The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
| Posted: 22 Dec 2012 06:03 PM PST THE must-sees are obvious. Global superstar Psy and the never-predictable Big Bang can make hearts race even offstage. Or, if you are a staunch Elf (a.k.a. Super Junior fan), the international spy stage thriller by the mammoth boyband is to be savoured. Here are some other pulsating moments of Mama 2012: Epik Gotham MADNESS is expected whenever this hip hop group takes the stage, but no one imagined they would bring Arkham Asylum (including a deranged-looking, Miss Faversham-inspired YG Entertainment rookie Lee Hi) with them to Hong Kong. Even more amazing, they kept their villain persona throughout the show: Joker (Tablo), Bane (Mithra) and Two-Face (DJ Tukutz). Mayhem! Wolfboy's song YOU could almost hear the screams when news broke out that South Korea's current It actor Song Joong-ki (Wolf Boy, The Innocent Man) would be the main host at the Mama 2012. Then, he had to open the show with the Korean version of Leslie Cheung's classic A Better Tomorrow! We already know you can act, but boy, can you sing! Battle of the flower boys TAKE a K-pop classic – Mirotic by TVXQ – and 17 flower boys, what do you get? Extreme yumminess. SM Entertainment hubaes (junior) Exo and Shinee gave their absent sunbaes (senior) TVXQ a run for their money as the two boybands danced off to the 2008 hit. If that was not hot enough, rookie Exo even did a number on Shinee with their explosive performance of Shinee's Lucifer! B.o.B's K-vibe FIRST, he took flight with former girlband Jewelry member Seo In-young in his Airplanes hit. (It mattered nought how her English sounded, Seo was one sexy mama in her lacy black bustier.) Then, American hip hop star B.o.B got a taste of K-pop soul when crooner K.Will joined him on stage for his charttopper Nothin' On You. Do we hear K-collaboration in the future ... Catch the repeat of Mama 2012 on Channel M HD (HyppTV Ch 181) tomorrow at 8.10pm . Look out for repeats from Dec 25 to 31. Channel M HD also comes with Catch-up TV (up to seven days) and Timeshift TV (two hours back), which enable viewers to watch missed programmes. Related Stories: |
| Posted: 22 Dec 2012 06:02 PM PST Nell THE name of Nell's frontman, Kim Jong Wan, might ring a bell with the fangirls – yes, he is the voice on G-Dragon's Today in his latest solo album One Of A Kind. Kim's distinctive voice, their poetic lyrics and melancholic tunes are part of the allure of the four-piece indie rock group that is heavily influenced by Radiohead. Like many indie acts in the country, Nell first plied its craft at the live clubs of Hongdae, Seoul's alternative arts district, before it was signed up by Korean music icon Seo Taiji in 2002. Nell won the Best Rock Award at the 23rd Golden Disk Award in 2008 for its sixth album Separation Anxiety. The members then had to take a four-year break from music to fulfil their mandatory national service. In April, Nell made a comeback with its seventh album Slip Away, which clinched the group a Best Rock Performance nomination. Busker Busker THEIR big break into K-pop is the common stuff of today's idol dreams - they were runner-ups in a music reality show. However, Busker Busker's real genesis is in no way ordinary, for K-pop at least. The pop indie band first got together with lead singer Jang Beom Jun's dream of creating a loose busking art group that will bring "artistic culture" to the streets of South Korea. When they decided to audition for Mnet's SuperStar K3, Jang along with his college mate Kim Hyung Tae and their English language lecturer American Brad Moore, formalised their music group and took on the name Busker Busker. Wowing the Korean music fans with their jangly folk-rock sound, their debut album Busker Busker 1st Album topped the major Korean music charts, making them one of the biggest K-pop acts this year. Unfortunately, with no flower boy look to boast of, the quirky charm of Busker Busker has been slow to catch on in the overseas K-pop markets. Lee Hi This YG Entertainment rookie was on stage at Mama 2012 for less than two minutes but it was enough to show how far this power voiced talent could go. Tagged by many as the Korean Adele, Lee Hi has swept the charts with her retro-soul debut single 1,2,3,4. The 16-year-old was discovered on the stage of the newest Korean music reality show, K-pop Star, where she bagged the second prize. Of course, it helps that the second prize means a contract with YG, currently the hottest talent agency in K-pop (it manages Psy, Big Bang and 2NE1). Funnily enough, it was her "clumsy dancing" and not her soulful voice that first caught the attention of YG's CEO Yang Hyun Suk. As he said, Lee Hi does not fit the idol princess bill but her "imperfection" is her appeal. Epik High Sold out – that was fans' fear when news broke out that the edgy hip hop group Epik High had signed with YG Entertainment after the members' military service hiatus. Their comeback album 99 soothed the angst though when it proved that the trio – Tablo, Mithra and DJ Tukutz – have not lost their touch. While 99 has a more upbeat vibe compared to their older works, the tracks are still specked with their signature witty takes on the Korean society and life in general. The clever lyricism may be lost on the non-Korean speakers, but their streetwise attitude cut across language barriers. Related Stories: |
| Posted: 22 Dec 2012 06:02 PM PST The recent Mama 2012 showed that K-pop is all set for the next phase of world domination. WHAT would Kanye West say? That thought kept crossing my mind in the throng of the screaming fans at the glittery Mnet Asian Music Awards 2012 (Mama 2012) at the Hong Kong Convention and Conference Centre in Hong Kong recently. I was of course thinking of the moment when West stormed on stage during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Music Awards. Wresting the microphone from the country music starlet, he unleashed a rant about how the gong should have gone to his friend and queen of hip hop Beyonce, "Yo Taylor. I'm really happy for you, I'm going to let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time." The rapper later blamed it on the alcohol, but anyone worth his drink would tell you that drunken outbursts do not come out of thin air. No matter how much he denies it, the tirade betrayed the pre-Kim K. musician's hidden feelings about the teenybopper acts ruling the pop scene at that time. Back to Hong Kong, I cannot help but wonder what West would have made of all the pop acts on show at Mama 2012. Would he have run on stage during Exo and Shinee's dance battle and shouted, "Yo Suho ... I'm going to let you finish, but 'N Sync had some of the best moves of all time." Or, would he have politely said, like Taiwan's star Wang Lee Hom, that it is music regardless of where (and when) it's from: A-pop, E-pop, K-pop, J-pop, C-pop or M-pop? Ultimately, what would he have made of the Beats Rock The World performance which saw some of South Korea's best hip hop artistes and rappers from Dynamic Duo, Double K and Zico to newbie Loco gang-banging it on stage? The thing is, before we get into all that "who owns pop music" debate, it must be made clear that American hitmakers have been in the K-pop loop way before Psy put K-pop on the global map. After all, money talks. From Teddy Riley to Will.I.Am, Omarion and Flo Rida, many American musicmakers have jumped on the K-pop bandwagon long before our grandmothers started riding the Gangnam horse. West himself surfed the K-pop wave way back in 2010. Along with Malik Yusef, he had travelled East to collaborate with K-pop rebels JYJ on the lead single Ayyy Girl off its first album, The Beginning. (The three JYJ members had walked away from their successful act TVXQ after a contract disagreement with their management company SM Entertainment.) With more than 500,000 copies reportedly pre-sold, it would be safe to say that if given a chance, even West would not be opposed to another K-pop collaboration. Gangnam calling It might sound like haters' biggest nightmare. When asked about what he thought of Gangnam Style, Taiwanese actor Chen Bolin said: "It's like air, it's omnipresent all around us ... Even if you don't play it, someone will, and if you don't talk about it, someone else will. It has become a part of everyday life." Gangnam was definitely all around at the Mama 2012 show in Hong Kong – actor Simon Yam could not stop doing it, Jackie Chan kept on raving about it and even the too-cool-for-school K-pop artistes like Big Bang and Epik High (in their Dark Knight villain regalia) joined in the trademark pony dance. Poor Hyuna, the "girl" in the 900-million-over-hit video (at press time), tried her best to evade the inevitable Psy question after she and her partner-in-crime Beast's Hyunseung won the Best Collaboration Award for their Troublemaker hit, but to no avail. Unsurprisingly, Gangnam Style dominated the winners' list too as Psy scooped Best Dance Performance – Solo, Best Music Video and International Favourite Artist – on top of his Song of the Year award. Psy's performance, the finale of the biggest music awards show in Asia, nearly brought down the Hong Kong Convention and Conference Centre, when a giant blow-up Psy doll and an army of dancing yellow suits (doppelgangers of comedian Yoo Jae Suk who played the geeky carpark dancer in the video) joined him on stage. Interestingly, this new big thing in pop is actually an old thing in K-pop, as Psy (real name Park Jae-sang) himself confessed. He said being known worldwide as the funny guy with the funny video is nothing new for him. "It's exactly the same thing that happened to me 12 years ago in Korea when I made my debut. They recognised me as the same funny guy with the funny dance in the funny video. "Twelve years later, I am doing one of the biggest concerts in Korea ... From now on I've got to take another 12 years to make that kind of status ... "This is kind of my debut worldwide and that kind of image, I like it 'coz it's the same thing 12 years ago," said Psy in the post-show press conference. Not producing another Gangnam Style is something that even Psy concedes to. "I cannot break this record forever, I think, unless I do a naked video or something," he quipped. He now has to show his other facets as a performer, he added, something that he would explore in his new album, planned for next March. K-pop purists may resent the fact that Psy ruled Mama 2012 but they would probably have to thank the accidental K-pop breakout star later for their beloved idols' future global success. Overseas appeal While Mama has always garnered a large following overseas, this year it has generated a bigger interest in North America and Europe, thanks to the worldwide sensation a.k.a. Psy. Even Mama 2012's special guest performer, American pop star Adam Lambert, who admitted to only knowing Psy and Big Bang (or rather, only their fashion), said he is curious about K-pop, "Hopefully, I'll walk away knowing more." The impressive show put up would have been an indication to the new converts of how far the K-pop scene can go on the international platform. Undeniably, China remains the big market for K-pop. Psy could not have captured the sentiment K-pop has for the world's biggest market better, "Obviously, I got to be there!" South-East Asia is a close second, as seen by the number of showcases and concerts held here. Next year, Mama will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia, while next month will see the Samsung Galaxy 27th Golden Disk Awards (described as K-pop's Grammys) hitting the stage in Kuala Lumpur. In fact, reports in South Korea indicate that these two markets have overtaken Japan as K-pop's goldmine. Lim Teck Kheng, marketing director of Universal Music Malaysia and Singapore, agrees that the interest in K-pop has simply exploded in the region in the last two years. "It's an exciting phase where we see the interest in K-pop in Malaysia is escalating very fast. There is this great demand for K-pop artistes' music releases or events which fuels this K-pop interest along," he said. Crucially, the acts showcased in Mama 2012 hinted on the variety of sounds and talents K-pop has to offer to global music lovers. While there are your typical immaculate but clonish dance brigades – sorry, Exo fans – on show, Mama 2012 also featured some of the not-so-popular-overseas Korean artistes like the edgy hip hop trio Epik High and the fiery rock group Pia. Then there is the Best New Artist indie pop group Busker Busker, that also clinched the Best Band Performance award. Busker Busker became one of the biggest bands in K-pop early this year, after winning the runner-up spot in Mnet's Superstar K3 (Korean version of American Idol). Whether they can do a Psy is yet to be seen, but if anything, their success is perhaps the first indication that K-pop fans were getting tired of the manufactured "perfection" of the idol boy/girl bands and their cute pop sound. And before you can say it is a Western thing, even kung fu superstar Chan admits to difficulty in telling the K-pop artistes apart. "For me, the K-pop stars today – the groups of boys and girls – look the same. Big Bang and Super Junior all look the same to me. The only one I can distinguish is Psy because his Gangnam Style is unique." The success of the "non-conventional" K-pop acts will depend on the fans, said Lim. "Music is a very experiential thing and there is always space for different music genres within K-pop to evolve as long as it can create its affiliation with the K-pop fans. "K-pop fans are a passionate and dedicated groups of music lovers who are also very instrumental in promoting and spreading all things K-pop in an ever expanding social media networks." Enter Psy. We all know what West would say about the Gangnam oppa – his photo with Psy and girlfriend Kim Kardashian has been making the rounds on Twitter. Still, I wonder what West's reaction would be to Korean rapper Double K's declaration: When asked if he would start rapping in English to break into the global arena, Double K bravely asserted, "Language is not an issue. I deliberately rap in Korean because I believe, where rap is concerned, Korea will be the next US, I mean, in its reach around the world." The writer's trip was sponsored by HyppTV and Fox International Channels. Related Stories: |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Star Online: Entertainment: Music To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan