K-Poppin

A few days ago I was watching a local music channel. The program was a top 20 countdown show and shows the 20-2 recap and I noticed a lot of them were foreign and non-English songs. Then they show the number one song for the week voted locally by a lot of fans, behold,  another non-English song performed by a K-Pop group.

K-Pop, or Korean pop is a music genre, just like in the 80s say, where boys and girls look the same. They are popular, probably in their prime. I think the K-Pop and obsession with everything Korean began during the height of Meteor Garden, those F4 guys and that 5566 group, so on and so forth.

The only thing I don’t understand is why the K-Pop is so darn popular. They sound catchy and danceable but 95% of the lyrics is in their native language which obviously a lot of us cannot understand. I think the only words that you can understand are love, heart and more love. Its like the boyband invasion of late 90s all over again, but this time, we cannot understand them.

Then we got a chunk of scary fans, their own fantards, remember not all of them, just a chunk of them, probably more than 50%. They dress like them, wearing fur and other bondage looking outfits, singing their favorite K-Pop songs even they have really no idea what the lyrics were. They might saying bad words about you or something they will eat you while you are sleeping  and you still don’t grasp it because the music sounds good.

Locally, some music executive cashes in with the K-Pop popularity and invents what he or she calls P-Pop, or Pinoy Pop. Hoping to fork more cash by emulating what does a lot of K-Pop does but the advantage is they are local countrymen and we can understand their lyrics. Covered with ridiculous amount of make up that makes Death from Bill and Ted cry in envy and make them look more oriental as possible, with a little hint of  skin retouching here and there. Alas, we got a localized K-Pop known as P-Pop but sounds like K-Pop but we can understand the lyrics which consists of love, heart and more love because they are P-Pop. I think the P-Pop approach failed horribly because I only saw one P-Pop group and already disappeared in obscurity.

Admittedly, the main background music of the most K-Pop songs are good. I actually wish that they remove all the non-English singing parts of the song and just keep the background music, especially the one that sounds like a slow pace electronica music. Even that over abused Nobody song from the Wondergirls, if you managed to ditch all the singing part, will sound better I guarantee you that. The musicians behind the main music do a better job than the real singers.

In the end one of the things that bothered me is sometimes, with all their manufactured glory, I can’t tell if the singers are male or female. I am not an all the way against K-Pop and other similar counterparts, but come on, there are other musicians that are good, looks decent and does not look like slapped together by a fat music executive.

Yup, its different strokes for different folks so I have no right to preach them but I can tell that in few months or even years time, they will say “Oh man, K-Pop sucks, I never knew there are other musicians out there that are good… and whats this? I can understand the lyrics? all those wasted years….ALL THOSE WASTED YEARS!!”

Post of Rage 2

Welcome to the new edition of Post of Rage, my very own complementary complain topic of some things I want to hit with a baseball bat hard, not literally, but in written form.

Popular K, J, C-Pop acts with absolutely not understandable lyrics
They are popular among teens who loves to dress like their foreign idols, wearing fur and huge jackets in a tropical country where El-Niño is currentlly laying a smackdown.  They sing, dance and embrace their culture even if they have no absolutely idea what they are singing.

Creation of P-Pop genre
Following the footsteps of Korean, Chinese, Japanese and other asian Pop that involves music that makes cat jump in happiness, some local music industry executive has audacity to create what they called as P-Pop or Pinoy Pop. It introduced some refreshing but manufactured talents that sounds like their foreign counterpart, but this time we can understand them because its PINOY. They are covered with tons of make-up, making them as more oriental looking as possible and forced to wear colorful and heavy clothes that would be probably get themselves in trouble on some parts of Manila, Wait, P-Pop? pinoy pop? they call this the Pinoy Pop? so how about all the other Philippine Pop artists that emerged from the 80s up to 2000s? they are not Pinoy pop artists? oh I forgot, the majority of Pinoy Pop artists are labeled as Original Philippine Music… artists, my bad.

Not using proper lighting on live TV shows
You can’t see crap on this shows, because the floor person does not know how to set up stage lights properly. One of the most obvious factors to a presentation, like a TV show, is that the audience and the target market, should see clearly on what you present. In a local variety show here, the technical stuff has insane fetish of using sub standard and not so bright lights. If you see them on TV they look like being lit by a flash light.

Useless news
Do we care if a dog knows how to use a surf board? backwards? Do I care if a certain celebrity gained weight? I need real news that has sense and in some way useful with our daily lives. Real news meant to inform, not blast with craps that should be shown in early morning shows.

Horrible hosts in big shows
Never, ever place bad hosts in big shows that sounds monotonous, by the book and does not know how to ad-libbed in certain situations. They may have the good looks and charisma but you should know how to entice the audience and deliver an impact while hosting, especially the with big shows and events. Sadly, this horrible hosts still get paid handsomely even if their performances is worse than watching Plan 9 from Outer Space… yup, a very old but considered the worst film of all time.. of all time.

I let off some steam, but I hope the following were treated with proper head butting because it is for the benefit of all mankind.