Essay --

K-pop, also known as Korean Pop Music, is a musical genre containing electronic, hip hop, pop, rock and R&B music originating from South Korea. K-pop started in the early 1990s and grew from a musical genre into a subculture among teenagers and adults throughout East and Southeast Asia in the late 2000s. In 1957, American music started influencing Korean Music which led to many comparing the two genres together. Ever since Korean artist Psy has taken the world by storm with his single "Gangnam Style", K-pop is becoming more globally recognized. Many people are new to the genre K-pop and try to compare it to American pop music. Although there are some similarities, there are major differences between the two. K-pop is often critique for misusing English words in its lyrics and having meaningless song titles. Many k-pop songs have simple and repetitive lyrics that make little to no grammatical sense. K-pop also throws in a lot of English phrases into their songs and sometimes it is misused causing parts of the song to not make sense. My interviewee, Tina, played a few k-pop songs that had English phrases in it that didn’t make much sense. One of the songs was â€Å"Mama† by Exo. There was a phrase in the song that went â€Å"Careless, careless. Shoot anonymous, anonymous. Heartless, mindless. No one. Who care about me?† and I had no idea what this meant. When I first listened to it, I thought it was silly and random but the next day after the interview, I found myself singing the lyrics to the song. Tina was telling me this is the power of k-pop. Even though the lyrics and English phrases don’t make sense, the beat is catchy enough to make you sing along to it. â€Å"Another song I didn’t like when I first listened to was Bar Bar Bar by Crayon Po... .... The song â€Å"Swagger Jagger† is about somebody who steals somebody else’s style. I found the lyrics kind of full of herself and very self-centered because she think people are stealing her style and declaring hate on them. While Crayon Pop’s song was about inspiring people to have fun. The lyrics to â€Å"Swagger Jagger† were somewhat sending a message to all her haters who stole her unique style I don’t think this song sends a good message because it’s essentially telling people it’s alright to hate. There was no real choreography during the entire concert. She just walked back and forth around the stage. There were times when she would start jumping to get the crowd hyped up and shook people’s hand but there was no real dancing throughout the concert. I was not into the performances as much as I was with Crayon Pop. The music was good but it wasn’t as fun and enjoyable.