Fascinated by the global phenomenon that is K-pop but overwhelmed by its scope? Here’s what you need to know to appreciate the genre.
On June 10 , just shy of their ninth anniversary as a band , South Korean megastars BTSreleased the career - cross 48 - birdsong anthologyPROOF , the set ’s 6th No . 1 album on theBillboard 200 . It ’s the type of massive collection more often reserved for classic - rock’n’roll set well past their flush , coasting on radio royal family and greatest - hits platter cut-rate sale , not a band at the tip of their popularity , as BTS is . But BTS — who , shortly afterPROOFdropped , announced they ’d be take aim a breakto focus on solo projects , losing their label HYBE $ 1.7 billiondue to amore dire - sounding mistranslationin the proclamation television — is no average band .
During the COVID era alone , BTS have put out several English - voice communication singles , including " Dynamite " and " Butter , " that broke YouTube record when they drop ; they held two loop of BANGBANGCON , a streamable pay - per - sentiment concert that draw 2.4 million viewers at its blossom ; and when in - soul shows started up again , theirPermission to Dance On Stage tourcrossed new US boxful - office records , commanding$33.3 millionand$35.9 million , severally , from the four - nighttime strings of shows in Los Angeles and Las Vegas , and another$32.6 millionfrom aone - day showingof their concert movie , Permission to Dance on Stage : Seoul . But this tale is n’t about the jumbo piles of cash BTS rakes in by simply existing — it ’s about empathise the sheer index ofK - pop as multibillion - dollar planetary phenomenon . It ’s also a little nudge to calculate beyond BTS , if that ’s all you know , and discover the multitudes of other groups working hard to make their fans worldwide squeal with hilarity .
That said , it ’s worth noting how we think and talk about kibibyte - papa , especially in the midst of the Hallyu undulation . Along withSquid Game , Parasite , and other South Korean pop - refinement exports that have strike it big abroad in recent years , jet - pop is hardly representative of all the music being made and beloved in the state — see : trot , indie , shoegaze , literally any other genre you could call back of — but it has an outsized impact on the way the West perceives Korea . By breathlessly cover K - soda , English - speaking metier has flattened the country ’s various mouthful as " South Korea is kind of losing control condition over its ethnic narration , " as writer Regina Kim says in her taradiddle on this very shift forNBC ’s Think . " … It seems that just whenmuch of the Korean public and the Korean diaspora have moved onfrom K - daddy due to the surfeit of idol group ( about200 to 400 of them have debut in the past decade , andover 50 are debut in this year alone ) , the rest of the earthly concern is clamoring for it , " Kim reflects .
BTS, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, BLACKPINK, and Twice|Design by Mallory Rosten for Thrillist
But even within K - pop , " its elements are so diverse that there ’s bound to be something for everyone , " Kim writes . No wonder it ’s become so profoundly massive on a global graduated table . Still , it never fail to storm me when a North American fan of music that extends to the nichest genres has a unsighted spot when it derive to K - pop , often intimidate by its scope , the business enterprise itself , the history , and the fandom . Yeah , they ’ve heard of BTS , because who has n’t , but what about the rest of the honey oil - pop diligence ? Who should they know ? Where did kibibyte - pappa come from ? And what the inferno does an " army " have to do with it ?
We ’re answering these motion and more for still - baffled English speaker in this special K - pop starter kit , which covers the basics but is by no means comprehensive . The promise is that you get out on the other side with a more holistic understanding of super acid - pop music and an itching to plunk in for yourself . And hey , maybe one day you too will be ARMY .
How K-pop went global
To understand how K - pop became a musical force ( and because the American Education Department organization tends to treat anything that happened in Asia as a footnote to Eurocentric deterrent example ) , we want to start with a brief story deterrent example . In 1997 , a fiscal crisis send shock waves through most of Asia , " triggered by a perfect tempest of uncollectible debt , loaner affright , and regional contagion , " writes Euny Hong in her 2014 bookThe Birth of Korean Cool : How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture , and in response , " the Korean governing negociate a loanword of up to $ 57 billion from the International Monetary Fund . ( They stop up using only $ 19.5 billion . ) The daytime they made the loanword request was called the Day of National Humility . "
The timing of the financial crisis was both frustrative and opportune : In the ' 80 , " all of Asia had benchmarked Japan as the res publica to draw a bead on to economically , " Hong writes , and Korea — short pose on besting their oppressor of more than 600 years , most recently during the Nipponese business between 1910 and 1945 — had lastly begun to deliver the goods until 1997 halted their economic achiever " after decades of concerted effort to extract itself out of poorness . " But " if it were not for the crisis , there might never have been a Korean Wave , " Hong writes . " Korea made some of its skillful determination in the wake of the crisis . Its data technology , papa , drama , film , and video game industriousness as we know them today all come up out of a last - opportunity , tenacious - shaft gamble to get out of this hole . "
That " gamble " was a national public - sexual intercourse endeavour to commercialise South Korea in " quite perchance the big interior rebranding run in world story , " Hong indicate . The president at the time , Kim Dae - jung , called on Lee TH , head of the Korean offset of the massive PR firm Edelman , to spin the crisis as an investment opportunity for the rest of Asia and other countries , result in the bookKorea : On path and Open for Business , which effectively opened the state ’s doors to the relief of the world . subsequently , Kim allotted $ 50 million toward a Cultural Content Office fund — which has balloon to $ 1 billion today under private - sector investment managers — specifically " earmark just for the Korean pop music - culture manufacture ; it does not let in the o.k. arts like museum , opera or concert dance , " Hong write . The short of it : The Korean federal government liberally funds its creative industries ( unlike the US ) , run as far as having full think tank and science lab to search the slickest cutting - sharpness technologies for stage performances .
Also in 1997 , Korea ’s own MTV launched , called MNET . Initially governance - fund , it was " instrumental in exchange the Korean populace ’s view of the amusement industriousness , " Hong write , changing euphony wasting disease from a " song - base merchandise into a video - based one . " It made such an mental picture that in 2012 " a staggering 4 percent of the universe of South Korea try out forSuperstar K , Korea ’s cock-a-hoop televise singing rival , " Hong writes . " That ’s 2.08 million would - be K - pop stars competing in a single year in a country with a population of 50 million . "
Right around the time such a significant number of the population audition forSuperstar K , YouTube became an important platform for musicians everywhere , and two all-important minute occur for K - daddy that would officially become the point of no yield for its worldwide wait : The radical Wonder Girls , fresh off a 2009 tour with the Jonas Brothers , free 2010 ’s English - language song " Nobody , " the first cat valium - soda pop song to hit the Billboard Hot 100 ; and in 2012 , Psy released " Gangnam Style , " the first YouTube video to surpass 1 billion views and held the record for most - follow medicine video for a ripe five geezerhood .
Psy , née Park Jae - sang , broke openhanded in 2012 — but he was " definitely not the conquering hero Korea want to conduce its shock - and - veneration cultural encroachment , " Hong spell . " Korea had been undercoat more ceremonious , beautiful K - pop band … Koreans were not expecting that the man to wreak Hallyu to the western level would be the course of study goofball of the Korean music worldly concern , a man who purposely evince off his sweaty , hairy axillary fossa and white potato - shape dead body , who made fart jokes in his song , and whose outfits looked as though they were picked out by a Las Vegas point magician . "
wondergirls/YouTube
The four generations of K-pop
Of course Psy was barely the first K - pop idol — he was just most Americans ' unlikely introduction to the genre . So who were the noteworthy human activity that come before Psy , and who were the ones to come after ? First , it ’s significant to establish that one thousand - pop groups are chunk into dissimilar generations , each operating within relatively distinct cultural shift even if the yr spanning each generation are open for debate . We are indisputably , however , in one thousand - pop ’s 4th contemporaries . With that framework in mind , let ’s generally standardize these generations and their hallmark paragon .
And so in 1996 , out come the boy bandH.O.T.(aka Highfive of Teenagers ) , consider to be the first K - pop beau ideal radical , put together by the company SM Entertainment . Around the same time , more groups would debut and become the groundwork of first - gen thousand - dad : Sechs Kies , S.E.S.,Fin . K.L(whose member , Lee Hyori , recently hosted a reality show cyclosis on Netflix , Hyori ’s Bed & Breakfast , where stranger come and stay at her gorgeous acres on Jeju Island),Shinhwa , Click - B , g.o.d . ,Chakra , andBoA.
2nd gen ( ~2000–2010):The idea of cultivating idols select hold in K - pop ’s second generation , following the 1997 financial crisis that lay the groundwork for radical to be commercialize globally through international tour ( see : Wonder Girls and the JoBros ) . " In the 2000s , K - dad started to become more commercialized and became one of the country ’s most profitable industries , " Tan read . " This also stigmatize the elaboration of Hallyu , or the Korean Wave , across Asia and beyond . Idols started going on man tours and chatter their fans outside of Korea . "
And then there was the YouTube of it all—“the platform that was all important for the spread of the musical style , " Tan state . " A lot of creative person in the latter part of this generation ( some call them generation 2.5 ) , used this opportunity to reach fans outside of Korea . " Here is where we get Psy , as well as more of the groups Westerners might be intimate with : TVXQ , BIGBANG , Super Junior , girl ’ Generation , plusSHINee , f(x),2NE1(who did asurprise reunion at this year ’s Coachella),Miss A , and others .
3rd gen ( ~2010–2017):“While the 2d generation started putting more grandness on reaching their fans outside of Korea , the third coevals might be the one who mastered it , " Tan says . " The habit of international societal media platforms”—Twitter , Instagram , YouTube , etc.—“became a must for these artists to reach their fans . " It ’s in this generation thatBTSdebuts in 2013 , and their accessibility and " the idea that they are so easy to blab out to and so well-fixed to contact , " Tan say , is what helped propel them to other stardom . " At the same sentence , company bulge out to become more candid to different origins and ethnicity in promise to appeal to audiences in other markets , " Tan adds . " So artists likeGOT7,TWICE , EXO , andBLACKPINKhighlight their Thai , Japanese , and Chinese members to reach a wider consultation . "
In this shift toward bridge fans and creative person , there was also a more dedicated interestingness in developing groups ' construct . " The literary genre saw a vast growth in the quality of not just the birdsong , but also in the choreography , music videos , merch , and more , " Tan says . During the third contemporaries , we also see groups likeSEVENTEEN , MONSTA X , NCT(and their fractional monetary unit , NCT 127,NCT DREAM , andWayV ) , andWanna Onedebut .
4th gen ( ~2017 – present):Full throttle into the nowadays , the fourth - generation radical are get " more and more originative with their choreography and storytelling , Tan say , " and more than being ' manufactured , ' they ’re now give the impropriety to spell and produce their own euphony . " Tan signal to groups likeStray KidsandATEEZ , who " take pride in give birth ego - written vocal . " Beyond those two groups , we also haveTOMORROW X TOGETHER , ITZY , LOONA , ENHYPHEN , Aespa , and stacks more breaking out , thanks in part to platforms like TikTok that turn clips of their song into viral sensation . " Constant front is key , " Tan says , " and having a song appear on the chart is also a very important milepost . The fans are actively looking at Spotify ’s ball-shaped charts , Billboard , and local Korean program to force back conversation and tout about their favorite artist ’s achievement . "
How a K-pop band gets made
All this talk about debuts and concepts and talent agency and recruiting may sound wild to westerners when our exposure to a mainstream creative person ’s way of life to famous person sounds something like " a euphony exec discovered her vocalizing in a dive bar , and the quietus is history . " For asinfamously grueling as the atomic number 19 - daddy trainee systemcan be , at least it ’s more transparent than the pop - lead factory of America , which obfuscates truths about a singer already having a substructure in the door because of a famous family extremity or years of intensive behind - the - scene work in favor of simpler narratives about having fantastic luck . " The band are prefabricated and treat like a consumer Cartesian product decent from the beginning , " Hong writes . " medicine producers create a product design for the band they want , right down to the precise look , sound , and marketing campaign , before they even audition member . "
Sure , there are plenty of stories about how an idol cease up being enroll that are regurgitate in TikTok video or on-line roundups — for example , BTS ' Little Phoebe accompanied his supporter to an audition without the purpose of trying out and got recruit instead ; NCT ’s Taeyong went to an audition because the ship’s company bought him toast . But the very basics for how a K - pop group gets made looks like this : hopeful stripling audition for company , then one of said companies offers said teenager a contract , and the newly ratify trainee will put in untold hours of singing and dancing lesson to hopefully one day debut with a group . Because simply " dancing well is n’t enough , " Hong attests . " K - pop band members must trip the light fantastic in perfect sync , like clockwork . And so as to attain that , you have to put the band together while they ’re still young and hold off their debut until they ’ve learned to behave as one . "
Who are these companies cook up K - pop bands ? Any fan can list at least a few of the agency , in part because each point for a sure vibe from their artists , and because it ’s not unlike being a fan of tastemaking label like pigboat - papa or Dischord Records . For K - pop groups , their company serve as labels , managers , mentors , chaperon , teachers , and more , all to ensure their investiture . " A Korean record label will spend five to seven eld grooming a future super acid - popping star , " Hong write . The former " Big 3 " of amusement means — SM Entertainment ( Girls ’ Generation , EXO , SHINee , Red Velvet , NCT ) , YG Entertainment ( BLACKPINK , BIG BANG , iKON , TREASURE ) , and JYP Entertainment ( TWICE , Stray Kids , ITZY,2PM)—has more lately expanded to the " Big 4 " to make room for HYBE , formerly Big Hit , home of BTS , TOMORROW X TOGETHER , SEVENTEEN , ENHYPHEN , and their first girl group , LE SSERAFIM .
officialpsy/YouTube
Where to dive in with K-pop
With this new , primary understanding of super C - papa , the next question is , of course : Who should you start hear to ?
Nurul Husniyah , Spotify ’s senior editor of K - popping , Singapore & Malaysia , recognise " how easy it is to get sucked into a black hole of content , comebacks , and product , and to be completely overwhelmed by all of it . When starting your potassium - pop journey , sharpen on one aspect at a time ; do n’t seek to consume everything at once . " At the same clock time , Husniyah recommends the boy band SEVENTEEN , who are touring the United States in August . " Not only are there 13 members to choose your prejudice [ or favourite member ] from , they are also really synchronized and they have a divers discography . "
" Any artist from the quaternary multiplication is a great agency to start learning about K - pop , " Tan append , who also notes that the top five most - streamed kB - soda artists on Spotify are BTS , BLACKPINK , TWICE , Stray Kids , and TOMORROW disco biscuit TOGETHER . " From aespa , to ITZY , to ENHYPEN , fourth - multiplication radical also go above and beyond when it add up to carrying into action and their stages , so you could not facilitate but be drawn in . They ’re also very active on societal sensitive , so you’re able to very easily get to know the creative person beyond their euphony . "
It does n’t take long after stepping into the K - pop universe to encounter each group ’s fandom , which is one of honey oil - dada ’s " fix traits , " Tan says . " Being a fan of K - pop means more than just being a fan of an creative person . It ’s being a part of a very dynamic community that constantly celebrates and promotes the creative person it bed , and at the same meter builds long - lasting friendship between the fans . " This is the reason that BTS shouts out ARMY , its prescribed fandom name , whenever they can and dedicated an entire magnetic disk ofPROOFto them . Like any vivid fan residential area , they can be mobilized for grand things — in 2020,ARMY call forth $ 1 million for Black Lives Matter — and they canturn toxic , or even grievous , in the typesetter’s case ofsasaengs , obsessive fans who have haunt idol .
But fan - made capacity about favourite groups or a funny thing their favorite extremity did one time is abundant . If the One Direction fanbase trailblazed online devotee communities via Tumblr and Twitter posts full of GIFs , meme , and supercuts , then K - pop stans have master the formula . It ’s likeHarry Styles graven image worshipmultiplied by X , with X being the figure of members in any give group . I ’m catch dangerously near here to starting a K - pop glossary to excuse what " diagonal , " " bias saboteur , " " maknae , " " rap parentage , " etc . , are , but for now , all you really need to have intercourse is that K - pop rooter love being K - dada fans , and why would n’t they ? idol are lab - designed to be fawned over , and with their own radical TikTok story , lively videos where they ’re eating and chatting with devotee , troves of public presentation footage , music television , behind - the - scenes training time , and talk - show appearances , the group bequeath a conspicuous internet breadcrumb track designed to take up you in . Once you start clicking around K - pop Twitter or TikTok , the algorithm reacts ; it wo n’t be long until your feeds are populated with fancams from public presentation or roundups of idols ' auditory sense tarradiddle . When that happens , you ’ve reached the event horizon : You ’re on the precipice of being a full - bollocks K - pop stan , booster . get the Hallyu Wave cross you off .
