23ji no ongaku

There, I said it. While everyone else is sitting over there listening to Korean pop music and apparently enjoying the hell out of it, I’m perched on my little chair in front of my desk with a blank expression on my face, wondering what’s wrong with me. I just don’t get it.

… well, that isn’t quite it. For starters, I do listen to Korean music in general. I’ve been a fan of Cherry Filter for five or six years now, and the first time I heard something by Epik High, I was hooked. I still follow both of these groups and listen to them regularly. But when it comes to the rest of the Korean music scene–specifically, female-fronted Korean pop–it’s like my brain just doesn’t react. I look at it, listen to a single song, and then kind of wander away and forget about it.

Like everyone else and their dog, I of course like “Gee”…

And I really enjoyed the Wonder Girls and “Nobody,” and was happy for their tour in the US…

And despite getting some criticism, I found “Abracadabra” really enjoyable.

But beyond that, I’ve listened to almost nothing. I have more music in my library from all three of these groups, but I never listen to it (save a few listens to “Tell Me,” which I also really loved after seeing the PV). If a Korean song comes up on shuffle, I usually eye it warily and skip it in favor of listening to something–anything–else.

Honestly, this behavior puzzled me, too, when I finally started thinking about it. Like I mentioned, I’m already a big fan of two Korean groups. And it’s not that I’m don’t “get” the concept of large girl groups, because I still follow some Hello! Project units, and can name all the Morning Musume members from start to finish. (Except for that time I forgot about Kamei Eri for a week. Oops.) But I just won’t go beyond these handful of songs that I already know and enjoy. When I actually sat down and gave this some thought, I think I figured out why.

Looking at girl groups from the outside in, they can be kind of intimidating. If you’re an AKB48 fan, think for a moment about how that group looked before you started learning their names or listening to their music. Looking at them from my position right now, I can tell you that it’s really intimidating. And it’s perfectly fine to just listen to the songs and leave it at that–”I like some AKB48″–but eventually you’re going to bump into someone who asks who your favorite member is, or if you’ve watched this stage or that, or what you thought of a certain photobook, or whatever. And if you don’t have an answer, that could be viewed as pressure to become more involved with the group. So the same goes for Korean groups, for me–I’d really like to just listen to them and leave it there, at face value, but the kpop blogosphere is just getting bigger, and more fans are popping up every day. The idea of becoming a “fan” as opposed to just a “listener” is something that I’m just not ready to confront.

Add into this the language barrier and you’ve got a pretty deadly cocktail. Japanese comes much more easily to me now than it did when I was first getting into jpop, so it’s no longer an issue for me to learn names and song titles. Honestly, if I put my mind to it, I’m sure I could pick up a good amount of names from AKB48 or the Hello! Project eggs, or something. I read them enough online that I’m pretty certain they’d be easy to learn. But there’s a difference between jpop groups and kpop groups: I don’t know any Korean. I can listen to it and find it pleasant enough, but my brain doesn’t react to it the same way it reacts to Japanese. If you introduce me to a Japanese musician, I can recognize the syllables and formation of their name. If you introduce me to a Korean musician, I’m going to end up blankly staring at them and repeating their name. And in five minutes, I’ll probably have forgotten it, or will just horribly mess it up when I’m asked to recall it.

You could, understandably, be reading this blog post so far and thinking “you’re just lazy.” Well, that isn’t something I’ll deny. I can be pretty lazy at times. But consider this: it takes a lot of work for me to really become familiar with a musical group. I don’t just get an album, throw it into my library, and go on my merry way. I try to absorb big amounts of a group before I either dismiss them as uninteresting or save their stuff for further listening. This can either involve listening to an entire discography, or at the very least viewing 3-4 PVs on Youtube. I do this for almost every group or singer I come across, and that takes a lot of time. This is even without learning names or breaking through that “fan” barrier I mentioned earlier. So when I’m faced not only with the amount of work it usually takes me to decide whether or not I even want a group’s music in my collection, but also the language barrier and a slightly unnerving fanbase… I’m just going to back away.

Having said that, maybe the title of this blog entry shouldn’t be “I don’t get kpop,” but should instead read “kpop terrifies me.”

To my credit, I am trying to change things. I realize that by allowing myself to hesitation, I’m keeping myself away from some music that I might actually really enjoy. So I’m taking a few hesitant steps in the direction of kpop. When I launched this blog, I made sure not to label it “a Japanese music blog” like I did with unchained, because… well, who knows. I may find a Korean group that I just can’t stop talking about… even if I am bound to butcher their names.

I’ll end this with a PV I’m really enjoying at the moment from 4Minute, “Muzik.” I am a total sucker for rap and vocoder, so this song is going right into my collection. (See? I’m making progress already!)

Edited to add: I think part of my apprehension may also be because kpop PVs are f***ing weird. I just watched T-ara’s “Bo Peep” the whole way through, and now I want to die.

Spoiler: SHE’S A F***ING CAT.