K-Pop Nine: A New View on K-Entertainment

As much as I like to fake talk smack about them, I was genuinely looking forward to BTS’ new song DNA . I didn’t watch any of the teasers minus the one where Jungkook is whistling, but that was enough to give me some level of hype. “Wow,” I thought, “finally BTS are going back to doing fun songs. Finally, I’m not going to have to deal with bullshit theories.” “Finally,” I thought, “BTS can have legitimate fun performing a song without it being bogged down with feelings.” These are the things I thought, but man was I disappointed. It’s not like DNA is a bad song, per se. Hell, if a nugu rookie released this track I’d be talking about how great of a foundation they were making, how it sucks that a group with such a solid song was going to be ignored. So it’s not a bad song, it’s just not right for BTS. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think BTS needs to focus on their melodramatic songs, even if it’s what made them famous. In fact, I tend to prefer their lighter hea

It’s so hard to have a conversation with k-pop fans without the topic of YouTube views coming up. There are so many people in the varying subsets of this fandom who believe that YouTube views are the most important indicator of popularity. In some ways, yes, YouTube views can show that a song or group is popular. On the other, bigger hand, it’s complete and utter bullshit. Yes, that’s right; the hours you have spent refreshing YouTube to make sure your bias is getting the most views in 24 hours means relatively nothing. For the sake of transparency, when I’m talking about general popularity and success I’m not talking about worldwide popularity. I’m talking about domestic popularity in South Korea and international fans. International k-pop fans, of course, not being representative of the music tastes and sensibilities of their respective countries. If any k-pop fans are actually using the YouTube views of their favourite group to boast about true international popularity they