Yay

I know it's automated, but this still made me really happy:

9.29

G-Dragon HAS Accepted Your Friend request. a minute ago

Yay for Me2Day having an english log-in and for Google being able to make crappy translations into English!

Remembering the WTF

I really appreciate when a Kpop video is so bizarre to remind me that OH YEAH THIS SHIT IS NOT AMERICAN. IN FACT IT'S REALLY PRETTY FUCKING CRAYCRAY by our standards.

And so, I present "Rocket Girl" by STELLAR.

1) I may have spoken too soon in the last post when I said B1A4 had the most autotuning, because these ladies like it a lot as well.

2) Can we talk about how awesome the noise is when they knock people out with their guns? Not the shooting, the physical hitting with the gun. It's like the mechanical version of the "buffalo down" noise in the old Oregon Trail game (yes, hearing that noise WAS the main reason I played that game).

3) I really love the orange pigtails. I don't know why.

4) Lady raps in this are kind of bizarre sounding - she doesn't sound like a legit rapper - but I like them anyway.

Kauto-Tuned.

I feel like this the the most auto-tuned Kpop group I've heard yet. They also have the deepest rap voice I've heard in Kpop (sorry, TOP, you'll have to try harder).

I don't really like their videos too much (more dancing, B1A4, more dancing! although the dancing they do for like-it-like-it-like-it is pretty fun), but I find their songs really catchy and slightly different from normal Kpop fare.

EDIT: after watching this another two times, I'm kind of in love with the video, too, dancing or not. The tiger jacket is great and the boy trying to hold her hand is gorgeous. Tiger jacket boy is gorgeous too, and kind of looks like a cat. Which makes sense, right! Well done, stylists, well done.

Speaking of auto-tuning - I totally got to see The Gregory Brothers at Bumbershoot. They were basically just singing all their songs, playing with their videos (captioned) behind them. But it was pretty fun. And the girl in that group really does have an awesome voice. And if you don't know who I'm talking about, then.... 1) I bet you do, and you just don't know it. They're the ones who made all the Auto-tune The News videos, as well as the Hide-Yo-Kids, Hide-Yo-Wife Antoine Dodson song, the Double Rainbow song, and my personal favorite, Backin' Up:

New K-Pops

Once upon a time, I was very adamant about trying to limit my Kpop groups. I was only going to add one at a time, if at all. Because I knew how easily I became obsessed and was afraid I would spend literally ALL of my time researching their names and watching their entire back-catalog of videos.

Yeah, well, that rule kind of fell by the wayside pretty hard.

BUT, I haven't gotten crazy-obsessed with any of the newer groups yet. I like them and am watching the videos, but for the most part I don't know their names (yet). To this day there are only a few groups that I can name all the members of (Super Junior, Big Bang, Shinee, 2NE1, Fx).

But, there are some new videos and songs that I'm pretty into. I was always aware of but hadn't really invested much time into: Beast/B2st, TVXQ/JYJ/DBSK (they've got name issues), U-KISS, B1A4 , Boyfriend, ZE:A, CN Blue, FT Island. More time has been invested, but mostly just in a song or two.

And my new favorite favorites (as far as listening to these songs on repeat for the last 3 weeks) come from Teen Top, SS501, and Infinite.

Teen Top! Seriously, it stands for "Teenz on Top" or something equally horrible. Sigh. Korean band names are SO BAAAAD. I'm pretty sure they're all jail bait (one would assume, with a name like that, right?), but they've got this cool fucking clapping song:

AND then there's this masterpiece - SO catchily titled "No More Perfume On You". (Double sigh.)

But it IS hella catchy and fun, and there's an amazing amount of guyliner going on. I'm also in love with the dance. Just never never ever go find the English translation - it will ruin the song for you. That's why I didn't even post the real video here. You can tell just from the real video story line that its a pretty douchey song. So I'm ignoring that, because I can't speak Korean and thusly I can choose to ignore it. Also, I almost always like the dance version music video better.

As to why Wide-Eyes sings pretty much the whole fucking song, I have no idea. But he looks like a barbie doll, and I'm cool with watching him. And I LOVE watching little red-hair's smug little snarky face in the background the whole time.

I've been listening to this A LOT. I'm considering learning the dance and doing it in-place-of or in-addition-to a Zefron drag act at my choir's Talent-No-Talent show this year.

SS501. I have no clue what that stands name for. Probably something about how many members are in their band, their initials, their blood type, what kind of girl they want - who knows. I'm sure it stands for something both meaningful and idiotic. I don't care what they call themselves, because they have one of THE best k-pop songs of the year, hands down, in my opinion.

I realized one of the reasons this song is awesome is that you can tell they're saying "Love" - with a real English "L" sound! (I understand that this is difficult for most Asians, but when it's the main line of your chorus it's especially important to try extra hard. I'm looking at you, ShinEE. Stop "Ling Dinging" around your stages and take some time to learn how to say "Rrrrrr".)

Hold the phone, yall. Wikipedia has informed me, over the course of writing this post, on the intensely special meaning behind SS501's name:

"The name of the band is a combination of letters and numbers that have special meaning. The first “S” stands for “Superstar". The second “S” is an abbreviation for "Singer". The combination of 5, 0, and 1 symbolizes "five members united as one forever".^[1]SS501's official fan club name is Triple S (means SSS : Super Star Supporters)."

I feel my point has been proven.

Infinite. A band name that is almost normal. Well done, boys. I like Infinite because of this song, which is awesome and catchy (Oh!) enough to outweigh my dislike for the way it just kind of... ends. It doesn't fade out, it doesn't do one last chorus - they're just rapping, and then it's over. Whenever it comes on my ipod I'm really happy and then it's just GONE and I'm so confused. I had to listen to it multiple times on multiple formats before I actually believed that was the ending.

Infinite has some other good songs out there, too, but mostly I'm impressed with Sungjong, their little maknae (youngest in the group). He's easy to spot in the video because he's the one with the blue color pop (I fucking LOVE the video production/post-processing they did on that video. I know it's kind of cliche and not new in any way, shape, or form, but I love it anyway). He's the ladydancer of Infinite (I'm convinced that almost every boy band in Korea has at least one ladydancer (e.g. Heechul in Super Junior, Key in Shinee)), and the first time I saw the video below, I had no idea who it was.

I REALLY was hoping it was a girl and I was so prepared to be head-over-heels in love. Like, finally a rival to GD perhaps. And not that he's not awesome, because he so obviously is, but I just can't get that fired up about boys that are never going to be into girls... ... .. #sometimesgayboysmakemesad.

There are some solo acts that I've liked a lot recently, too, for either sound (and NOT dancing), or sound AND AWESOME DANCING. (HyunA and Jang Woo Hyuk, respectively.) But I'll spare you, as I think I'm done expanding on Kpop for the day.