BigBang; Prudential Center, Newark, NJ, October 10, 2015

BIGBANG! Yes, I went to see BIGBANG this past weekend at the Prudential Center in New Jersey. And even in my nosebleed seats, the show was incredible.

I'm not sure where to start my discussion of BIGBANG. I've spent the last ten-plus years or so immersed in East Asian pop music and my feelings and opinions are colored by all of that. One angle overlooked by the professional music guys over here is that BIGBANG aren't just awesome but are an awesome Korean idol group-- with all the connotations that brings.

Although I've found that Japanese pop is much more my taste overall, I still love quite a bit of Korean pop music. The biggest difference between the two is that mainstream Japanese pop is targeted inwards, at Japan, with all the specific cultural oddities in taste that brings. Mainstream Japanese pop includes slick dance-pop like J Soul Brothers and artists with unique voices like Shiina Ringo, who also sometimes writes songs for the slick dance pop acts. There is a huge variety available in genre, tone, style, level of engagement with the audience. There is the hugely popular genre of anime theme songs, ani-songs, in which the stars are known primarily for their voices. Contrast that with hugely popular girl group AKB48, who sell records solely on the personalities of the girls. You have mainstream rock bands like Southern All Stars (still putting out popular, fantastic tracks like this year's single "Aloe") and promising new rock bands like Gesu No Kiwami Otome, who I went to see in concert while I was in Japan.

Japan has a ton of variety in its mainstream music but almost none of it is for export. Access to Japanese pop or even information about Japanese pop is exceedingly difficult if one neither Japanese or actually in Japan. That's not to say that there aren't groups that have an audience outside of Japan like Kyary Pamyu Pamyu or L'Arc-en-Ciel but their international audiences are almost beside the point.

But Korea is not Japan. It's a much, much smaller country than Japan with a burning need to prove itself on the global stage. Which means that Korean pop, unlike Japanese pop, actually is tailored for export. Korean pop has swooped into markets abandoned by Bollywood and left untended by the Japan culture industry. Southeast Asia, Russia, the Middle East, Latin America... Online access is easy. There are English subtitles, among other languages, for almost everything. And the style palate is aimed at a broad audience, based heavily in the sound of global R&B, it's much easier for non-Koreans to hook into 2PM than say, the specific culturalisms of a Japanese group like Johnny's WEST. (Emphasizing this doesn’t mean all Korean music is rooted in global R&B; just this export-driven market.)

But Korean pop has also swooped into the United States and other Western countries, without any help from our native culture industries. With the exception of PSY's "Gangnam Style", which was a novelty hit, one never hears Korean pop on the radio, never reads about it in magazines like Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly, except as a novelty act... and yet Korean acts tour worldwide to fairly large crowds. I have thoughts on why this is the case but to make a long story short, BIGBANG packed out the Prudential Center in New Jersey for two nights in row and yet could walk anonymously around Manhattan.

That's pretty fucking amazing.

BIGBANG, much, much more than other Korean pop groups, are a) mostly a hiphop group and b) kind of weird. They have two distinctive rappers in T.O.P. and G-Dragon. T.O.P. has an ear for the sound of words, apparent even to non-Korean speaking me. And G-Dragon has swag for miles. And then there's the angelic voice of Daesung--who is also really goofy--and the very solid talents in singing and dancing from Taeyang and Seungri... and that's one hell of a group.

What I wasn't expecting from BIGBANG was the lack of staginess and visual set pieces. Unlike their videos, the group used almost no stagecraft aside from a handful of backing dancers and some fantastic costumes like T.O.P.'s Piet Mondrian inspired suit. And their band was tight. It was really all about the music. Which was all in Korean but that didn't matter to the crowd. Sick beats reach across cultural boundaries, shaking booties worldwide.

I hope they tour the US again sometime soon. Chasing the G-Dragon is addictive.

ETA: I just found the NYT review and I think it's REALLY telling that the critic read T.O.P.'s manner as "disdainful" rather than uncomfortable, which is how I think most fans would see it. Considering T.O.P. is very uncomfortable in English/foreign languages--he was the only one who had trouble giving a little speech in English--and is known for his lack of ability to dance, I think the "disdainful" was more of a projection from the critic. A critic who also seems to be implying BIGBANG's reign at the top is at an end, which seems more than a little premature a prediction. If SMAP can last 30 years at the top, I don't see why BIGBANG can't.

(Originally posted October 13, 2015)

__________

I spent the last day or so trying to pick apart my BIGBANG experience, much like picking apart a ball of yarn tangled by my cat. I can't let it go. My librarian-brain needs to figure this thing out. I read over a handful of "professional" reviews of the concert and some other pieces and I keep returning to the same handful of threads. Americans have a limited tolerance for spectacle; at least 95% of "professional" arts critics are full of shit; what gets lost in translation when pop goes global; and BIGBANG is fucking awesome. (The last one is most important.)

The review at Jezebel really hammered home how differently people can view the same show. Where the Jezebel review saw an extravaganza of confetti and background dancers, I saw a subdued stage with only a handful of confetti cannon blasts and a minimum of required background dancers. It all depends on where you're coming from. When your baseline for pop act are the slackers of One Direction--who don't even dance--then twelve dancers seems like a lot. When your baseline is a Johnny's & Associates concert featuring sixty-plus backing dancers, many of whom have fans of their own, then twelve feels like the absolute minimum for a decent concert. When you've seen concerts that feature hundreds of multicolored balloons released into the air, water features, harness work, multiple moving stages, random sword fighting, skits involving cross-dressing and robots, and a record-breaking number of backflips in a row, then a couple of confetti cannons and some pyrotechnics feel subdued, rather than cra-zy pop stuff.

I also found it interesting how the lack of literal wings in Daesung's solo "Wings" this time was seen as "growth" by one critic.

Was the choice to not use the wings and flying again "growth" towards an American ideal of no stagecraft at concerts or a cost-saving measure? Again, it's all a matter of perspective.

But there is something rather fascinating about global K-Pop. The music is pure Michael Jackson international but the lyrics are all in Korean--except for in Japan, where the Korean groups will sing in Japanese. One has to wonder what is lost in export. Does one lose all meaning beyond "We like to party"? I suppose for some that is the whole point of pop culture, especially pop music: "We like to party." I think there is a lot to be gained digging deep into the music but I also think we need to keep in mind that K-pop, like American movies these days, is aimed at the export market. It's a global product.

As for BIGBANG, there is a reason they have really been the only K-pop act I've cared about beyond a handful of songs and it's because their music is fan-fucking-tastic, baby. What sets them apart is something I hadn't put much thought into before I saw them live. I'd just enjoyed the music. Sort of like the difference between enjoying a Bollywood hero on DVD and then seeing it live in the theater with the fan club. You get caught up in the excitement. Producer Teddy Park is certainly a huge part of their sound, as is the phenomenal G-Dragon. And the rapping of T.O.P. I listened to his "Doom Dada", built over a Bollywood-style beat, on repeat for ages yesterday trying to figure it out. The way he plays with texture and sound and tone. Alternating rising, falling intonation. Spitting words fast then slow to build tension. The layering of his voice to create a weird pipe organ effect. I dare One Direction to produce something as creative. Then we'll talk "boy band" v. "boy band." BIGBANG ain't no American style boy band. They're BIGBANG.

(Originally posted October 14, 2015)

___________

Note from the future: This was another fun one for me to re-read from my vantage point in 2020 having spent the last few years delving deep into picking apart some of these very questions. To give a little context to newer readers, I spent years as a casual consumer of K-pop, just enjoying songs as I found them without bothering to find out more about the groups beyond their discographies. I spoke about this in one of my episodes but just being in some of these early Asian drama communities on places like LiveJournal, you would see gossip and news and learn all of the major acts by osmosis. There was a lot more crossover between Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese fandoms before “K-pop subculture” with all it’s internal-looking rules and petty fights calcified in English-language spaces. I remember vividly when “Fantastic Baby” came out and how the song was absolutely everywhere. J-Pop fan; K-pop fan; it didn’t matter. You were saying, “Wow. Fantastic Baby.”

Here’s praying for a BigBang comeback in 2021 to bring back some of that excitement (and quality music) missing from K-pop spaces these last few years.