The Rizzness of K-Pop
The response to and by Asian pop culture to Western markets—America, more specifically—is something I’ve been thinking and writing about for many, many years. My old blog is now defunct but here’s a sampling:
The oldest piece (transferred over from the old blog) is from 2011. That’s over a decade of thinking about this to, honestly, not that much interest outside of my little circle. So, I genuinely didn’t expect such a huge response to my recent post hammering in once again on the same topic: “Just Pop, Hold the K.”
What that says to me is even if K-Pop has not quite reached a mainstream audience in America, the attempts to do so have been alienating the current fans of K-Pop and re-reading some of those older posts, some big questions remain unanswered:
1. What is the goal of this push into the American mainstream?
2. Is it worth the attempt, at the risk of tanking the entire “K-Pop” brand?
In the post “On Western Validation and English” I bring up one of my favorite Aamir Khan quotes where he’s discussing Lagaan being nominated for the Oscars and says:
“It gives a window of opportunity for your marketing. Because the film was nominated a whole lot of people in the world said, what’s this film that was nominated? Let’s watch it.”
For Aamir, the point of reaching Oscar was to get Lagaan in front of a bigger, global audience. He had a film he was proud of—rightly so, it’s excellent—and Oscar was one way to spread it beyond the traditional audiences. But Aamir didn’t alienate those traditional audiences in his quest; he was trying to add to them. Making something his fans at home would enjoy while also introducing the craft of Bollywood film to new audiences. And to that end there are some concessions to global tastes in Lagaan but it’s still very recognizably a Bollywood film.
One could also argue that Korean media like Parasite and Squid Game both accomplished something similar, balancing the line between global and domestic tastes while—here’s the important part—also being good.
That was also the direction K-Pop had been trending in the era I lamented in “Just Pop, Hold the K,” culminating in BigBang’s magnum opus, really the high water mark of what K-Pop can do as art: MADE. Almost a decade later we have Jungkook’s Golden as the polar opposite, the end product of a years-long attempt to completely sever the “K” from K-Pop and serve global audiences a product completely indistinguishable from what guys like Justin Timberlake or the Jonas Brothers can offer.
And I’m left asking, what’s the point? Why do we need a perfect pastiche of old Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake songs delivered direct from Seoul? We already have those guys and those songs. That’s not to say Golden is bad. In fact, Golden is quite listenable. Golden is a perfectly smooth, perfectly American, perfectly designed to fit into Spotify streaming algorithm “If you liked [choose one: Justins Bieber or Timberlake, Ed Sheeran, etc etc] you might like Golden” album.
Between the company and the fans, Golden sold a lot of copies and Jungkook did plenty of promotions in the United States but there’s no real excitement around it outside of BTS fan circles. Golden exists in a vacuum. It’s a pastiche of American Top 40 pop but because it was made halfway around the world there’s a bit of a jet lag quality to it. It’s an album just slightly out of sync with Current Year. It’s like we sent “Sorry” off into the ether and slinging back around the meridian is “Please Don’t Change.” Are we going to get a perfect pastiche of “Mr. Take Ya Bitch” in a couple of years? “Need a Favor”? Done in flawless English?
To really compete in the American marketplace, these companies need to be on the ground in America. And it looks like that is where the next step in the evolution in K-Pop is headed.
What I want to know is what they plan on selling to us. Can brand “K-Pop” even be rehabilitated at this point? Are they going to keep selling us the enshittification songs meant for mass streaming and charting, not for listening? Double down on photo card collectors? Keep trying for the perfect “golden” American pastiche? Or will we pick up where BigBang et. al. left us a decade ago, quality forward-looking (K-)Pop lightly packaged (like Lagaan) for global audiences? Will there still be an audience for Brand K-Pop if they do?
I’ve been called a “bitter second gen stan” and you’re welcome to continue thinking of me like that but I do like plenty of new music and new acts… just a lot less from Korea than in years past. While I admit a fondness for the songs of the Second Gen Era of K-Pop, it’s not like I’m sitting around in my bedroom listening to vintage f(x) and Block B and crying. It’s just that most of my favorite songs from Current Year were not K-Pop.
(One of my big time favorites from this year is from Kazakhstan: Kalifarniya “Oi barekeldi”)
I was looking back at what I did really, really like from K-Pop this year and while there were a handful of K-Pop songs here and there I enjoyed, the only songs that have lasted have been high quality albums from SHINee and EXO plus a late addition that seems promising: a country-music flavored MCND (who you should check out if you don’t know them).
WITH ONE BIG EXCEPTION.
LEE TAEMIN! Look at the control he has over that audience.
If there is one idol who is holding the torch right now of that forward-thinking, boundary-pushing, just all around incredible K-Pop with a heavy emphasis on the K, it’s Taemin.
I’ll save my gushing for a separate post but the entire Guilty EP is phenomenal (JUST LISTEN TO THOSE RUNS IN “NIGHT AWAY”), as was the MV for the title track and the whole accompanying promotional rollout. “The Rizzness,” in particular, has really caught me and refuses to let go. It’s by far and away my favorite song of the year from any genre.
If the entire project to bring K-Pop to America results in nothing more than introducing Taemin to mainstream pop audiences here, I’d be satisfied. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the direction these companies want to go in and I suspect we’ll see something very similar to what domestic boy and girl groups like Citizen Queen, Boys World, and Crossing Rain are already doing, except with a very strong marketing push tied to Brand K-Pop. Is that progress? Sure, okay. Will I be tuning in? Honestly, probably not. I’m way more likely to be listening to this over here in my little bubble. And maybe that’s okay. If Brand K-Pop doesn’t need listeners like me, we certainly have other options—countries from Kazakhstan to Japan to Thailand and the Philippines are putting out good idol music—but will Brand K-Pop find that new audience it wants? And will it be able to keep it? Only time will tell.