SNSD’s Genie & Big Bang’s GARA GARA GO!!
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
Nine member SM Entertainment girl group 소녀시대 (So Nyeo Shi Dae, or Girls’ Generation) released a new MV recently. You might remember the ‘Gee Virus’ they spread at the beginning of the year, with their super catchy song Gee. Even if you didn’t like the song much, you probably had “gee gee gee gee baby baby baby~” stuck in your head for a while. (Did you live under a rock and never hear the song? Now’s your chance!)
I definitely don’t think that they’ve necessarily done it again with 소원을 말해봐 (Genie), but the song is still cute, catchy, and I really enjoy it (and I love the outfits! Rawr~):
The original album cover caused a bit of a stir, because netizens have hawk-like eyes (and maybe not much of a life). This is the original cover. Apparently that’s a Japanese fighter plane. Oops. It caused such a stir amongst netizens that SM Entertainment actually delayed the release, so that they could make a new cover.
What do you think? Too much fuss over something silly? Or was SM Entertainment careless in the first place, by allowing such a thing to be used? Or did they do it on purpose to get more eyes on them?
Wearing a bit more clothes (sadly), is 빅뱅 (Big Bang), YG Entertainment’s 5 member hiphop/dance/pop boyband. For the uninitiated, Big Bang’s music is a fun concoction of pop, dance, hiphop and electronica, and they’ve enjoyed huge popularity with hits like 거짓말 (Lie), 마지막 인사 (Last Farewell) and 하루 하루 (Haru Haru), and have a successful career in Japan as well as in Korea.
The members of Big Bang also dabble in their own things. G-Dragon is known for his slightly odd fashion taste and word has it that he’ll release a solo album this year, TOP is co-starring in the upcoming action drama IRIS, 대성 (Daesung) released an adorable trot song, 승리 (Seungri) had a taste of solo success with his song Strong Baby, and 태양 (Taeyang) released a very well received mini-album last summer (does anyone remember 나만 바라봐?).
Big Bang are releasing their 2nd Japanese single at the moment, so here’s the MV from their latest Japanese song, ガラガラ GO!! (GARA GARA GO!!):
Is it the best song in the world? No. But like a friend of mine said, “It resembles everything I love about Big Bang: shamelessly upbeat and youthful, blazingly bright colors, and a hint of 90s pop.”
Posted by Taliana in Korean Music |
July 1st, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Both were much better than I was expecting them to be, so I’m a happy customer
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:57 am
I am positively addicted to 소원을 말해봐. Stop the madness~!
I was also pleasantly surprised by 빅뱅’s second single on this album. I usually ignore any Korean artist’s Japanese or Chinese albums but this song is pretty catchy. Like your friend mentioned, it’s just a fun, shamelessly upbeat tune.
Great post as always Tali!
July 4th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
What’s this thing Korea has about big singing groups? I mean, Chinese/Western groups have 3, or 4 members in a group, but Korean ones have 13? 9?
Isn’t it complicated to have so many people in a group?
July 4th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Shan: Although I don’t know what on earth prompted it at the beginning, I can safely say that it is a very smart tactic now.
When you have such a big group, there’s a lot more opportunities to keep the group in the spotlight by having various members do different things between album promotions.
Take Super Junior for example - they’ve got 4 sub-units. The sub-units had activities between group albums, so when the group album promotions finished, Super Junior didn’t actually get out of the spotlight. There was still a bunch of them making music and performing on shows. The sub-units also give them the ability to target different markets (Super Junior-H for the younger fans, Super Junior-T brought trot music, Super Junior-KRY put together Suju’s 3 strongest vocals which allowed them to appear on OSTs that Super Junior wouldn’t have, Super Junior-M to target China).
Having such a big group also lets your members do pretty much everything, while not overworking one person. Up until recently, Super Junior members hosted 3 different radio shows simultaneously, and were the MCs and regular guests (ie appearing most weeks) for various music and variety shows. There was pretty much a Super Junior member everywhere.
And then of course different members in the group specialise in different things - like acting. Having such a big group means that if one person is missing (for example, Super Junior’s Kibum) due to another schedule, or acting, or whatever, it’s okay because there’s still a billion other people to take that person’s place.
With so many different looks and personalities in the group, I think it’s also more likely that there will be at least one or two members that catch your attention or tickle your fancy. And in the fickle world of fangirls, that’s what’s needed XD
If you try to imagine a 3 or even 4 member group doing this, you’ll soon realise that while yeah it’s totally impossible, it would be a lot easier to spread the schedule and workload between a lot more people. That’s why many of the smaller, 2-4 member groups, aren’t in the spotlight quite as much between album promotions.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I am in love with 소녀시대. Great blog post or greatest blog post?
July 9th, 2009 at 4:20 am
I think SNSD’s new song is absolutely brilliant! I hate all the fuss netizens like to stir around successful artists. It’s not just SNSD I feel bad for but all other artists. Gara Gara Go is pretty sweet as well. I wish they’d make it fully in Korean as well though