A New Decade In Pop: Weeks #31 & #32

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Catching up on last week's missed poll = double bonus ticky today! Apologies if I've missed anything. Ne-Yo is at #1.

[Poll #1603549]

Comments

Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

This year:





Last year:

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

Best Korean songs I first heard in July, that is.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[askbask.livejournal.com]

How many other songs use the speed up and down effect SO much? I really like that song and Sandara seems naturally feisty, both here and with the group. I don't think it's an act, she is a troublemaker.

Her fellow bandmember Park Bom's 2009 solo offering is simpler and prettier with fewer edges. It's catnip music, but I like it (though not as much as Dara's)

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

E.via seems like even more of a troublemaker (and more self-consciously a troublemaker). When she speeds up "Shake!" it seems like a deliberate parody, though I know so little about Korean genres that I'm not at all sure I'm reading this right.

Dara's family moved to the Philippines when she was eight, and that's where most of her showbiz career took place; she had an album out in the Philippines in 2004 (also, the site I link claims that she claims that her dad is a wife-beater and bigamist who abandoned her family for another).

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

OK, I don't know the song lyrics, but what's that video about, with the wheel chair, the hospital room, and the cupcakes?

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[askbask.livejournal.com]

My take: The happy couple are married, but the man suffers from some sort of disease. He ponders suicide, decides against it with the support of love and cupcakes, but ends up dying anyway, so our girl wanders alone. Some holes are left to explain.

E.via is more of a troublemaker, but she sort of comes from another place outside the pop idol sphere where 2NE1, though touted as bringing girl power to pop (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrdGpealMpw), still exist.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

I'm curious about the little bit of religious imagery in the video. The church seems to be Christian, though except for one set of crosses Jesus doesn't appear in the vid. Christmas does, but for practical purposes that's a secular holiday. I know nothing about religion in Korea.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

I think the "Shake!" vid is from this year, even if the song isn't (not sure it isn't, actually), so that makes the song eligible for my year-end lists, I've decided.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

"Shake!" does seem to be from this year, though Wikip is not definitive on this issue.