We're almost halfway through the decade and we've seen hundreds of K-pop girl groups come and go, though arguably none have managed to make the same impact as the main stars of the second generation. However it's more obvious than ever that the veterans will very soon be stepping down, with even giants like Girls' Generation, Wonder Girls, and 2NE1 having to rely on their previous successes to stay at the very top, and it's time for someone else to take the throne.
"Hang on though, if no other girl groups have even come close to the top spot, who could take it?". And that's where, in a flurry of confetti and glitter, Red Velvet appear to claim their rightful place at the girl group throne with "Dumb Dumb".
An album teaser for Wonder Girls' third full-length album "REBOOT" has been uploaded onto JYP's YouTube channel, and it sounds like it could be the best album this year.
You'd think NC.A's cute and innocent image would gain her quite a bit of popularity in the current K-pop climate, full of slut-shaming and pathetic attempts to justify double standards. After two years of going pretty much nowhere with any of her songs, NC.A's "Vanilla Shake" looks like it will very literally shake things up; both her styling and the instrumental are wildly different to what we're used to seeing from her.
"Vanilla Shake" is set to be released on the 20th of July, and with all of the big groups currently promoting she'll most likely find it very difficult to stand out, but maybe this switch up is just what she needed to drastically boost her popularity (here's hoping it also drastically boosts the quality of her music too, "Cinderella Time" was unbearably insipid).
K-pop's focus on visuals can be both a blessing and a curse to fans: on the one hand the flawless idols mean there's an endless amount of eye-candy, on the other it can be a little intimidating to be bombarded by such good-looking people, and it's all too easy to compare yourself to them. Enter Got7 with their new single "Just Right".
K-pop is an incredibly competitive music market, with most K-pop fans devoting all their time to only one group and only casually following or outright ignoring all others. This means that as groups all battle it out to gain popularity and money, inevitably a small percentage of groups get all the love whilst others are left to wallow at the bottom, seemingly incapable of gaining traction and a steady fan base. Tahiti is one such group, and after their recent appearance on "Mom Is Watching" I thought they would be the perfect first group to feature on the new series "S.O.S", which will highlight groups who are struggling to make or maintain presence in the industry.
K-pop flops Tahiti appeared on today's episode of JTBC's show "엄마가 보고있다" ("Mom Is Watching"), where they revealed that the group have made a grand total of 0 won in profits since debut. Is it surprising? No, not really, in fact not in the slightest.
It's clear that, even after being somewhat saved by Youngji, KARA cannot return to the lofty heights of their 2010-2012 days. Whilst "Mamma Mia" showed a much more energetic side to the group, this time they've done a slight shift towards a more sophisticated route whilst keeping that signature KARA sound with the excellent "Cupid".
Yesterday at Dream Concert 2015, KARA performed their comeback single "Cupid", and thankfully the song's just as brilliant as you'd expect from the group. Hara said the group would be "transformed" with this comeback, but fortunately the song doesn't stray too far from KARA's usual sound. Youngji did look a lot less relaxed here than the other members but I'm sure she'll find her comfort zone soon (and in the future I'm guessing she'll become the resident rapper in the group).
Meanwhile, KBS uploaded the first half of the MV as its latest K-Pop Hot Clip, a good day or two earlier than they probably should have but I'm certainly not complaining:
Of note is the complete lack of choreography or story shots, perhaps hinting that this isn't the final, "official" version of the MV (a similar thing happened with AOA's Like A Cat, where KBS played a clip of the MV that didn't feature the narrative of the 7 girls trying to break into a bank). Fortunately we'll only have to wait two just over a day for the full thing now, and even less if it's getting released at midnight!
Today Dal Shabet have uploaded both the second teaser for "Joker", which gives us a much better idea as to what the song sounds like than the first, as well as the highlight medley for their eighth mini album "Joker Is Alive". The mini consists of five tracks (possibly six, if an instrumental of "Joker" is included at the end): "To Darling", "홀여", "Joker", "I'm Not", and "OK Boy". It's already revealed that Subin got involved in production for all songs on the mini, and by the sound of the teasers we've been, "Joker" is set to be a fantastic follow-up to the fantastic "B.B.B".
Let's be honest, 2014 was a horrendous year for Girls' Generation; five dating "scandals" (including the absolute mess of Baekyeon), disappointing performance from both "Mr.Mr." and "Holler", and the departure of Jessica meant the invincible wall they had erected finally started to crumble (the fact that Girl's Day, Apink and SISTAR had been continuously pounding away since 2013 didn't help either). Now it's no secret that whilst they've more or less achieved a status of immortality similar to TVXQ!, their invincibility is at serious risk, and Girls' Generation needed something particularly outstanding to fend off the numerous rising girl groups that are desperate to snatch their throne (including junior label-mates Red Velvet). Many complained that the brilliant "Mr.Mr." was just too generic, and SM have seemingly retaliated by giving us something completely different... but it might just be the worst thing they could do.
SM seem to be determined to confuse us as much as possible with Red Velvet, first they announced Yeri would be joining the group and now out of NOWHERE SM have decided to release an MV for "Automatic", which is an album track on their upcoming first album, "Ice Cream Cake". So far it's been rather ambiguous as to what Red Velvet's overall image would become as their previous singles "Happiness" and "Be Natural" were worlds apart in both sound and style. It's a good thing this is just a pre-release though, because "Automatic" does nothing to show what Red Velvet are really about.
Nineteen months. It has been nineteen months since Rainbow released "Rainbow Syndrome Part 2" and since then all we've had was the debut of sub-unit Rainbow Blaxx, who despite a solid mini album failed to compete with Girl's Day, AOA, or even Dal Shabet. After being overtaken even by rookie groups such as Red Velvet and MAMAMOO, it seemed all hope for Rainbow was long gone, and they'd be left to hang around the "borderline" tier forever. After a painfully long wait they've finally returned, but a lot of people have been sorely disappointed, and I'm not surprised, because "Black Swan" truly is a peculiar song, and I've had to rewrite this review twice because of it.
2014 is over, and so K-pop fans everywhere are making their predictions in threads/blog articles/chatrooms. And of course I thought why not upload my own bullshit stabs in the dark onto the web for everyone to laugh at when none of them come true! A smashing idea.
Prophecy #1: Dal Shabet will be the next girl group to breakthrough
But if they keep releasing songs as good as "B.B.B"
I don't care if they're mid-tier forever.
Okay, so it may seem like I just picked a random girl group here, but I'd like to think there's a reasonable chance of this happening. As it is the group are reasonably popular and hover around the "pretty decent" level, with "Have, Don't Have" being the only single of theirs to not reach the top 20 in the digital charts (it just missed out at 21). "B.B.B" as a single got to number 16, but the mini album was so far their biggest selling physical release yet, and probably could have fared a lot better if they weren't ignored in favour of AOA's "Miniskirt" and Girl's Day's "Something". The group is just one single away from rising to the top, and with this comeback in January they might succeed.
Prophecy #2: Netizens continue to hate Taeyeon
1. [+1,288, -99] This sly fox just doesn't know when to stop, does she? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
First dating Baekhyun, then kicking Jessica out of SNSD, and NOW flaunting her tummy on Instagram? What a bitch ㅋㅋㅋㅋ She should stop using SNS, there's some wrong with her head!!! What will this despicable vixen do to damage SNSD's good name in 2015?
That smile...what is she plotting this time?!
Prophecy #3: People will still talk shit about YG yet eat up everything the company release
"Songs like THIS, with TALENTED ARTISTS, make me a YG fan."
Over the past couple of years YG artists have been releasing utter trash, with a few select AKMU album tracks and Seungri's "Gotta Talk To You" being diamonds in a stinking turd. Yet YG has somehow managed to get a reputation for consistently releasing "quality music" from "real artists", and pretty much anything by an act under the label does extremely well in the charts. To make things even more confusing, netizens constantly trash-talk about the label for its relentless "media play" and their acts often getting into big scandals. Make up your mind, netizens.
Prophecy #4: AOA Black return but no one cares
Remember how many people gave a toss about AOA back in the "Moya" days?
If you guessed "pretty much no one" you'd be right!
AOA were my nugu faves since their debut days, so you can guess how happy I am with their big success this year (though after my MV review of "Like A Cat" you probably already knew that). What I'm not so happy about is that people have been demanding AOA return to the image they had as nugus when no one cared about them and the majority of the fandom weren't around to see (let's not forget that AOA Black has both the visual and the most popular member missing!) AOA Black will return next year as previously stated, but you can bet the single will be nowhere near as successful as this year's outputs (and fans will still probably whine about it "not being the same").
Prophecy #5: 100% will stay nugu for some reason I can't quite fathom
Not even flaunting their abs was enough. That really is tragic.
I love 100%. They originally caught my attention with the brilliant "Want U Back" and "Bad Boy", but this year they released "Beat", one of the best songs of 2014, and the not quite as good but still fantastic "U Beauty". I can even play the "oppas are so talented omg!" card with them because my god do they live up to their name during their lives. They release adorable videos to pander to fangirls on their channel, and to top it off they come from pretty popular group Teen Top's label! Alas after 2 years they're still as nugu as they come, and I can't see them making it big any time soon *sob, sniff*.
Prophecy #6: A boy group will return with a stripper concept
Hopefully with homoerotic shots to really rub it in.
This needs to happen next year no matter what. Just imagine the reactions as fans who condemned AOA, Girl's Day, and Stellar stare hopelessly in horror as their oppas prance around shirtless and shake their behinds. They can't say it's hot now, they'll look like hypocrites!! Cries of "why is K-pop now becoming so westernised?" will be heard, as if the genre hasn't always been criticised for being a carbon copy of western music. But which boy group will be desperate heroic enough to do it? Will it be the nugu kings 100%, sick of always being under Teen Top's shadow? Perhaps multinational group Cross Gene after their daring crotch-rubbing in "Amazing - Bad Lady" just wasn't enough? Maybe the people at Starship will decide it's time for an image change for Boyfriend! Whoever it ended up being I would stan them forever for being trailblazers of gender equality and for gifting us with what would be the most hilarious controversy in 2014.
Happy new year! 2014 is finally over and my god has K-pop been a mess. On the bright side, 2014 was certainly a step up from last year music-wise; I'd say almost every group released material that was better than their outputs in 2013 (well, those that actually promoted this year). Hopefully 2015 will be even better for music but I think everyone's really just praying for less drama. Nevertheless, here are my top 20 songs for 2014.
Notes:
- All songs are Korean releases (not like this changes much but I just thought I should clarify)
- All songs are lead singles, with music videos (to prevent this list being f(x) feat. AOA)
- Yes of course this list is biased, I obviously have favourites and many are on this list
