Crossover Appeal
Obviously in the middle of an A.sian Pop culture resurgence.
Reoccurring since middle school when I was a subscriber to Asian pop culture magazines and thangs.
Sometimes dabbled in the music…and doing that again.
It’s interesting that nobody from the far east has made a breakthrough with the American market…especially since many of the artists over there are so heavily influenced by American music.
Also interesting because a lot of the artists I’ve been looking into claim their genres as R&B, Soul, and Hip Hop…
S.e7en
J.ay Pa.rk (This video was controversial because of the Black lead dancer…will get to that in a min)
R.ain (Totally love this btw)
2.PM
Read someone’s blog rant that music over there is a bit like the old school Ford plants…WAAAAY more manufactured and formulaic than what we’re used to in America…and that’s saying something.
My show Dre.am Hig.h is not so far off the mark…they take kids with potential and a certain look, train them in dance/presence/acting/singing (though shadow singers are a thing over there) and make bank off of them. Seems dude groups are more popular than female ones…though I kinda like this song a lot and saw it featured in tons of kdram.as..it’s one of the more formulaic groups :
Something that’s super important culturally is keeping a pristine image. Beauty standards (double eyelids), no overt sexuality, even a bit xenophobic despite the recent departures posted above…those are all outliers.
J.ay P.ark for example was ousted from the group 2.PM after posting comments on his Myspace page about not liking Ko.rea (due to his struggles with immigrating from America). He was the lead singer in 2.PM.
“Fans” wrote petitions for him to commit suicide for that comment.
He came back as a solo artist, and his video featuring a black lead dancer got hugely negative feedback as well, so much so that they released another acoustic version with a Korean girl as the lead.
Feedback from Black women who live there reports that Black people are still mostly seen as caricatures (hypersexual, good dancers/singers, good at sports) which makes sense I guess in such a homogeneous culture…but that is so interesting that there’s such a huge disdain for anything outside the norm…or huge objectification.
The formula truly rules…I wonder why that is.
I’m not sure I know enough about their cultures to really draw a hypothesis about this…but really interesting that that’s the case for at least South Korea and Japan…
As far as them breaking out over here?
I feel like they’ll need (just knowing what I know about america because clearly I’m a fan of some them already) :
- Almost perfect English…
- Western friendly looks (ie. Tall if a dude, more curves if a chick…)
- Play into sexuality. They minimize this a lot from the dude side and play up the lolita look for the girls. (ie. The following is a dude.)
- If you’re going to be R&B/Soul/Hip Hop, commit to it for real. It seems like they slide the scale back to Pop a lot and it waters down their voices.
- Be original! Make the artists the brand instead of making them into something from some think tank. If people are that replaceable, that’s not a good thing.
I may be a bit biased, but I think JY.P’s artists do slightly better at this. (Rai.n, 2.PM, and Ja.y Pa.rk all came up through JY.P) JY.P himself could have done exceptionally well over here, but his look probably got him caught up.
Promo pic from 2.PM’s last project :
There’s an appetite for these types of artists with bie.ber and on.e dire.ction and nem…just tweak the package…
(Average age of 2pm is 24…they’re too old now…)
ETA : Uh yeah Rain could def make the leap. Just heard his new album released last week…put it in English and…yeah… (The La song posted above is one of the lead singles).
Also saw this (Probably NSFW..becauze.ee.wrjwoaefjiweojfgkiejiwa ogvjwiao njwaokv jaiwmj fwk)
