What Rosé’s rise means for Okay-pop’s (English-speaking) future : NPR

Rosé, a member of the Korean lady group BLACKPINK, made her full-length solo debut this fall with rosie, an English-language album led by the Bruno Mars collab “APT.”

John V. Esparza/Courtesy of the artist

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John V. Esparza/Courtesy of the artist

Years earlier than BTS broke the seal on Okay-pop in America, Teddy Riley noticed the imaginative and prescient. The R&B trailblazer, whose manufacturing and songwriting pioneered new jack swing within the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, turned an ear to Seoul within the late 2000s, producing for Okay-pop teams like f(x), EXO and Women’ Technology. The wedding was arguably overdue: A era earlier, Riley’s signature sounds had been everywhere in the single most essential breakthrough in Okay-pop historical past, the 1992 smash “Nan Arayo (I Know)” by Website positioning Taiji and the Boys, the primary crew to not solely experiment with Western affect however mimic its artistry and trend wholesale. And so, when Riley arrived to service the now absolutely constructed pop trade that had taken form in South Korea due to the “Nan Arayo” revolution, the producer was nicely conscious of his position within the course of. “They did not don’t have any disgrace of their sport. ‘We wish the American tradition,’ ” he advised The Boombox in 2017, laying naked the supply of the youthful tradition’s hip-hop, R&B and post-Michael Jackson disco-pop swagger. However Riley additionally acknowledged one thing distinctly Korean concerning the synthesized closing product. “The one factor that evokes them is American tradition and our fashion,” he stated, “however their music is their music and it is actually territorial.”

On the shut of 2024, Okay-pop is changing into territorial in a distinct sense. Earlier this month, the BLACKPINK member Rosé and the lady group TWICE, two of the style’s towering figures, launched new English-language music on the identical day — the previous dropping her solo debut, rosie, and the latter releasing a mini-album led by the Megan Thee Stallion-featuring title observe, “Technique.” Each have launched music in English earlier than. What’s notable this time is the seamlessness of the imitation, with many tracks feeling as if they may slide undetected into the American High 40. The music is totally wonderful — and but, there’s a sedate, by-the-numbers earnestness to even the most effective songs, one at odds with Okay-pop’s regular excesses. The efficiency of style is toned right down to the purpose of feeling virtually typical. To a lover of the shape, the impact is each spectacular and slightly unsettling. And it’s consultant of a motion constructing momentum, evident within the work of many artists capitalizing on an American breakthrough this yr.

For a lot of its historical past, Okay-pop has been at the very least one step faraway from the tradition it predominantly echoes, owing to what the social principle scholar John Lie known as the “temporal hole” — the dissonance created by the bodily, social and anthropological distance between cultures — in his 2014 guide Okay-pop: Standard Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Financial Innovation in South Korea. Lots of the songs and kinds draw from a recognizable wellspring; some are nostalgic, others flat-out spinoff. All are in dialog with a worldwide pop diaspora that has been dominated by the U.S. (even when Okay-pop is partaking with Afrobeats or urbano, it’s doing so as a result of the Sizzling 100 says so). Okay-pop songs have been riddled with English hooks for the reason that daybreak of the style, however the closing product is usually barely askew — hardly ever becoming into conventional molds or scanning as American pop to any ear skilled on High 40 radio. For its devotees, a whole lot of what has labored about Okay-pop so far is distinctly the byproduct of that mash-up nature, the slight discord of our sounds pushed by their system. Even for producers like Riley, who might hint the road of affect to his personal doorstep, there gave the impression to be an understanding that assembly within the center was not simply mutually helpful however mandatory for the cultural alchemy at play.

Nonetheless, the very issues that make Okay-pop thrilling to its followers additionally mark its otherness, at the very least from a sure business-minded perspective. The trade was constructed within the shadow of South Korea’s “large three” expertise companies — JYP Leisure, SM Leisure and YG Leisure — which within the mid-Nineteen Nineties established the blueprints for a extremely systematized, deeply allusive, kaleidoscopic group equipment. In tweaking that mannequin, BTS’ label, the HYBE Company, has since supplanted all three, changing into its personal consortium of imprints producing crossover triumphs like NewJeans, Le Sserafim, Enhyphen and Tomorrow X Collectively, all of which have debuted within the High 10 of the Billboard 200. Between this transition of outdated and new powers, now we have seen the goalposts for fulfillment transfer from considered one of sustained profitability to unfettered development. If one’s aim just isn’t merely business success, however an entire and whole integration into the worldwide pop market, then there’s a strategic drawback in sounding merely shut to what’s hottest. For a South Korean music government making an attempt to beat that remaining friction, it might appear the best path ahead is to take away the obvious differentiator — language — completely, and strip these songs of a few of their tangled eccentricities in order that they mix in. There have been loads of English songs made by Okay-pop teams, however most are merely the English-language variations of present Korean singles, or afterthought deep cuts buried on releases. Solely now’s a persistent and widespread effort rising to have Okay-pop idols create music that does not simply search American ears, however prioritizes them.

It tracks that members of BTS and BLACKPINK, the primary teams to essentially break the stateside dam for Okay-pop, have been among the many first to aggressively goal the language barrier. This yr, after rigorously teasing the transfer since 2020’s The Album, BLACKPINK members Jennie and Lisa launched “Mantra” and “Rockstar,” respectively, each by American labels. “Mantra” faucets into Miami bass however evokes Los Angeles; “Rockstar,” which Lisa carried out on the Victoria Secret Vogue Present in Brooklyn in October, dials up hyperpop for a equally cosmopolitan sentiment: “Each metropolis that I’m going’s my metropolis,” she sings. Since pausing their group actions in 2022, the Bangtan Boys have continued off in varied instructions towards the American horizon. Nearly all of the music they’ve launched as soloists this yr has been blatantly crossover-minded: j-hope teaming with Nile Rodgers and Benny Blanco, Jungkook buying and selling intercourse bars with Latto. However the pattern goes nicely past these marquee stars. The track by the lady group Kiss of Life that went semi-viral in 2024 was not their EP’s designated Korean single, however the English B-side, “Igloo.” Ditto for Le Sserrafim and its half-rapped “1-800-hot-n-fun.” The newly debuted group MEOVV launched the English single “TOXIC,” and BOYNEXTDOOR launched an English cowl of “It is Starting to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” NCT Dream’s “Rains in Heaven” even made it onto the Pop Airplay chart, which ranks songs being performed on High 40 radio. All the Okay-pop songs to hitch NCT on the airwaves in 2024 — “Mantra,” Lisa’s “Moonlit Flooring,” Rosé’s “APT.,” Jimin’s “Who,” and “Feeling Fortunate,” a collaboration between the R&B singer BIBI and Jackson Wang, the Hong Konger of the group Got7 — are in English.

We’re seeing this uptick as a result of Okay-pop is extra seen, accessible and approachable for Western audiences than ever earlier than, and our ears have by no means been extra receptive. Tik-Tok is, as a lot as the rest, a Okay-pop app: algorithmically fed, prioritizing clipped sound and glossy objects, aimed toward dwindling consideration spans, designed particularly for fancams and thirst-trap edits and choreographed dance challenges. If it is not a gateway drug to Okay-pop, it is at the very least a pipeline. However past short-term gratification, this second has been years within the making. Since 2016, Okay-pop has been steadily on the rise, beating lengthy odds — most notably, a pervasive bias towards foreign-language music — by circumventing conventional avenues to listenership, due to YouTube and streaming. Spanish-language pop has made related inroads in America throughout that point, and has benefited from the web in the identical methods, however did not face as steep a climb. For one, there’s a built-in viewers for that music within the greater than 40 million individuals who communicate Spanish within the U.S. Latin pop additionally comes from a wide selection of areas, and is produced throughout varied artistic circumstances. (The Puerto Rican star Unhealthy Bunny, as an illustration, received his begin on SoundCloud.) In Okay-pop, the small oligarchy of leisure companies that each one however management the music and its manufacturing churn out glowing new collectible figurines at breakneck velocity like a workshop. In a way, you can say the mannequin’s incessantness wore down the defenses of American cynicism. Now, we stand at a crossroads the place the endgame of Okay-pop’s export initiative might lead away from its inventive development.

To be honest, the concept of a globalized Okay-pop trade was at all times the aim, and cracks at a brand new revolution aren’t wholly novel. From the multinational girl-group challenge Rania in 2011 to the NCT experiment that culled 25 members from eight nations into sub-units (together with NCT Dream) with the express goal of area of interest advertising and marketing, there have been a number of makes an attempt at franchising, significantly right here in America, the massive leagues of cultural consumerism. However we’re reaching a tipping level — not only for musicians on the high of the Okay-pop heap again dwelling trying to absolutely transition, however for executives, each inside and outdoors the Okay-pop trade, rubbing their fingers collectively on the prospect of enhanced attain, even when it means a dilution of the cultural signifiers in motion. You’ll be able to see it in XG, a Japanese lady group primarily based in South Korea that sings and raps solely in English. I’ve loved a few of XG’s songs, which characteristic machine-gun flows and lure drums. However not solely is the group taking part in into the facsimile of rap tradition now handled broadly as web tradition, it doesn’t appear to be chatting with or for anybody particularly. Okay-pop is not precisely constructed for individuality, however that is music so all-encompassing as to grow to be flat. The mission assertion for the group’s label, XGALX, appears like start-up jargon: “Via XGALX’s distinctive creativity in music and content material, we intention to interrupt down the partitions of frequent sense and stuck concepts, create new values by creativity, and talk to younger folks all over the world.”

Take, as one other instance, KATSEYE, a brand new lady group fashioned on the 2023 actuality present Dream Academy in collaboration between the HYBE Company and Geffen Data. The sextet was launched with a lofty goal: a “world lady group” that might “transcend nationwide, cultural, and inventive boundaries.” It has since grow to be evident that “world” really simply meant “Western,” and that the group’s backers weren’t trying to transcend cultural boundaries a lot as create one thing cultureless. KATSEYE sings completely in English. Its music is produced by ASCAP mainstays like Ryan Tedder and Cashmere Cat. Solely considered one of its six members is Korean. (Okay-pop trainee applications are recognized for plucking would-be members from throughout the Korean diaspora — Rosé, for one, is a toddler of Korean immigrants raised in Australia — however these strikes have typically served the efficiency of Okay-pop’s comfortable energy, somewhat than feeling like believable deniability by tokenism.) Although the group is clearly cosplaying Okay-pop, in observe, it’s something however. In an interview with Korea JoongAng Each day, HYBE founder and chairman Bang Si-hyuk admitted as a lot earlier than betraying his true intentions: “It is time to use the Okay-pop manufacturing system abroad to search out new skills throughout the globe,” he stated, producing a product “focused to the American market.” Okay-pop, he appeared to say, was not a style however a workflow.

Okay-pop companies construct their teams by a rigorous course of that begins with a trainee program, auditioning teenage girls and boys to suit a specific group aesthetic. The “idols,” as they’re known as, signal contracts that enable the label to manage each facet of their profession and public life. Members are organized by operate (e.g., a fundamental rapper or dancer), and every new launch brings a brand new idea, whose extremely choreographed routines are carried out on varied Korean music reveals for months earlier than the cycle repeats. The revelation that the identical method is likely to be relevant within the American market — the auditions for KATSEYE drew 120,000 candidates — has discovered some U.S. stakeholders keen to assist the assimilation. “It has been nice to have the ability to educate them about our market and the way they will carry out higher in it,” Allison Kaye of HYBE America advised advised Billboard. “I feel it is the primary true East-West partnership because it pertains to expertise.” In March, HYBE struck a 10-year deal with UMG, linking the most important video games of their respective cities, and by August the label had doubled down on its “multi-home, multi-genre” plan to deliver “the Okay-pop methodology to the American pop scene,” underneath the stewardship of polarizing expertise supervisor Scooter Braun. Up to now, that methodology has been a chart gold mine. Final month, three Okay-pop albums had been within the High 10 of the Billboard 200 for the primary time ever — this after Rosé not too long ago grew to become the primary feminine Okay-pop act to succeed in the High 10 on the Sizzling 100. Final week, rosie debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, the best ever for a Korean girl.

The timing of this export operation feels a contact ironic. For one factor, as concern about A.I. slop intensifies, it is weird to think about deliberately treating Okay-pop — as uncommon a phenomenon as we have seen in music this century — as merely an outlet for generically engineered musical copypasta. However this increasing method to the music’s enterprise mannequin additionally comes at a second the place the equipment itself is underneath scrutiny. Current scandals have resurrected longstanding issues concerning the ethics of commodifying idol worship: In April, NewJeans, maybe essentially the most critically revered Okay-pop act of all time, discovered itself on the heart of a labor controversy that led considered one of its members to offer tearful testimony for a broader investigation into office tradition within the South Korean leisure trade. In July, Brian Kim, founding father of Kakao Corp. (who received a controlling stake in SM Leisure after a battle with HYBE), was arrested for allegedly manipulating the inventory value throughout his tried acquisition. In November, NewJeans introduced the termination of its contract with HYBE on the grounds that the corporate had breached the settlement. The trade at massive rallied towards the transfer: “If we enable such a way of contract termination to happen, who might ever put money into the Korean Okay-pop market?” the Korean Leisure Producers Affiliation stated in an announcement.

NewJeans is the Okay-pop preferrred: referential however aesthetically targeted, systematic however not mechanically so, broadly interesting however unmistakably Korean, marked by good style and private fashion. Contemplating that, it is jarring to be taught that even the most effective case state of affairs is topic to the whims and evils of trade. It is price noting that many Okay-pop teams do not make it to yr three: Promo cycles are brutal and exhausting, and idols’ lives are rigorously stage-managed in methods that may’t assist however breed strife. Labor practices within the American document enterprise aren’t generally known as healthful both, however within the NewJeans equation evidently the star-aligned serendipity of the group’s music, through which the configuration of artist, producers, songwriters and choreographers feels completely and harmoniously matched, solely barely balances the burden of an oppressive operational infrastructure. If HYBE’s endgame is a Okay-pop for America, and for the world, there’s a actual menace of sacrificing the most effective elements for the worst elements: Franchise the effectivity, lose the identification.

What’s the sound of Okay-pop, if one exists past language? And if it has a singular sound, why would this push disrupt that? Whereas Okay-pop does borrow far too broadly to have anyone unified sonic principle — in any case, its acts undergo conceptual evolutions each few months, pegged to varied music developments — I would argue that the sound’s inherent kitsch owes to its want to barter so many layers of context, and that it’s in that negotiation that one can see and listen to persona past the system. At its greatest and most charming, Okay-pop music is about liminal area — the journey between cultural poles, favoring neither the origin nor the vacation spot however the pressure of touchdown within the center. Processing all that’s misplaced in translation creates songs which are decidedly not American pop, present in awe of and in opposition to it suddenly. Stripping the music of these circumstances can depart it sterile and boring, even when “higher.”

There are a whole lot of the reason why the mannequin works — stunning younger folks drawing the parasocial wishes of even youthful followers; its completely packaged, hypnotizing use of synchronization; its climate-controlled environment — and why it could once more elsewhere. However I’ve at all times preferred the concept one thing so blatantly business might produce one thing virtually paradoxically custom-made: as cosmically twee as WJSN’s “Secret,” as reverential as Heize’s “And July” or as bonkers as Women’ Technology’s “I Received a Boy.” How else can one clarify the “Gangnam Model” phenomenon — through which a firecracker of a track from a personality who appears to be like like something however an idol, written a few very Korean expertise, grew to become the most important YouTube hit ever on the time — than with a unstable cultural chemistry whose imprecision is its best asset?

It should be stated that the “outdated Okay-pop” is way from lifeless. The boy band ATEEZ, who had been on the entrance of the pack the week of Okay-pop’s large Billboard takeover, embodies the entire chaotic maximalism of the style, and there are a lot extra the place they got here from. You’ll find the NewJeans preferrred in sister group Illit, or in ARTMS’ Dall, the most effective and most intoxicating Okay-pop full-length of 2024. However HYBE’s 10-year UMG deal looks like a harbinger: The shift is coming, and the edge is nearer than ever. I do not need to be all doom and gloom. I do see the imaginative and prescient. Actually, one might consider Rosé’s chart-storming Bruno Mars collab “APT.” as a logical subsequent step in Okay-pop’s evolution: As a substitute of pairing Korean verses with an English hook, it does the alternative, and as an alternative of reaching for a sound that’s strikingly up to date to the purpose of setting one’s enamel on edge, or so nostalgic for a bygone period as to really feel alien, it’s deliberately only a bit passé. Together with Mars, the world’s best karaoke star, is a intelligent contact. Rosé carried out the track on Fallon and on the MAMA Awards, which is sort of just like the Okay-pop Grammys. But it surely’s telling that the MAMA ceremony was held within the U.S. for the primary time in its historical past this yr. Getting ready to one more Okay-pop revolution, the following battleground is right here.