October 24, 2009

I Don't Care

A very massive part of mainstream Korean culture is what's lovingly (and sometimes not lovingly) called K-pop. This is the overproduced pop music that nearly all Korean's love, it seems. Each song has it's own dance routine, and every Korean will learn and know these moves. Any age.

These songs are also a strange mix of English and Korean, where the choruses are generally in English and most of the verses are in Korean. I'm guessing that this is at least party due to the difference between the languages where English words can be more easily drawn out. Some of the syllables can last almost forever, take for example any Michael Bolton song. I'm sure that in addition to this, the inclusion of English words increases the marketability overseas.

One example of K-pop and the hybridization English and Korean is this song by 2NE1, a manufactured Korean girl group. This song is about girls getting hurt by their player boyfriends, so they have to act like they don't care. Somehow I've heard this song about a thousand times and I'm not really sick of it yet. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with me.

2 comments:

  1. uh-oh, something really might be wrong with you. That sounds exactly like something you'd hear on Z-104. Do you just miss american sounding pop music?
    -Amber

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  2. Maybe it has something to do with how cute those Korean girls are in the video.
    Mom

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