On English Ratings and B.A.P

I just found this page today and after reading some of the confessions here I’m really heartened to know I’m not the only one who is made uncomfortable by some EYK content. To be clear, I do appreciate S&M initially introducing me to Kpop, but in the process of cultivating a more comprehensive interest in Korea, I feel like I may have “outgrown” EYK for a number of reasons.

In particular, the whole “rating the English of the song” thing always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s entirely up to you whether or not you want to learn the language, but understand that making a choice not to puts you in a position of not being justified in critiquing others’ use or misuse of *your* language. One of my favorite parts of the one Kpop concert I’ve been to was the break in the middle when the members went down the line, speaking to the audience (and doing so in whatever language they felt comfortable in!) We cheered when some of them managed even a little English, correct or no, just as I would hope someone would do for me if I was put on the spot to speak in my awful pidgin Korean in front of one person, let alone thousands. They’re idols, they’re carefully groomed marketing tools, they have to be a certain level of outgoing and confident to have made it to where they are. But they are still human underneath, and it doesn’t change that fact that it means a lot to me as an English-speaking fan that they’re making an effort to reach out, *even* as a marketing tool.

That brings me to my second point, which is that I also like what another user here said - that KPOP is not designed for English-speaking foreigners. Is that fanbase one which a lot of labels/groups are trying to expand into right now? Sure. Is it the only fanbase, or even the main fanbase for KPOP? I really don’t think so. I think nothing illustrates this better than the fact that a lot of KPOP group “World Tours” very much stick to an East Asian circuit, sometimes a South American circuit, but English-speaking European countries and the US have only recently warranted singular stops on tours. So when English shows up in a song, I appreciate it without feeling it was put there specifically for me, and I therefore don’t feel personally offended on behalf of all English-speakers when the grammar or pronunciation of something is off.

I understand that it’s entirely my choice to watch EYK, and if it makes me uncomfortable, I should probably just stop watching, and to be honest I have for the most part. Part of it is the lacklusterness which, hey, if I’d been making videos for this long, I may be a little tired/bored/running out of ideas by now too. But what frustrates me most is that it’s sometimes not even *what* they say, but *how* they choose to say it that bothers me.

The recent B.A.P controversy (which I apologize for even bringing up at this point) is the prime example. I too am a little saddened to see B.A.P going in a different direction from their earlier work (totally their prerogative, and hey, if they kept doing the same stuff over and over, we’d probably all get bored pretty quickly). It’s casting them in a different light than I’m used to, and I think it’s easy to feel that by moving away from their fierce, swaggering early image to a more balanced image incorporating ballads and such, they’re abandoning what made them stand out int he first place. But that’s just the way I feel at the moment. They’re still talented and masculine and cool, and I wish them well; I’m just not quite as excited about their current stuff as their older stuff, and a kind of selfish part of me hopes they return to that older style at some point down the road. That’s one way to say it. Another way to say it is to call them “bitch ass pussies.” I think by now we’ve all come to pretty clear conclusion on which way might have been the better way to go.

Anyway, glad I’m not the only one bothered by these things, but I’m going to stop here to avoid this page from becoming a codependent echo chamber. Like with B.A.P, I may just lurk for a while hoping EYK moves back in the direction of some of their older stuff. Unlike with B.A.P, I may not respect what they do in the meantime.