evacuatewithstyle » Korean pop

Whatever kind of face

Amy — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:22:38 +0000

Here is a detailed explanation of what happened.

I wasn’t going to write about this, but I’ve been reading a lot of discussion in response to the incident, and I just wanted to get into some of the points that have been coming up repeatedly.

Point 1: I don’t understand why this is offensive because I wasn’t taught about this in school, and you can’t expect everyone to know about why this is offensive because Blackface is an American thing.

Blackface does its roots in the US. It has (hopefully) been ingrained into the American consciousness that painting yourself to look Black (or Asian, or Native American, or Hispanic) is offensive.

But, just because this is a unique to American history doesn’t mean that anyone outside of America or anyone who does not know American history should be exempt from understanding why this is offensive.

The very fact that someone has the luxury of painting some makeup on his/her face in order to be a person of another race, and then gets to perform/entertain/amuse an audience, and then has the luxury to take that face color off means that it is a thing of privilege, appropriation, and disregard for another person’s condition.

Someone else’s race and identity can be used at your disposal without you having to suffer any of the real consequences that are associated with having that skin color. That is not okay. Understanding this does not require a nuanced understanding of American history. These offenses exist independently of the circumstances that gave rise to them, so saying that you’re not aware of how something is offensive because you were never taught about it in school does not fly.

(...)
Read the rest of Whatever kind of face (983 words)

© Amy for evacuatewithstyle, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Kikwang, Korean pop, race/ethnicity

A dissection on SHINee: the timeline

Amy — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 05:00:08 +0000

Like I don’t write enough posts on SHINee. This post made possible by “Lucifer,” which I’m still ambivalent about. A timeline briefly going through all their promotional singles.

LUCIFER

I feel like Lucifer is an intensely sped-up remix version of Juliette. I don’t like songs that sound like shouting (ie: DBSK’s “Are You a Good Girl?”) and the chorus is somewhat headache inducing. Not only that, but the song is really repetitive, and I mean pop songs are meant to be repetitive in order to be catchy, but the repetitive parts in this song go on for so long. There’s somewhat a bridge, but I’m not really feeling it, so the song by itself is definitely not a favorite.

Now for the choreo. SHINee’s one true strength is that they are all great with choreography, and they almost always get great choreography. I really want to know who choreographed this because they just look like they’re doing non-stylish hip thrusts repeatedly. But I can’t fully judge the choreography yet because MVs are always edited in and around choreography with other set pieces, so it’s harder to tell, and Music Bank cameramen don’t seem to have any idea how to film things because they kept focusing on Minho half the performance and I missed out on all their dancing.

In addition, after watching their comeback perf, I will say that I grossly underestimated how much of a nightmare “Lucifer” is for Jonghyun and Onew to sing. Like I seriously teetered on the edge of my seat in fear that Jonghyun will pop multiple blood vessels in his forehead/neck when he was belting out notes and I think Onew was sweating the Atlantic Ocean out of his forehead trying to get all of his. Those two are the motherfuckin’ BOSS when it comes to singing, but it can’t possibly be good for their vocal cords to have to hit all those notes perfectly so many times a week for such a long time.

The one thing I really, really love about SHINee’s live performances is Jonghyun. I love watching him sing and perform because he’s so passionate and aggressive with his singing and he has so much attitude that it’s just really attractive in a performer. So I’ll stick around for Jonghyun if nothing else.

(...)
Read the rest of A dissection on SHINee: the timeline (1,076 words)

© Amy for evacuatewithstyle, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Korean pop, SHINee, SM Entertainment

Kind of perverse

Amy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:31:45 +0000

There’s a new SBS variety show called “Heroes” with an all-female cast (minus the MCs) — IU, Kara’s Nicole, After School’s Gahee, Shin Bong-sun, Lee Ga-eun, Yoo In-ah, T-ara’s Ji-yeon, BEG’s Narsha, Seo In-young, No Sa-yeon, Hong Soo-ah, Finkl’s Lee Jin.

The episode begins with the cast members arriving one by one to a remote location, inside a warehouse, where there are two tables set up. One table is labeled “popular team,” and the other is labeled “unpopular team.” As the members arrive one by one, they’re supposed to decide which table to sit at.

This is the awkward and stupid part: the sunbaes in the industry obviously feel like they belong at the popular table, and the eldest unnies who are also the most senior in experience feel even more of a reason to sit at the popular table. This leaves: jokes about Shin Bong-sun, and jokes about the younger members.

Seniority is a big deal in Asian culture, and I understand that. Women like Noh Sa-yeon and Lee Jin have been in the industry for forever, and do have a lot of work experience that people, say, IU don’t have. But the problem I have with Asia’s sense of seniority is that somehow it trumps everything (both seniority in age and in experience). Look, things in the industry are a lot different now than they were ten years ago. I know that the elder sunbaes have had to pay their dues many times over to be where they are, but it’s so embarrassing to watch them single out newbies like they o b v i o u s l y do not know anything or they can’t possibly be knowledgeable of this, this, or that.

So you get the younger girls being embarrassed to admit their popularity for fear of appearing haughty — because we know that it’s double whammy to be both haughty and a haughty female — when I’m sure audiences know someone like IU is sure as hell more relevant now than Lee Jin.

(...)
Read the rest of Kind of perverse (609 words)

Am I going to have to lay down some whoop ass?

Amy — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:13:33 +0000

To preface, I love this couple. I have a bit of a Victoria weakness, but hey Nichkhun’s amusin’.

This episode, was not. It’s like watching an episode of a bad K-drama where you’re just hitting yourself in the head because the second female lead is doing stuff that only a second female lead would do to pursue a crush on a male lead — stay up all night to make food, follow-up on a promise meticulously …

This is now becoming one of those unfortunate stories where the girl is a little bit too much into the guy and talks about it happily with her girlfriends and then the guy’s like whaaaatevaaaazzzzz yo, I don’t need to do shit and I’ll still charm your panties off!! I hope Vic lays the smackdown and makes Khun work for it a little bit more.

I think the couple has a lot of chemistry and I hope it exists outside the show, but Vic is more believable than Khun, only because Khun is a helluva sweet talker and I’m glad Vic doesn’t fall for that shit so easily. (Though I wish she’d lighten up in thinking that this was actually a real relationship…)

Related Posts

© Amy for evacuatewithstyle, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2PM, f(x), Korean pop, We Got Married

If you are currently a male residing in the SM fam

Amy — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:18:59 +0000

You will at one point in your career jump ferociously in front of negative space.

And I mean ferocious. Like wind-meets-water-meets-fire-melding-five-elements-of-earth-defy-gravity-become-an-Olympic-gymnast ferocious.

Related Posts

I don’t even know who I should blame

Amy — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 04:26:11 +0000

Man, I’m so over the Kpop music scene. Everyone tries so hard to out-do each other, but everyone for some reason, ends up looking like the everyone else anyway. How about we just concentrate on making good music, good videos, and good dances and call it a day? Instead of forcing these ridiculous concepts and images and blah blah blah and then getting accused of plagiarism left and right?

SHINee is not usually a group I pick on for this sort of stuff because I really enjoy their music and their efforts as artists, but SM is slowly turning them into gimmicky little marketing ploys and it drives me up the wall.

…Enjoy these?

Related Posts

Two things

Amy — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 06:20:32 +0000

Miss A’s debut

I am LOVING this debut. When I first heard the song, it was alright but I didn’t really dig it, but now I find myself humming to it and I think it’s actually a good song to show off the girls’ vocals. I’m impressed that everyone’s fairly well-rounded, and I love Jia and Fei’s voices. Suzy’s singing and dancing is a little weak — it’s easier to notice that her pops aren’t as strong or that she gets out of breath a lot easier when she’s in a sea of good apples. And Min…well, Min’s debut is long overdue.

Super Junior’s “No Other”

God, what is this embarrassing crap. SuJu’s 4th album in general is lackluster and can’t really compare to their third. “No Other” isn’t bad — I actually quite like the happy pop sound going on — but I refuse to watch anymore live performances of this song. The upside of the slower tempo is that everyone sings their lines perfectly, but the downside is that everything else about this song is crap. I hate cutesy dancing and I pretty much hate cutesy SuJu. They do not tickle my fancy at all. Oh, and massive fail as a repackage album song because this is NOT the “Norago” caliber I was hoping for.

Ah well, you win some, you lose some. Here’s to hoping there will even be a fifth album and that it’ll happen soon before the group disbands / more members sue / everyone goes to the army.

Related Posts

© Amy for evacuatewithstyle, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Korean pop, Miss A, Super Junior

Song of the day

Amy — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 04:28:14 +0000

IU – Sweet Day

Related Posts

© Amy for evacuatewithstyle, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: IU, Korean pop, Song of the day

Monkey majik

Amy — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 02:16:48 +0000

This music video is easily the best looking Kpop video to come out this year. The cinematography is gorgeous and the visuals are sharp and sleek, the styling is fun and well put together.

Unfortunately, this song just isn’t very unique and the actual content of the video is unremarkable. I’m reminded of Jinusean’s earlier stuff, stuff that was the typical hip hop bling, hoes, and cars — except in TOP’s case, it’s Goyard bags and luggage. I’m also irritated by the brand-name dropping because TOP is more than capable of telling folks he’s badass without having to talk about McQueen or Galliano. Yeah you can argue that “that’s just what hip hop artists do,” but honestly, name dropping is is so outdated and the second half of the video looks like one long product placement video.

I generally really like TOP but I’m experiencing TOP fatigue from the oversaturation of TOP lately in the media. From what I’ve gathered, he’s not so remarkable an actor that it garners this much press, but that’s what happens when idols are in movies and dramas. That aside, I’m kind of tired of TOP the rapper too. Back when he ~~still used to rap~~ performed while Big Bang was still promoting, he started doing this thing that my friend likes to call the “DMX effect.” The DMX effect is basically when you shout words and get gruff and just come off as unnecessarily angry and for some inexplicable reason drop your voice several octaves lower than how you usually sound. That’s just how TOP sounded whenever he was covering songs live and it just really drove me bonkers because I’d never had an issue with how he rapped and I’d always preferred his rapping to GD’s.

However, even though I think “Turn it Up” is kind of one-note, it’s an excellent song to exercise to :D Nothing better for a gym playlist than one that talks about how much you rock and how awesome you are.

Related Posts

Formspring.me #2, songs

Amy — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:15:03 +0000

Someone on formspring asked me:

what are a few of your most fav songs?

This list got a little longer than I thought it’d be…

★ Imogen Heap – Just for Now (acapella version)
I love this song so much that when I went to watch Imogen perform a couple of weeks ago, when she started singing this song, I teared. Oh, and, Imogen is AMAZING live.

★ The Postal Service – Such Great Heights

★ Kyuhyun – Smile

★ SHINee – 누난 너무 예뻐 (Replay)
Easily the best Kpop debut song ever. Don’t hate. I know all the lyrics to this one -_- No, but seriously, “Hug”? Terrible. “Twins”? Ear bleed. “Oh Yeah”? Oh no. I’ll be honest, I find SHINee still kind of lifeless and boring outside of performing, but you know what, they are easily the best group live out of all their peers and that’s what they debuted to do anyway.

★ Khalil Fong – Love Song

★ Cinderella’s Sister OST – Minor Waltz

★ Ibadi – 오후가 흐르는 숲

(...)
Read the rest of Formspring.me #2, songs (72 words)

© Amy for evacuatewithstyle, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: American pop, Chinese pop, Korean pop, Super Junior