#every song on this album bops. bumps. perhaps even fucks.

[andie-cake]

absolutely ecstatic to announce that i am now in a committed relationship with this album

[nobiscuits]

kpop blog sample (best of 2016 - incomplete)

(paragraph now irrelevant) Don’t worry, I’m aware that this is a bit late and that we’re almost a whole month into 2017. I’m aware that every other best-of-2016 list was published weeks ago (months ago, for those people who don’t count the last two weeks of a year as being in the year for some reason – which is ridiculous: what if the historically acknowledged BEST THING EVER comes out on December 29th and it’s NOT recorded in your best-of list for that year and you’re ostracized from the Annual-Best-Ofs-List-Writers Association and you lose all your ranking street cred and have to move back in with your parents, huh? Was it really worth all that just to reach a deadline or whatever?)

Taking that all into account, I’ve decided that January 20th is the perfect day to write this list (I’ve been deliberating over the winners for a grueling few weeks) because a new person is currently being sworn into the most powerful position in the world and my office is dealing with this by serving liquor at 9AM and then marathoning the Harry Potter movies, so as far as I can tell, no one is particularly concerned that I might be thinking and writing about Korean Pop music instead of putting together another competitive power point. Not that I’ll announce it, but considering the VP just spilled beer on her computer watching a Quidditch match, I think whatever I’m doing is probably fine.

I’m of the opinion that it’s borderline impossible to rank songs and releases concisely, so my system is in no actual order from best to MOST BEST or anything like that. Instead, these are my favorite 10-ish releases/singles in 2016, why I think that, and a superlative about them that made them stand out to me. So if your faves aren’t number one, please don’t send me death threats (side-eyeing you here, ARMY) because I’m nobody important and there isn’t even a number one and I didn’t even write them in a particular order. Now that it’s in writing that I’m scared of ARMY, without further ado: The Most Best of 2016.

Kisum – No Jam

Released Jun 22, 2016

“Most Slept-On Song”

Uh, more like Yes Jam?? One of my favorite rappers to come out of UPRS (South Korean rap elimination show, bafflingly called Un-Pretty Rap Star despite most of the contestants looking something like this) , Kisum’s fun and light style of spitting rapid-fire, upbeat and energetic advice like “steal your mom’s car keys and let your friends hop on” fits perfectly with the upbeat piano-driven boogie, shouts and chatting in her track. A repeated, yell-able English hook bumps up my enjoyment of any k-pop song exponentially; having it be in English but make NO SENSE is even better and you’re a liar if you say you weren’t chanting along to “NO JAM NO JAM NO JAM NO! OKAY OKAY OKAY” after the first chorus. “No jam” is a phrase used in Korean slang to indicate someone being no fun, boring, or terrible on variety shows (the greatest of sins). I have actually refused to look up the origin of the phrase because I want to believe it originated from my husband BTS’ Rap Monster telling his group mate, Jimin, that he’s “got no jams” on their way to LA (I also highly recommend watching the video from the beginning to hear perhaps the cutest pronunciation of “extra-terrestrials” ever recorded). But let’s get back to Kisum before I turn this article into “top ten times I wanted to jump Rapmon”. “No Jam” didn’t do particularly well in Korea; Kisum didn’t promote it on music shows (there’s 4 or 5 broadcasts a week where artists perform their recent releases – think Korean TRL if TRL wasn’t the worst), which I understand as the fun of the song (and the music video) is its chant-along, casual, have-a-beer-on-your-rooftop-with-your-attractive-friends summer vibe that wouldn’t be super compatible with the slick-black-stage-and-strobe-lights feeling of music shows. Despite not charting super well domestically, the video only 2million views on youtube, which is still pretty damn good for an un-promoted track from a non-winner of UPRS, but by no means great. As far as I can tell, I’m responsible for about 500k of those views, as even international fans seem to have forgotten about the track, which makes it my “Most Slept-On” award winner for 2016.

Younha – Get It? (Ft. HA:TFELT, CHEETAH)

Released Jun 12, 2016

“Collab of The Year/Girl-Power Of the Year”

Internationally popular power-vocalist Younha sets a new precedent for collaborations and bad-bitches all at once with this incredible song featuring Yenny of the massively popular Wonder Girls (her stage name as a solo artist is the baffling HA:TFELT for some reason, I don’t know) and UPRS Season 1 winner, Cheetah. The song has a killer synth base that plows into a rock-y, poppy and upbeat 80s sound and layers the vocalists’ three unique sounds into a punchy, girl-rock chorus based around the line “you say you’re innocent and I’m fuckin’ crazy”, using the censor sound as a part of the instrumental. In general, actually, this song has probably my favorite English of the year: besides “I’m fucking crazy” and “you better watch out” in the chorus, Yenny purring “just beg for mercy” is overwhelmingly fine, and Cheetah’s rap includes the line “Catch me if you can? Fuck boi, I’m Frank Abagnale”. The music video continues the 80s girl-band feel, where certified bad-bitches Yenny and Cheetah teach tiny, innocent Younha how to be one of them, wear fishnets, apply neon makeup, and disregard men. The song didn’t do particularly well domestically or internationally; the ladies not promoting it and Yenny not using her actual name probably hurt its chances. K-Pop seems to be coming back around on inter-label collaborations after years of sectionalized stagnation, so I’m hoping that other tracks like this continue to be produced, because the world needs more bad-bitches standing together, rolling their eyes and more Yenny holding a lollipop.

Red Velvet – Russian Roulette

Released September 6, 2016

“Best Music Video”

If I’d written a Most Best of 2015, SM’s youngest girl group, Red Velvet, would’ve had the best music video with their incredibly produced and performed colorful, visual stunner and musical banger, Dumb Dumb. If I’d written a Most Best of the first half of 2016, the award would go to Red Velvet’s haunting ballad (and subtle tribute to the Sewol Ferry Disaster), One of the These Nights. BUT I wrote neither of those. Fortunately, ReVel has my back and released ANOTHER visually fascinating, hella aesthetic video along with a 100% certified bop. Musically, I actually prefer some of their earlier tracks and found Russian Roulette’s album a little disappointing, especially compared to their incredibly stacked first full album, The Red, released in 2015. The song is still a blast, and I definitely rock out to it, but what gets this on my list is the music video: the girls are tricked out in the bizarre outfits, geometric hairstyles, and aesthetic makeup that have become associated with Red Velvet and dance and sing to the cutesy, sweet song with their trademarked creepy non-smiles. Compared to Dumb Dumb’s bright, contrasting colors, Russian Roulette is muted and pastel, replacing slap-bands with frills and trippy 90s geometric transitions to Strawberry Shortcake-esque borders and Itchy and Scratchy animations. The video starts out innocuous enough, but within the first minute, it changes from a cutesy 80s-tennis-players aesthetic to a cutesy-80s-tennis-players TRY TO MURDER EACH OTHER aesthetic. The sinister undertone grows and grows as the stone-faced girls’ pranks escalate to fatal: Seulgi drops a fridge on Joy via Rube-Goldberg machine, Yeri feeds her members nuts and bolts instead of cereal, Wendy lights Seulgi’s sweater on fire and pushes Yeri into a drained swimming pool, Joy and Yeri bury Irene in tennis balls, Irene and Seulgi push Wendy’s bed in front of a speeding car, Seulgi and Wendy drop a piano on Joy and Irene, and the four girls team up to knock a row of lockers on Seulgi. You know, normal tennis camp stuff. The girls have stated that the murder-pranks are because they’re all in love with the same man, but in my PERSONAL view, because that’s stupid, it’s just how tennis is played in Korea.

Jonghyun – She Is

Released May 23rd, 2016

“Best OohAhhs” / “Best Misheard English”

This would obviously be a top 10 release just for being the day before my birthday, but fortunately, it has merits on its own as well. Jonghyun, the lead vocal of K-Pop super group, Shinee (no wait, their name is super cute: like how the person who gives a gift is the gifter and the one who receives it is the giftee, they’re the ones who receive the shine! Come on, that��s cute as fuck.) Jonghyun debuted as a solo artist a few years ago, and is known for his soulful, powerful vocals, powerful abs, and powerfully open-mind. In the past, his solos have been more soulful or ballad style; “She Is” is his first fully fun, fully funky release, and it knocks it out of the park. This song is such an unusual groove that I actually literally have no idea how to describe it. Just watch it. The second reason it’s on the list is that the English in this song is phenomenal. The chorus is “Oh, she is” but sounds like Jonghyun is exclaiming “Oh, SHIZ” before ooh-ahhing like a pro, putting this on level with “I don’t wanna cry, destroy my ass” for innocuous-English-misheard-as-profanity. The other stellar English line is when Jonghyun interjects, “I like this bridge”…not really during the bridge of the song, at all, nor while standing on or near a bridge. It’s wonderful, and the way he sort of purrs the sentence has become an excellent addition to my observations, and I appreciate bridges much more. Thanks, Jonghyun, and I’m sorry I can’t pronounce your name.

Bulletproof Boyscouts – Blood Sweat & Tears

Released October 9th, 2016

“Best ‘Comeback”

A unique and rather confusing aspect of K-Pop for Westerners is that every time a group returns to promote a new release, they refer to it as a “comeback”, despite the group not disbanding or quitting or anything. I’ve decided to recognize BTS for not just their song or their music video or their Rap Monster, but for the comeback as a whole. BTS stands for Bangtan Sonyeodan, which means Bangtan Boys, and Bangtan can be translated to “bulletproof” and therefore “Bulletproof Boyscouts” is not only a hilarious name for a group, it is a perfectly acceptable translation. One of my all-time favorite groups (I just spent pretty much ALL of my money buying pit tickets for their show in Chicago), BTS are massively popular both domestically and internationally; this music video is currently sitting at 82 MILLION views on youtube right now since its release 3 months ago, and they’ve sold out multiple shows in the US. Other than making it now possible to watch “a BTS BST BTS”, Blood Sweat & Tears wins comeback of the year for several reasons other than featuring Rapmon repeatedly pronouncing “realm” as “rehl-um” and daring to look at the camera like this. The hype for the comeback started roughly a month before, and featured seven individual short films, each starring one of the members and using samples of their solos from the album. The films included references to their previous trilogy of interconnected music videos, collectively called “The Most Beautiful Moment in Life”, and leading to hundreds and thousands of interpretations and theories shared and postulated among fans as they tried desperately to understand how the two universes connect (although let’s be real HYYH [Chinese title of TMBMiL] is about the boys learning how to deal after Jin dies, adoyee) and what the parallels meant for BST. Instead of a grand connection between the two, BST took its own route and introduced us to a dramatic, sexy, and almost Latin-insfired jam accented by visuals of opulence, temptation, and formal pajamas as it relates car door guy’s descent into temptation to the eponymous character of Herman Hesse’s bildungsroman, Damien, succumbing to the charms of the fallen angel Abraxes. Surprisingly heady stuff for a k-pop video, but what else can you expect from the group whose leader is a mensa member (pictured here far left). Other than the wonderful story and visuals, the era also gave us Jin kissing V and Rapmonster and V recreating it, and there is nothing more perfect and good in the world.