A tale of two girl bands.

Before we moved to Korea I was pretty impressed at the scale of the dance routines and staging and all of what makes k-pop a "global" powerhouse in the music scene. Now that we've lived here for a while I find the songs to kinda all sound the same and be pretty formulaic, and the dance routines to be quite simple and predictable (and later performed by old ladies on the back of flat bed trucks during political campaigns.) While I understand that there is a phenomenon called "hallyu" by the Koreans, basically that Korean pop music and pop culture is being imported by lots of other countries and they're finding fans all over the world, I can't help but think that the "Korean Wave" is less tsunami and more "breaker that you can't quite surf on" when it hits the shores of the US. I don't really know how to explain why Americans are probably less likely to enjoy k-pop than the other audiences, but I think that these two videos can give you some insight into the way the music is performed that can help you judge for yourself.

Undoubtedly the original version of this song is quite catchy. The staging and video production are well done, and the dancing is fun to watch. There's just something about it that doesn't suit my tastes and while I don't presume to speak for all Americans, I think there's something that's grating about this music that just doesn't mesh well with our tastes. I think just about anyone could watch this and be like "hey, that was really good," but that you'd be hard pressed to find this tune and others like it on the same people's iPod playlists.

Now, I think this song is a particularly good example of k-pop and actually does translate well to a song that could be enjoyed quite well by an American. I think it just needs a few changes. In essence, I think it needs some muscle tone. There it is! I figured it out. The original song is too cute. It's all frosting and no cake. It doesn't have a whole lot of passion built in. What it needs is a few girls wearing vinyl dresses, electric guitars, and excessive amounts of makeup. A translation into English would be nice too.

Ah. That's better. I think this particular group could find a wide audience playing songs like this. There's something in this performance that was missing in the original. Muscle tone. Passion. Cake. I mean literally, look at the girls of Nylon Pink and the girls of Girls Generation. There is literally more muscle tone. Are they as pretty? It's all debatable. Is there more passion in the performance of the same song from Nylon Pink? I argue yes. You can say no, but the fact of the matter is that there's at least more volume. Not that what's appealing to Americans is simply louder bigger faster and better, but a little more beef never hurt anything so far as I'm concerned.

The point of this post isn't to disparage hallyu, k-pop, or any of the cool cultural things that come out of Korea. The point I'm trying to make is that the hallyu wave has hit hard throughout Asia, and it made a good push for the US, too, but I don't think it will catch. I think there's something missing in these very choreographed and perfect performances that an American audience will notice, and that cute is maybe not enough to win over a stateside fan base.