Tens of millions of us now reside within the cloud of the Okay-pop eruption, with bubble-gummy, hi-hat-filled bands together with BTS and Blackpink recurrently hitting the highest of the charts.
Fewer Individuals know that Okay-pop is only one musical style amongst many in a rustic bursting with sounds — trot, indie rock and rap, to call a number of. Any one in all them might be the following up within the “Hallyu,” or “Korean Wave” that periodically washes throughout continents, to combine metaphors.
Final month, legions of Korean music followers have been buzzing with pleasure over a seemingly obscure information launch: Billboard, the music-industry bible that publishes world lists of the highest hits, will now rely streams from one of the crucial standard music apps in South Korea, Melon.
Whereas Melon has solely a fraction of the lots of of thousands and thousands of customers of Spotify, Apple Music and different apps that dominate Billboard’s charts, it’s a significantly better holistic illustration of the music panorama in South Korea. Some {industry} watchers see the deal as an indication that the peninsula’s tectonic plates is perhaps shifting once more.
“I feel Billboard merging with Melon goes to essentially open up the probabilities for different Okay-pop teams in addition to different genres of Korean standard music, like trot, ballads, or indie pop to be extra uncovered within the U.S.,” stated Jung-min Mina Lee, a Duke College professor who research Korean standard music.
Are you prepared for the following massive sound? Right here’s a information to the lesser-known aspect of the Korean music scene, whereas we wait for an additional eruption.
Let Lim Younger Woong introduce you to trot
If all about Korean music is Okay-pop, it is best to get conversant in trot. It originated through the Japanese occupation of Korea within the 20th century, and combines conventional storytelling strategies with Western pop and folks sensibilities. Trot usually tells emotional tales in a lot the identical means that American nation or folks may. It tends to be fairly heavy on acoustic and electrical guitar accompanied by a jaunty drumbeat, as exemplified by Lim Younger Woong’s music “Rainbow.”
Lim, 32, has dominated Korean charts since profitable the singing competitors present “Mr. Trot” in 2020. As of mid-July, he has 15 songs in Melon’s top-100 chart — most of them greater than a 12 months previous. His most up-to-date single, “Grain of Sand,” has remained within the prime 5 on the Melon charts since its launch in early June. It’s frequent for his followers, a lot of whom are middle-aged girls, to combine with youthful Okay-pop followers at annual Korean award exhibits.
Get into ballads with Lee Mujin
Lee Mujin, 22, makes a speciality of pop and ballads, downtempo tracks bursting with emotional lyrics and punctuated with belted excessive notes, good for karaoke. “Room No. 8,” from his 2022 EP “Room Vol. 1” exemplifies this: mellow, wealthy and complimented by clear vocals and sparse manufacturing.
Younha: Spanning 20 years of Okay-indie
Nicknamed “Oricon Comet” for her success on the Japanese chart Oricon, singer-songwriter Younha, 35, started her profession with immense reputation overseas. She has been a mainstay in Okay-indie and rock in her dwelling nation since her debut within the mid-2000s.
Her 2007 hit “Password 486” evokes the sound of the mid-2000s in a storm of pop-punk-styled grainy electrical guitar and lyrics a couple of secret love sung in a strong chest voice. Extra just lately, her 2022 music “Occasion Horizon,” which is considerably slower and gentler in manufacturing, has held a constant spot on the Melon charts since its launch.
Okay-rap. You realize you wish to hear it.
Born out of Black American communities, conventional African storytelling, Caribbean music and work songs from the interval of enslavement, rap made its means into the Korean music scene within the 1990s, shortly after the American music {industry} started its hip-hop feeding frenzy. With the assistance of a still-new web and a globalizing financial system, acts corresponding to Jay Park and Search engine marketing Taiji and the Boys mixed American rap with Korean devices and lyrics that mirrored their very own lives.
By 2021, Koreans have been watching Season 10 of the beloved rap-battle program “Present Me The Cash,” which is the place the musician BE’O rose to fame.
After his look on the present, BE’O spent 2022 awash in a sea of awards for his melodic rap hit “Counting Stars,” that includes the Okay-rapper Beenzino. He oscillates between rock-inspired singing, corresponding to on “Love Me,” and syncopated rap-singing over old-school hip-hop beats, as on “Rope (Feat. Kwon Jin Ah).” He additionally steadily collaborates with Okay-pop stars together with Seulgi of the woman group Purple Velvet, fellow rapper Zico and the soloist Sunmi. He appeared on the Melon charts with Zico on the music “Complicated” in 2022, and most just lately, featured on “Summer time” with the Korean Canadian rapper Paul Blanco.
Fall in love with Okay-rock with Jannabi
Followers of American indie rock may really feel at dwelling with “For Lovers Who Hesitate,” a string-laden sluggish jam from the soft-rock band Jannabi that has appeared on the Korean charts since 2019, when it got here out on their breakthrough sophomore album, “Legend.” The band’s gauzy melodies usually lean on mild guitar and piano to accent lead singer Choi Jonghoon’s earnest, ethereal vocals.
Jannabi means monkey in Previous Korean — a reputation chosen as a result of the unique members have been all born within the 12 months of the monkey, 1992, though the roster has modified over time. You possibly can see 5 little monkeys within the opening shot of the music video for “For Lovers Who Hesitate,” a couple of man who falls in love with a postal employee.
Let’s cram one other metaphor into this text: a petri dish. Any vibrant artwork scene goes to function style mixing, and Zia exemplifies that.
A veteran within the Korean music {industry}, she debuted in 2007 with the shiny, twinkling EP “Voice of Heaven” and has experimented in a number of Korean genres, together with trot, pop and ballads. She has gravitated extra towards ballads in recent times, particularly after profitable awards for her singing in that type. She has launched three singles in 2023 which might be charting on Melon.
She incorporates conventional Korean vocal methods into her songs, such because the distinctive vocal vibrato she makes use of in her 2023 piano ballad “Love. What’s it,” which climaxes with an electrical guitar rendition of Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.”
This text has been up to date.