In my 'Music (I am an audiophile)' post, I mentioned on multiple occasions the music genre that is KPop.
Now, to begin with, I am Asian. In fact, I am half-Korean. I can read Korean. I can write Korean. I can speak some of it. KPop is not entirely foreign to me.
KPop is pretty awesome, I think, at least in certain areas.
I've debated between aspiring to be a designer (fashion, game, et cetera), a photographer (fashion, creative, et cetera), dancer/choreographer (hip-hop, breakdancing, urban styles), or a linguist/translator, so KPop is highly helpful to me in pursuing my dreams of a career. (^o^)
If we start at the beginning, as we properly should, I 'discovered' KPop in June of 2013, less than a year ago, which is absolutely and almost unforgivably late. That is to say, I was exposed at a younger age, but I didn't fully get into it until [June of 2013].
What happened was this: I was at some Asian mall in Canada (in May or so) and there was a CD store. On the store's front, there were two posters: one for CN BLUE and one for EXO. I was intrigued, so I looked them up later. At first, I was intimidated by how many people were in EXO, so I started with CN BLUE. I looked up CN BLUE on Youtube and the first song I listened to was 'I'm Sorry'. In the 'Related Videos' section, there was C-Clown's 'Far Away... Young Love' video, so I clicked on that. And from there, I just continued to look up all sorts of KPop songs and KPop bands. I found NU'EST's 'Face' shortly after.
At this point in my life, I did not know how to read/speak Korean at all. So, what I did was I took the Hangul lyrics to 'Face' and then I took the Romanized lyrics, and I compared the two, until I figured out which character in the Hangul alphabet was pronounced like or equivalent to which character in the English alphabet, and what grammatical pattern was to be followed when writing in Hangul.
In June, I attended an international immersion program in Canada for kids learning English or French (details are in my 'International Encounters' post). There, I met a Taiwanese girl. We met when I was sitting off by myself (in my 'Introductory Piece' post, I mentioned being a loner), and she saw I was practicing my Hangul and reading 'Face's lyrics.
Since she at the time was an avid KPop fan, she asked if I knew Korean. I told her I did not and that I was teaching myself by reading lyrics, and she recognized NU'EST's 'Face', so she started asking me about KPop (thinking I was a KPop fan).
I told her that I only really knew CN BLUE, NU'EST, and C-Clown and so she was kind of surprised, and we started talking about Korean, and she taught me a few words (that she had picked up from listening to KPop) and identified some in the song.
I promptly asked if maybe she had a list of songs and bands that I could listen to and use for practice or just enjoyment, and she agreed.
The next day, she brought me a 4-page list of everything from 2PM to FTIsland to Ze:A, as well as their most popular songs.
I listened to them all (over time, of course), and that's how I got into KPop. I started exploring their less well-known songs and everything, and began developing the common traits in KPop fans such as having favorite members from each band and learning the jokes about the different groups and idols.
Like any newbie, though, my first reaction to seeing BtoB, EXO, and INFINITE was something along the lines of, "They all look the same."
I learned each one by name and face quite quickly.
Within a couple months I knew well BigBang, SHINee, BtoB, B.A.P., C-Clown, and NU'EST. Within another couple I knew well MBLAQ, Block B, CN BLUE, Super Junior, and Teen Top. A couple months after that I knew well Epik High, Beast, Topp Dogg, BTS, and BOYFRIEND.
I'm still kind of undeveloped in terms of how well I know KPop, but part of that is that I'm not your average fan. Sure, I enjoy B.A.P. and EXO and BigBang and whatever, but what separates me from the primary KPop fandom is that my favorite artists are Block B, U-KISS, Teen Top, and Seungri. Teen Top's pretty popular, and U-KISS is sort of popular, but from what I understand, practically no one knows Block B. And Block B is my number 1, no contest.
I also think BtoB is no better than okay and that G-Dragon and T.O.P. are sorely overrated.
But the main thing that isolates me in the fandom is that I absolutely, positively, without a doubt HATE Super Junior.
I DESPISE Super Junior with a deep and acidic loathing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind them as people (my favorite members are Kyuhyun and Henry because of Henry's 'Trap', and Donghae because I think he has... um... a nice face (awkward)), but I hate the group as a whole. Their songs all sound the same, their choreographer sucks and needs to be fired, and the group is unnecessarily and irritatingly ENORMOUS.
EXO is not super high on my list for the same reason (TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE GROUP), but because they're split up into EXO-K and EXO-M, I don't mind so much.
Now, and I'll do my best to say this without sounding horribly awkward, I much prefer boybands over girlbands. Why? Because I like boyband music better, the reasons being that male rappers are much better than female rappers (and I love rap), and that I like the male voice better than the female voice (in singing). I mean, there are a bunch of female KPop idols who have amazing voices, but overall I prefer the sound of male singers in KPop.
Oh, and also, boyband songs sound tougher and cooler, less girly and happy and bouncy. I like the stronger songs. The only girlband song I like is 'Nightmare' by 2Yoon featuring Ilhoon, and the reason for that is Ilhoon.
CL's cool, by the way, and good-looking (in my opinion). And I think HyunA is overrated.
(I can talk about KPop for a long time, by the way)
And, I sort of implied earlier, dancing and choreography for songs is important to me. If the dance is painfully stupid or just plain bad (*cough* Super Junior *cough*), I will probably hate the song by default. My favorite dances are the unique ones, typically, or the memorable ones, like Beast's 'Fiction' penguin dance, EXO's 'Wolf' flower dance thing, Teen Top's 'To You' and 'Rocking' choruses, Se7en's 'Digital Bounce' dance, and Topp Dogg's 'Follow Me/Say It' dance. HATE SUPER JUNIOR DANCES (in case I haven't stressed that enough, yet).
In terms of music videos, I like the abstract, surreal, and/or avant garde video styles. Since I have an abstract/surreal/avant garde style of design, these videos inspire me. These include G-Dragon's 'Coup D'Etat', BigBang's 'Monster', Block B's 'Very Good', Kim Jaejoong's 'Mine', and Taeyang's 'Ringa Linga'. I also like videos that really impact me, such as Taeyang's 'Wedding Dress' (which was sad, and I like sad songs/stories/videos), Henry's Trap (which had some pretty cool choreography, I think, and nice planning overall), and G-Dragon's 'Heartbreaker'
(which had a weird dance but was awesome).
So, yeah, I'm super picky about the stuff I like, and I do develop strange favorites (I'm not calling them biases because it's weird for me to call them that, it makes me sound like a girl).
The following is a documentation of some of the bands I like or know well, my favorite song by them, and my favorite member:
BigBang --> Monster, Tonight --> Seungri
B.A.P. --> Rain Sound, 1004 (Angel), Coma --> Zelo, very closely followed by Jongup
BtoB --> Insane --> Ilhoon (dope rapper)
Block B --> LOL, Halo --> Kyung, very closely followed by Taeil
Teen Top --> Rocking, Miss Right --> L. Joe
BTS (Bangtan Boys) --> The Rise of Bangtan --> Suga
MBLAQ --> This Is War --> Lee Joon*
NU'EST --> Face --> JR (no contest)
SHINee --> Lucifer --> Jonghyun, very closely followed by Key
Super Junior --> N/A --> Donghae, very closely followed by Henry and Kyuhyun, and maybe Ryeowook
EXO --> Wolf, Mama --> Baekhyun, very closely followed by Chen and Lay
C-Clown --> Shaking Heart --> Kangjun
INFINITE --> Destiny, Tic Toc --> Dongwoo
Yup, that's me.
Oh, and remember that list my Taiwanese friend gave me I told you about? My favorite band is Block B and that was the only band that wasn't on her list. I checked multiple times.
*Speaking of Lee Joon, I met a Korean guy at the immersion program who looked almost exactly like Lee Joon, except younger. It was awesome, he and I are good friends.
