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

Listen, I never promised consistency in posting.  I hope everyone had a good New Year's celebration. I drank a shit ton of wine, ate lobster, and smoked just the tiniest bit of weed while getting rejected by men on online dating sites. Here's hoping that in 2019 I can actually keep up with writing this blog.  20. To Heart - fromis_9 While the way I wrote about Glass Shoes  made it seem like that track was fromis_9's debut, they really didn't debut until January 2018 with To Heart . The track, for the most part, just sounds like a stereotypical APink-knockoff that wouldn't really turn heads. And it really didn't, considering that the song itself didn't have a lot of success. Now I like this song for a few reasons. Firstly, there's a real string section! You can hear real violins! It's fantastic. It's even lampshaded in the video itself with Gyuri playing the song on her violin. It's absolutely fantastic and sets the mood for the e...

Oh my god I don't even know where to begin with this song. fromis_9 have just come back with their new song "Love Bomb" and it's a hell of a treat. If you haven't had a chance to listen to it, I highly recommend that you do so now. "Love Bomb" represents a new chapter for fromis_9. They've just come off of a successful run with "DKDK", with Nagyung taking centre stage. Like, seriously, her beauty took everyone away it was glorious. At the same time, Gyuri had entered Produce 48  as a Stone Music Entertainment trainee, a ballsy move since she was on a MNet survival show less than a year ago. She's promoting with fromis_9 so clearly she didn't win, but she brought in a lot of attention to the group. Which leads us to "Love Bomb". fromis_9's previous three singles have all very safely fallen into the cute category. "Glass Shoes" showed promise, "To Heart" was safe but melodious, while ...

So I never did get around to reviewing ‘Idol School’ because I have this thing called a life so I barely have any time for anything anymore, but I’ve been keeping up with the final group a bit. The top 9 girls from the show formed fromis_9, which may be one of the stupidest group names I’ve heard in a while but sure let’s go with it. They haven’t officially debuted yet, but they did just release their pre-release track ‘Glass Shoes’, and, well, it’s something. The aesthetic is what I expected from the group even before the teasers were released. ‘Idol School’ was a not-so-subtle nod to stereotypical j-pop girl group style, so I expected a school girl vibe. And, yeah, that’s the style. There’s not much to say about the music video besides that. The girls look cute; the styling is predictable. I will say that they fucked Saerom up with this hair style though. She was one of the memorable beauties of ‘Idol School’ and they went and messed her up. There’s not...