Okay-pop, BTS, and What the Grammys Get Improper About Asian Music

During the last decade, I’ve met tons of of American Okay-pop followers as a Okay-pop ethnographer. My first query is at all times the identical: “Why do you want Okay-pop?” The query carries an assumption: “If Okay-pop is merely a replica of American pop, as some critics dismissively declare, why hearken to the reproduction quite than the unique?”

Their responses have been surprisingly related, as if they’d in contrast notes. Okay-pop was “magical” and “catchy,” whereas American pop was “boring” and “at all times the identical.” In line with these followers, whereas American pop stars sang “an excessive amount of about intercourse, medication, and events,” Okay-pop supplied “goals, fantasies, and self-growth,” usually by elaborate various “universes” wherein idols developed distinct personas and narratives.

This concept of “universe” was first systematically launched to Okay-pop in 2012, when SM Leisure debuted EXO as aliens from “EXO Planet,” every endowed with a supernatural energy. Since then, world-building has turn out to be more and more intertwined with Okay-pop’s integration of music, dance, costume, stage design, vogue, magnificence, digital media, and extra not too long ago, digital idols and AI manufacturing, making Okay-pop an more and more audiovisual, narrative, and participatory cultural type for audiences worldwide.