We have this interesting problem at school: a shop two doors down is having some kind of amazing sale, and to promote it they are blasting ridiculous and loud dance music during my entire afternoon schedule. It is loud enough that we can hear every word of every song clear as day inside of my classroom. To make things worse (maybe better?) there are two girls who dance on platforms in front of traffic right in front of the store. All of the time it's either two girls dancing to music, or sometimes one of the girls picks up a microphone and starts yapping about the sale they are having. I went and took some video with my camera:
In the video I'm not sure if the girls just don't want me taking pictures of them, or if it's illegal or something, but I don't really care.
Today I was giving my fourth and fifth grade class a test, which is supposed to be silent. The whole time the music is just blaring, and I'm singing along in my head to Lil' John while he sings "shots shots shots...shots shots shots shots shots...everybody....etc." Please make it stop. Please.
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.
