Romanize song. (The English language’s lack of a hard “b” letter makes talking about K-Pop somewhat trying at times, and this isn’t the first time we’ve encountered a tongue-twister title thanks…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Nobody
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…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Heartbreaker
Okay, I admit it: after listening to Lies over and over for yesterday’s column, I got sucked into a black hole of Big Bang’s music. After a journey through basically their entire discography, I arrived here: the song that put G-Dragon on the map. Heartbreaker was this Big Bang member’s big breakthrough solo debut, and…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lies
I’ve used a lot of words to describe a lot of songs in this column, but I rarely call songs iconic—because words have meaning. Big Bang’s Lies is iconic. I can’t think of many songs that have withstood the test of time as well as 2007’s Lies. More than a decade after its release, it…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: All Night
Out of all former Sistar members, Soyou has probably been the most successful at striking out on her own, thanks to a robust pre-breakup solo and collaboration discography that set the baseline for her continuing success in K-Pop. The Latin/jazz inspiration in All Night is clear from its opening chords and makes me wish that…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: First Love
Does any song capture all of the shy, timid flutterings of a schoolyard crush as well as First Love does? I’m inclined to say no. Epitone Project is a one-man band under Kim Sae Jeong, who appears to have debuted around 2006 (as with most indie artists, the exact date is lost to history) and…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Bongsuki
Bossa Nova and Korean indie? Works better than you think. Rose Motel is an indie band that debuted in 2011. Bongsuki is part of their debut single album, You’ll Never Get Married Like That Bongsuki is notable for its lyrics, which were written in a Busan dialect instead of the standard Korean. As a result,…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Cider
Norazo has gone through some changes since the last time we featured them, but the central concept has remained the same: producing wacky, irreverent music couched in some truly addictive beats. Sprite-like beverages are known as cider (sa-ee-da) in Korea, and somewhere along the line, the word has come to mean something very specific in…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: How People Move
Get up and dance, because Akdong Musician’s How People Move is all about—you guessed it—dancing. Plus, it’s Friday. Do you really need an excuse? This brother-sister duo, stylized as AKMU, is mostly known for their acoustic pop, from which How People Move was their first significant departure. (I covered one of their acoustic pop examples,…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Love City
Nine Muses is one of the most mature-concept, refined girl groups active right now, so it wasn’t surprising to see them fit like a glove into Love City’s cosmopolitan pop-inspired music. 2017’s Love City is Nine Muses’ latest release at the time of this writing, after an exodus one year earlier that saw Hyuna, Minha…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Day By Day
While I normally try to link to official music videos whenever possible, today is an exception—because the music video for T-ara’s Day By Day is fucking 16 minutes long, and no one has time for that. I’ve linked to a dance version, which also doesn’t even start the song until a minute into the goddamn…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lightsaber
Yes, that Star Wars—the one from a galaxy far, far away—made a K-Pop song. Lightsaber, a 2015 song by EXO, was released for the purposes of marketing Star Wars: The Force Awakens in Asian countries, where the intellectual property didn’t have as much pull as it does in America. (It still doesn’t, really; do a…
By Seung Park -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Together We Can
Idol groups don’t only promote cell phones and hair products. Sometimes, they produce entire songs for various PSAs, like BESTie did when they partnered with the Seoul police to release Together We Can Together We Can is a PSA against bullying, and schoolyard bullying in particular. This is a problem everywhere, but especially in South…
By Seung Park -
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,…
By Seung Park -
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…
By Seung Park