The GLORIOUS J/K-POP THREAD

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Did she change her style or make a comeback, or something? I watched some other videos of hers and she looks/sounds completely different.

Like this (almost a Mariah Carey song):

Gotta love the Engrish - Tara's New Member of a sexy look. Yes, indeed. Sexy is not the adjective I'd use. Mousy would fit better. And OC are awesome, agreed.

That poor girl is dwarfed by her bass guitar.

Creepy Moonraker twins triples look FTW.

Zhou Jie-Lun is Chinese.

After School is back, though now without Kahi and with a raised-in-japan jailbait (for the west...) newbie. It is a pretty cool comeback, but I still like their old stuff much better.



Bonus points for Nana continuing to be awesome in everything she does. You are the boss, girl.

It never fails to amaze me that those three dorky girls are the same ones from After School. The images they have in both are completely different.

Yes, the reason I became a witch is from Neo Spirit, her 2012 mini-album (which is also her first). The one you just posted I believe was a digital single from around July 2011.

She's been around since 2009 and gone through a lot of concepts.









I hope she stays with the newest one, IMO it is truly her "OMG, she finally found it!" moment both in sound and in image.

Nice heels. Which one is supposed to be jailbait? I didn't spot any.

Kaeun/Gaeun. She gets very few lines and camera, this being her first appearance.



She's seventeen, I believe.

Which means she's legal in half of Japan and jailbait in the other half, and in Korea I am not sure. Wikipedia says the age of consent in South Korea is 13, most people I know and T.V shows I did watch act like its 19, and in some website I did read it was 16. @_@



Edit: It did just hit me how different and cool does Juyeon look now.

lol no 2NE1 has been posted yet

You are going to laugh at me but I never paid much attention to them.

To the point I have been actually looking for the first song you posted for quite some time, because I couldn't remember who it was nor what it was called.

So thank you!

So is there any drama and gossip involving those huge girl groups like T-ara and GIrls' Generation? There's no way these girls don't hate the guts out of each other, especially when only one or two actually have talent.

Girl's Day is only of the few K-pop groups I've seen that really gives the impression the girls are actually friends and having fun doing what they're doing.

All this talk about girls that can't sing did remind me of this newcomer group I did post about a while ago, She'z.

This is the song with which they debuted, which I already posted before.



This is the debut stage of their debut song.



If they aren't standing atop the charred remains of most other girls' groups before a year has gone by the world knows neither justice nor fairness.

They try their hardest to sell the image of all girls' bands and boys' band being a great Nakama where everyone understands each other and share meaningful moments that advance them as human beings. And that image is part of the product, so the fans do little to fight it or break it.

There are some bands, however, where the image does not hold. T-Ara being the main one, IMO. This is going to be long and require quite a lot of story.

Originally T-Ara was Hyomin, Eunjung, Jiyeon, and other two girls who trained together for about four years. They were selected and trained to make a very different style of pop music, too.

The two other girls left when the debut was close because of "creative differences", which probably involved the fact CCM was actually going to make them debut in a completely different subgenre of pop music, one they had no training on and whose voices were not able to sing comfortably.

CCM added three new girls to the group. One of them, Soyeon, was a quite talented singer, but the other two, Qri and Boram, were useless wastes of space with little training and no talent. Qri was chosen because she was pretty, and Boram wasn't even that. Her family had connections, instead.

Given the difference in skill and training the entire weight of pulling T-Ara forward fell on Hyomin, Eunjung, and Jiyeon. Their schedules became so brutal they were sleeping two hours a day, and some days not sleeping at all.

Did I mention most Korean Pop groups aren't paid per member but as a single entity. The group receives X amount of money, that is then divided in equal shares to all members.

With time Soyeon did raise to the challenge and became cool, but both Qri and Boram remained useless. They can't sing, they can't dance, they can't act, they aren't funny, they can't do variety, etc. They are basically dead weights... Who get a share of lines, camera, and jewgold.

Then CCM decided to add another girl under excuse of her being a focused raper, when the true intention was to reduce the average age of the group. Did I mention T-Ara had already two girls who could rap better than this one while still being useful for something else, and that T-Ara's song never had more than one or two rap lines anyway?

Given how useless the other members are the three, then four, main girls had to follow their schedules even when sick or badly hurt. I.E: Soyeon singing live in crutches, or Eunjung singing and dancing pumped full of painkillers because of horribly hurt leg that she actually broke soon afterwards. Then she was made to follow the schedule with a broken leg.

Then CCM decided to add two more girls to the group, one of which is like thirteen years old and has no training worthy of mention, to foster healthy competition between the girls or some shit like that.

Oh, and idol groups are made to live together. As in, the nine girls live in the same house and share bedrooms (I am guessing three girls per bedroom in the new house), instalations, and housekeeping duties.

You will not be surprised that I haven't seen a single T-Ara TV Show in which you couldn't quite easily perceive how very much were the girls just acting the big happy family while they were obviously uncomfortable around each other and tending to hang around their own cliques. When Hyomin, Jiyeon, and Eunjung are together in any combination they just "click" and have a lot of true chemistry, yet add Qri or Boram to that and it is so obvious they are all not working. Soyeon is a unique case in that she's kind of in the middle: Outside the big three, yet part of the big four.

Even better, T-Ara has gone to be so important as to be a serious contender for No.1 girls' group in Korea, the place currently being held by an already starting to decline SNSD. You can imagine how they feel by having two, then three, then five bloody parasites leeching on the brutal effort they put to get there after one of the most pathetic and shameful debuts in Kpop history.

And T-Ara is the only group that has an actual public feud with their CEO, which is somewhere between awful and amusing. The big three basically speak about how overworked they are, how they are basically slaves, how they have gone three years without a single free day to at least visit their families, etc, every time they have a chance. Then their CEO will appear somewhere else and talk shit about how they are all lazy prima donnas and he's going to kick them all if they don't learn discipline. Then Qri and Boram will start acting like desperate attention whores on twitter so that the fans remember they exist and their CEO can't just kick them both out the window.

Then they will try to act like a big happy family all over again, and speak of how much they love each other and how happy they are of having two more talentless bitches come to steal their camera, lines, and money.

Which is also why they sound so bad live. First, they have no chemistry. Second, they aren't singing the music they were picked and trained to sing. Third, the "big three" are constantly going from variety shows to acting to training to recording to live shows to reality tv to filming commercials to appearing in fan events to etc.

If you pay attention you will notice Jiyeon basically sleep-dancing while singing without a voice (and that's when she's not looking at the camera with that "I don't give a shit anymore, just fuck yourself and die" face of her), Eunjung falling asleep while filming TV spots, and the like. Is harder to spot in Hyomin because she's such a camera whore that whenever she notices a camera nearby she goes all I'M GENKI AND CUTE AND FUNNY AND DORKY PLEASE FILM ME!

If you are lucky you will find a case of one of the big four actually singing in a not half-assed manner once in a blue moon.

It's kind of sad being a T-Ara fan is actually stressful.

Whoa, that's a lot more drama than I've heard about. Reminds me of this K-movie about K-pop - it's a pretty entertaining watch if you know anything about the K-pop industry.

Thank you for the recomendation, Korean Horror + Idol Culture? Hell yeah. I'm watching the hell out of it.



And to exemplify what I just wrote I'll post this video. Watch it focusing on Jiyeon, but be informed you will feel like shit if you love T-Ara. Every time I fucking come across it I want to hug her, make her some tea, and send her somewhere pretty for a vacation.

At least Girl's Day record label (DreamTea), from what I've read aren't total sharks.

Looked happy enough to me.

In any case, are they bound by strict contracts? If not, why not go independent? Or is the market too tightly controlled by the record companies for that?

Pop music runs on hype and marketing, not talent.

I was talking only about Jiyeon, on that one. She's barely able to stand.

Yes, they are basicaly the company's property for as long as the contract lasts. The contracts are pretty brutal themselves, to the point many are actually illegal and only permisible because of the lobbying and corruption, though some idols manage to find a way to renegotiate or have it declared null.

That's why they are said to be on this for the popularity and being able to enter the entertainment industry with an advantage: Most get little money, are bound by extremely long contracts (thirteen years, in a couple of cases, though those were declared null), and are basically worked to the bone.

That song is Kpop's answer to bloody OPIUM. I got the CD and now I barely listen any other Kpop thing. I listen to it while working out, while going out for a walk, while playing MMOs, while drinking tea, while studying, while...

And it's all your fault.

MUAHAHAHAHAA! My cunning plan comes together!

Also, not sure if you posted this already but I think it's Hyuna on her sexiest/sluttiest:



Could that minidress be any shorter? Nice work from the choreographer, by the way, making moves for the girls that allow them to remain upright with those towering heels AND creating something for the boys that compliments the girls instead of just swirling around them.

hey guise I don't listen to the genre but I found this and thought of this thread

Final Fantasy Girls Generation, I assume? Looks like it only uses girls from playstation era, I don't recognize any of them.

Girl's Day Watch #23







Jihai...