Shownotes Transcript
Hi, Oliver. Hi, Emma.
Hi, welcome back. I always feel weird saying welcome back since you're actually technically here all the time. But welcome back to being a speaking voice on the podcast. Thank you. Time for some more sexy history of the world and the things in it. And you were here the last time that Gina was away. That's true. And talked about Austrian history. But now you're actually going to talk about something that is like your expertise in
Well, tangentially. To your tangential expertise. Yes. Well, I mean, the question is, what's the history of popular music and how did it contribute to the K-pop craze? True. So we're doing part two first. Yeah. And we're going to talk about K-pop and where it comes from and whatever you're going to talk about. And then next time we're going to talk about popular music as a concept. But it's all going to be part of the same thing.
Because poppy music as a concept is, would you believe it, quite broad. Yes, which I, this is one of those things where you wouldn't really think about it necessarily. But because I think as I said to you, my first thought is just like, oh, okay, well, I mean, what year does the chart start? But obviously it's a much broader, broader than that. Yeah.
So, yeah. So we're going to do part two first and then the broader stuff as a second part of this episode. So it's all going to be...
Yeah, when you finished researching it. So I basically got my cup of coffee and I'm ready to listen to some music and going to let you tell me about it, basically. Yeah. During the episode, I'll send some videos and stuff to Emma and she can listen to them and say, wow, that's crazy or whatever Emma would say about this sort of thing. I don't know. That wasn't a very good imitation of Emma's voice. Yeah.
And then we'll put the videos themselves in the show notes and you can look at them and go, wow, that's crazy in your own way. So until shortly after World War, immediately after World War II, Korea was occupied by Japan and had been for a while since the mid 19th century, I think. And then
Once Korea is liberated, it immediately splits into two. You have the Jucheist North and the American-aligned South. The Juche North led by the Kim family, specifically. And then you have a big old civil war, which then turns into the Korean War, during which something like...
80% of the buildings in Korea are destroyed. Fucking hell. Most of the major cities are flattened completely, which is why Pyongyang and Seoul look the way they do. It's because most of the old buildings were destroyed completely.
In the middle of the 20th century? Yes, because it's very much an aerial bombardment war, isn't it? Exactly. The US drops... A lot of missiles and dropping bombs on people. I think it's something like 10 times more bombs dropped by the US in Korea than in World War II. And Korea doesn't last as long as World War II and is in a much smaller area. So very much... And Korea is not that huge. It's not very big, yeah.
So the Korea War is suspended in 1953. It hasn't technically ended because they haven't signed a peace treaty. So it's kind of in a sort of stalemate sort of situation. Which is why the Americans are still there. Yeah. There's technically still quite a big like American military presence in South Korea. That's true. But that's also true most of the places too.
Especially in, for example, Japan. There are a lot of bases in Japan. Yeah, that's true. Well, they were occupied as well. They were occupied as well. After the war, Korea is partitioned along the, I think it's 48th parallel, something to something parallel, which is where the DMZ is now. And in the north you have the Soviet-aligned, quote-unquote, communist dictatorship. And in the south you have an American-aligned, essentially fascist dictatorship.
Yes. Both societies are extremely repressive. We think of North Korea as being really anti sort of expression and stuff. But South Korea, for most of its history, has been too. Yeah. So the North Korea is led by the Kim family, obviously, while the South is led by the autocratic president, Syngman Rhee. And then in 1960, there's a student revolt.
followed by 14-13 months of weak government, Ri has to resign. And then in 1961, General Park Chung-hee takes control in a military coup.
I was going to say it's always the students. Yes. Yes. It's 2025 now and Korea is on, I think it's sixth republic. Uh-huh. Despite having been founded in the 50s. I just had another... I just had another martial law thing where the president refused... Attempted martial law. Yeah. Yeah.
General Park Chung-hee is in power for a good while and he does some serious repression of just about anything that you could be seen as communist, leftist, anti-him. The CIA takes a role in this as well. I don't know if you read the Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins, but that's about Indonesia, obviously, but that's the kind of, the same sort of things were happening there. Lots of people murdered, basically.
basically this is very much peak CIA having their fingers in everything and doing the worst things imaginable everywhere yes absolutely so there's lots of that sort of thing then democracy is suspended in the 70s because Park struggles to sounds like it was going well so yeah Park's struggling to maintain control
And then in 1979, he is assassinated by his close friend, which is as rough, Kim Jae-gyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. So he gets JFK'd. Yeah, but kind of like JFK'd by the vice president or whatever.
I'm not even ordered by this guy. He did it himself. He just did. I mean, you know, good for him. Don't be handing that out to underlings. Take responsibility for your decisions. I don't actually think that JFK was murdered by the CIA, just to be clear. People think that I do, but I don't.
No, it was the space aliens, right? It was the space aliens. As we all know, that's who was behind the grassy knoll. The ones that they found in the 40s, yeah. So that's a bit of Korea history up until about 1979. So American troops have been present in Korea since the end of World War II. And obviously, American troops, they have a lot of cultural influence on the places where they are.
And so they brought pop music with them and then that gets sort of disseminated out from them to locals and then among each other and so on. Yes, because this is when I start to think of like if, you know, when I first thought of this question, I was like, okay, yeah, the 50s, like Elvis Presley and you have like girl groups and like you have them visiting the troops and stuff like that as well. But this is like the idea of like
chart music and portable music that you can carry around with you on a vinyl yes you have like Marilyn Monroe goes to visit the troops and whatnot so and then the Beatles obviously because the Beatles get just about everywhere although the Beatles are obviously not popular with the ruling people in South Korea because obviously they're a bit well they obviously take drugs don't they so that's a bad influence on the youth
Deeply suspicious hair as well. Yeah. So at the time in Korea, the most popular or one of the most popular genres was called trot, which is kind of similar to Japanese Enka music, which is probably kind of like saying to someone who doesn't know what a book is that it's like...
piece of parchment you do you know what i mean if you don't know yeah exactly yeah i don't know what that is either it's like comparing it to something so uh we'll have a listen to some trot okay this is this this is like classic trot anchor kind of music in japan it will be called anchor all right so we've got a tv show looks like pan's people
right, we've got a jazzy lady she looks like first lady those flares those ladies are wearing would be massive right now okay, yeah I get the I get the jest, like it's quite jazzy yeah it's yeah I'm really
It feels like the kind of thing that this is going to be a very specific Irish reference, but it's the kind of thing that people who are my in-laws age would go to hotels to watch people perform. Like a lot of, she's kind of,
middle-aged woman she looks like she's in her 40s or 50s she's got a very respectable looking dress on and she's singing some slightly jazzy looking music in a very conservative fashion you could clap along to it but probably not much more very sort of wedding music right yeah yeah or i mean it is just giving like hotel bar vibes i would say yeah
So that's kind of the dominant pop music in the Japan career in the 60s is trot. This is as rebellious as you're allowed to be. This is obviously the videos after the 60s, but it's that kind of thing. Yeah. But, of course, with the influence of the Americas, you have other...
artists coming up that are kind of styling themselves in a similar vein to people who are popular in America at the time. And in one of those is Han Dae-su. Okay. And on names here, the first name on Korean and Japanese names come second. So the first name is always the family name.
So Dae-su Han. Because it's quite confusing when people call Kim Jong-un, they call him Mr. Jong-un because that's actually his first name. It's like calling him Mr. Oliver. Well, you can call me that if you want, but it's a bit weird. You'd say no, I suppose. So Han Dae-su is a Korean who was born and raised in America. So he's a Korean-American.
Yep. And he releases a song called Moldium Jusso, which is Give Me a Water. And that's the next video we have for you. Okay. You can have a listen to that. Oh, okay. I like the artwork. It's quite intense. Okay, yeah. Kind of Dylan-y, like... Yeah, it's kind of Dylan, kind of Leonard Cohen sort of thing.
Yeah. Like a slightly jangly guitar and a mildly unpleasant voice. I have a controversial opinion on music as they like Bob Dylan songs and cannot fucking stand Bob Dylan. A good songwriter who can't sing, yeah.
I can't listen to it. I really enjoyed that Timothee Chalamet film because I got to listen to loads of Bob Dylan songs without having to listen to Bob Dylan. And then my friends who are really into Bob Dylan were like, if I wanted to listen to this many Bob Dylan songs, I would just listen to Bob Dylan. So I was like, yeah, no, that's what I liked about it. Anyway, I actually quite like this. I quite like the... Like the...
It feels like deliberately difficult to listen to almost. Like the vocal is really rough on purpose. Yeah. So that's Muljeon Juso by Han Dae-su. And he was banned by the Park government from playing in Korea because of, you know,
They always sort of... Too American. Well, yeah, but they sort of bring these arguments on like, oh, it's dangerous for the youth, you know, in the youth. And so he goes to America and doesn't come back until the 90s. Okay. So after Park gets given the abrutus treatment by his friends... Yep, his etude, yep. The government of his successor, Chun Doo-hwan...
Continues basically the same as before. Anything too risky for public morals or political civility gets sort of suppressed pretty heavily. So moving on. It's always so weird to me that people don't learn. Like, how do you watch like all of the previous governments? And like, this is...
The same for all repressive governments. They're like, well, it didn't work for them, but I reckon if we maybe just repressed a little bit harder, then it might work. Maybe this time it will work. It doesn't work. It's a very bad plan. It just pisses people off. But anyway. So then sort of an evolution from Trot and incorporating...
what we would consider maybe the power ballad from the West. The Korean ballad, in capital letters, becomes a really popular form. Okay. And as you can hear from this one that we're going to listen to in a minute, it's very, very sort of in that mode. It's not like trot. The power ballad. It's got a bit more of an edge than trot, but you'll see. Okay. So this is Lee Sun-hye, and the song is called 2J. Okay.
She's got some killer glasses. Oh, okay. He's got that classic sort of power ballad thing where it builds and builds and builds and builds. It's going to start small and get big. Yeah. I'm not sure why there's like four people standing behind her. They're not like dancers or anything. They're just sort of there. They're just there to look. I'm skipping through to get to the building. Oh, okay.
Okay. Oh, there we go. I like that she's just not moving at all. Like, just... Oh. Good for her. She's one of these singers who's putting in, like, no effort into producing these noises. Like, looks like she could just do this all day, every day. Yeah. While hitting these wild notes. Yeah.
She's so chill about it. Yeah, the grand aim, you would say now, of these Korean ballads. She's still doing it. Good for her. I like her suit a lot. Yeah. It's that snazzy, tuxedo, glittery smile. Yeah. Oh, there she goes.
I was enjoying the final. And we have the democratization movement, which manages to force an election. And you will never believe this, is one guy, another hard right demagogue, this time a friend of the previous one. And he's also an army general.
Is everyone cool with this election? Everyone's like, oh yeah, no, we freely... Or is it like 87.6% of the vote went to this one guy because everyone else was in prison? Yeah. So between 1960 and 1993, at this point, every ruler of South Korea has been an army general, which isn't great. No. Yeah. So, yes. So this is General Roh Tae-woo.
So now we move on to the next little bit. And then in 1992, there's like a seismic event in Korean music. A group called Sauteji and Boys enters the, essentially the Korean version of like the X Factor or Britain's Got Talent. It's a talent show. A talent show. It's like, yeah. And the song is called Nan Arayo or I Know. And the jury on the show,
Hates it. You're gonna see why. And it loses pretty badly. But lots of people watch this program. Lots of people watch this program. Lots of young people watch this program and they're like, I like this. We love it. I really like this. So it's got, it's a complete break from everything before. There's lots of hip hop influence, new jack swing, which is something I've never said out loud before.
lots of sampling rap breaks they have the dancing they have the sort of pop idol thing which this is all sort of brand new to South Korea they're not new in the West but they haven't been in South Korea before so let's listen to that okay this is like the moment Saturday night music show I'm excited oh he's wearing a hat oh
Oh, okay. Yes, no, they look like 90s American hip-hop. They look like TLC or something. They do, yeah. Got the baseball top. He's got a chain, he's got baseball hats, they've got basketball shorts on. Yeah. Automatically a very different vibe. There's drums. Oh, fuck. Oh, yeah, it sounds loads like everything that was on the radio. Oh, my goodness, they're doing NSYNC dancing. Yeah. They look...
One of them at the back looks like iced tea. Ehhh. But yeah, no, this 100% would not go down well in a military government. But it's also kinda great, I love it. So this sort of thing... They're all very pretty. Yeah, this sort of thing had never sort of happened before, and they're like... Yeah, it's like blowing people's minds. Look at them breakdancing! Oh yeah, no, we've got an everybody dance now. Sample.
He's lying on the floor. My goodness. So this is like Elvis Presley. Compared to the previous lady who stood stock still and at the end for her big move, moved her head slightly. This, I can imagine, this feels like Elvis Presley doing hip thrusts and making girls cry. Yeah.
on the telly in the 50s. And I can imagine, I feel like other judges are going to turn out to all be 50-year-old women who are shocked to their very core that this has happened near them. Yeah, this is great. If I'd been a teenager or even a child and had seen this, and to be fair, if I had seen this on the telly on Top of the Pops in 1992, I probably would have gone wild for it. Yeah. Yeah.
So entirely fair, good for them. I hope that they become massively successful and do not get like ground up into pace. I mean, they don't get ground up into pace but I don't think they last very long. They only last a few years and then they split up. And one of them, I think it's the one in the grey suit,
I love that one of them is wearing a suit, but yeah. I think he becomes the CEO/founder of the biggest entertainment company in Korea. Still the biggest. Oh, okay. So he does very well then. He does very well. And when we get into talking about idols and stuff, you'll know what he's been up to.
I mean, from my understanding, the little that I know of K-pop and idol culture and stuff is that it's not great for anyone involved. Except the people making the money, cashing the checks. Who is this guy, presumably? Yeah, eventually the guy in the grey suit, I think. Yeah, well, I mean, I suppose. Anyway, yeah, keep going.
Okay, and they've got some lines in English too, which you know. And English language samples, yeah. I mean, it's very much, you know, in a world that has not that far long ago been kind of banning American stuff and getting rid of Korean speaking Korean people because they were a bit too jazzy. I can see how it would be quite shocking. Yeah.
So that was Satay June Boys. That was the sort of beginning moment of K-pop as we know it now. I love that it just comes out of nowhere as well. Like it goes pretty much from like a lady on a stage to massive, like three lads in baseball caps, like break dancing on the floor. Yeah.
So there we go from that. And their album, even though they lost the contest badly, their album sells tons and basically kicks off the first wave of K-pop, as we know it, Korean hip-hop. Amazing. So then skip forward a few more years and we get to 1996 and a band called H.O.T.,
Okay. And then, so unlike the sort of more organically formed groups that have been before, like Sartegian Boys and the people that followed directly on from them. Yeah. HOT is manufactured in a sort of boy zone kind of fashion where they're sort of, rather than forming themselves, the agency selects people and thrusts them together into a band. Something like, they take that sort of thing. Yeah.
Yeah, like they audition, or like any, loads of bands, S-Cup 7, all of those bands in the 90s and early 2000s were made by auditioning a bunch of people individually and then putting them together into a band. That's right. And then giving them songs and then a man named Simon forces them to work until one of them has a mental breakdown. Yeah.
I think S Club 7 had like a TV show. It's always a man named Simon. I think I remember S Club 7 having like a... They had two TV shows. I actually read a really good book about late 90s, early 2000s pop bands called Reach for the Stars, which I massively recommend because it's horrifying about... And it has a load of these bands from this period. So like Sugar Babes, S Club 7, Steps.
just, you know, blue, all of that period of, it's from 97 to 2007 is the period I think it covers. Spice Girls, Boyzone, all of that era and basically talks to members of the bands and the, the,
Thing is the same. They're all some of them are so young So some of them are coming out of school like they're 15 years old the oldest one in one of those bands was 23 and they take them out and then they just work them 24 hours a day seven days a week like S Club 7 had two TV shows and then they were touring filming touring recording touring filming touring recording and then one of them has a mental breakdown and or dies and Then they just move on to the next one and
Yeah, so good. Absolutely horrifying. Yeah. So this is very much a thing taken from... They're all called Simon. It's all meant for Simon. Simon Cowell and what's the other guy's name? But yeah, the idea of like the mogul who creates this band and then makes all of the money and then burns through young people. That's right. Is very much a model taken from Britain. Yeah. Mostly.
And also Japan. We'll get to this. So H.O.T., this manufactured band, and their major hit song is called Candy, which is a lot softer. It's more kind of bubblegum than Sauteji Boys. But it does extremely well across Korea and outside Korea. And so that's the first kind of idol group as we'd understand it now. So let's listen to Candy. Okay.
Okay. Candy. Oh, we've got women running. We've got crying. We have behind-the-scenes footage of some pretty boys with curtains. We have rapping. We have samples. We've got some full choreographed dance moving. They look like the Teletubbies. They do look like they... This could be the intro for a new BBs, like CBBs program. Yeah. They're very... They're very...
They're wearing dungarees that are made of like fake fur. This is so non-threatening boys. Yeah. Like non-threatening boys magazine cover stars right now. Like they've got little soft things on their hands. They're like, my feelings for you doesn't mean I don't love you. Okay, this is extremely sweet and soft. And like, now I'm going to change myself for you. Okay. Okay.
Yeah, this is like the one direction, like, we are soft and gentle and we're good boys that you can take home to your mom. You will fall in love with us. And all of our songs are going to be going to have like you pronouns. So it feels you can listen to them and think that we are talking to you. And profoundly non-threatening boys. Like this is the least sexy thing I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah. It's going for a younger audience, I would say, than the... Yeah. The Taj Boys were much more kind of grown up. This is much more, you know, tween, like for 11-year-olds, basically. Yeah. Which is weird for a band called Hot. It is weird for a band called Hot because they're not... I mean, they're pretty. Yeah. But I think that this is a thing with a lot of the...
K-pop and J-pop is a very, very, very pretty, but not hot necessarily. This feels very much like it's got the beginnings of like, we are presenting these boys as someone for you to put on your wall. Yeah.
Very sort of smash hits. Very smash hits, yes. Like they're going to ask them a series of bizarre questions. Yeah, what's your favourite colour? Yeah, exactly. Who's your favourite puppy? And that kind of thing. And like this idea of you're going to be... Women are going to scream for you and it's going to be vaguely terrifying. Yeah. So now that we've got two idols, let's talk about idols for a little while. Yes.
So the idol concept starts in Japan in like the 70s and hits a stride in the 80s. We have like the golden age of the idol, it's called. So this is earlier than K-pop. This is before even Sotaiji. Yeah, so it's like 20 years.
Groups are manufactured but also selected from very young ages. Like in Japan, even now, there's like talent scouts on the street propositioning
14 year olds 13 year olds so yeah like the fashion industry does like just yeah approaches women it's like would you like your life to be completely ruined yeah exactly and so these young women you know they leave school straight away and then they go into pretty extreme regimens of musical physical and language training yeah so like
They all have to be exceptional dancers. They all have to sing well. They all have to be able, and especially in Korea, they have to be able to sing in Korean and Japanese. Damn. Usually they sing the same song, they release the same song once in Korean and then the same song again in Japanese. Fucking hell, okay. Because it's a much larger market to access. Yeah, yeah.
And they often have English training as well. And especially in Japan, they want, because Korea isn't a bigger market than Japan, but the English market definitely is. Yeah. If you can get into the American market, then yes. Yeah. And pretty much from that point, every aspect of their life is no longer their own. They're basically, they've been referred to as sort of slave contracts. Yes. The company that they are contracted to basically has control over all of their life.
Yes. Every little aspect. They basically work 14 hour days. From like 13, 14 years old. From 13 years old, yeah. And they're sort of pushed into a sort of social panopticon where basically they are being watched for the slightest sort of misstep the whole time by the press, by the fans, by each other. Because it's obviously...
When there's a group of young people, there's someone has to be... There's always going to be someone who's like the main one. Yeah. They're all sort of jockeying to be the main one. So that involves all kinds of... So it's a bit kind of catty in that respect, I assume. There's a lot of competition within it. Yeah. So they are...
in a sort of precarious situation where they can be very wealthy and support their families and all sorts into like riches and whatnot but it's also extremely precarious in that if they do anything that they're not supposed to do they have sort of rigorous that they can be like kicked out straight away
Yes, and I have seen, this is where you get the very intense and quite horrific stories about, like there's the girl from AKB48 who shaved her own head and appeared with a terrible, did this awful apology because she had broken the band rules and the band rules were like she had
like had a boyfriend. She spent the night with her boyfriend or she'd been seen with a boy. Yeah.
And like just completely, like she basically shamed herself in the same way that like French women who slept with Nazis were shamed. Just for being an adult woman with a boyfriend. Like she just completely, I remember that one very clearly because I like, it's so, like it's just such a shocking image that she would basically, the policing has become so internalized that she has policed herself. Yeah. And yeah, there's like,
There's a lot of that sort of thing and...
But even extending from this whole no relationships, if there's no, like they can't smoke, if they're seen smoking, that's usually enough to get rid of them or drinking alcohol. So basically most of the things that adults do to just exist, have fun. So no relationships, no smoking, no drinking, lots of, and everything has to be like ultra clean. You can't, I mean, it kind of changes a little bit, but not too much.
So their marketability and their reputation is like critical. So I know a lot of them, I imagine, probably don't even go outside very much because someone's going to take a photo of them and they're, I don't know, doing something perhaps that normal people do that they shouldn't. They will lose everything. They lose their job. They lose all their money. Yeah, they will be punished forever. Exactly. And this applies like perhaps even more for female idols because...
This sort of... It's horrible, but there's this kind of like social environment. It's a misogynistic environment where a woman has kind of a hard limit on age. Yeah. These idols, most of them are finished by the time they're 30, or certainly by 30, mostly by 25, they're sort of done. Yeah. And they have to like move on to...
either acting if they want to try acting or like becoming a TV host or something but they're done with being an idol and it's like you spent from childhood till 25 that's like 10 years doing this and now the rest of your life no
Not our problem. Yeah, exactly. And try not to kill yourself, I guess. Try not to kill yourself, yeah. But yeah, no, the whole industry is focused on youth and wants effectively very, very young and has no interest in anybody after they are. That's right.
Like once they look like an adult, basically. Yeah, basically. Gross. So moving on to concepts now. A lot of idol groups have sort of concepts, especially in Korea. So like you have a band called Big Ocean. They are a band of three guys and they're all deaf.
Oh, that's quite cool. I quite like that. They do all their songs in sign language, which is nice. Okay, I actually love that. Like, that's so cool. Well, look them up there. There's a band called The Margarines in Japan who set up their band specifically and openly with the motivation to pay off the debts that they have incurred.
Amazing. Kind of a fun thing, like pay off your student debt. Not even like implicitly like, oh, we just love making music. Oh, no, we started this band to pay off debts. Did they pay off their debts? I hope so. I hope so. A band in Japan called Morning Musume who have their members graduate from
Okay. Which means they are removed after a certain period of time. Yes, that's the terminology is that you're a trainee and then you're a member and then you graduate. And graduate means that you have got too old and they've kicked you out. Yeah. Yes. A band called Babymetal who are very, all quite well known all over the world. Babymetal, yes. My husband loves Babymetal. Yeah, they're pretty good. I like them too. And listen to them quite a lot, so I know them well.
Yeah, but that also sort of plays with the idol aspect of the like cute girls dancing, but also with the metal. Yeah. That's a concept. It's a gimmick. Yeah, yeah. There's one called Black and their gimmick is that they're all porn stars. All right. So they're porn stars who have...
singing and dancing group. I mean, okay. Good for them, I guess. Good for them, I guess, yeah. Yeah. So, idol groups in general, not all of them, but they have the tendency to be very large. Yes, they've loads of members. Much larger than...
western band with the exception of maybe s club seven who were already seven was a lot yeah yeah like four would be average four or five five would be yeah but whereas you get akb48 i've got 48 if they're not and you get ones i've got hundreds yeah i think akb48 actually has like 90 split into sort of teams yes and you get subgroups
Subgroups, yeah. So like Girls' Generation has nine members. BTS has seven members, you know, but there are others that are smaller, like Blackpink has four members. They're very popular right now. They are huge. And New Jeans has five members. So it's not universal, but it's more, they have a tendency to be bigger than Western groups.
Yes. So let's listen to this AKB48 song. I think it's called, what's it called? Something Fortune Cookie. We'll find out when we listen to it because it says it at the start. There's an American guy at the start. All right. Hello. Koisuru Fortune Cookie, that's what it's called. And they have these like, idol groups have these really elaborate, like they have costumes that are super like crazy. Yeah.
Yes, they're very elaborately outfitted. Here we go. Alright, they're doing a parade. They're doing some very mediocre dancing. It's very much go on girl give me nothing. There's loads of them. This is also kind of bubblegum I suppose. Yeah. Not very quite inoffensive. It's the most inoffensive thing. I'd not turn it off.
But also, I will never listen to it again. There's basically... I'm kind of obsessed with how bad they're dancing it. They've just really put in 0% effort into this. But people seem to be enjoying it. There's about a million of them. Sure, it's fine. This is what Taylor Swift sounds like to me. Just so that everybody can hate me.
Just like to alienate everybody. Sounds fine. Like, it's fine. It does not... I don't hate it. I don't love it. I don't really feel anything about it. I'd watch it again just to watch their dancing. But yeah, this is the band that the girl shaved her head. Yes. Yes, the poor wee girl. And...
She punished herself brutally to stay there. Didn't one of them die as well? That does happen. I have a feeling that one of AKB48 also died super young. Yeah, but then again, there's 90 of them. It's probably going to happen, right? Just the law of averages. Yeah. Yeah.
So, you know, this is pretty inoffensive, quite dull, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah, same, ditto. But unless it's got somebody saying, whoa, or like, I like quite heavy music. The video has quite a few normal people doing the dance moves and some of them are doing it better. Yeah, I mean, largely like the office workers are not that far off there.
This is a thing that I do generally associate like J-pop and K-pop with at the very least, like being very well trained in this stuff. Like should be able to do a dance with a decent degree of precision and enthusiasm. At least, not least out of terror, but they really weren't.
As basic as possible so people can do it themselves. Unlike, you know, Satoshi doing his breakdancing and stuff is probably beyond the reach of most. Yeah, it's very simple. And yeah, it makes like an S Club 7 dance look like they were putting in quite a lot of effort and they were exhausted. Okay, well, that's enough for that. I'm sure that their other ones are better. Five and a half minutes is too long for this sort of music. Yeah.
Yes. Anyway, so that brings us on to group roles. Other groups are quite Byzantine in their construction. So they have lots of members and each member has a certain role from these sort of archetypes. And these have the various strong points, various bits where this particular person comes to the fore.
And when there's more than one person who occupies this sort of archetype, that's called a line. Okay. So you have the dancing line, et cetera, et cetera. They're the people who are the best at dancing. So when there's more dancing to do, they come to the front. So this is sort of paraphrased from an article on Vox.
You have the leader, who is typically the oldest member of the group. And they're sort of the spokesperson and quote unquote mentor for the other members of the group.
And because, kind of unlike us, Korean culture places a sort of premium on seniority. Yes, yes. They're like hierarchy. So they're mostly quite well respected. For males, they're called a hyung. And for females, it's the unni. So both terms you'd use in Korean society to address someone who's senior to you. Yes. But not a family member. So like an older man would be hyung.
uh for example so the next role you have is the visual who's considered the most attractive usually uh okay that's usually yeah the pretty boy i'm basically thinking of this entirely in terms of take that here with the yeah so i'm like okay so we've got gary barley we've got mark owen it's going to be yeah exactly yeah
You have the face, who's sort of the, can be the leader, can be the visual, or can be someone separate, who is the sort of charismatic, charming person who sort of represents the group. Okay, Robbie Williams, yeah. Robbie Williams, yeah. LAUGHTER
And then you have the dance line or the vocal line or the rap line. So that is the teams or the individuals that focus on certain things specifically. So the dance line is the dancer or the dancer group who do the more complicated dancing. Howard and Jason. Yes. Yes.
The vocal line are the ones who do the difficult singing. Yep. So the ones that require more singing. Gary Barlow, maybe? I guess. Yeah. And then you have the rap line or the rapper. A group tends to have a rapper, at least one rapper, who does the rap breaks. Yeah. And usually they dance the rest of the time. Yeah. Terry from E17, yes. Yeah.
I'm alienating everybody who didn't grow up in the UK in 1990s now because my only real kind of touch points like emotionally are age 17 and Take That, who I thought that I was. In fact, I was. I was cool. I was far too cool for boy bands. I was only into boys with guitars. But I distinctly remember when Take That broke up, the sheer drama of it.
And then apart from that, you have lines called a maknae, young or new line. So you have the babies of the group who are typically a team. Okay. And you have the elders of the group who are also like a team. Okay. So there's sort of like, yeah. Yeah. The elders are supposed to be the mentors or the big brothers, whatever. Okay. It's pretty complicated. J-pop has these roles too.
The division of labor is more or less the same. So the system kind of equal in Japan and Korea. Yeah. So every aspect of their lives is scrutinized. So they're supposed to support each other through that. Yes. Whether they actually do or not, or they use that kind of as a rivalry points or whatever is depends on question from question to question. But they're basically equal.
Not yet really adults because they're in this sort of transition phase of their lives. Yes, like late teenagers. Yeah. Yeah. Unlike normal teenagers, they can't do anything that teenagers like to do. So, yeah, it's kind of a quasi slavery. Their management owns everything.
basically what they do and they they basically control their lives completely almost yeah so it's not really much of a surprise that idols kill themselves yes after such that scrutiny and they you know they're very young to start with so you know it's very yeah they are it's still an aspiration for a lot of young koreans and japan japanese to be an idol even though it's
on the outside visibly quite a rough existence. Yeah, I think this is one of these things. I often think this with like, to my mind, going on a reality TV show looks like literal hell. Like if you were like, do you want to go on Love Island? I'd be like, I'd genuinely rather soar off my own arms. But millions of people, like hundreds of thousands of people every year, like look at the like...
whatever the benefits that they perceive of being on Love Island, like the, you know, that they then...
get to go on other TV shows. I don't know that they get loads of Instagram followers, that they will have the wonderful opportunity to promote weight loss teas to people. And that occasionally they will be bullied until they have to go into hiding. Yeah. And that's like, they're like, yeah, it's worth it. Like the, or they either don't see or acknowledge, or they think that the benefits are,
worth their like yeah the the out their downsides like i can cope and sometimes they can and sometimes they can't but to me like i could i just know for a fact that i could never cope so no i would like i genuinely would rather eat my own face but enough people go still will
go on it that you know they've got 20 odd seasons of it now so I assume it's the same kind of process where people are like just don't see the downsides or don't see the downsides as being something that will affect them yeah it's like that arrested development it's like it never works but it might for us
I've seen loads of polyamorous couples and it's never worked for them, but it might for us. Yes. Also, I guess they're kids, like when they're going into this system and they are recruited or they are, you know, applying to go into this system, like they are going to be 13, 14, 15 years old for the most part. Yeah. Like,
This is the reason we don't let them vote. And because their little brains are squishy and they can't see past the end of their own noses. So, yeah, it's not really on them to not go into it. No. More on the adults to not do it to them. Yeah, exactly. So the fandom is obviously a very important part of K-pop. A terrifying part of K-pop. Probably the most terrifying part of K-pop.
Yeah. So you've probably seen this, but like they have fan groups that sort of organize themselves, sort of not official fan groups, but sort of
fan groups that create themselves. So they're kind of militant and in kind of a sort of scary kind of mob way. BTS has ARMY. Yes. Blackpink has Blinks. Yeah. They're like Swifties, but if Swifties were even more insane. Yeah, so they're very frightening and they do things like, they'll like hire billboards to put things on them and they will like have...
like they will gather enormous amounts of money in order to do huge projects for the group or the group member that they like like and they will organize like huge single buying or single pre-saving yeah
And then sometimes it's the buying of billboards that blows my mind. Like they will go out and purchase billboards with their own money or like get money together or vans, like advertising vans that they can put adverts on the side of and they're like... And then...
Yeah, and it's kind of, it's like the terrifying power of the teenage girl, which is infinite and can be harnessed. And K-pop and J-pop companies have worked out how to harness these kids for free advertising, basically, and also to be very friendly. Making lots of money. Yes. Yeah.
And, you know, like with every boy band sort of thing, there's also subgroups who like one guy over the other guys and they fight each other and squabble all the time. As, you know, like, oh, I like Gary Barlow. No, I like Robbie Williams. Yeah. That kind of thing that we had in school. Because they have aunties as well. Which is real scary. I won't talk to aunties yet. Yeah. So we have a thing called Saisang. Mm-hmm.
And in the world of parasocial relationships, they take it to like an extreme. There's this sort of dangerous fans almost. They tend to be young women who go to really, really severe lengths and often doing criminal acts to get attention from the idols that they like.
It's kind of like a fatal attraction kind of scenario. Yeah. They stalk them. They harass their family members. They post their addresses on the internet, mail their underpants, that kind of thing. Very scary. Yeah, and they can cross into physical violence as well. I read a report from 2012 and a Saisang fan went up to pop star Yoo Chun as he was leaving a hotel and she just slapped him.
Yes. And when they asked why, she said, oh, well, he'll always remember me now. So I remember this and I know this because I...
I'll just show my age yet again. But a German fan did this to Damon Albarn when Blair were really big in the 90s. So in like 1994, 1995, a German fan at a festival hit Damon Albarn with a bottle. And when they arrested her and said why, she said, well, he'll always have the scar to remember me. So.
That's where they got the inspiration from. Maybe, but it is like you can, this is one of those things where you can see like technically you're not wrong, but also you're very scary.
Yeah, and you need to speak to a professional. You probably need to speak to a mental health professional quite badly immediately, yes. And I read another report of a K-pop idol who was in a bar and a Psy-Sang put glue in his drink. Oh my God. So these people are really scary and they're quite high profile activities. They make the headlines often. Yeah.
k-pop fans it's it's damaged their reputation a bit when they see these things happen to idols yeah and the uh pop star called jai jung went on the radio and described some of the things that he that happened to him he'd been an idol for like 12 years which is quite a long time yeah um and he said it would uh people would just walk into his house my god um
they'd send him photos of themselves in his house and sometimes they would even just enter his house and take photos of him without him knowing and then send it to him. Like while he was asleep? Yeah, or sitting on the sofa or whatever. Oh my god! See, this is like, makes no sense to me that people would be like, yeah, what a great career option. I too could have people try to break into my house. He mentioned once he had a pizza delivery
And the deliverer kind of freaked him out. She was very weird. And so he called the place and they said, oh, she just quit. She just got a job there because she knew he lived around there. Okay, was just waiting. She got a delivery order from him, went and found out where he lived. Then she quit and posted his address on the internet. Fucking hell. Yep. So, and the same guy, this is all one guy, right? This isn't,
This isn't like a bunch of different Korean pop stars. Yeah, this is just this one person. And he describes that he got a house in a nice area with a terrace that he really liked, but he couldn't use it because a group of fans had rented the house opposite and were just watching his terrace all the time. Oh my God. So...
That's scary. But these are the fans. These are the appreciative fans. Apparently they are the, they love this guy. Yeah. And they just wish him to be terrified at all times. Yeah. So in contrast to the Scything fans, you have the anti-fans that you mentioned before who are like, rather than obsessively loving Scything,
The artists, they just hate them for almost for no reason. They just sort of build their personality around, I hate this guy and I want to end his career. And they like do things like the docks. It's kind of like a dark mirror. Well, they're both dark. It's kind of like a mirror to the Psychic Fantasy. They sort of docks them and stalk them and harass them in order to basically just to get them to stop being...
Yeah. Yeah. They just want to make their lives miserable for no reason. Yeah. But having said that, there is fan culture. There is an aspect of Korean pop star fan culture that is good and that's called fan rice. Okay. Wearing fans buy sacks of rice and donate it to their favorite artist.
Okay. And then those donations are passed on to charity. Okay. So they basically almost compete to see how much they can donate. See, this is the thing is you get that competitive element and that can be harnessed for good. And sometimes it can be harnessed for terror. Yeah. Yeah. So they, yeah, these big sacks of rice, like five kilo sacks of rice, they send them to the management and then the management,
Donates. Like thanks. Yeah. Cheers. So, but it's not just rice as well. They donate all sorts of things. They donate packets of noodles, charcoal briquettes, which are still used quite a lot by poor people in Korea to heat their houses.
Pet food, eggs, nappies, all that sort of thing. So on the finale tour, the band Big Bang, that's quite a difficult thing to say, received 168,320 kilograms of rice.
Jesus. 14,000 charcoal briquettes, 7,000 packets of eggs, 37,900 packets of ramen, 300 kilograms of pet food, 100 nappies, and 84 cans of baby formula. So they received that and then donated it to charity. And as you can see on the...
On the document. On the document, if you look in. There's this picture. Yeah. It's like... Oh, they've like decorated them with pictures of their... Exactly. Of their favourite idol. And like, I have given 50 kilograms of rice in the name of this guy. Yeah, exactly. And this one's only given 20. And yeah, there's like ribbons and...
It looks like going to a village show or something. Yeah. They've fully printed out whole displays. Wild. Yeah.
So that's that, and we can just finish off by watching some more videos. Lovely. So after Hot, more bands and groups sort of pop up, and now it's like there's lots and lots of bands, so it sort of opens up the niche, and the niche is immediately blasted. Girls' Generation, this is kind of like a... It's not as twee as AKB48, but it's still quite inoffensive. The video is from...
It's a long time ago. 15 years ago, so it's quite... But if you see how high the production on these videos are, like how much time and money must have been spent on them. There's loads of them as well. There's nine of them, yeah.
You can see the aesthetic has changed as well, like immediately, that they are paler, they are smoother, they are getting into that kind of almost uncanny valley style of...
Literally pretending to be sharp dummies. So, yeah, definitely uncanny. And now there's loads of them doing a dance. It's weird how nine looks like loads. It looks like so many. Yeah. And they're great at dancing. And they all look very adorable. This is clearly before plastic surgery really took off because they've all got identifiable faces rather than like...
Yeah, they look super adorable. It's all very bright colours and... yeah. And they do this thing where they sort of rotate. Yes, one comes to the front and then, yeah. And in this video that's very specific in literal rotation in there. It is literal rotation. They are literally moving around so that everybody gets a turn at the front or some of them get a turn at the front, presumably. Yeah.
And they're all styled ever so slightly differently. But yes, it all looks very sweet. Good for them. Did you send it to the wrong person? I sent it to my wife, yeah. She's like, why are you sending me these? And a lot more expensive. And their hair is a lot shinier. And now...
I'll be honest with you, they look far less distinguishable from each other. But yeah, this is them presumably being grown up. Oh no, one of them's got had a sexy haircut. Like they're much less teenage girl, much more adult sexy lady now. Much more. It's like a Beyonce video. Yeah, it does. A lot kind of, yeah, a bit more grown up.
So that's sort of like K-pop becoming more adult. Yes. What else have we got? 2NE1. These are also really popular. Okay. One of the biggest of their time. This is in the document, yeah. Yep. Okay. Okay, again, we've got our dark. She looks like she's being a wrestler, but with spikes. Okay.
Again, it's a very American aesthetic. Yeah. This song was quite popular, not just in Korea. You might recognise it, I don't know. I do. It's been on TV and stuff. Maybe. It's much more like... I don't know if you'd call it hard, but it's got that electronic... Yeah. This is very... Comparing this to the stuff...
with the nice lady who looked like she was the first lady and now we have these girls in like skin-tight pleather covered in spikes like it's astonishing how quickly aesthetics change but yeah this is all very I quite like it if I was gonna listen to pop music it would sound like this
At the moment, I'm only listening to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. It's my current obsession. Yeah, all good. All grand. What else have I got? Blackpink. I know Blackpink. Yeah. Blackpink, I've heard some songs by. I feel like Blackpink and BTS have kind of fully crossed over into, you know, you can't, even if, like me, you don't pay any attention to,
to like pop like i wouldn't know what's in the charts anymore i only hear about it if they're in a film um yeah because i decided i could opt out of it after i turned 35 um but black pink super elaborate dancing i think this is it is look how good they are at dancing video maybe but yeah yeah they're very good and they're all to akb48
I mean, this is making AKB48 look like a children's pageant. But then they've all got that very, you know, that pop music style of dancing where they're really like emphasizing every move very hard, like really leaning into it. I quite like that, I think they're alright. And they're huge, like underneath this video, they're playing Wembley Stadium.
It's an advert for them playing Wembley and then they're playing like doing a big American tour as well by the look of it like they are properly... And this video has over a billion views in four years it's got 1.8 billion views which is so many! Like that's a boggling number really yeah. If you remember like Gangnam Style from like 12 years ago. How could anybody forget Gangnam Style?
That was also one of the first sort of like major crossovers. That was the first YouTube video to get a billion views as well, I believe. I think so, yeah. But it was like on Radio 1 all the time. Yeah. That was a real, like, yeah. Like, that was just straight up popular. Like, it did not need their, like, it...
I feel like, and I know a lot of people feel this, that calling things J-pop and K-pop put them into a genre bucket that when they could just call it pop music. It's not a separate genre, it's just pop music. But the...
Like Gangnam Style was, I think, was definitely the first one that crossed out of being a niche genre for people who are aware or people in the West who are aware of Korean things and broke it into just being chart music in the UK and the US, in English-speaking countries. Not popular for K-pop, it's just popular...
It's just popular. Exactly. It's not in a genre at all. The aesthetics of these have become so much darker than the early ones, which were just purely like... Bubblegum pop. Adorable. And this one, this big bang one seems to have some kind of post-apocalyptic riot happening. Yeah. Yeah, it's all super stylized. Very stylized. Very, the like...
clothing aesthetics are and then this is all um when we've reached the boys in makeup who've clearly yeah um like there's nothing kind of relatable about this at all this is an aesthetic all by itself now it's eyeliner and neck tattoos and simultaneously very pretty but not
This is not a person that you're going to see on the street. No. This is a K-pop star. Yeah, it's almost like a cartoon character sort of. Yeah. Levels of pretty. One of them looks quite a lot like a Korean... What's he called? Chris Rock in... Fuck, what's the film called? With...
Bruce Willis and Mia Yelovich and Chris Rock. Oh, Fifth Element. Fifth Element, yes. Yeah, he does, yeah. He's got a Fifth Element-y situation. That's what it feels like. Chris Tucker. Chris Tucker, sorry, God. Yes. Yes, I definitely see what you mean, yeah. Yeah. It feels very not, yeah, just like enhanced from reality. Yeah, it's like hyper-reality, yeah.
Yeah, and this is where we are now with K-pop. Yeah, like you said, the difference between the boys breakdancing on the stage and this is like, the amount of money that's gone into it is massive. Yeah. What, 20, was that, I suppose, was that 92? 92, so like, yeah. So it's 30 years. Yeah, 30 years, 33 years.
Yeah, even though to me, 92 is about four years ago. Yeah. Yeah.
So this is like the evolution of... It's interesting how what you saw with the first one was basically a transposing of what was happening in American pop music. So they just looked like they were wearing American clothes. They were sampling 90s American music.
dance music pop songs yeah they were they were dancing and moving in the exact way it's basically just transposing like American kind of
Dance and Beastie Boys and TLC and Salt-N-Pepa onto Korean. But then from that, and it's like just purely taking that American aesthetic and doing it, whereas now it has evolved into something that's very much its own thing and has its own aesthetics that are then...
kind of coming back round into American culture. So it's kind of nice to see it evolve. Yeah. Like you can see very much the impact of how American pop music became that, and then K-pop has become its own pure thing. Yeah.
And yeah, that's where we are now. And that's where we are now. And then, so that's the kind of history of K-pop. And then the next time we are going to talk about, we're going to go back to the beginning, I suppose, and talk about the concept of popular music more broadly and the idea and how one defines popular music. Yep.
And musicology. Yes, and musicology. So that's going to be the more like theoretical, I suppose, approach. And then how we get to this stage, this K-pop. Yeah. And this stage in popular music where I feel like because I think I always associate pop music with charts and radio. Yeah.
But that just doesn't really exist anymore. Like the charts are effectively irrelevant because anything could be in the charts because they include streaming now. And the idea of releasing a song and where it gets to in the charts just doesn't really matter that much. It's like the Christmas number one used to be huge and now it basically doesn't mean anything at all. Yeah.
And then some Facebook people had their Christmas number one, like, five years running with songs about sausage rolls. And, yeah, and so now we're in a very different era of pop music. In a sense, it's a democratization, but in other senses, not quite, because, like...
Although people can put out music by themselves now, they still don't have access to the networks and the distribution and promotion. We'll talk about this next time. We'll talk about this next time. I'm spoiling it. Yeah, well, it's a teaser. I'm going to put the videos for everything that we have watched so that people can look at them and the pictures and you can see how kind of Korean pop music has evolved very speedily. And yeah,
into the show notes so you can go and watch them at your leisure and it doesn't have any BTS in it oh yeah I forgot to put BTS in it well they can find their own BTS I think they don't need our help at this stage they're fine
Although I believe that they are all off doing military service now. They're taking a break to do their military service. And I think it's two years in Korea as well. It's a long time. It is. So I think they're coming, must be coming to the end of it now. But I do remember seeing that they were taking a break, which is fascinating. It's a bit like Elvis. Elvis did his military service when he was famous too. He did do his military service. That's a parallel then. Yes. So...
Until next time, until musicology time, thank you to Tyler for this question. And if anybody else would like to ask a question or support us on Patreon and get early access and bonus episodes and a sticker, then you can go to historyofsexy.com and all of the links are there. What else? Is there anything else? Is that everything?
I can't think of anything. Okay. Support us on Patreon. Get a sticker. Yeah. And we appreciate you very much. And until next time then, Oliver.