What makes k pop popular

The average K-pop song is eight to They are also very heavy in the harmonies. Users find one song and they start digging on their own. Despite the record-shattering success of BTS, radio remains largely hesitant about putting K-pop into rotation. Still, the U. See Also. Newswire Powered by. Close the menu. Rolling Stone. Log In. The prize at that time was the Japanese music market, and breakthrough happened in when Korea and Japan both hosted the soccer World Cup.

From , bigger forces meant that K-pop's reach extended well beyond an Asian fan base. Unlike in China and Japan, where they use home grown social media, Korean companies embraced international ones — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — and K-pop began to become available on international music platforms.

Oppan Gangnam style Credit: Getty Images. That perfect storm culminated in, well we have to mention it, Psy and Gangnam Style in Psy was not a Korean version of a big pop star. Psy was Korea's version of Psy, and it turns out that's what the world wanted. It showed that you could be big and not sing entirely in English or be in vogue. The power of the music video transcended language. Just one of the official videos of Gangnam Style on YouTube had well over three billion views, the largest number of hits of any video at that time.

Today, Korean music producers are experts at manufacturing incredibly successful products. If K-pop is like a popular selling product, then how is it put together? Hannah Waite was at college in America looking for a subject to research. In the early hours of that morning, she stumbled across it.

This was nothing like the Macarena. When Waite started looking, she couldn't find anything in English online. The first day the site went live in , it crashed. Waite started delving deep into the origins of the bands.

As in the West, the pop groups were manufactured. But in South Korea, it was taken to extremes. It was far more targeted. Children were spotted and recruited. There is, says Waite, a specific formula and a set of conditions for creating a K-pop star. There are three main agencies with up to trainees each. There are other smaller ones out there too. All K-pop bands come through this system. The recruits either stay at home or live in dorms. They live by a tight regime. You train for a bit, whether that's choreography classes, vocal lessons.

In recent years, increasing public attention to these problems has given rise to change; in , multiple studios agreed to significant contract reform. Still, as the recent suicide of Shinee artist Kim Jong-hyun revealed, the pressures of studio culture are rarely made public and can take a serious toll on those who grow up within the system.

Despite all this, the cloistered life of a K-pop star is coveted by thousands of South Korean teens and preteens — so much so that walk-in auditions to scout kids for the studio programs are frequently held in South Korea and New York.

In addition to studio auditions, a wave of new TV audition shows have sprung up in the past few years, giving unknowns a chance to be discovered and build a fan base.

Often called idol shows or survival shows, these audition shows are comparable to American Idol and X-Factor. The band only has a seven-month contract; enjoy it while it lasts! These TV-sponsored idol shows have caused pushback from the studios, which see them as producing immature talent — and, of course, cutting into studio profits.

Today there are numerous talent shows, along with many more variety shows and well-known chart TV countdown shows like Inkigayo and M Countdown, which factor into how successful — and therefore bankable — a K-pop idol or idol group is seen to be.

Winning a weekend music show or weekly chart countdown remains one of the highest honors an artist or musical group can attain in the South Korean music industry. All of this emphasis on live performances make fans an extremely active part of the experience.

K-pop fans have perfected the art of the fan chant , in which fans in live studio audiences and live performances will shout alternate fan chants over the musical intros to songs, and sometimes as a counterpoint to choruses, as a show of unity and support. Fans intensely support their favorite group members, and many fans go out of their way to make sure their favorite idols look and dress the part of world-class performers.

There are also anti-fans who target band members — most notoriously an anti who attempted to poison a member of DBSK in But the less said about them, the better. You might expect that in the face of all this external pressure, K-pop groups would be largely dysfunctional messes.

Instead, modern-day K-pop appears to be a seamless, gorgeous, well-oiled machine — complete with a few glaring contradictions that make it all the more fascinating. Though government censorship of South Korean music has relaxed over time, it still exists, as does industry self-censorship in response to a range of controversial topics. South Korean social mores stigmatize everything from sexual references and innuendo to references to drugs and alcohol — as well as actual illicit behavior by idols — and addressing any of these subjects can cause a song to be arbitrarily banned from radio play and broadcast.

Songs dealing with serious themes or thorny issues are largely off limits, queer identity is generally only addressed as subtext, and lyrics are usually scrubbed down to fluffy platitudes.

Despite these limitations, K-pop has grown over time in its nuance and sophistication thanks to artists and studios who have often either risked censorship or relied on visual cues and subtext to fill in the gaps.

The women of K-pop are typically depicted as traditional versions of femininity. Yet the women of K-pop are also increasingly producing self-aware videos that navigate their own relationships to these rigid impositions. In the video, Sunmi transforms physically , growing more empowered and defiant as she faces the camera and finally confronts a billboard of herself.

Most of the time , co-ed groups tend to be one-off pairings of members from different bands for one or two singles, or novelty acts that are quickly split into gendered subgroups. The most famous actual co-ed band is probably the brother-sister duo Akdong Musician, a pair of cute kids who made it big on an audition show; and even they get split up a lot to pair with other singers.

Despite a number of K-pop stars openly supporting LGBTQ rights, the industry aggressively markets homoeroticism in its videos but remains generally homophobic. His name is Holland, and his first single debuted to a respectable 6.

Hip-hop tends to be a dominant part of the K-pop sound, particularly among male groups, a trend that has opened up the genre to criticism for appropriation.