It’s been about two years ago when I wrote a teeny tiny micro blog, so to speak, about the K-Pop genre. Pop music made in Korea. It was not enough to get me into it, but enough to get me surprised about the quality level of western pop music they are making in the eastern parts of the world.
In recent months, I’ve seen a rise of K-Pop (and J-Pop) in the tweets from western media and a tweet by Billboard caught my attention about girl group Red Velvet, whom managed to reach the number one spot of their World Album chart for the second time.
Altogether, the girls have released 4 album variations (aka a few mini albums (EPs) and one full length album), from which Ice Cream Cake and Rookie (both EPs) have reached the number one spot of the Billboard Album Charts.
Red Velvet are a great example of how K-Pop can cross over to our own mainstream pop. By mixing the Korean language with an abundance of English words and the mainly English song titles, their music is so accessible to everyone. It would even be a fun challenge to learn the lyrics to one their songs.
Musically, they remind me a bit of 90s R&B (Destiny’s Child and Christina Aguilera come to mind). It never sounds outdated though. Perhaps that’s due to the speed of some of their up-tempo songs and the songs are clever compositions that do captivate you, even though you only understand half of it.
I’m so impressed by the singing of these girls. I can’t even tell a real clear accent when they sing in English and I think they could, at some point, push their popularity even further when they record fully in English. However, for now, I actually like the mix of their own thing combined with all the elements of pop music as we know it.
The concept of the group is also well thought through. As you might expect from Asian pop (if you can excuse the generalization), they have a strong visual image. The sweet (school) girl image is very much a part of their marketing strategy, but they do mix it with a bolder look. When researching the group a little, I noticed that this is also linked to the name where “Red” represents the bolder parts of the girls and “Velvet” represents their sweet smooth side.
