keiara | Entries tagged with kpop

does anyone else feel as though kpop has been really boring so far this year? sure we’re only halfway through the year so i’m sure there will be hits to come but it's currently june 1st and the only real stand out song for me so far is UNIS’s Swicy (and yum by kepler but thats in japanese and i don’t know if i could objectively say its GOOD… it's catchy af though and i enjoy it). i’ve always been a 4th gen defender when it comes to musical eras of kpop because people lovedd to complain that 4th gen was the noise music gen and all their music sucked as if we didn’t have concept geniuses like PinkFantasy and musical-concept legends like GWSN. kpop has kind of always been about following trends but right now i feel like so many companies have seen the heights that idol groups can reach with western popularity and are tailoring some concepts to be more “acceptable” for a general public rather than just allowing crazy idol weirdness for idol fans to enjoy. Idgaf if the average person wouldn't like pinky star!!!! I like it!!!

a lot of the concepts have been super cute and i think we’re getting really creative with packaging and merch which is fun but also why does the music just not match in quality. listening to illit’s snippets for their upcoming comeback ‘bomb’ made me both excited and annoyed because all the songs seemed great… in concept. As in when i was listening to all the short audio clips, every song just felt as if something was either missing or off. Can kpop producers not hear these things when making their songs? Why are you allowing bad producing or lazy lyrics or flat teaser photos or incredibly plain album covers to be used as final products? It pisses me off more than anything because a lot of these big companies know they can just put out whatever and it’ll sell, even if it isn't great quality. how do we go from the adorable packaging of super real me to the incredibly plain and boring covers of bomb? i’m not buying that bro it’s ugly and unoriginal and a waste of materials to make and space in my room. theres actually a ton of albums i regret buying from my ‘i like kpop :) and buying albums :)’ phase in 2021 that i wish i could get rid of and so maybe ill ask kpop nara or something if i can just drop them and some photocards off because i dont want thesee. Just let me have my gwsn and exid stuff and i’ll be able to smile

speaking of merch, i just think the difference between korean idol and japanese idol merch is so interesting to observe. The entirety of the difference in the two industries actually is just really interesting and it often throws me off when getting =love versus illit stuff because of how standard sizing of photos and what is actually being sold (ex. lightsticks, shirts, standees, etc.) differs. =love has a whole new line for every concert, each with a set concept. The closest thing kpop really has to that are season’s greetings/memberships i feel like. In the sense that its an (bi)-annual thing with a concept and many different forms of merch outside just photocards. ALSO speaking of merch: fan creations are soo much better than official company things. I’m making a friend act as a proxy for me so i can get some fanmade illit stuff off weibo cause its 100% cuter than anything hybe is or will ever put out. alright midnight rant about effort and quality in kpop is over. goodnight!

Current Location: bed time

When I visited my friend in Australia, she asked me question: “What do you like about K-pop?”. For me, It’s an easy question to answer; Partially because of how industrial K-pop is and therefore, how easy it is to pick apart what I'm supposed to be liked in K-pop. What idol companies purposely do to make their groups and music addicting. I like the pretty idols, the sense of friendship or family in groups, the fun music, enticing choreographies, cute outfits, etc. But specifically about the music, I like the fact that I can't understand the lyrics.

This may seem like a strange argument because one of the first things people ask K-pop listeners is "how can you enjoy music you don't even understand?". However to me, not understanding the lyrics means I can overlay any meaning or purpose I want onto a song; all it needs is the right sound. If a song is in english (or even in spanish), I'm aware of both the beat and the words. If the beat is good, it's good. However if the lyrics are cringe or something I can't relate to, it makes it difficult for me to sit through the song. Whether I fully hate the lyrics or just wish they were slightly different so that I could relate to them, they distract me, pull me out of the musical experience. The first example of this that comes to mind is when I heard Laufey's "Promise":

"It hurts to be something
It's worse to be nothing with you"

When I first heard this audio on TikTok (yes, I heard it on TikTok first), I thought the lyric would go like this:

"It hurts to be something
it's worse to be nothing at all"

Just by changing a couple words of the second line, the meaning of the lyrics changes completely. In the official version by the artist, Laufey is singing about how while it hurts to exist, it's even worse to be reduced to nothing by the person you are in a relationship with. You will always experience pain in life, but that pain and uncertainty is preferred to the complete lack of care, regard, and love that the singer receives from a partner that treats her as if she was "nothing".

In my interpretation, the meaning changes so that the first part stays the same: life comes with pain and heartache, however, the 2nd part implies that it would be worse if I simply never got to experience that life in the first place. It hurts when things in life go wrong, but it's worse to miss out on opportunity by never even trying. Or even, it hurts to live, but to resort to ending that life, to become nothing at all, would be even worse, would fix nothing. It's a feeling that I relate to much more and so I can't listen to that song without thinking about how it's just not me.

When all the lyrics are in another language (in this case, Korean), I can simply find a song that has an instrumental, a tone, a vibe, that matches the emotion I want to express, and let words and thoughts float around my head like loose lyrics to the song. I do this with The Lonely Bloom Stands Alone by HYNN, Lullaby by GWSN, Our Garden by WJSN, and many, many, other songs. It's kind of my way of figuring out how I'm feeling with the help of music.

Now, when I told my friend this (in a wayyy more concise way), she found it interesting! However, the reason she loves songs in english is because, according to her, she can relate to every song, LOL. Good for her!

Current Mood: peaceful

ok this is a fun update: song jaewon, also known as hwarang (ex-tempest), has been spotted for the first time 9 months and spoiler! he enlisted.

let me give you a short summary of the whole catasrophy that led to us losing one of the greatest idols of all time (biased opinion). in october 2023, while korean boy group TEMPEST was promoting their song 'vroom vroom' (shit song btw), member hwarang was injured on stage. it was some shoulder injury and he had to get surgery and rest so he went on hiatus from late october to late december, ~2 months. by the start of 2024 things were moving normally, they had a fancon coming up, a korean comeback, japanese debut, their 2nd anniversary, and hwarang had even landed a MC gig at show champion.

then everything changed when the fire nation attacked blah blah Ok so basically in mid-feb, literal hours before the 1st group teaser was supposed to drop for the group's upcoming comeback 'lighthouse', a burner account posts a video of an audio from when she went to a tempest fansign. in the audio, she tells hwarang that she saw him at a club, and he admits to it saying like 'haha yeah i was there with some friends and we listened to music' or whatever. obviously umm idols in the club (he was w/ 4 other nugu / mid-tier idols) the post got like 10k+ qrts and a ton of attention. yuehua put out a statement a few hours later like 'umm yeah we confirm that and hwarang's sorry and also teasers will be delayed a day' and then that day ended. so like ok obviously everyones going ??? and we're all on edge but after maybe 3 days things go back to normal. teasers are posted, bubble messages are being sent, twitter posts, etc. like everyone moved on. they celebrated eunchan's birthday in late feb and their 2nd anniversary on march 2nd with livestreams. then on march 5th, literally 3 days after they had their ani livestream where they were like Yess tpst ot7 4ever lets stay together for a long time, yuehua puts out a SECOND statement saying that hwarang will be put on an indefinite hiatus for failing to establish trust with the agency. thus begins the time from march 5th to august 11th until finally they release a message saying 'ok yeah he left the group byee' and then tempest ot6 goes on to flop on road to kingdom 2 (i mean cmon man, you couldn't beat 8turn? YOUNITE?).

throughout this time theres been 0 sightings of him. unlike how people saw seunghan apparently going 'hoooly shit' outside SM building or whatever, we never got any hwarang photos (because he has like 10 fans: 5 of them are in China and3 of them are my friends and i). everyone kind of has their ideas of what happened such as upcoming survival shows (i didn't think this would happen, you cant just get kicked out ur group for clubbing and then join a ss) and military enlistment: the 2 year period that korean men have to serve in the military. the military made sense cause like this guy has been training for what, 10 years to be an idol? only to actually be an idol for 2 years? yeah man i'd also, as twitter user hammypies put it, want a "hard reset".

it was maybe 11:30-ish at night, i was on a twitter space with some friends when all of a sudden im scrolling through twitter and just stop. in front of me, in a post from around a whole hour ago, are 3 fansite photos from twitter user trigger0423, showing a man in military uniform saluting, the name 'song jaewon' stitched on his shirt.

"HOLY SHIT" <-- (my reaction live on space)

funnily enough the space ended due to poor connection like 2 minutes later but for those 2 minutes, my mutuals and i lost our collective minds because holy moly guacamole we just got a picture of hwarang. 'he didn't kill himself!', said one. 'his face is still great!', said another. slowly but surely the photos went from having 3 likes and 100 qrts to 3k qrts and 1k+ likes, all flaming the fuckk out of the OP fansite.

now see, trigger0423 isn't an ordinary fansite. maybe you could tell that just from the fact that she took photos of him from a f*cking military base, but this crazy ass stuff started wayy before then. she has been one of tempest's more notorious sasaengs, standing out from some of the groups other stalker fansites due to the fact that she made hwarang cry at a fansign event once. she basicaly just said 'ur hair is ugly change it it looks bad' and he teared up and apologized and then she posted the video on twitter, got flamed, and deleted it once she got flamed. awesome stuff all around (also the hair she didnt like was his dangerous-era black hair which literally made me a fan of the group but to each their own ig). however, hwarang is just a more recent choice of hers to terrorize; she's also known among korean fans of other boy groups for a scammer and such. but circling back to her getting dragged in the qrts, do you wanna know what the cherry on top of all of this is? people theorize that she's the burner account that posted the audio that got him kicked out in the first place.

YUP! theres now a whole conspiracy that she got him kicked out in order to try to get closer to him, seeing as she is still following him around to the military when he's now just an ordinary korean citizen. when the fansite photos were posted, she got ratioed by a krn hwarang fanpage that hadn't been active in months (obviously) basically telling her she's crazy and needs to leave him alone. like brother thats song jaewon now hwarang is gonee you need to drop it. i don't know how or why she is still doing all this and like okay kind of legendary that this is how we get our first photos of him in ages but also dang. he's for real in the military at 23. he LITERALLY should've been in the club.

anyways hwarang was like the only male idol i ever really gaf about (unless you count zhang shuaibo umm #plz debut in uni league with a good team thanks) and my interest in tempest started to fall around may of 2024 when they continued to release music i didn't care for with fanservice that did not interest me. it's like once hwarang left all of a sudden no one wants to gaybait anymore! just another piece of evidence to show he was a legend. i still like tempest kind of sort of considering i did like ult them for like a year from may 2023-may 2024. the members are chill and dangerous is a fantastic boy group song all around, but i just do not care for them like that nowadays. hopefully they start making good music again, hopefully hwarang has an easy time in the military or whatever (he enlisted oct 2024 and will be discharged apr 2026 i believe).

p.s. i'm still not calling him Jaewon; your ass is Hwarang.

Current Mood: crazy
Current Music: dangerous (tempest)

congrats GWSN on winning road to kingdom 2, absolutely huge. #HwarangKarma

Current Location: my bed
Current Music: dangerous (tempest)

last semester, i took an 'effective writing' class as a credit requirement and our final project was to write an opinion piece on anything we desired. of course, as a kpop fan with lots of opinions and no where to put them, i decided to write my paper on lawsuits regarding contracts in the korean pop industry.

i chose this topic because A) i knew something regarding legality would be the most likely to result in an actual peer-reviewed paper i could use, B) i could connect the paper to my favorite group, GWSN, and C) people in my class (and my chronically online teacher) likely have heard 'cupid' and therefore, if i mentioned FIFTY FIFTY, they might think 'wow, i knew the song but had no idea the story behind the group'.

the final paper ended up nearly twice the required length, but still missing tons of info i wish i could've added in. however, i was already over the word limit (it wasn't a hard limit but still) and it was final season so i had other work to be doing. i turned in my essay, and ended up receiving an 100% and the ask if my professor could use my paper as an example of a good pop-culture analysis for this assignment in the future, yippee!

this was around 6 months ago and a lot has happened to FIFTY FIFTY and it's former (or still active) members that makes a lot of my essay contain outdated information, but i still wanted to post it here in case anyone was interested in reading it. it's one of the only school assignments that i actually enjoyed making because it was on a topic i was invested in. once again, it's nowhere near perfect and i actually never read it over in full because i hate reading my writing (basically nothing i write on here is re-read before being posted LOL), but i wanna put it here anyways.

link to the essay is here, enjoy!