But the wave didn’t stop there. As with Korean movies and TV shows, its music kept finding new fans. In the old days, you had to convince radio programmers or music television executives to play your music if you wanted people to discover your group. Not in the Internet age. Thanks to YouTube and other online services, fans were able to find anything they wanted and could spread the word. And the word kept spreading. If you are reading this book now, it’s probably because the word spread to you as well.
Today, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment are commonly called the “big three” music labels (with Cube, which was founded by a former JYP president, often considered a strong fourth). Each has a pretty distinct style of music and way of doing business. SM is easily the biggest company and concentrates on more bubbly, younger pop. Having consistently produced many of the biggest groups in K-pop for nearly two decades, it can be argued that SM is the industry leader and most aware of what the fans want. Except that SM might argue it doesn’t produce K-pop. It produces SM-pop—a style of its very own.
FANS HANGING OUT AT CUBE STUDIO
JYP ENTERTAINMENT
2PM
YG ENTERTAINMENT
JYP Entertainment has a more R&B flavor and is strongly influenced by its founder, JY Park (Park Jin-young). Park is the main songwriter for his company’s groups and the creative force. His mottos of leadership, humility and responsibility hang prominently on the walls of the JYP headquarters. He also has a long history of success, having been a big solo artist himself for many years and having worked with many of Korea’s top stars. JYP used to be home to Rain, one of the biggest K-pop stars of the last decade, and his group Wonder Girls were the first K-pop group to land on the Billboard charts.
YG Entertainment was founded by Yang Hyun-suk after Seo Taiji and the Boys broke up. From the beginning, YG featured hip-hop and favored attitude over the usual K-pop cuteness. But since YG struck gold with the idol groups Big Bang and 2NE1, it has pushed swag and flair to ever greater heights. YG is also home to a little solo artist by the name of Psy; maybe you’ve heard of him.
But there are dozens of smaller labels, too, all following roughly the same formula: recruit potential stars young, then train, train, train them incredibly hard, and put together the most promising recruits in a multi-member (and nearly always unisex) band. Almost everything is done in-house, from production to publicity.
BIG BANG
15&
So that is some history and background about K-pop. But it still leaves the core question unanswered: What is K-pop? There are very few signs of traditional Korean pentatonic music in it, or of Korean traditional instruments. Increasingly, top K-pop labels buy music from international producers (and some K-pop songwriters write for Western acts, too). Detractors, even Korean ones, often accuse K-pop of not being Korean at all. But if you listen to it seriously, there is definitely something different about K-pop that stands out.
It has certainly changed a great deal from the days of Seo Taiji and H.O.T. Tinny New Jack Swing is long gone, replaced with much more of an electronic dance sound, even dub step on some songs these days, most notably on CL’s “The Baddest Female.” There are still a few tinges of trot here and there, but much less than there once was. A popular trend at the moment is to create songs that almost sound like mash-ups of three or four different songs stuck together at random. Although this mishmash sounds weird to many ears, it’s a hyperactive style that has long been popular in Korean discos, where you often get just minute segments of a song before the deejay quickly moves on to something else. Apparently, even pop songs are not fast enough for the high-speed pace of young Korean people today.
FANS GATHER TO GLIMPSE THEIR IDOLS
Perhaps one of the most defining parts of K-pop is simply the language. Korean is a snappy, popping language, full of densely packed, tight syllables. In many ways, it is already halfway to hip-hop. Writing melodies for the Korean language forces the songs to reflect the language, often with more syllables in a line than you’d hear in other languages. And since dance and live performances are such an important part of K-pop, songs are also written with their choreography in mind. The things K-pop sings about are different, too. There is much less storytelling than in Western music and more of a focus on describing a feeling or metaphor. While there is plenty of longing and suggestion, K-pop is usually much less graphic and sexual than Western pop (well, except for JY Park).
Perhaps most importantly, K-pop is overwhelmingly genuine. It is not a music of cynicism. When a singer loves, he loves completely. When he misses his love, it is a deep, soul-crushing ache. And most of the time, it’s just fun. Sure, it can seem a little silly, even childish, but plenty of people appreciate the opportunity to forget about being cool and have a little fun.
If you have dreams of becoming a star yourself, there is good news as K-pop has gone global, and so has the search for new talent. And with new stars like 2PM’s Thai-American Nichkhun, Miss A’s Fei and Jia and SM Entertainment’s large and growing line-up of ethnic Chinese stars, K-pop is more open to the world than ever. Even non-Asians are increasingly getting chances at stardom now, with girl group The Gloss featuring Olivia, a French woman, and Nicole Curry appearing on the audition program Kpop Stars 2.
2PM
However, it’s still an incredibly tough slog. There are untold thousands, even tens of thousands, of young people fighting with all they’ve got to secure one of the few precious slots that open each year in Korea’s leading music labels to become a young trainee. Of the few that make it, fewer will actually get a shot, and fewer still will make it to the big time. Between that audition and becoming a star, a trainee is in for years of brutally tough training. Not to mention that they had better learn Korean fast and well.
Step one, of course, is the audition. These days, all the big music labels in K-pop recognize the importance of finding stars, so there are more opportunities than ever to try out for a precious slot. Many, like YG Entertainment, accept online applications any time, inviting the most promising young people to live auditions several times a year. The big labels typically have one or two auditions in the United States each year, and another in Japan, and auditions in Canada, Australia, China and other parts of the world are growing more common, but of course there are more chances in Korea.
What are the music producers and labels looking for? It’s more than just a great voice. It’s more than just dance moves. It’s more than just a pretty face. Everyone is hungry to find stars—that magical but oh so elusive charisma that inspires fans. And you had better be pretty young. It takes years to create a K-pop star, more than four on average, so the window of opportunity is fairly small.
BROWN
