The K-Pop Boom

I don't have any Korean friends but in my circle of friends, I can honestly say they can easily name a lot of the currently big K-Pop acts but would struggle to figure out what the most popular artists are on the Australian charts.  Most people tend to think Psy when K-Pop is first mentioned but it goes well, well beyond Psy, it's an interesting world of why K-Pop is proving to become a global sensation.

Having listened to K-Pop, I think there's a few things that strike me and I think it's how clean and pure it is.  I've honestly felt for a while that American pop is way, way too overtly sexual, yes, sex does sell but we're at the point where certain videos that appear on Sunday mornings could pass off as softcore porn videos.  Pop music is getting serious, it's getting darker, Korean's are bringing back it back to the 90's where pop was more fun, when we had boy bands and girl bands but more importantly it's incredibly and slickly produced, it's done so well that it's up there with the likes of Pacific Rim and Avatar for stores like Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi using K-Pop video clips for showing off their TV's being a common occurance.

The pop is near perfectly manufactured, thousands of people apply every year to make it to become the next big thing, the sets are slick, shiny and near perfectly manufactured, glamorous, beautiful, K-Pop videos are an incredibly expensive process, with impressively slick choreography.  Everything all comes together beautifully, in comparison to the American ideal of having a focus on a single superstar and everything being a blur or irrelevant around it.

The West still has felt somewhat embarassed about boy bands and girl bands and have felt that they're passe, that the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys should be left dead and buried back then.  Korea has brought the concept back with a glorious modern twist which is seeing a huge growth and popularity around the world and I don't just mean PSY, K-Pop concerts in Australia have been big business and it's not just the Korean population of Australia who are excited.  PopAsia, an SBS show dedicated to Asian music has been growing at a fast rate and it has mostly been highly interested in the consumption of K-Pop.

From a personal point of view, we had a Japanese, anime and gaming night and at the first show in 2011, when K-Pop was slowly becoming a thing, I was completely oblivious to the idea of K-Pop but I was a bit desperate for DJ's and decided why the hell not, give something for everyone.  At virtually all our shows K-Pop has been one of the biggest genres that people have gotten excited about, oh and in 2012, oh boy, Gangnam Style was a hit at our events well before it was spreading like wildfire and even led to me shortly doing a K-Pop club in Adelaide.