Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Kpop - My Guilty Pleasure


I had an ex flatmate, and at one time of her life, she was involved with a Korean guy, and then she just started to listen to anything Korean, and also watch more Korean show, from movies, dramas, to variety shows.

I remember my first reaction to her sudden change was, "what a girl would do for a guy... -_-"...

I was not a strange to Korean dramas at that time, I was actually one of the fans of Korean dramas. I find them more interesting, pretty-to-look-at, though much lesser make up than Taiwanese counterpart. But I was definitely not a fan of Kpop.

Especially when I found out that Korean music is mostly dominated by boy and girl groups, and usually only one or two of them are musically talented among bunch of other girls/boys who are there just to fill up the space on the stage/tv, dance, and most importantly, to look pretty. So you can practically sum up that I was not a fan at all of Kpop.

However, on a boring day at office, I killed time by watching some videos in Youtube, and I stumbled upon a video of 5 good looking Korean guys singing a ballad, and they were MAGNIFICENT!! I was totally floored by their performance, and they just got themselves a new fan!



Actually I had a little knowledge of this group prior to that video encounter, but I had always thought of them as one of the pretty boy groups with lack of talents. I even picked on their group name, DBSK a.k.a Dong Bang Shin Ki a.k.a The Gods Rising From The East... I thought that was the cheesiest name for a boyband (but the more I got myself involved deeper in Kpop, I realize how wrong I was - there are more groups with ridiculous names that anyone could ever think of, to name a few, Dalmatian, BTOB, SPICA, C-Real, Orange Caramel, etc).

Anyhoo, these so-called Gods of the East are indeed GOOD! not just "good" in a boyband kind of way, but they indeed have the talents. Of course few of them are more talented than the rest, but still, together their voices harmonize beautifully.

The sad thing is that I got to know them when they were on the verge of breaking up... sigh... talk about timing, huh?!?

And so long story short, now the Gods are separated into 2 different groups, named JYJ - the initial of the members' names and DBSK - yes, they keep the name though there are only 2 members now.

To be honest, I am always more into JYJ than DBSK Duo. I find that the 3 guys in JYJ are more musically talented, they have better voice, they compose their own songs, they practically own the music their producing since the split - unlike DBSK Duo which is still singing the songs that the company choose for them. Suffice to say, I appreciate singers that can actually sing and write their own music more than those who only sing (and dance). But I still listen to all of them, of course - I'm just easy like that...

Few days ago, one of JYJ members released a new music video of his solo project. His first solo album is to be released soon (if I'm not wrong). The title of his first single is Tarantallegra. If you think you ever heard that before, you might have. It's one of the spells in Harry Potter movie, which if my memory doesn't deceive me, was the spell Draco tried to cast on Harry once.

So out of curiousity, I youtube-d the video and my oh my, I was in utter shock!
Jun-su (that's his name) has changed completely from the cute and innocent image he used to have during the years with DBSK. Check it out yourself and be ready for a totally out-of-the-box kind of Kpop music video.


Is it wrong that I feel a little disturbed watching the scenes where Junsu is with orange-y hair? I got the lady-boy vibe from that scenes -_-'

Don't get me wrong, I love Jun-su dearly, and I certainly love this song, but it doesn't mean I love the whole music video when the scenes I really find disturbing to certain extent.

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