(originally posted on April 6, 2010)
Black concept in recent k-pop girlgroups
It’s only a colour, which has the advantage of going really well with bold concepts. It’s not new, Fin.K.L’s “Now” comes to mind inmediately. So what does 2010 kpop girlgroups bring to the table?
So Nyuh Shi Dae is pulling off the “sassy” theme. To me, their overall concept is written right there in their name, so nyuh. I think that every concept SM gives to them is an stereotype of girls/woman. It’s a whole theme to explore, and I’m sure they won’t run out of concepts in a while. This time, they’ve went through quite a change. Oh! is a cheery song, and including “oppa, I love you” in the lyrics means it’s written in femenine language, ie. it would sound weird if a guy was singing it. Of course, that kind of language (not exact lyrics) can be found in nearly all of their lyrics.
Run Devil Run’ image is totally different from Oh!. They sing about how they don’t need a guy that cheats on girls. I think the feeling of the song can be found in the dance and singing, their outfits colour is a plus to me. The dance has attitude and is not so simple. To me, creating a dance of that kind is a work of art. It’s known that the choreographer of the dance is Lisette Bustamante, so congrats to her for creating a dance like that one :) So Nyuh Shi Dae members have said the song is for “unnies” (girls older than them), and I agree with them. Some people have said the song has “SM social lyrics” (not really SOCIAL, but more like… more social than the standard pop lyrics). I agree with that in the sense that it’s not really common in current mainstream k-pop lyrics where they girl disses the guy. About the black colour, like I said, it’s a plus for me. It creates a certain kind of effect. It would create another effect if the girls were dressed in say, pink clothes.
I find T-ara’ Crazy because of you not so original, but still really catchy. I think it’s very similar to Son Dambi’s Crazy and Brown Eyed Girls’ Abracadabra, except with a more catchy dance, and more autotune :P Not that autotune is bad, I just don’t like it all the time. I think it works better with certain kind of songs. Anyways, I think T-ara is a bit like a younger version of Jewelry. Some of the dance moves of both groups are very addictive. I’d like to see more non-autotuned vocals in T-ara’s songs, I really how they sound in Good Person (from their first album). Perhaps the girls aren’t quite ready to sing live for a title track promotion? If that’s the case, that’s understable, they’re still a new group.
I think KARA’s Lupin image is kind of old school. In that sense, it’s a bit different from So Nyuh Shi Dae’ Run Devil Run futuristic image. Some have said it’s almost like an unisex image. I sort of think so. The girls do a lot of leg moves, and the outfits don’t reveal a lot of skin, at least not at first sight. As usual with current k-pop, it has a hook dance move, the “running to the door” one. It’s really fun to do. KARA seems to be following the maturing so nyuh theme too, but differently from SNSD. For one, KARA features rap in many of their songs, SNSD does not. I’d like to think that contributes (or not) to the quality of their songs, depending of the song. I especially liked Nicole’s “two oh one oh” here. I’m very satisfied with Lupin, moreso because I can’t remember the last time where the first title song from a DSP release has been succesful, usually they do wrong choices regarding their title songs.
