A
quick browse through YouTube with the search term “k-pop” yielded an explosion
of modern beats, bizarre fashion, and elaborate dance choreographies by waves
of Korean pop star groups. Through my brief exposure to this strikingly popular
music genre with each song having well over half a million views, I have got to
admit that these k-pop songs are extremely catchy and entertaining at first. But after
watching just a handful of some the latest songs by famous groups such as SNSD
and 2NE1, I feel as if I had already grown bored of the genre in a matter of
minutes and I was left with a feeling of emptiness—that is, the lack of substance.
When
I think about music, I will usually associate it with the talented vocals of
the musician and the lyrics of the song, which it is through the song’s
ability to evoke an emotional response in me that attracts me to them. With
k-pop songs, my attention was quickly aroused by the genre’s crazy fashion
styles and intricate choreographies found within its music videos. However, as
I listened to more and more songs, I was not able to develop any emotional
attachment to them whatsoever. This is not simply because I do not
understand the Korean lyrics, but even with the marvels of Google Translate, I
honestly could not see anything special about each song. For example, during my
surf on YouTube at some of the latest songs released by an artist called
G-Dragon, I noticed that they all sounded incredibly similar to other big names
such as BIGBANG and TVXQ. Namely, the use of generic melodies, meaningless
lyrics, and simplistic beats that shuffles from electronic dance segments, to
rhythm and blues fragments, and rap sections, all within the same song. This
movement of amalgamating different types of songs together into one common
genre is purely so that the genre itself can appeal to a growing international
audience in places such as the United States, Europe, and other Asian markets. According
to The Huffington Post, k-pop is
becoming one of South Korea’s biggest exports. In 2012, the industry generated
over 235 million US dollars and more than 7 billion views on YouTube. Thus, it
becomes apparent that the music industry plays a vital role in boosting the fast-growing
Korean economy. With so much economic potential, it is not surprising to see
record labels becoming increasingly desperate for listeners at the expense of
the quality of the songs. As a result, what happens is that the entirety of
Korean music industry becomes plagued by an abundance of unoriginal and
mass-marketed music to the extent that its own style that made it appealing to begin with becomes meaningless and
bland.
I
find this is not just a big problem that is only prevalent in Korean popular
music, but also, in western popular music. Mainstream music today is becoming
increasingly less and less about the meaning of the songs, and instead, more
and more about the profit. Today’s record labels are so focused on making money
that they do not care whether they are producing garbage music or not, they
just want to make sure people become hooked onto their music like an addictive
drug. Through the overplaying of songs on social media and radio stations, we are
being brainwashed into liking popular music for no particular reasons at all.
In a recent study by Dr. Carlos Silva Pereira at the University of Porto, it
was discovered that the emotional and reward centers of our brains are more
active when we hear songs that we have heard before. This means, if a song
is played enough times, over time, people will start to like it. Applying this
study to today’s mainstream music, I can see why producers are losing the
incentive to compose music that is creative and original because there is no
longer the need to do so. All they have to do is just constantly bombard their
audiences with same songs or even mass marketing an entire cultural style as
seen in the Korean music industry in order to gain listeners and fans. Ultimately, the giant record labels have so
much control in what we listen to, we have no clue why we like the music we
listen to anymore. As a result, no longer are we able to enjoy music the way we
use to as music loses its ability to move our souls and to evoke a sense of
connection to our invaluable experiences in life.
I
will end this post with a less serious tone by sharing a k-pop song that I find
really catchy, hilarious, and of course, random!
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