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SB Chat Box #11: EXO in the house, K-pop longevity

19
Written by On December 29, 2011

This week, Subi and I chit-chat about the upcoming EXO Planet, how long K-pop will last, and Beast’s 2012 world tour.

  • Our thoughts on EXO Planet (1:11)

  • The EXO Planet marketing strategy (12:22)

  • Beast‘s world tour (22:48)

  • K-pop longevity (32:30)

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Download the podcast here.

Good job to KIMGINA for getting all the songs correctly from the last podcast. Give us your guesses for podcast #11!

Thanks for listening, and if there’s anything you would like to hear us talk about, drop us a comment.

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  • Anonymous

    B2ST World Tour – What?? I really like B2ST truly, but going on a world tour…. Did they even go on an ASIAN TOUR before? I’m sorry. Even though I like Cube, they seem to be overly ambitious and try to be like ‘the big 3′ which can afford and DO HAVE enough diehard fans to run the show and make a sizeable profit. Especially with a world tour. And YES THEY NEED TO BE OF THE TOP OF THE TOP TO HAVE A WORLD CONCERT TOUR. If Cube wants to make EVEN A LITTLE profit, they should wait for B2ST’s popularity to grow even more – which it will in the future. :) 

    And what the hell was Cube’s CEO smoking when he said that? Delusions. The ‘new kids’ and the new generation of fans will not be as big as THIS generation. Once the main groups (BB, 2NE1, SNSD, SJ, TVXQ) disappear, fans WILL leave. This feels like your other article with KPOP being a fad. KPOP is a fad. Fans are here because of emotional attachment, and this emotional attachment will die when the main groups do. Which therefore would mean that KPOP will not be as big because not many to none rookie groups are getting enough traction to having enough love and support at the point of what ‘the main’ groups have now. That ‘something else’ that you guys are saying KPOP will become in the future will NOT be popular, I agree. 

    I like this podcast! :D

    • Anonymous

      I disagree. When I heard the announcement, I thought Cube was brilliant and got the right idea. How refreshing it is for an Asian artist to have a world tour that actually goes outside of Asia? They were the most charismatic group at Kpop Masters in Vegas and they had the most robust live performance out of all the groups. I can see them filling a venue like Nokia Theater at L.A. Live. Kpop fans outside of Asia are hungry for live performances. I believe BEAST and Cube will do very well with this world tour.

      • Anonymous

        I sure hope so for B2ST’s sake. :D What I was saying is that, Cube as a company out to make as much money as possible (because that IS what they’re out to do), maybe should wait a little for B2ST popularity to REALLY skyrocket. Because it’ll definitely happen and its soon. THEN having a world concert tour would make a quite sizeable profit. :) But I know I’ll definitely be buying tickets if B2ST is coming to my country on this World Concert Tour. <3

    • Mee

      Agree with you, many rookies debut as NEXT dbsk, NEXT snsd, erm, for BB and 2NE1 i think a bit difficult since idols want to look so pretty (or they can’t wear cothes as extreme as BB n 2NE1). But they forget that the big names have wokerd so hard to put themselves as standard of Kpop, so rookies have to be more than that standard to get noticed..

  • HaibaraChristie76

    Super Junior M-Super Girl (Korean)
    B2ST-Shock
    4Minute-Huh
    DB5K-You’re My Melody/You’re My Song

    • HaibaraChristie76

      Sorry, I mean’t “Who’s Next” by 4Minute…not Huh….(wow, that was embarrassing)

  • e smith

    SuperMan- Suju M
    Shock – BEASTWho’s Next – 4minute feat BEAST
    ??????? – JYJ

    • Guest

      DBSK – You’re My Melody

  • Anonymous

    Tao from EXO is supposedly the rapper for whichever he’s in (most likely EXO-M) as in his bio he won some award for rapping, wushu(martial arts) and dj-ing. I think that Lu Han has an unique look that might be popular in China. He has this sweet look, which is different from the intense look Tao has. I think that the music used in the second and third teasers aren’t actual songs with singing, but more like copyrighted intros/instrumental music.

    Although I don’t like SM that much, I must say I like their marketing for EXO. Rather than automatically debuting the two separate groups as EXO-K and EXO-M and having fans fight over which group is better, they are introducing the members one by one. This way fans can try to like each member equally. SM is also probably using this to help gains Korean and international fans for EXO-M as it seems they have promoting under control in Korea with the monster TV trucks.

    Also Eunhyuk is not ugly, it’s just his face is complicated. Once you get to witness his personality, he’s becomes less complicated and more unique : )

    • Asdf

      thumbed up for the last part.

  • Anonymous

    As I listen to you girls talk about Kai, I see allkpop’s article about his longer teaser hahahaha.

    • http://twitter.com/miss_subi Subashiny

      Sometimes I think the K-Pop Gods listen to our podcasts and then go about punishing us. 

  • Guest

    i love the ending song <3333 neon naui noraeeeeeee

  • SHINee52911

    What do you guys think of 2NE1′s US debut

  • http://www.twitter.com/hipployta Hipployta

    SuJu-M Supergirl
    Beast Shock (my babies)
    4Minute Who’s Next
    DBSK…You’re My Melody (I know it’s DBSK but have no idea on the song but the chorus says You’re My Melody and Your Love Your Love so it’s 50/50 LOL)

  • Anonymous

    First, I LOVED the discussion of art and culture. I think there is some …disconnect? (I think it is somewhat described as incommensurability in philo) in the definition of pop culture. My interpretation of pop culture is everything that the general public encounters in daily life. I’m from Hong Kong, I have never lived in Korea, so I can’t speak for what actual Korean culture is like, but if we take the idea of Kpop as a whole, it is obviously something that the youths in Korea are exposed to. Subi seems to define Kpop as a static term; Kpop is what it is right now. Auto tune, Super Junior, SNSD, cross dressing, fan service and the like. Thus, it is accurate to say that Kpop will not be here after 20 years. Culture, trends will inevitably change in two decades. My problem with this is that I don’t believe that you can assign static meaning to words, which the seems to be the entire crux of studying semantics. Using American popular culture as an example, we have artists like Bing Crosby charting as pop music in the 1940s. Skip to 1980s pop music and we have Michael Jackson. What people wanted to listen to in the 80s is obviously not the same as the 40s, yet it is still “pop” music. The only for Kpop to not exist at all in 20 years would be if Korea stopped producing music, or if their industry drastically shrank and we saw a similar event such as what happened (is happening?) in the Philippines. There was a SB article back in October about the OPM (Original Philippine Music) movement that has sprung up due to over saturation of Kpop overshadowing native acts in the music scene. However, I feel like Korea has enough nationalist tendencies or ideals that their government/society would not embrace a foreign culture over their own (I believe this has also been discussed on SB).

    Additionally, I feel inclined to include musical acts from the Korean indie scene in my definition of “Kpop” because I do likewise when considering American pop culture. With increasing exposure to the “hipster scene”, which is debatable whether Zooey Deschanel is even representative of the actual indie movement, or if she presents a bastard cousin of easy-to-consume, somehow trendy “indie”, America cannot discount the effect of bands like Wilco, MGMT, Bright Eyes, or even Owl City (it pains me to include them), particularly on the teen to college student/20 something demographic. Similarly in Korea, groups like Clazziquai, 10cm, Nell, Vodka Rain obviously cannot compete with groups from the “Big 3″, but they do have a fan base. Alex from Clazziquai and 10cm have made appearances on variety shows. Nell was picked up by Seo Taiji back in the day. And on the topic of Seo Taiji, back when Seo Taiji and the Boys were formed, they were experimenting with totally unheard of sounds and did not belong to any solely money entertainment company. They had amazing mainstream success nonetheless and are undeniably a huge influence when considering 1990s Korean pop culture. Therein lies what I think is potentially the wild card of the indie scene. At any moment, a trend from indie music can be picked up or adapted into mainstream culture. Unlike the idol groups that win Inkigayo, the indie scene in Korea is comprised of self composed, un-autotuned music, and really, that is what the essence of music is for me. And the mere existence of such bands make me think that trendy, popular music isn’t just going to stop or die in Korea because trends and musical styles will change and evolve. What sells and is marketable will change. These huge, multi-million dollar companies aren’t going to keep producing the same song (SM I’m lookin at you and your A-Cha crap) if it doesn’t make money. Amy’s comment about a changing generation in Korea is very true in this sense, because maybe Korean youths 8 years down the road won’t buy shitty albums to support their biases just because ELFs right now are. Like it’s been said time and time again on SB, when something stops selling, that’s when change happens. Change in companies, change in pop culture. 

    So ANYWAY. Yeah, cannot believe I wrote this much about Kpop. What am I doing with my life if I care about this so much? To make amends, I am now going to do my homework/try to memorize my taekwondo forms. Cheers and happy new year!

  • Anonymous

    I love you podcasts, guys! Keep it up.

  • felicia elasih

    eunhyuk is not ugly :( he’s just a different kind of charming. 
    er.. technically JYJ touched on the whole ‘world tour’ thing. So how come Suju and Beast are still ‘fighting’ for the first spot for that? just wondering. Though JYJ’s World Tour wasn’t so much of a world tour, but they went outside Korea nevertheless. 

    I’m just thinking that when DB5K does a reunion.. even if it’s years from now, they /better/ do a world tour. A legitimate worldwide tour with stops all over the place. But now that I think about it, it’ll make them really tired.. hm… so… nevermind. Maybe I’ll just hopefully get a chance to go to their concert in Korea of Japan. 

  • http://twitter.com/ErikinaDaisy Erika Ward

    Hey guys! I really liked this podcast! You talked about a lot of really interesting things~! Thank you, as always, for your thoughts~ =)
    Here’s what I think:

    1) About EXO, so many people are saying different things. Some people love the teasers and think these guys are amazing, some hate them and criticize everything from the music to the dancing to even the pants they wear(?).SM is putting a lot of hype into this group, and just because they are from SM I think people except a lot – plus they will already have a successful fanbase. Why? Well, the fact that they trained with SHINee and are friends with them gets a lot of SHAWOL on their side. Than again, the fact that they resemble a younger SuJu gets a lot of hate from ELF. Either way, I’m glad SM is putting out another group – with all the teen rookies group in the market, they needed to debut another group in order to compete. Thus, EXO is being used as that. Well, I really don’t know how I feel about EXO – like a lot of people – and I think we really won’t know whether they work or not until they debut. 

    2) About Beast — I do feel like CUBE is being a little too ambitious, but that may not be a bad thing. For me it feels like they are trying to gain popularity by riding on the current wave. I mean let’s say you have a bunch of ELF – I’m using SJ as an example because they won an online poll for the group that overseas fans want to see the most – so let’s say there’s a really big SJ fanbase some where in South America. They really want SJ to visit there, but that fact that they’re ELF means they also know a lot about Kpop groups. So if a group like Beast (who has less popularity than SJ) has a concert there – Of course it will be successful because fans want to get as close as they can to their idols. If another group shows up that’s part of the kpop scene – some fans will just go support them to feel closer to SJ. Does that make sense? Also, gropus gather a lot of fans when they put on concerts. So I think this world tour can either make them more succesful or fail horribly – or it may meet somewhere in the middle. Only time can tell. 

    Same with the longevity of Kpop. I don’t think Kpop will ever die out – because as long as people have been living, they have been making and listening to music. I do believe that it will change though. In the podcast they mentioned that if it does change in like 10 years it won’t be Kpop anymore. Well let’s look at Kpop 10 years ago – it was VERY different form what we have today. It followed the trends back then. Nowadays, Kpop if following trends and I think it has already started to change. I mean if you look at some groups earlier videos compared to what they put out now it is very different. Look at the debuts of SJ or BB and than look at them now – they are following trends. Also, in the US in the 90s music was following trends. Now it is very different. So I agree that Kpop is changing and will forever change. Whether or not it will still be a global popular trend, well that is unpredictable. I think it is up to luck. I mean the fact that a lot of people caught onto Kpop and not pop culture from some other country was just luck. Kpop happened to have the right group who came out with the right stuff at the right time. I think 10 years from now some global fans will remain, but I have to agree that it will not be AS popular as it as been from 2009 till now. I’m the same. I have my fav groups which include SJ and BB and personally none of the rookies appeal to me. Sure I have listened to Beast and SHINee, but that was only because they were similar of SJ and BB. I think that in 10 years, if SJ and BB aren’t in the kpop scene, a lot of fans will stop support. That doesn’t mean that kpop will loose all fans.The way I see it there are two types of kpop fans: There are the hardcore fans that only like their groups and vow to support ONLY those groups forever. Than, there are the Kpop GENERAL fans who love ANYTHING kpop related and switch to whatever is popular at the time. Well, if there are more of the latter, than maybe Kpop will have a long future. As, they said in the podcast this topic is HUGE and can have a MILLION possibilities. But look at the UK for an example – when the Beatles were big, there was this HUGE craze for British music and lots of bands and singer started becoming popular from the UK. After the Beatles split, it died down. Not to say it lost all fans completely, but the trends moved on. Lately though the UK has been putting out more and more singers. SO I believe that Kpop will die down in a couple years. Probably in 10 years, when group like SJ and BB start to enter their 30s — but there is hope because things always come around full circle. So, even if Kpop does die out for a while, maybe 20 years down the road there will be another group at the right place with the right stuff who will start another big trend. The thing with trends is they are all different. So we will never get a trend like we had. It’s sad, but people change and so will kpop. Let’s enjoy it while we can. Besides, when I have kids I’ll make them listen to kpop — Haha, maybe that’s how current Kpop fans can start up the new fade 20 years from now. Good Luck Kpop~