Agencies PSY

Agencies Korean boy band BTS making it to the No.1 position on the Billboard 100 speaks volumes about K-pop’s calibre.

Agencies EXO’s Suho & SHINee’s Minho were in India earlier and were asked by a bystander to take a picture. The man had no idea who they were.

Agencies

Agencies Red Velvet, an extremely popular K –pop group has won many awards for music & choreography.

Contribution To Music: When Kendrick Lamar, Riri & Bon Jovi Made A Mark



Autoplay Autoplay 1 of 3 Marching To The Music Songs have the power to unite beyond their notes, just like these chart-toppers that evolved into anthems for landmark movements.



(Text: Shannon Tellis) ‘Born in the USA’ Bruce Springsteen

‘Born in the USA’ was written as an ironic retort to the Vietnam War. Given the song’s popularity, the staff on then president Ronald Reagan’s campaign trail thought it might be the perfect track for his 1984 re-election campaign, but it was rebuffed by Springsteen’s team. When Reagan referenced Springsteen in a speech anyway, he questioned if the then-president had even listened to his music. This incident paved the way for other artists to tell politicians to stop using their songs as endorsement. ‘Over the Rainbow’ Judy Garland

Gay rights activist Gilbert Baker was inspired by this 1930s song when creating the rainbow flag (a universally recognised symbol of gay pride). It’s an unoffical anthem for the gay community and was even played at the vigil for victims of the Orlando gay night club shooting last year. Singer Judy Garland was often referred to as the ‘Elvis for homosexuals’ for her character’s easy acceptance of the dandified lion in The Wizard of Oz.



(Image: www.imdb.com)



Not just Chester Bennington and Kurt Cobain, there are other music legends who lost their l...







Autoplay Autoplay 1 of 8 Smells Like Nirvana On April 5, 1994, the world lost Kurt Cobain, who, at age 27, had committed suicide at his Seattle home with a 20-gauge shotgun. His body was found two days later. Cobain’s body had been found to contain high traces of heroin and valium when he died, though at the time of his death, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic dismissed the idea that his drug habit was the reason he killed himself. On April 5, he locked himself in a room above his garage and shot himself in the head. A radio station was the first to broadcast the news, which shook not just the music industry, but the entire the world.



(Image: Facebook/Kurt Cobain)

Elegantly Wasted INXS frontman Michael Hutchence lived a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. He dated famous models and pop stars, and accounts of his drug and alcohol use are widespread. According to friends and bandmates, the singer found the dark allure of rock star excess irresistible. Before he hanged himself at his hotel room in Sydney in November 1997, Hutchence had been rummaging through a bin, desperate to find drugs. In the same bin, were found the lyrics of the last song he wrote – which have never been published.



(Image: Facebook/Michael Hutchence)

A Means To An End On May 18 1980, Ian Curtis, lead singer of post-punk pioneers Joy Division hanged himself. Curtis left a copy of Iggy Pop's "The Idiot" album spinning on a turntable at the time of his death and left a note stating: "At this very moment, I wish I were dead. I just can't cope anymore". Curtis left behind a small yet highly influential body of music. His deteriorating health can be attributed to struggles with his musical ambitions, a failing marriage, and his unfortunate illnesses.



(Image: Pinterest)

You'll Never Know Just days before her suicide, Mindy McCready was plunged into despair after she was served with court papers proposing that her two sons be sent to live with her long-estranged mother. The country artist killed herself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2013, having twice attempted suicide in the past. Her children were already in foster care at the time of her death. A Fond Farewell Smith died in 2003 at 34 years old from two stab wounds to the chest. According to his partner, Chiba, the two were arguing in their residence, and she locked herself in the bathroom to take a shower.Chiba heard him scream, and upon opening the door, saw Smith standing with a knife in his chest. She pulled out the knife, but he collapsed. He died in the hospital. Smith left a post-it note stating, "I'm so sorry—love, Elliott. God forgive me."

Back home and elsewhere in the world too, the first brush with Korean pop, or K-pop, probably was with the release of the video, Gangnam Style, by Park Jae Sung, better known as Psy. The ‘invisible horse-riding’ dance by Psy became an instant hit.No one really understood what the song meant, but the catchy music and the dance just caught on. The video got 100 million views in just 51 days of its release, more than what Justin Bieber got for Baby. Till today, it is among the most watched videos on YouTube.That was way back in 2012. Korean pop has since reached staggering heights of popularity. This year, the seven-member South Korean boy band, BTS, became the first ever K-pop album to make it to the No.1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart with their Love Yourself: Tear.Last year, BTS' Love Yourself: Her, peaked to No.7 on the Billboard 200. The Korea Music Content Association, through Gaon Music Chart, South Korea ’s equivalent of the Billboard chart, has issued a certification that Love Yourself: Tear has sold a million copies since its release on May 18 this year.K-pop albums making it to the Billboard listing, though, isn’t new. BoA’s (real name Kwon Bo-ah) self-titled Englishlanguage album was the first to appear on the Billboard 200 in 2009. The same year, Wonder Girls’ English-version of Nobody was the first Korean single to appear on the Hot 100 song chart.“Psy was next in 2012, and it took until 2017 for BTS, with DNA to become the first group to appear with a Korean song, not an English variant,” says Tamar Herman, a columnist for Billboard’s K-Pop section and contributing writer for Forbes.Korean economy has grown richer over the last two decades and the export of K-pop has propelled the South Korea’s music to an estimated $5 billion (Rs 34,500 crore) industry, according to a report published in the Korea Creative Content Agency in 2017.In fact, the band BTS is having a significant effect on the stock market as well, reported news portal Business Korea. “For the five days after BTS topped the US billboard album chart, Billboard 200, on May 28, the stock prices of entertainment companies shot up.”It estimated the corporate value of BTS’ management company Big Hit Entertainment, which has an IPO planned for next year, at more than 1 trillion Korean won (Rs 6,100 crore).The Korean Wave or hallyu — it includes Korean TV dramas and K-pop — sweeping across the world has come as a blessing in disguise for the country’s image and economy, especially after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.The South Korean government on its part is actively participating in the development of the country’s cultural economy. A Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism was established in 2008 with a specific department for promoting globalisation of K-pop and has been allotted substantial funds. Since the 1990s, many stateof-the-art auditoriums have come up. Research and development of hologram technology (prominently used by K-pop) and promotion of K-pop tourism too have picked up since.Changdong in north-western Seoul is being developed as a major cultural destination for K-pop tourism. The first phase of the project saw the completion of Platform 61 last year that has been constructed from 61 colourful shipping containers. Some K pop groups have already used it for recording videos.Hannah Waitt, cofounder and CEO of moon-ROK, a premier English source that provides fans with up-to-date and reliable information on their favourite K-pop artists, says: “I think K-pop has certainly stimulated the Korean economy by encouraging tourism — people from all over the world who love K-pop travel to Korea to catch concerts and experience Korean culture first hand.”Besides tourism, there has been an increase in the demand for learning the Korean language. A recent report in BBC News states that in order to understand the lyrics of the K-pop hit songs, learning the Korean language is in high demand in countries like the US, Canada, Thailand and Malaysia to Algeria. The South Korean government too is playing its part — it has set up 130 language institutes in 50 countries.The thriving cultural economy has also boosted increase in export of related goods. Korean stars are driving consumer trends in a big way. Fashion, food and even plastic surgery are followed by the diehard fans. The beauty industry has seen the biggest growth.The Hyundai Research Institute has assessed the economic effects of hallyu, stating that an improved national image thanks to hallyu leads to increasing exports, and therefore to the growth of the manufacturing industry.While Korean brands like LG, Samsung and Hyundai rule the roost with their excellence in cutting-edge technology, South Korea is also surging ahead with its cultural economy.Koreans are very proud of K-pop. As Band Ji Choel, a dedicated fan of K-pop says: “It is talked about globally and has really brought Korea into the spotlight and this time not for technological excellence but for a cultural reason.”The genesis of the Korean wave goes back to March 14, 1992, when Seo Taiji and Boys performed for a live TV show at Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation ’s weekend Music show. After that, “the first boy bands and girl groups truly made an impact in the late ’90s and early ’00s. The late ’00s saw a revival thanks to the advent of YouTube,” Herman says.The entertainment industry of South Korea has been closely related to its political history.The music industry gained momentum only when South Korea adopted democracy in 1987.What is it that has transfixed the world’s attention to K-pop?K-pop is a well-thought of package, always trying to push the envelope in every aspect of music entertainment. It has everything together — music, fashion, dance, singing, story, and not just sells the music but the idols themselves.“The systematic way K-pop groups are trained, produced, and marketed means K-pop tends to be highly stylised, extremely colourful, and very entertaining,” says Aja Romano, an American culture reporter who has covered K-pop extensively. “Overall it’s a very fun system.”Explains Jay Bang, a South Korean fan of K-pop, “What distinguishes K-pop artists from other pop artists from around the world is their sheer hard work and their “knife like” dance moves.This means their moves are quick and sharp and in perfect sync with each other.”Waitt was introduced to K-pop on the social media when she happened to watch the music video for Gee by Girls’ Generation and she recalls, “I watched the video and was immediately taken by the bright colours, catchy melody, and tight choreography. I spent the next few hours watching K-pop music videos and was amazed not just by the high production value of the songs and music videos, but by the view counts on YouTube. I was shocked that these videos were getting upwards of 100 million views, and realised that there was an entire sector of the music industry and a massive pop culture movement happening on the other side of the world that I knew nothing about.” Before Waitt knew it, she was fully in it. She was studying at University of Texas then and she went on to write an awardwinning thesis about K-pop after two years of extensive research.The global success of K-Pop did not happen by accident, nor is it simply an interesting cultural phenomenon, Mooweon Rhee, professor of management at School of Business in Seoul’s Yonsei University and Won-Yong Oh, a former assistant professor at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary in Canada wrote in the Harvard Business Review.“K-Pop entertainment companies demonstrate how to innovate business models by changing the fundamental assumptions of existing ones. Rather than find readymade talent, K-pop companies manufacture it,” they wrote. “Rather than market performers in a one-way manner, they nurture relationships with customers via social media. And rather than treat the world as one single market, they localise songs and even groups so that they truly resonate.”As K-pop became massive in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia as a whole, many groups have recorded alternate, localised versions of their singles in Mandarin, Japan, and English in order to make their songs more appealing and relatable to fans who speak those languages.One of the most important factors that led to the rise of K-pop is that record companies in Korea saw the potential in YouTube and capitalised on it early. “The development and proliferation of YouTube as a global video platform allowed Korean artists to go from local celebrities to global superstars. K-pop already had a winning formula — catchy songs, sharp choreography, and gorgeous group members. All of a sudden, YouTube exposed billions of people around the world to this new and exciting genre of music that they’d never seen or heard of before,” says Waitt.K-pop went global in 2009 when it spread outside of Asia with songs like Sorry Sorry by Super Junior, Nobody by Wonder Girls, Gee by Girls’ Generation besides some others spread through YouTube.Another hugely important part of the K-pop phenomenon is that Korean artists allow fans gratuitous access to their personal lives via reality series and variety shows. “Whereas many Western celebrities go to great lengths to protect their privacy, Korean celebrities let fans into their homes, their studios, and even their cars to give fans a closer look at their day-to-day lives. This sort of access fosters a more intimate relationship between the fans and the artist, which results in intense fan loyalty”, Waitt points out.And that means having a huge fandom presence in the live studio audience. “It’s a really intimate relationship, and the biggest groups overseas aren’t always the biggest groups at home in South Korea,” adds Romano.Herman observes, “K-pop is less a genre and more of an idea of an industry.” “The marketing decisions of the Korean music industry are probably the biggest single factor … the studios have built themselves up with the goal of exporting Korean musical groups and have spent decades making decisions that would help them achieve that goal,” says Romano.Another reason for K-pop success is that “Korean entertainment companies are not afraid of making mistakes, which has helped allow them to implement multiple experiments with various kinds and genres of products, idol groups, and continue to generate creative arts”, says Yonsei University’s Rhee, speaking from Seoul.Korea’s domestic music economy has been dominated by three big entertainment companies — SM Entertainment (1995), YG Entertainment (1996) and JYP Entertainment (1997) — which emerged in the late 1990s. Till recently, the top K-pop stars were a product of one of these. Now, however, there are many other music companies operating in the domestic market. Big Hit Entertainment (founded in 2005) is one such company that is currently managing BTS and some others. Soon after BTS made it to the Billboard ranking in 2017, the company’s fortunes sky-rocketed. According to the Korean entertainment label’s full-year audit report last year, Big Hit’s net profit rose 173% from 2016, reaching 24.5 billion won, or around $22.9 million.The big three entertainment companies, JYP, SM and YG and others employ two ways to identity talent: by auditioning or scouting. Auditions are held in Korea and globally, from the US to Kazakhstan.It is no secret that K-pop trainees go through rigorous training. They start at a very young age and train for almost 12 hours in a highly competitive environment. In their article, Rhee and Won-Yong Oh wrote, “Training is like boot camp. The trainees, who live together in company-provided dorms, are entered into tournament after tournament with no guarantee that they will actually ever make their professional debut.”Throughout the day they have classes for singing, dancing, and acting. Foreign languages are taught too with an eye on the biggest international markets for K-pop. In recent years, reports on the harassment faced by young trainees began to get attention from the media. Their private behaviour, public conduct and even their dating life once they entered into “long-term” contracts with the entertainment companies are allegedly controlled.Public attention did bring about change. In 2017, many studios agreed to bring reform in their contracts. “The legal system in South Korea has intervened to help improve situations that in the past were problematic, such as a 2014 law that aimed to protect minors in the entertainment industry and ongoing aims at breaking “slave” contracts that bind entertainers to agencies for extended periods of time,” says Herman. She further adds, “The legal situation revolving around the K-pop industry is still evolving, and abuse is still widespread,”In 2015, KBS World TV, a South Korean television channel operated by the Korean Broadcasting System aimed at international audiences, decided to send a group of top K-pop idols to India to find out why Korean pop wasn’t as popular here as it was in other Asian countries. They documented the experience of these idols and put it up on YouTube as the series ‘Exciting India’. The team consisted of Kyuhyun from Super Junior, Minho from SHINee , Jonghyun from C.N.Blue, Sunggyu from Infinite and Suho from EXO. Through this series, one sees the boys wandering around the streets of Mumbai trying to figure out how to popularise K-pop.They were surprised, excited and perhaps a tad bit disappointed at not being recognised. At the Gateway of India, an Indian tourist asked Suho to take a picture of him. He politely helped the man but one can tell he was not used to such behaviour. Minho, who was there with Suho, was highly amused by this exchange and so were the Korean camera crew and staff.The boys met a single fan, Babu, during their weeklong trip to Mumbai. Babu, though, claimed that there were thousands like him in India.However, they may be happy to note that in just three years, the number of Indian K-pop fans has increased manifold. A reason for this could be the rise of K-pop in Western countries. While Bollywood Songs are predominantly listened to in India, the trendy youth do follow charts such as the Billboard Hot 100, to stay updated with Western popular music.“I was introduced to K-pop by a friend who saw BTS’ Blood, Sweat and Tears playing on Vh1. While Psy’s Gangnam style had an impact on India as much as it did on the rest of the world, the more tasteful Blood, Sweat and Tears music video managed to capture my attention for a longer time,” said Sukanya, a 20-year-old college student. “The kitschy image of K-pop I previously had was shattered through BTS’ mesmerising music videos portraying detailed story lines and relatable youth-centric concepts. Through the variety of shows they release, one feels more and more connected to them. Rather than seeing them as celebrities, fans see them as friends.”The largest Indian fan club of BTS on Twitter, @BangtanINDIA, has 24,000 followers.The K-pop World Festival in Changwon organised by the South Korean government holds auditions worldwide to increase the exposure to k-pop. The Finale for Indian contestants was held at Siri Fort Stadium in Delhi and attended by the first lady of Korea, Kim Jung-sook. Juchy from Mizoram and We Are Family Crew from Delhi took the top prize and will be travelling to South Korea for the final on October 5. “It’s time to say that K-wave and K-pop finally arrived in India after a OMG time of insignificant presence,” says Kim Kum-pyoung, the director of Korean Cultural Centre in India. “We will witness the strong and enthusiastic fandom of K-pop in India, which will surprise Korean people as well.”