Today’s K-pop is a hybrid of cultural influences and musical styles. Popular music in Korea saw a definitive transformation in the 1990s, modernizing and internationalizing alongside South Korea’s rapidly growing economy. Since then, K-pop as we know it – centering around idol stars trained by entertainment companies – has been guided by two main goals: to develop globally consumed cultural content and to satisfy domestic fans’ taste for novelty and familiarity. This chapter explores how these goals have shaped K-pop’s stylistic evolution, arguing that its musical styles are inseparable from the tension between the local and the global. To better explore this phenomenon, I use the term glocalization to capture the prevalent features and characteristics of K-pop. Glocalization refers to the considerations on both the local and global levels in developing a product or service, including the promotion of localized differences globally.1 K-pop has transformed global musical influences into unique local features, one of which is the recent trend of incorporating aspects of traditional Korean culture. This chapter shows that such global-local intersections challenge the widespread notion of the unidirectional influence of Western popular music.
The focus of this chapter is on idol-driven K-pop music that emerged in the mid-1990s. This discussion must begin by considering the validity of using the term “K-pop” as a genre designation. The expression “K-pop” was first used by Chinese and Japanese media in the late 1990s to refer to popular music originating from South Korea. In this early context, the designation denoted place of origin. More recently, as of April 2021, Billboard lists K-pop as an independent category, alongside pop, hip hop/R&B, dance, country, Latin, and rock. This choice indicates two possible rationales: It may imply that the primary consideration for K-pop is its linguistic and geographic orientation, or that K-pop is deemed to display musical qualities that are unique and allow it to stand as a separate genre. The former rationale can be misleading because the particular strand of Korean popular music known globally as “K-pop” is by no means inclusive of all genres and styles of popular music in Korea, which is called daejung gayo (or simply gayo) in Korean. As ethnomusicologist Michael Fuhr notes, the discrepancy in the meaning of the term “K-pop” as used within and outside Korea reasserts “the significance of the nation as symbolic boundary market.”2 At the same time, the fact that many K-pop songs fall under the established genres or even mix different genres in a single track renders the task of genre identification even more complicated.
These considerations prompt the question: Can K-pop be considered a genre? That is, what musical characteristics, if any, distinguish it from other genres? To begin to answer these questions, this chapter traces K-pop’s musical-stylistic development since its emergence in the 1990s. Fuhr has suggested, taking Adam Krims’s genre classification for rap music as a conceptual model, that K-pop’s mode of production, such as its casting and training systems and fan culture, is not only crucial but more relevant than musical features in understanding K-pop as a genre.3 Agreeing with the notion that the mode of production is one of its most distinguishing features, this chapter also considers how the K-pop industry’s global tendencies have had significant and direct influences on its musical and stylistic aesthetics – including the incorporation of traditional Korean music – which may hint at K-pop’s unique genre identity.
The first part of the chapter provides a bird’s-eye view of K-pop’s stylistic evolution in three phases, delineated according to the extent of its global reach. The initial phase (1996–2006) saw K-pop’s rise to popularity in Asia, and the second phase (2007–2017) was marked by K-pop’s isolated successes in the West. The third and current phase (2018 to the present) is witnessing K-pop’s consistent integration into global pop culture. The second part of the chapter discusses the incorporation of traditional Korean culture in K-pop, which began prominently around the late 2010s. More K-pop stars are now expressing their Korean heritage through music, music videos, and performances, as seen in the use of the Korean traditional clothing hanbok as the sartorial theme for BTS’s “Idol” (2018) and BLACKPINK’s “How You Like That” (2020), for instance. Thus, K-pop approaches globalization increasingly through local elements, which, given its current global popularity, may bring about changes in the traditional dynamics of influences between Western and Eastern popular culture.
Global Reach and Stylistic Evolutions
K-pop is a substantial component of Hallyu, or the “Korean Wave,” a term that emerged in the 1990s to describe the popularity of various Korean cultural forms, including TV drama, film, and popular music, in China, Japan, and other Asian countries.4 Hallyu gained a new momentum around 2008 (sometimes called Hallyu 2.0), when Korean popular culture began spreading beyond Asia with the help of the digital infrastructure that the South Korean government had invested in since the 1990s and the bourgeoning global social media platforms.5 Because K-pop and Hallyu inform each other, the three phases of K-pop outlined below coincide broadly with the Hallyu timeline, especially in terms of their global reach; however, the unique turns of events and stylistic trajectory of K-pop merit a separate discussion.6
Phase One (1996–2006)
Phase one saw the emergence of idol-driven popular music in Korea and its rise to popularity in other Asian countries. Some Korean music labels responded by building systems to further the music’s global appeal, localizing K-pop acts to target markets while also embracing global musical trends. Genres such as R&B, hip hop, rap, and club dance music were integrated into Korean popular music that had been previously dominated by ballad, trot, and soft rock and formed the foundation of the sound of modern K-pop.7
K-pop’s initial moment of global recognition was the explosive, unexpected popularity of the Korean boy band H.O.T. in China in the late 1990s. The band’s first Chinese concert in Beijing in 2000 drew 13,000 fans, an unprecedented audience for a foreign group.8 Subsequent Korean idol groups such as NRG, S.E.S., Fin.K.L, Baby V.O.X, and Shinhwa rose to popularity in other Asian countries, confirming K-pop as a cultural phenomenon. Because the popularity of K-pop was felt primarily within Asia during these years, many scholars have interpreted the success within the context of trans-Asian cultural traffic, inter-Asian relations, and the expansion of Asianism.9 Others read the phenomenon through notions of cultural familiarity such as “geo-linguistic region” and “cultural proximity,” both of which explain that consumers gravitate toward cultural products exhibiting linguistic or cultural similarities to their own.10 However, by the early 2000s K-pop attracted fans from Turkey, Mexico, Egypt, Iraq, Europe, and the United States, albeit in a scattered manner.11 The growing global fandom prompted the K-pop industry to draw blueprints to reach audiences beyond Asia.
One such plan came from SM Entertainment (SM hereafter), H.O.T.’s management company. In 1997, the company’s CEO, Lee Soo-man, announced “cultural technology,” a total management system inspired by a similar approach of Maurice Starr, producer of New Kids on the Block, and that of the Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates.12 SM’s cultural technology system dictated every stage of artistic production, including casting, training, producing, marketing, and managing:
The manual, which all S.M. employees are instructed to learn, explains when to bring in foreign composers, producers, and choreographers; what chord progressions to use in what country; the precise color of eyeshadow a performer should wear in a particular country; the exact hand gestures he or she should make; and the camera angles to be used in the videos (a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree group shot to open the video, followed by a montage of individual closeups).13
Essentially, the cultural technology system was designed to promote the artists through glocalization, customizing the music, music videos, and artists to the tastes and demands of the target audiences.
A good example of an early application of this system is the female singer BoA. Prior to her Japanese debut in 2001, SM put BoA through intensive Japanese lessons for more than two years, in addition to the usual training in singing and dancing. The company also formed a partnership with the major Japanese record label Avex Trax, who produced and promoted BoA’s Japanese album. BoA was carefully positioned as a teenage singer (she was fourteen then) who could sing while performing hip-hop dances, thereby distinguishing her from other female singers in Japanese, many of whom did not showcase such a combination of singing and dancing. Her Japanese debut album, ID; Peace B, addressed Japanese audiences exclusively. Its title track had been released in Korea a year prior, but its lyrics were rewritten in Japanese. “Dreams Come True,” from the same album, was written by a Japanese composer and a Japanese lyricist. Her subsequent album, Listen to My Heart, comprised fourteen Japanese-language tracks, eleven of which were composed by Japanese composers. All of BoA’s Japanese releases – more than sixty in total, encompassing singles, compilations, and studio and live recordings – have been produced primarily by Japanese producers, lyricists, and composers, although the executive producer remained SM (and later BoA herself). As three of her albums became million sellers – an unmatched record for a foreign artist in Japan – BoA was fully integrated into the Japanese popular music scene.
When album production and promotion were managed from Korea, K-pop companies found ways to create a sense of cultural affinity for foreign audiences. For instance, for the boy group TVXQ, created in 2003 with the goal of making it the largest boy band in Asia, SM chose a name that would resonate as familiar to Chinese-speaking audiences. “TVXQ” is derived from the stylized phonetic expression of its Chinese name, 東方神起 (read Tong Vfang Xien Qi; 동방신기 in Korean, read Dong Bang Shin Ki and translated “The Rising Gods of the East”). In addition, although all members were Korean, some of them adopted more Chinese-sounding stage names (for example, Xia Junsu for Kim Junsu). By the end of the decade, it also became common for K-pop idol groups to comprise foreign-national members or members with foreign-language abilities.
Concurrent to these localization efforts, Korean popular music in the 1990s evolved as it embraced genres such as R&B, upbeat dance music, rap, and hip hop as part of its parlance. R&B was popularized foremost by the male-trio group Solid, active in 1993–1997. Emphasizing tuneful melody and rich harmony in their music, Solid appealed to Korean audiences’ taste for melody-driven ballads. They added fluid rap or stylish dances to sentimental melodies, demonstrating genre mixing that is still an important aspect of K-pop.
Meanwhile, more energetic hip-hop music rose to popularity with SM’s first act, Hyun Jin-young. His first full album, New Dance 1 (1990), included tracks with raps, which he performed in baggy clothes and showcasing hip-hop (and the popular Roger Rabbit) dance. Lee Soo-man explained that with this album he wanted to create high-quality dance music in Korea: “People might think that the Rabbit dance and music came together, but I prioritized music.”14 Lee, who had just returned from his study in the United States, focused his new music business on creating well-produced dance music that he had heard there but deemed absent in Korea. By debuting Hyun, a seasoned hip-hop dancer, Lee successfully popularized new jack swing–style dance music in Korea.
Shortly after Hyun’s debut, the three-member male band Seo Taiji and Boys took the Korean popular music scene by storm with their rap-heavy single “I Know” (1992). A blend of hip hop, metal, and electronic dance music, this track was far more powerful than any other dance music previously released in Korea. Their next, even more experimental hit, “Hayeoga” (1993), not only mixed heavy metal and hip hop but also incorporated the traditional Korean woodwind instrument taepyeongso, whose piercing sound blended seamlessly with other synthesizer and drum-and-bass sounds. The track also featured an unusual song structure, departing from the standard song scheme of intro-verse-(pre-chorus)-chorus-verse-(pre-chorus)-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus-outro (see Table 3.1).
“Hayeoga” has a three-part interlude, the second part of which includes a dramatic, amplified electric guitar solo lasting over a minute, underscoring the rock element of this track. Also, instead of the bridge, which is usually placed toward the end of a song and offers a moment of contrast, this track maintains high energy and drive throughout and then pushes the tempo even further in the final twenty seconds. With such experimental approach, Seo Taiji and Boys became synonymous with musical revolution in late 1990s Korea. Their groundbreaking music, along with their virtuosic dance and bold fashion, guided the K-pop scene in the years to follow.
After Seo Taiji and Boys’s unexpected retirement in 1996, Korean music labels acted quickly to fill the void, producing similar single-gender idol groups one after another. These groups, equipped with striking visual appeal, targeted young audiences who were excited about dance music, hip hop, and rap. Idol music was thus often rhythm-driven, suitable for dynamic choreographed dances, and carried lyrics addressing issues such as the inner turmoil of youth or school culture, following the example of Seo Taiji and Boys’s “Classroom Idea” (1995). Boy bands such as H.O.T., Sechs Kies, and Shinhwa (debuted in 1996, 1997, and 1998, respectively) made hits with such music and were subsequently regarded as the voices of teenagers. Girl groups such as S.E.S. (debuted in 1997) and Fin.K.L (debuted in 1998) similarly performed energetic choreographed dances, but their music tended to be more lighthearted and sentimental. For example, although S.E.S.’s dance pop hit “I’m Your Girl” (1997) gives a nod to hip hop with intense rap passages accompanied by scratch effects and heavy synth bass lines, the rest of the track is sprightly and light in texture, with R&B-style melodies, and the lyrics are about hope and promises of love.
Notably, the blending of dance, hip hop, and R&B exhibited in “I’m Your Girl” was comparable to new jack swing, which many Korean producers of the 1990s, including S.E.S.’s producer, Lee Soo-man, tried to bring to Korea. The dance and hip-hop elements of the genre fascinated Korean fans who were eager for new sounds and rhythms. At the same time, the use of soulful melodies also appealed to domestic listeners who already had a strong proclivity for the sumptuous melody and harmony that characterize ballad and trot songs, and the melodic and harmonic aspects of new jack swing were often further emphasized in K-pop songs to satisfy Korean consumers. Thus, the mix of dance beats, singable melodies, and rich harmony, which became one of the key characteristics of K-pop music, can be seen as a musical feature that resulted from glocalization.
While idol groups were emerging as key players in the Korean popular music scene, previously popular genres such as trot, ballad, and rock remained popular throughout the 1990s and in the early 2000s.15 In fact, idol-driven K-pop experienced a relative lull in the early 2000s, when the first generation of idol groups retired with only a few new groups to fill the gap. Even so, the period was a pivotal moment in the history of Korean popular music, as everything surrounding idols – their music, performance style, production system, and fan culture – fundamentally changed the nature of popular music in Korea.
Phase Two (ca. 2007–ca. 2016)
If the first decade of K-pop was about recognizing its international potential and drawing the blueprint for further success, the second phase was the time of implementing that system in a fully fledged manner. The penetration into Japanese markets solidified with groups like BIGBANG and Kara, while the K-pop industry’s reach expanded beyond Asia. Some general stylistic tendencies and approaches employed by SM, JYP, and YG – the top three K-pop management companies – included incorporating Western pop culture tropes while minimizing Korea-specific cultural references; using English words in song titles and lyrics, especially in song hooks; and collaborating with foreign, mostly European and American, composers and producers. These factors gave rise to two notable musical trends. One was extremely hook-driven music that became prominent in the mid- to late 2000s and continued to proliferate for almost a decade. The other was structurally complex, nearly modular music; this quality, which became noticeable around the mid-2010s, could be seen both as a development of the genre mixing witnessed in the first phase and as a reaction to the excessively repetitive hook music. As this section will show, both trends were closely tied to K-pop’s globalizing tendencies.
Examples of strategic references to Western pop culture in K-pop of this phase are legion. In one such case, Wonder Girls’s single hit “Tell Me” (2007) sampled parts of Stacey Q’s “Two of Hearts” (1986), adapting the basic harmonic progressions and melodies of its verse, drumbeats, sound effects, and various filler phrases, such as “Oh no” and “No baby.” The hook (“Tell me, tell me, te-te-te-te-te-tell me”) of “Tell Me” is a twist on the opening words (“I-I-I-I-I-I need”) of the older song. The music video of “Tell Me” similarly includes references to American popular culture. For instance, one member embodies the group’s namesake fictional character Wonder Woman and protects other girls in various troublesome situations. More subtle references include high-five gestures (not a common celebratory gesture in Korea then), posters with English words on the stage set, visual effects reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein’s pop art, and American-style yellow school buses and school lockers. Wonder Girls’s next hit, the retro-inspired “Nobody” (2008), drew from American popular culture, too. The track’s music video features the five members as chorus girls performing on a Motown-style stage, garbed in sheath dresses, long white gloves, and coiffed hair, conjuring up images of 1960s girl groups such as the Supremes, the Shirelles, and the Ronettes.
Musically, this “cultural odorlessness” – an expression used by the sociologist Koichi Iwabuchi to denote the absence, in a product, of cultural references to the country of production – was matched by the rise of electronic dance music in K-pop.16 The popularity of electronic dance music grew steadily in Korea throughout the 2000s. By the end of the decade, beat-driven music with tempos around 124–128 bpm, inundated with digital sound, dominated Korean charts. BIGBANG, whose members’ musical identity is rooted in hip hop, debuted with an electronic dance track, “Lies” (2007), earning immediate mainstream popularity. Brown Eyed Girls, famous for their electronic dance “Abracadabra” (2009), originally debuted in 2006 as a R&B/ballad group but did not top Korean music charts until after releasing the electropop “L.O.V.E.” (2007). Idol music of this time was inseparable from electronic dance music, giving rise to a somewhat homogenous sound world across K-pop in the 2000s.
The hook was another important feature of K-pop between the mid-2000s and early 2010s. Musicologist John Shepherd defines hooks as “musical and lyrical material through which the song remains in popular memory and is instantly recognizable in popular consciousness.”17 Whether a short melodic idea, lyrics, or instrumental riffs, hooks allow listeners to anchor a song to their memory. When the K-pop industry was expanding its global fandom, it was important to maximize such anchoring moments and render songs memorable. One of the first songs to start the hook trend was Wonder Girls’s “Tell Me,” whose hook, “Tell me, tell me, te-te-te-te-te-tell me,” went viral in Korea and was parodied and adapted in numerous TV shows and dramas. This hook, short and catchy with its fun stuttering effect, is also made effective by repetition. In addition to repeating thirteen times between the chorus and the postchorus, the hook appears in varied forms in the interlude and as a melodic filler in other parts of the song. Moreover, its melody and harmony are designed to please: the melodies before the hook seldom land on the tonic pitch (the “do” of a scale), F#, even when the chord returns to the home key of F# minor, and the melody’s arrival on F# at the beginning of the hook after the leap to the dominant C# gives the listener aural satisfaction as built-up tension is resolved (Figure 3.1).
One consequence of the sweeping success of “Tell Me” was K-pop songs being flooded with hooks with English words, which had several social and commercial advantages but not entirely favorable musical consequences. Linguist Jamie Shinhee Lee explains that in South Korea English references are generally associated with modernity, globality, and a new generation.18 English lyrics can also operate as a discourse of resistance and greater artistic freedom, as musicians can use English to express notions that are considered too explicit in Korean.19 Furthermore, mixing in English words can make K-pop songs more memorable to foreign listeners who do not understand Korean. For these reasons, simple hooks with English lyrics surfaced prominently in K-pop in the late 2000s and onward, often accompanied by English song titles (Table 3.2). The boy band Shinhwa’s first album, released in 1998, had just one track with an English title, but nine out of fourteen tracks on their fifth album from 2004 had English titles (Korean titles were accompanied by English translations); by their tenth album of 2012, all eleven tracks had English titles. Although using English in titles and lyrics had apparent advantages for globally driven K-pop, English hooks were often rendered meaningless in efforts to maximize their phonetic or rhythmic effects, as in SHINee’s “Ring Ding Dong” (“Ringdingdong, ringdingdong / Ringdiggy dingdiggy dingdingding”) and Super Junior’s “Sorry Sorry” (“Sorry sorry sorry sorry / Shawty shawty shawty shawty”). Such hooks certainly made K-pop songs catchy and memorable, but the repetitive music and the sometimes nearly nonsensical lyrics contributed to the reputation of idol music as being nonmusical or unsophisticated in these years.
| Release year | Artist | Song | Times hook repeats (variation) | Total hook time (including variations)/song length | Hook lyrics | Other hooklike materials |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Wonder Girls | “Tell Me” | 13 (2) | 55 seconds / 3:36 | Tell me, tell me, te-te-te-te-te-tell me | None |
| 2008 | Wonder Girls | “Nobody” | 7 (2) | 42 seconds / 3:33 | I want nobody nobody but you | None |
| 2009 | Girls’ Generation | “Gee” | 8 | 16 seconds (1 minute 36 seconds) / 3:20 | Gee gee gee gee baby, baby | Variations and secondary hooks; four-chord track (AM7-F#m7-G#m7-C#m7 or AM7-F#m7-C#m7-C#m7) |
| 2009 | Super Junior | “Sorry Sorry” | 8 | 56 seconds / 3:52 | Sorry, Shawty (each ×4), followed by naega, nege / michyeo, ppajyeo | Single instrumental riff throughout |
| 2009 | T-ARA | “Bo Peep Bo Peep” | “Bo Peep” repeated 110 times | 64 seconds / 3:43 | Bo Peep (×7) Oh! | “Bo Peep” melody used as instrumental riff throughout |
| 2009 | SHINee | “Ring Ding Dong” | 12 | 45 seconds /3:51 | Ringdingdong (×2) Ring diggy ding diggy dingdingding | Secondary hook: “We wanna go rocka rocka rocka rocka rocka …” |
| 2010 | Super Junior | “Mr. Simple” | 12 | 48 seconds / 4:00 | Bwara Mr. (Miss) Simple, Simple | Instrumental riff throughout with minimal variations |
| 2010 | T-ARA | “Breaking Heart” | 12 | 48 seconds / 3:14 | Oh (×8) Cheoreopge (×7) saldaga micheo (Living foolishly makes me crazy) | Ostinato bass (Bb-Db-Gb-C-F(Cb, occasionally)) repetitive melody and lyrics throughout |
| 2011 | 2NE1 | “Naega jeil jal naga” (I am the best) | 19 | 42 seconds / 3:29 | Naega jeil jal naga (I am the best) | “Bam Ratatata Tatatatata Beat” (×8); single instrumental riff throughout |
| 2011 | T-ARA | “Roly Poly” | 6 | 45 seconds / 3:34 | Roly Poly Roly Roly Poly (plus two alternating Korean phrases) | Four-chord track (Am-F-C-G) except in the intro, interludes, and outro |
| 2012 | f(x) | “Electric Shock” | 7 (1) | 56 seconds /3:15 | Na – Electric (×3) E-E-E-Electric Shock | Part of the hook appears at 0:03; full hook at 0:50 |
| 2012 | Secret | “Poison” | 8 | 40 seconds / 3:25 | You are my poison | “Crazy crazy crazy love listen listen crazy love” (×4) |
| 2013 | Crayon Pop | “Bar Bar Bar” | Hook 1: 6 Hook 2: 15 | 1 minute 14 seconds / 3:00 | Barbarbarbar (×2) / Jumping ye (×2) (everbody, da gachi ttwieottwieo) | Hook 1 first appears at 0:15; hook 2 first appears at 0:50 |
| 2013 | EXO | “Growl” | 12 | 30 seconds / 3:27 | Na eureureong (×3) dae (I growl, growl, growl) | Instrumental riff (becomes chorus melody) |
Global collaboration in music producing was another important aspect of this phase. In the early days of K-pop, when not many Korean composers were fluent in the vocabulary of dance pop music, Korean music labels often adapted and remade existing Western or Japanese pop songs (for instance, S.E.S.’s 1998 hit “Dreams Come True” was a remake of Nylon Beat’s “Like a Fool”); this could be artistically limiting and legally complicated. Taking a step further with the glocalization efforts, around the mid-2000s, Korean management companies experimented with global collaboration, where foreign composers wrote original songs for K-pop idols and Korean composers mastered or arranged them according to the domestic listeners’ tastes. In 2005, SM partnered with the Swedish producer Pelle Lidell, who had worked with pop stars such as Christina Aguilera, Madonna, and Celine Dion. Girls’ Generation’s iconic hit “Genie” (2009) was a result of this collaboration: Lidell and his roster of British and Scandinavian songwriters sent their original song to SM, to which the label’s chief composer/producer Yoo Young-Jin added melodies that would appeal to Korean fans. By the early 2010s, SM also began collaborating with Teddy Riley, who brought back new jack swing through tracks such as Girls’ Generation’s “The Boys” (2011), Jay Park’s “Demon” (2011), and EXO’s “What Is Love” (2012). In addition, in 2013 SM established its own writer’s camp and began inviting composers from around the world, completing its global music producing system. By the late 2010s, it became commonplace for K-pop albums to be produced by a team of Korean and foreign composers, an effective arrangement to create music that satisfies both domestic and international fans.
K-pop produced under the global system demonstrated a distinct set of musical characteristics, including memorable hooks, propulsive music conducive to dynamic dance, dense harmonies, richly melodic bridges, anthemic choruses, and the mixing of different musical styles. Because the market for K-pop was relatively young and responsive to external influences, it made an ideal place of experimentation for foreign composers. Moreover, K-pop’s unique feature of having many members in one group required composers to write for many different vocal timbres, ranges of voice, and specializations (rap or singing), not only highlighting each member but also blending them into one cohesive ensemble. Taking all of these elements together, K-pop tracks became remarkably multifarious and maximalist, with frequent textual, timbral, and stylistic changes and constant aural stimulation matched by equally rich visual presentations.
Girl’s Generation’s “I Got a Boy” (2013) is a prime example of such experimental sound enabled by the global music-producing system. Composed by SM’s Yoo Young-Jin and a team of composers from the Norway-based Dsign Music (Sarah Lundback, Anne Judith Wik, and Will Simms), this five-minute track contains enough materials for at least three songs, cast in a complex and fragmented, yet tightly woven structure (Table 3.3).
| Time | Function | Lyrics (starting phrase) | Musical features | Music video | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intro | 0:00–0:30 | Intro 1 | (Diegetic sound: girls laughing, doorbell) | Instrumental music | Acting: Girls in a house, startled by a visit by a boy |
| 0:31–0:53 | Intro 2 | Ayo! GG! Yeah Yeah Sijakae bolkka? | Rap | Stage performance | |
| 0:54–1:13 | Intro 3 | Ha Ha! Hey let me introduce myself! Here comes trouble o! | Introduces the pre-chorus hook: hook A (“Oh oh oh yeah oh”) | Street performance | |
| Part I | 1:13–1:42 | Verse 1 | Jiga mwonde? Utgyeo. | Rap 1 | Street performance and acting |
| 1:43–2:02 | Pre-chorus | Oh oh oh yeah oh | Hook A | Street performance | |
| 2:03–2:10 | Interlude 1 | Ayo, stop, let me put it another way | Tempo change; electronic dance music | Stage performance | |
| 2:11–2:25 | Chorus | I got a boy meotjin, I got a boy chakan … | Hook B | Stage performance and acting | |
| 2:26–2:38 | Verse 2 | A~ Nae wangjanim! | Vocal (melody 1) | Stage performance | |
| 2:39–2:53 | Verse 3 | Na kkamjjang menbungiya | Rap 2 | Stage performance and street performance | |
| 2:53–3:07 | Pre-chorus | Oh oh oh yeah oh | Hook A | Street performance and stage performance | |
| Part II | 3:07–3:20 | Verse 4 | Nae mal deureobwa geu ai neone alji? | Vocal (melody 2) | Stage performance |
| 3:21–3:35 | Pre-chorus | Oh oh oh yeah oh | Hook A | Stage performance and acting | |
| 3:37–4:00 | Bridge 1 | Nan jeongmal hwagana jukgesseo | Tempo change to 98 bpm; Broadway-style singing | Stage performance (new stage setting) | |
| 4:01–4:03 | Interlude 2 | “Don’t stop! Let’s bring it back to 140” | Narration, no accompaniment | Stage performance | |
| 4:04–4:17 | Chorus | I got a boy meotjin, I got a boy chakan … | Hook B | Stage performance and acting | |
| 4:18–4:31 | Bridge 2 | Eonjena nae gyeoten | Vocal (melody 3) | Stage performance and acting | |
| 4:32–4:45 | Chorus | I got a boy meotjin … plus A~ Nae wangjanim! | Hook B + melody 1 | Street performance and acting | |
| 4:45–5:01 | Postchorus | I got a boy meotjin … plus Oh oh oh yeah oh | Hook A + hook B + variation of melody 1 (as chorus material) | Stage performance and street performance |
The introduction alone has three parts, conveyed visually in the music video by three different sets. The song can be divided into two or three parts, depending on how the structural functions of the musical fragments are interpreted. The fragments include four verses (each with different music), two hooks, two interludes, and two bridges. There are also two tempo changes via short interludes, the first to shift to Broadway-style solo singing, announced with the words, “let me put it another way,” and the second to “bring it back to 140.” Notably, even in this kaleidoscopic music, hooks remain crucial: the track is held together by the two melodic hooks – the pre-chorus material (hook A; “Oh-oh-oh-oh”) and the chorus music (hook B; “I got a boy”) – that alternate throughout and come together in the postchorus. Finally, the track has elements from electropop, R&B, dubstep, rap, drum and bass, and bubblegum pop, like a potpourri of popular music genres. “I Got a Boy” takes K-pop’s multi-genre approach to a nearly experimental level, transporting the listeners to a culturally nonspecific yet wonderfully surreal place. This innovative and maximalist music heralded a new phase of K-pop, characterized by great stylistic diversity.
Phase Three (2017 to present)
During its most recent phase, K-pop has experienced a heightened level of global attention and popularity. The landmark incident ushering in this new phase was BTS’s winning the Billboard Social Artist Award in 2017, the first US mainstream recognition of any K-pop act. As the K-pop industry expanded, new players rose to prominence, including HYBE (previously Bit Hit Entertainment; BTS’s management) and Cube Entertainment (4minute, Apink, and CLC). Many midsized and smaller companies emerged, although the YG-SM-JYP triad, all established in the late 1990s, remains dominant. This diversification within the industry has translated into wider stylistic and musical variety in K-pop. Stylistic diversity also came from greater engagements of foreign composers, cultivation of new domestic composers and producers, and more idols taking charge as composers and producers of their own music.
The global music producing system introduced by SM in the previous phase has grown steadily, influencing the entire K-pop industry. SM’s system now consists of a network of over 500 producers, composers, and lyricists from around the world, as well as robust songwriting camps.20 Other labels have adopted SM’s practice. For instance, Jellyfish Entertainment (management of VIXX), WM Entertainment (B1A4 and Oh My Girl), and DR Music (Rania) have partnered with foreign composers. HighGRND, the sublabel of YG, and JYP now run their own song camps, inviting both foreign and Korean composers. With such collaboration having become common practice in K-pop, more foreign musicians are producing, not only composing, in contrast to the early days of global producing when the songs provided by foreign composers were arranged and mastered by Korean producers. A famous example is BTS’s 2000 hit, “Dynamite,” composed by the British composers David Steward and Jessica Agombar and produced by David Steward; it was also the first K-pop track composed as an English song and performed that way.
Meanwhile, more Korean composers have cultivated their own sound for dance music: Yoo Young-Jin has been credited since K-pop’s early days with SM’s metal-inspired, beat-driven music combining dance, rap, and ballad singing, a style continued by the company’s younger producer, Kenzi, who tends to create harmonically and texturally dense tracks. Producer/composer Teddy Park has been responsible for YG artists’ music since 2006. JYP has a roster of Korean composers, including Sim Eun-jee and Hong Ji-sang; its composer audition programs help discover domestic composers. Black Eyed Pilseung, Hitchhiker, Monotree, Shinsadong Tiger, and Iggy/Youngbae are just some of the Korean composers active in K-pop.
Finally, more K-pop idols have been writing and producing their own music, adding to the stylistic diversity. BIGBANG’s leader G-Dragon composed numerous hits for his band, including “Lies” (2007), “Heartbreaker” (2009), and “Fantastic Baby” (2012). Because K-pop management companies have traditionally exerted much control over their stars’ artistic activities, and because the industry has long focused on the performance aspect of idol music, G-Dragon’s producing his own music was a refreshing change. Moreover, he was among the first idols to refer to himself and his peer musicians as “artists,” consciously rejecting their reputation as singing and dancing machines with only visual appeal and little artistic autonomy. Today, Mino of WINNER, Woozi of Seventeen, Hyunsik of BTOB, Soyeon of (G)I-DLE, and many others compose and produce their own music. The members of BTS also either compose or write lyrics for their songs; furthermore, RM, Suga, and J-Hope of BTS have released mixtapes as solo acts. Even established groups like Wonder Girls began producing later in their career, composing and producing nearly all of the tracks of their last two albums, REBOOT (2015) and Why So Lonely (2016).
With a greater number of competitive management companies, more robust global collaboration, a larger range of domestic composers, and increasing involvement of idols in the production of their own music, the stylistic spectrum of K-pop is now broader than ever. The following section discusses one notable feature that arose in this stylistic diversity: the borrowing of traditional Korean music in K-pop.
Traditional Korean Music in K-Pop
Traditional Korean culture began surfacing prominently in K-pop toward the end of the 2010s, indicating a change in the industry’s approach to globalization.21 In fact, throughout K-pop’s history, musicians have experimented with incorporating traditional Korean music, through iconography, instrumentation, and lyrics, as shown in Table 3.4. However, only in recent years has it been happening in earnest and with notable frequency. The incorporation has thus not been monolithic, but rather involved diverse intentions and creative procedures, reflecting K-pop’s evolving glocalization principles. The rest of this chapter examines three examples, TVXQ’s “Maximum” (2011), Topp Dogg’s “Arario” (2014), and Agust D’s “Daechwita” (2020). They demonstrate different modes and extents of borrowing from traditional Korean culture, as well as their broader implications for listeners and musicians.
Table 3.4 Select K-pop tracks released since the 1990s that borrow elements of traditional Korean music and/or culture
| Release year | Artist | Song title | Traditional elements |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Seo Taiji | “Hayeoga” | Title, sampling of taepyeongso |
| 2000 | 1TYM | “Kwaejina chingching”* | Title, folk tune (Kwaejina chingching) in the chorus, samul nori performance, Bukcheong saja |
| 2007 | SG Wannabe | “Arirang” | Title, gayageum performance in the intro |
| 2011 | TVXQ | “Maximum“ | Traditional drums, stage setup |
| 2012 | B.A.P | “No Mercy” | Samul nori (music only) |
| 2012 | Block B | “Nillili Mambo” | Title, samplings of traditional instruments and folk song in the intro |
| 2013 | G-Dragon | “Niliria” | Title, folk tune (Niliria) |
| 2014 | Topp Dogg | “Arario”* | Title, lyrics, costume, samul nori, gayageum performance, music video setting (props and background) |
| 2017 | VIXX | “Shangri-La”* | Title, gayageum (and gayageum-like electronic sound), props (fans), costume, MV setting |
| 2018 | BTS | “Ddaeng” | Lyrics, stage setting, costume |
| 2018 | BTS | “IDOL” | Lyrics, music video setting, costume |
| 2018 | Mino | “Financé”* | Lyrics, music video setting, costume (incorporation of trot) |
| 2019 | ONEUS | “LIT”* | Instruments, lyrics, costume, music video setting |
| 2019 | Sunmi | “Lalalay” | Sampling of taepyeongso |
| 2020 | Agust D (Suga) | “Daechwita”* | Title, sampling of daechwita, taepyeongso, costume, music video setting, narrative |
| 2020 | BLACKPINK | “How You Like That” | Costume |
* Tracks adapting traditional Korean music or culture as primary visual or musical source.
TVXQ’s “Maximum” (2011)
In TVXQ’s “Maximum,” references to traditional Korean music do not add up to a legible reading of Korean culture, but rather serve to create a vaguely East Asian feel. There are many borrowings from traditional Korean music in this idiosyncratically dense and beat- and synth-heavy song produced by SM. It opens with a brief solo passage by the traditional Korean zither instrument gayageum. The song’s overall percussive sound intensifies as various traditional percussion instruments enter around mid-track, starting with the jing (gong) that bookends the interlude rap sections (1’23” and 1’45”). In the second half of the track, multiple electronic drum sounds are layered and culminate in the postchorus, when the jangling sound of the kkwaenggwari (small gong) is added (3’12”). This last section alludes to the traditional folk performance pungmul or samul nori, which includes drumming, dancing, and some singing. Also, throughout the song, the singers exclaim phrases like “urlssu” and “huh-ee,” interjections used to express amusement and to encourage audience participation during traditional Korean performances.
However, these borrowed sounds from the traditional instruments are neither foregrounded nor instrumental in determining the narrative or structure of the song, but rather are subsumed into the layers of synthesizer drum sounds. Even the gayageum part of the opening is fleeting and atmospheric, serving as an incidental sound effect at best. Therefore, despite being a fresh case during a time when K-pop was generally preoccupied with hook-ridden dance music with the propensity to draw on Western culture, the referencing of traditional Korean music in “Maximum” achieves little beyond creating an exotic milieu in the context of Western musical procedures.
Topp Dogg’s “Arario” (2014)
“Arario” by hip-hop band Topp Dogg (now Xeno-T) makes explicit and ubiquitous references to traditional Korean culture. The title is a variation of the word “Arirang,” a famous Korean folk song. The lyrics of “Arario” are filled with direct quotations of words of folk songs and puns from Korean folklore. Furthermore, the words convey confidence about using Korean elements, a feature rarely seen in K-pop previously: “I don’t know why people do such typical raps / I’ll just say it, ours is the best.”22 The turn to Korean culture is communicated visually in the music video as well. Starting with an image of a gayageum player’s hands in performance, the music video constantly juxtaposes performances of traditional instruments, such as gayageum, buk (drum), Bukcheong sajanoreum (lion mask dance), and samulnori (traditional percussion quartet), and those of Topp Dogg, whose costumes alternate between the traditional hanbok and clothes of hip-hop style. This conjoining of the two worlds culminates in the chorus, where all performers share the stage and take turns in displaying hybrid-style solo acts, as exemplified in one of the back dancers breakdancing while dressed in hanbok.
Ironically, the music itself does not match the extent of the expression of traditional Korean culture demonstrated in the music video and the lyrics. Except for at the very beginning and a brief moment in the final chorus, the traditional instruments are not actually heard, creating a disparity between the image and the sound whenever the music video shows performances of the instruments. Thus, despite the numerous references to traditional culture, there is little intermixing of traditional Korean music and hip-hop music. Even so, with both traditional Korean dance/music and hip hop and the lyrics filled with Korean idioms and references to Korean folklore, this track is an antithesis to the “culturally odorless” K-pop music commonly seen in the mid-2010s.
Agust D’s “Daechwita” (2020)
“Daechwita” by Agust D (BTS member Suga’s solo act name) stands as one of the boldest uses of traditional Korean culture and music in K-pop thus far. The track stylishly and effectively infuses elements of traditional Korean music, hip-hop and trap, reflecting the plot of the music video that weaves through Agust D’s dual persona in two different temporal spaces, one as a king in the historic Joseon period (1392–1897) and the other as the rapper himself, somehow appearing in the historic period, disguised as a peasant and facing the king persona.
The title “Daechwita” is taken from the eponymous traditional Korean band music originating in the early seventeenth-century Joseon, performed for royal and military processions. Chwi means to blow, and ta means to strike; together, chwita refers to music performed by woodwind and percussion instruments, and dae translates to “grand,” indicating the significance of the occasions where daechwita was performed. The instruments for traditional daechwita have changed over time, but the standard instrumentation in today’s performances includes the woodwinds nabal (brass horn), nagak (seashell horn), and taepyeongso (shawm), and the percussion instruments yongo (drum), jing (gong), and jabara (small cymbals). The traditional performance begins with the band leader’s command, “myungeumilha daechwita harapshinda” (“Hit the gong once and let daechwita begin”), to which the band responds by shouting, “Ye-I.” To that, a strike on the gong and three hits on the side of yongo (drum) announce the start of the music, and the entire band commences.
Agust D’s song borrows these iconic moments of daechwita, with modifications. Unlike the traditional performance, “Daechwita” begins with the gong, followed by the taepyeongso and the leader’s command, delivered as a sung melody and accompanied by the gong and other drums. This intro rounds off with the band’s response, “Ye-I,” as done in a traditional performance. Notably, these sounds are sampled from a performance by the Court Music Orchestra of the National Gugak Center. The voice is that of the piri virtuoso Cheong Jae-guk, whose vocalization uses the shigimsae technique, melodic decorations involving microtonal bending, grace notes, or vibrations. Fittingly, this introduction, which adopts numerous elements of traditional daechwita, is matched visually in the music video by the image of Agust D’s king character arising from his throne, followed by a view of the courtyard of a historical palace.
As the music transitions into the main verse and the music video shows Agust D’s peasant (modern) persona strolling in an old marketplace, the traditional gong sound is re-created by the synthesizer. These shifts symbolize the intermixing of the tradition and the modern, on both musical and narrative levels. The sound of the kkwaeggwari (small handheld gong) introduced in this scene (0’31”) could symbolize Agust D’s peasant identity, since the instrument is not used in traditional daechwita, but in farmer’s music, nongak. Musically, its jangling timbre perfectly depicts the boisterousness of the marketplace, while its high-pitched, metallic quality blends seamlessly with hi-hat and snare drums. Likewise, the gong, with its lengthy reverberation, mixes well with larger drums. Thus, the track effectively exploits the timbral similarities between traditional and electronic instruments to blend the two genres, which in turn informs the song’s narrative.
Recurring pitch materials also help the two different genres mix with each other. For instance, the pitches from the commander’s vocalization, the taepyeongso melody, and the pitch clusters created by the various instruments in the introduction are rich in microtonal bending and semitone relationships. The vocal bending and semitones serve as cohesive melodic ideas later in the track, as in the vocal chorus melody (“Daechwita-a-a, Daechwaita-a-a”) that oscillates between the pitches C# and D. Additionally, the vocalization and the taepyeongso melody comprise the pitches G#, C#, D, D#, and F (slightly off pitch), which become part of the main melodic riff (spanning the pitches G#, C#, B, F#, and D) played against the drone on C# (first played at the appearance of the peasant Agust D) throughout the track. Through the cohesive use of pitch materials in both styles of music, “Daechwita” integrates two vastly different genres – traditional Korean music and hip hop – on structural, sonic, and narrative levels.
Overall, the musical, visual, and symbolic integration of traditional Korean music and culture in this track is by far more seamless and effective than in any other K-pop song. Such incorporation has had significant commercial implications, as illustrated by the popularity of “Daechwita” on YouTube (more than 318 million views as of July 2022, with 13 million likes). Given BTS’s influence in the Korean popular music industry, the musical and commercial success of their engagement with traditional Korean music and culture may encourage other K-pop artists and management companies to continue to explore in this direction.
Conclusion
As this chapter has shown, K-pop’s stylistic evolution has been guided largely by a search for a balance between the global and the local. Certain aspects of this dynamic have surfaced more prominently than others at different times. However, generally speaking, K-pop has progressed from a conscious resistance to Korea’s local elements to a more willing and enthusiastic expression of them. K-pop artists – not only composers and producers but also choreographers and costume designers – are increasingly looking toward traditional Korean culture for fresh inspiration. One implication of this change is that K-pop as a whole is becoming more confident and assertive about expressing its Koreanness. At the same time, greater consumption of K-pop globally might signify changing dynamics of influence within the popular culture industries. Finally, this trend is symptomatic of the overall widening of the cultural spectrum in K-pop, as the incorporation of Korean traditional culture is counterbalanced by songs like BTS’s “Dynamite” and “Butter,” sung entirely in English.
Whether more K-pop idol musicians will continue to incorporate traditional Korean culture and music in their works is a matter of pure conjecture. However, it is certain that a greater number of international consumers have grown familiar with K-pop and other aspects of Korean culture, which might enable them to embrace K-pop’s experimentation with traditional elements more readily. It will be worthwhile to investigate how this recent engagement with Korean tradition may impact the consumption of K-pop overseas, by Korean and non-Korean audiences, to understand the future direction of K-pop.
Timbre
EJAE (Kim Eun-jae), a rising singer-songwriter and producer, was in her car driving from Virginia to New York in December 2019 when she suddenly received an onslaught of direct messages from her Instagram account. Fans of the girl group Red Velvet were texting that her demo version of “Psycho” had been uploaded to YouTube. It was two days before SM Entertainment (hereafter SM), one of South Korea’s largest entertainment conglomerates, was to release Red Velvet’s song “Psycho,” the title song of their next album, and the demo version, sung by EJAE and Cazzi Opeia, a singer-songwriter who cowrote the song, had been leaked. It immediately circulated as avid fans tracked down EJAE’s SoundBetter account after Andrew Scott, the song’s producer and other cowriter, had tagged her to promote the record before its worldwide release.
EJAE had accidently uploaded the demo for “Psycho” a few years before on SoundBetter, a music production marketplace, to connect with other musicians when she arrived in New York. In the SoundBetter portfolio, musicians post the SoundCloud link to their demo playlist, automatically loading all their songs onto the platform. She had uploaded several of her demos to promote her account and also had posted another demo identically titled “Psycho.” Unaware that Red Velvet’s version of “Psycho” had been uploaded to her song list, she had forgotten about the account. But the fans tracked her down. She immediately deleted her account and notified SM’s A&R agent and EKKO Korea Music Rights publishing, to which she is signed. They advised her to report the unofficial uploads, so for the next two days, EJAE would report all leaks that came into her purview: “I’ve been reporting the leaked version all day long for the past two days. It was wildfire from then. There was nothing I could do other than to report endlessly.”1
“Psycho,” the title song for The ReVe Festival: Finale (2019) studio album, was met with extraordinary commercial and critical acclaim. It topped Korean and international music charts and won numerous accolades, including the prestigious Golden Disc Award’s “Digital Single Award” in 2021. Ironically, it was EJAE’s demo leak that sparked interest for me, apart from the fact that she is one of the few Asian and Asian American women K-pop producers in the industry who has worked with women artists such as EXID’s Hani, Suzy (former member of Miss A), and Taeyeon (Girls’ Generation member). I was browsing the internet and clicked on the leaked demo, thinking it was the English version of “Psycho.” I was surprised to find a well-polished, extremely well-sung song with catchy lyrics that would play in my ear for several days:
I was intrigued that EJAE was excluded from The Korea Herald’s article, which covered the production of Red Velvet’s “Psycho.” In-depth interviews were conducted with Scott and Cazzi Opeia, but not with EJAE. “Someone said something like being heartbroken is almost like feeling psycho. We then decided we wanted to write a song with beautiful chords that tells a story about this. And that’s how ‘Psycho’ was born,” Cazzi Opeia notes. But who was this someone? The article mentions that the song’s inception took place at SM’s songwriting camp in Seoul and that EJAE wrote the top line (melody) with Cazzi Opeia. Yet EJAE’s name is unmentioned when the article recounts how the melody was developed, and only Cazzi Opeia is credited.3 What happened during the production of the record or inside the recording studio?
Because many scholars contend that K-pop is driven by visual imperatives, such as Irene from Red Velvet, who seems to prove their point by singing that she is “original, visual” in “Psycho,” academic analysis has been dominated by ocular-centric discussions while questions pertaining to K-pop as a sonic phenomenon have largely been neglected. Drawing on R. Murray Schafer’s definition of “soundscape” – which treats sound as the combination of layers of culture, place, acoustic space, and technology – this chapter provides an overview of K-pop’s soundscape with a particular emphasis on an aural turn in the discipline of K-pop studies. The industry’s sonic practice has responded to new recording technologies and media, which are linked to particular temporal and spatial configurations. For instance, the technological mediation of sound in studio recording booths, where K-pop singers give literal voice to their self-expression, has become an integral component of the sonic form.
K-pop artists’ recording methods drastically altered over the past decade with the advent of technologies such as smartphones, digital plug-ins, and music streaming platforms (Melon, Genie, and Spotify, to name a few), which facilitate portable music and make digital sound files effortlessly fungible. The soundscape of K-pop has expanded further into cyberspace as record production, vocal directing, and sound mixing are controlled remotely and synchronized with digital platforms, situating cyberspace as a form of recording studio produced by multiple participants and sound practices. Spaces of sonic performance are no longer confined to the recording studio but form part of the confluence of time and space in cyberspace. Once the demo for “Psycho” was cut for the album, Scott, who was based in Los Angeles, communicated with Yoo Young-jin, SM’s in-house executive record producer in Seoul, to alter sound sources, instrumental stems, and chords, and to restructure sections to fit SM’s sound design; Scott also worked with EJAE in New York and Cazzi Opeia in Sweden remotely to produce the bridge of the song, which was sent to Yoo for SM’s approval. Technology has taken record production one step further, so that records are produced synchronously with digital platforms such as Audiomovers, where sound can be streamed, and mixed remotely in real time; the compressed time and space has accelerated and amplified K-pop’s soundscape in ways that even COVID-19 cannot hinder.
From demo production to recording sessions, I address in this chapter a broad network of sonic practices in contemporary Korean music production, including through interviews with recording artists ranging from balladeers, singer-songwriters, rock stars, rappers, and idols to K-pop boy bands and girl groups. To contextualize their discursive practices, I also address the interventions of record producers, songwriters, sound engineers, A&R teams, and the CEOs of entertainment companies. With the aim of broadening the discourse of sound studies, I try to eavesdrop on how the soundscape of K-pop is recorded and how artists register their voices, both literally and figuratively, in music-making processes.
When I invoke “K-pop,” a nebulous expression for Korean popular music, I refrain from limiting the term to boy bands and girl groups and expand it to encapsulate the spectrum of Korean popular music. In so doing, I focus on the intimate space of the recording studio and the performances of seminal figures who have built the platform for K-pop’s global consumption. It is impossible to fully address the diverse sounds, genres, and presence of many celebrated personalities, but I have carefully selected recording artists and producers whose influences have most notably fashioned the K-pop industry. Finally, while listeners’ multivalent reception (which one might call listener response) forms an integral part of K-pop’s soundscape, for the purpose of this chapter I focus on the production of what Pierre Schaeffer has called “sound objects,” or recorded sound.
Pulse
Sound studies in academia have gained traction in the past decade under the auspices of scholars such as Rey Chow, James A. Steintrager, Philip Auslander, Brian Kane, Jonathan Sterne, and Fred Moten, and the digital revolution has helped the discipline expand culturally, spatially, and theoretically.4 Yet the fledging discipline of sound studies has produced a paucity of literature on Asia and none on K-pop. While Suk-Young Kim, Dal Young Jin, John Lie, and Youna Kim, to name a few, recently have published valuable research on K-pop, no scholar has focused on the production of sonic practices in the industry.5 In this chapter, I situate the soundscape of K-pop, as a case study, from the perspective of sound studies.6 I utilize sound theory to approach K-pop and elucidate its interplay between technological mediation and production, and attempt to intervene in the discourse of loss that treats sound as ephemeral, ineffable, and elusive. By rethinking K-pop and sound as categories of analysis, I aim to materialize a dimension that largely has been omitted in sound studies and the K-pop canon and offer new perspectives on the production and perception of sound.
In the physical world sound was captured and burned into objects such as CDs; in the digital world sound is archived in the data cloud, from which music is streamed. In sound studies, sound is conceived as an ephemeral and ineffable effect and is associated with loss, but that sense of capture and loss is interrupted by digital technology. Capture, in the age of digitized sound, as Chow and Steintrager explain, no longer involves loss; file formats such as the MP3 and MP4 positively connote plenitude, compactness, and pristineness that does not erode through repeated copying.7 The grain of the voice is captured through sonic objectification (the objectified form of sound) in recordings whose copies all retain high-definition quality and clarity, so Chow and Steintrager postulate the need to revise the paradigm of sonic capture as mere loss and consider “sonic loss as gain.”8 I build on this stance but argue that sound is not ephemeral; sound capture does not primarily implicate the retention of what is lost. Instead, the ephemera of sound are always marked on the record and are distinctly material, even as they emanate from either the sonorous body (the larynx, vocal folds, palate) or the digital interface, where sound is activated through software with the touch of a human finger – sound remains.
Focusing on sound as what Chow and Steintrager termed an “object of sound” – or what Pierre Schaeffer coined as a “sound object” (l’objet sonore) – I highlight how these terms refer to the invisibility of what causes sound.9 They situate sound no longer as the Other of vision and subvert the Western ideology of equating vision to rationality, science, and writing and sound to unscientific realms of affect and emotion.10 Technological reproduction severs sound from source and audio from visual dimensions, and leaves us to perceive them on separated tracks. In so doing, recordings capture K-pop’s tactility as an independent entity as sound waves touch and vibrate our bodies and the music becomes an object of sound. Yet most studies of musical recordings as objects of sound have centered on sound technology by underscoring technical mechanisms.11 I instead examine the connection between human and nonhuman actors that generate the sound object by focusing equally on human interplay and recording technologies. As Brian Kane elaborates, “sounds and notes do not simply constitute a realm of essence detachable from their moment, sites of production, or reception. Rather, they need to be recognized as a sedimentation of historical and social forces.”12 For sound to become an object, the singers’ voices, the musicians, and the producers’ and engineers’ mediation, inside and outside recording studios, form part of a complex and arduous collaboration that gives meaning to the sedimentation of sound. Within this trajectory, I utilize Schafer’s concept of soundscape and introduce the soundscape of K-pop as a sound object tied to its geographical environment in its inception.13
I argue that sound objects are political statements embedded with multiple subjectivities; accordingly, K-pop is inextricably entangled with its temporal and spatial nature and is emblematic of the social, historical, political, and technological soundscape of the industry. The object of sound performs the “sedimented acts” of multiple agencies connected in the recording process. Chow brilliantly elucidates how a sound object can be translated as an embodied materiality via Mikhail Bakhtin’s notions of double-voicedness and polyphony; “a word” appears in the form of “a singular vocal emission,” but is consistently “underwritten (and under-spoken) by other voices; even when silent.”14 However inaudible the other voices are, they exert power in the emission and reception of the voice. For instance, with digital technology, the breathing of K-pop singers in between notes easily could be eliminated. Yet the silence is never an absence: the erasure of a K-pop singer’s breath is a political act in itself in that power relations have been involved in the decision-making process. The creative choices of each actor in the network of songwriters, singers, musicians, producers, A&R people, sound engineers, and CEOs who participate in this process shape K-pop by burning themselves into the memory of a CD or writing data in binary numbers. Tracing the labor of multiple agencies in the manufacture of a sound object can disclose a web of power relations, and the sound object represents an imprint of the recording studio as a site of power relations.
Track 1. “Geunyeoui useumsorippun” 06:27, Written by Lee Young-hun and Kim Myung-gon
Prior to the rise of digital technology and the ensuing global consumption of K-pop, sound was produced in an analog recording system, by the interplay of human subjectivities in the recording studios in Seoul. In the 1980s, Lee Moon-sae, a multiplatinum solo recording artist who is regarded as the pioneer of K-pop ballads and pop aesthetics, recorded his songs with analog multitrack consoles. Lee debuted in 1978; released sixteen studio albums; was the recipient of numerous awards, ranging from the Golden Disc Award to the Presidential Commendation Award; and his ballads – such as “Yetsarang” (Old love), “Sarangi Jinagamyeon” (When love passes by), Gwanghwamun yeonga” (Gwanghwamun love song), “Geudaewa yeongwonhi” (Forever with you), and “Bulgeunnoeul” (Sunset glow) – are still popular and covered by contemporary artists. Lee is famous not only for his songs but also for his talent as an entertainer; he was the host of Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)’s most popular radio show, Byeori binnaneun bame (On a starry night), from 1985 to 1996 and had several major TV music shows of his own. Lee’s popularity gathered momentum with his third studio album, which was released by Seorabeol Records in November 1985 and sold 1.5 million copies. This marked the beginning of the vast popularity of gayo, which means Korean popular music, and the “ballad” genre. American popular music, trot music, and folk dominated Korea’s music industry until M. Lee’s third and fourth studio album in the mid-1980s. Lee’s first single, “Nan ajik moreujanayo” (I still don’t know), from his third album, peaked at number one on Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) TV’s Gayo Top 10 chart in June 1986, after seven months of promotion and gaining significant radio airplay. It also marked the beginning of his collaboration with Lee Young-hun, a songwriter who had just launched his professional career. K-pop balladeer M. Lee’s subsequent albums also went platinum: His fourth studio album sold more than 2.85 million copies in 1987, making it the biggest seller in K-pop history (in the 1980s and 1990s, albums that sold more than 1 million copies were considered platinum); it also was the first studio album that entirely centered on M. Lee and Y. Lee’s teamwork.
Recognizing their potential as a team, the duo developed a collaborative relationship for four consecutive albums. “While the singles from my fourth album reached number one on music charts, Y. Lee was already starting to write music for my next album,” says M. Lee. He continues: “I was busy promoting the album, but all the while, my mind was occupied with my next album.” During preproduction, the duo had long talks where they envisioned the direction of their highly anticipated album. Y. Lee preferred working on the piano and was far from spontaneous in writing his music and, in particular, his lyrics; he worked steadily and meticulously, selecting each word as he worked out his ideas for the characters, the narrative, and the sound design tailored to M. Lee’s voice. He then presented the songs to M. Lee, who would select those that would best fit the concept of the album. “Mr. Young-hun Lee already had the lyrics naturally fused with the music; he was more than a lyricist – he was a poet,” he explains.
Once songs were confirmed, another six months was spent to practice and memorize the melody with the lyrics, and after extensive discussions on the exact kind of arrangement that reflected the precise mood of each song, it was during this time that we would record the demo on a reel-to-reel tape recorder to be delivered to the song arranger Kim Myung-gon.15
With only Y. Lee’s piano and M. Lee’s voice, the duo layered the polyphony of voices on the demo they desired to iterate on the master, and Kim, a renowned and prolific songwriter and arranger, would come in on the day of recording to capture their narrative into sound.
The production started with the recordings of instrumental sessions executed under Kim’s guidance and was followed by vocal recording sessions: “I was always fully prepared, and my lyrics fully memorized by heart when I recorded my songs in the studio,” recalls M. Lee. He adds, “I never brought in the lyrics with me when recording; it was a time when artists recorded songs with their eyes closed.” During the 1980s, recording studios were equipped with analog multitrack consoles, the standard for Korea’s music industry. Music was recorded to a master disc, reel-to-reel magnetic tapes referred to as “reel tapes” in the Korean vernacular. That decade was the era of the vinyl long-playing record (LP), the definitive analog sound storage format. Under those material and technical conditions, music was fully rehearsed and memorized before the artists entered the studio, because it was difficult to fix mistakes with the recording technology available. When collaborating on their fourth studio album in 1986, M. Lee as always was fully prepared to record “Geunyeoui useumsorippun” (Only her laughter), another hit song written as a gift to his loyal fans. The 6:27 duration was inappropriate for radio airplay, whose time limit was generally three to four minutes per song. “We didn’t have Auto-Tune back then and couldn’t alter a single note, so if you made a mistake, you had to sing it all over again,” M. Lee recalled. By his own account, “To sing over six minutes straight, I could not even practice the song because my voice would go hoarse. So, to sing in the best condition possible, I had dinner, and after two hours of digestion in complete silence, I entered the studio, sang the whole song once, and the first take ended up in the album.” (M. Lee did sing three backup versions.) In postproduction, the multitrack was delivered to the mixing engineer, who optimized the audio levels, and then pressed into LPs.
By 1992, recording studios had transitioned from using analog to digital multitrack recording consoles, and sound was manifested through visual displays of sound waves on the computer screen. M. Lee had started exploring other genres such as jazz, and collaborated with various musicians to expand his musical range, but the duo legend continued to work on pop ballads until Y. Lee’s death in 2008. By 1992, the music industry had been transformed: three-member group Seo Taiji and Boys’ debut in 1992 with “Nan Arayo,” which utilized MIDI technology, popularized the incorporation of rap into K-pop, contributing to the K-pop idol songwriting formula, and galvanized the proliferation of dance music (electronic dance music, EDM) into mainstream popular culture. Dance music groups (including gender-mixed groups) and solo artists performing powerful choreography to dance music enjoyed immense popularity. With the exception of singer-songwriters and the rare dance music groups such as Seo Taiji and Boys and the two-member dance group Deux, where Taiji Seo and Lee Hyun-do were, respectively, songwriter and producer themselves, the efficient system of the compartmentalization of composers, lyricists, song arrangers, and producers took shape: Lyrics were rarely written before the melody; in extreme cases, they were written during recording sessions. Kim Hyun-chul, a producer and singer-songwriter, produced M. Lee’s eighth studio album in 1993, and the modes of collaboration were very different from that with Y. Lee: Kim wrote the lyrics to the title single, “Jongwonege,” in the recording studio, as M. Lee was in the booth recording the first phrase of the song, waiting for the lyrics to be handed to him. Demos were given to Lee in the form of cassette tapes with “dummy lyrics.” The dummy lyrics were terrible, although they were fun to listen to. This compartmentalization of what used to be a holistic music production process was effective in a fast-paced neoliberal society such as Korea, and the collaborative format expanded drastically in the mid-1990s with the introduction of boy band and girl group idols such as H.O.T., S.E.S., Fin.K.L, and Sechs Kies, whose soundscape was buoyed by the advent of Auto-Tune. By the late 1990s, K-pop idols and music dance groups and solos depended heavily on Auto-Tune, software that corrects singers’ pitch and added to the stereotype of K-pop automation.
Track 2. “Sangeo” 05:29, Written by Cho Kyu Chan
“이 앨범의 모든 수록곡은 AUTO TUNE 기능을 사용하지 않은 목소리로 녹음 되었습니다.” “All songs on this album were recorded with a voice that did not use the function of AUTO TUNE.” (bold letter emphasis in original)
Hip-hop artist Jay-Z released his single “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)” in 2009 to bash the overuse of voice-correction technology, but in Korea, already at the turn of the millennium, Cho Kyu Chan, a Korean Music Award winner, singer, songwriter, and producer, imprinted his anti–Auto-Tune statement at the end of the credits on his fifth studio album cover. Cho’s position reflected the industry’s overweening promotion of pop idols, boy bands and girl groups, and solo and dance group singers who were incapable of singing live on pitch and always lip-synched on TV due to their focus on presenting vigorous choreography.16 Their voices were hypermediated in recording studios, and idol and dance groups were heavily criticized for their inability to sing live, except for their lead singers (such groups usually featured one capable singer). Most singers no longer needed to sing well, and it was no longer considered taboo to place a sheet of lyrics on a music stand when recording; the digitized manipulation of voices in recording studios manufactured timbre, tone, and pitch in an unprecedented fashion. Cho explains, “Nowadays, I do use Auto-Tune when necessary. It depends on the concept of the song, but back then, the tool was perceived negatively – it was a transitional period.”17
This transitional period proceeded in tandem with rapid technological innovation – such as the invention of the MP3, a file-compression technology, and its free distribution on the internet – which affected the object of sound and the Korean music industry in multifarious ways. If the free distribution of the MP3 encoder impelled the inception of Napster in June 1999 in the United States, in Korea, there was Soribada, a Korean version of the free peer-to-peer MP3 file-sharing service that involved copyright infringement in May 2000. Free MP3 downloading had detrimental effects on the industry, with CD sales dropping drastically because players such as MPMan (the world’s first MP3 player), Yepp, and Iriver made MP3s portable. It instigated a sharp decrease in sales of analog formats, such as compact discs (CDs), tapes, and vinyl, but also contributed to K-pop’s stark shift from audio to visual culture. The shift was a survival strategy but also symbolized the resilience of the industry, since musicians had to provide listeners more than the sound component and needed to secure an alternative and innovative platform to CD sales. Still, the detrimental effects on singer-songwriters and balladeers were severe. By 2001, million-seller albums had disappeared, and technology also modified studio practices. When in 2001 Cho recorded his sixth studio album, on which he collaborated with R&B artist Brian McKnight on “Thank You for Saving My Life,” the conversion to full-digitized recording, along with Pro Tools, an alternative editing software, allowed sound to be cut, pasted, and mended with simple mouse clicks. Even with advanced sound engineering, however, producers knew that consumers were listening to compressed MP3 files. After hours of mixing the tracks with the sound engineer, producers such as Cho and David Kang (Kang Hwa-seong) – a prominent record producer and songwriter who produced popular pop ballad albums for artists such as Sung Si-kyung, Naul, Brown Eyed Soul, and Fly to the Sky – would burn the final sound-mixed song to a CD and listen to it in their car on an average set of speakers, just as the casual listener would. Kang noted how sound mixing had changed: “sound was hypercompressed, and for idol albums, in particular, the low end was amplified where the bass sound was aggressively compressed for the MP3 listeners. At the time, there were rumors that SM Entertainment started to aggressively compress the low end during sound mixing to cater to listeners of the sound on MP3.”18 Today, Kang’s statement attests to SM’s standard sound-mixing practices, as producers use sources and mixing attuned to the industry’s technological advances, such as the use of smartphones as music players.19
Cho is considered among the most important artists of Korea’s popular music industry and epitomizes the era of K-pop’s singer-songwriters of the 1990s and 2000s, which featured Kim Kwang-jin, Yoon Sang, Kim Hyun-chul, Yoo Hee-yeol, Lee Juck, Kim Dong-yul, Kim Yoon-Ah, and Paul Kim.20 He is renowned as a “genius singer-songwriter,” “a master vocalist,” and “the king of chorus (backing vocals)”; Nam Tae-jung, an MBC radio producer and music critic, describes Cho as having a “microfiber voice” that captures “even the subtlest nuances, while musicians describe him as a true musician who is “the vocal producer for vocalists.”21 In 1989, Cho won the first Yoo Jae-ha Music Competition and made his solo debut with Since 1993; his first single, “Chueok #1,” became a big hit. (The competition also produced popular singer-songwriters such as Sweet Sorrow, Yoo Hee-yeol, and Bang Si-hyuk, the founder of Big Hit Entertainment) In the 1990s, a plethora of dance music and pop ballads dominated mainstream Korean charts; however, Cho’s nine studio albums explored diverse genres such as pop, rock, R&B, and jazz, and experimented with innovative sounds and vocal techniques that met with both commercial and critical acclaim. He plunged into R&B with his third studio album, The Third Season, which is regarded as having pioneered the most authentic yet Koreanized form of the R&B genre with songs such as “Baby You’re the Lite,” for which he used overdubs to enhance his R&B phrasing, turns, and falsettos. In 2010, Cho’s ninth studio album received the Best Pop Album of the Year at the Korean Music Awards. Since receiving his MA in jazz studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Cho has been teaching, performing, hosting his own radio show, producing records, and recently releasing one digital single each month for his tenth studio album.
Unlike artists and idols who do not write their own music, singer-songwriters such as Cho usually work alone, and Cho produces, writes, and arranges all his songs, although he occasionally collaborates with friends and colleagues. A multi-instrumentalist, he works with the piano or guitar to compose, depending on the concept and texture of the sound he needs. Cho begins with the chord progression, melody, and rhythmic idea, and transcribes them onto a lead sheet with rehearsal marks during preproduction. The initial creative process occurs in random places: his personal studio, his room, or the public bench in front of his house, where he wrote K-Pop Star’s season 3 winner Bernard Park’s title song “Before the Rain” in one hour. Sometimes the lyrics come with the concept of the song, as he plays around with chords and melody, but for his records, the lyrics are fixed when he inscribes the concept on a lead sheet. If the arrangement requires additional programming, he works with a computer programmer, with the music score in hand. Cho sets the pulse (beats per minute, bpm) and plays all sound sources, including the groove (straight or swing), four rhythm (keyboards, drums, bass, and guitar), and synth source (a software interface called Virtual Studio Technology). He dubs when needed and makes selections on the tone, dynamics, and voicing of each digital instrument. Otherwise, he lays out the basic arrangement in his own studio with real-time or digital instruments and sound sources on his own iMac. For his own albums, he does not need demos, as he is his own client, but when he needs to send out demos for session musicians who will add real-time instruments, he sings the melody without words, providing just enough for the musicians to grasp the flow and atmosphere so that they have more freedom to develop their artistry.22
Track 3. “Byul” 02:40, Written by Sweetpea and Lee So-ra
The intimate space of the recording studio is a construction of the various agencies that are involved and registered in the sound objects of K-pop, and oftentimes, unplanned creative ideas take shape unrehearsed in the studio. Critics and musicians refer to Cho as the producer who has “influenced Lee So-ra to become the vocalist she is now.”23 Celebrated for her delicate musicianship, Lee is one of the most prominent female singer-songwriters of K-pop. In 2019 she collaborated with BTS member Suga on the hit single “Song Request,” and she has worked with Cho on numerous albums since her solo debut in 1995. If Kim Hyun-chul helped her find her unique voice in the initial years of her career, Cho played the pivotal role in shaping her identity as a musician in later years. Since Lee’s sixth studio album in 2004, Cho has served as the vocal producer. One fall night, they met at Booming studio in Daechi-dong, in the southern part of Seoul’s Gangnam district, to discuss her forthcoming sixth studio album, Nunsseupdal. Lee writes only the lyrics to her songs and at the time had already selected potential songs written by other artists to accompany her lyrics. In the course of preproduction, the two sat side by side behind the control booth console, where Lee explained the overall concept to Cho. She played each demo with her handwritten lyrics in front of them, and Cho would listen carefully while Lee continued delineating the images and stories behind her lyrics. Since a different composer had written each song, Cho envisioned the need to develop an underlying narrative or dramatic arc in sound design and vocalization. Under Cho’s direction, vocal technique, vocal chord progressions and patterns, sounds, ambience, melodic and harmonic ideas, delay, and reverb were all accurately planned, and on top of that instruments were dubbed with identical ambience; the musical concept also was applied to sound mixing.
The final recorded productions changed significantly because the demos contained only the skeletons of the songs; depending on the concept, the skeleton is often just the piano, guitar, and drum loop and at times added synthesizers. One song, “Byul” (Star), was written as a simple folk tune without any kind of ambience or vocal harmony. Before recording, the two sat in the control booth, where Lee sang the song with lyrics to Cho. Cho realized she sang with a lot of “scooping,” a technique where the vocalist starts singing below the desired pitch and slides up to the intended pitch. The technique was her specialty, as it was a common vocalizing tactic in pop. Cho advised her to discard it and sing all notes straight, like Enya. They listened to Enya together, and following a long discussion, Cho’s decision to alter Lee’s vocalization elevated the spatialization (positioning a sound source, such as the vocals, in three-dimensional space) and mood of “Byul.” That set the album’s unequivocal narrative tone, which expanded into “Barami Bunda,” for which a similar timbre, ambience, and spatialization were achieved by manipulating sound in the production and postproduction of sound mixing. Before entering the booth to record “Byul,” Lee studied Cho’s instructions and began to jot down musical notation in symbols, a method similar to Labanotation, a concept Rudolf von Laban developed in 1928 that now is used primarily to record dance movement in symbols. Lee documented all Cho’s suggestions regarding the movement, crescendo, diminuendo, and vibrato wavelength of her voice, as well as the movement’s duration, by means of symbols placed on each word or line of the freshly printed lyric sheet. Then she went into the booth, turned off all lights except for the thin pin light on the music stand, and started recording under Cho’s direction.
The collaborative process was built on mutual respect and loyalty; Cho was the only vocal producer whom Lee trusted, in that she did not allow anyone in the studio other than the recording engineer – not even the songwriters or her manager. “Sisikolkolhan Iyagi” (Miscellaneous stories) was designed as a folk acoustic tune with a dry ambience, and Lee had written the lyrics as a monologue, which was a predictable concept. Most significantly, it wasn’t pertinent to the narrative arc of the album Cho designed. Once again, Cho altered the concept and presented an additional persona, represented by an audible voice, in order to form part of the narrator’s inner conversation. Lee adored this, and Cho wrote the additional melody and lyrics for the persona on the spot. While Lee was taking a break after recording the vocals, Cho jumped right into postproduction and manipulated the secondary voice by cutting off the lows and the high sound with the equalizer to open up the midsection and display the persona’s voice, to make it sound as if they were on the phone and to separate the two personas. One “pro” (equivalent to a recording session in the United States) lasts three and a half to four hours, but would vary depending on Lee’s condition and mood on the day of recording. They once recorded from four in the afternoon until eight the next morning. There was also an incident when they were recording at 2 a.m., and Lee was resting inside the booth; as Cho was editing the melodic phrase that Lee had just vocalized, he asked her via intercom to continue the next line and was met with silence. Lee had vanished into thin air. After an hour of waiting, Cho realized that she had gone home without telling him.
Track 4. “Psycho” 03:31, Written by Andrew Scott, EJAE, Cazzi Opeia, Druski, Yoo Young-jin, and Kensie
Rewinding to the intro da capo, I note that the leaked demo for “Psycho” was written at SM’s songwriting camp in 2018, with EJAE, Scott, and Cazzi Opeia in SM’s recording studio. “The melody was done in like thirty minutes,” recalls EJAE as she starts to unravel the story of “Psycho.”24 At songwriting camp, musicians work with a number of producers; track makers, who construct the instrumental track, which includes the beat, chord progressions, loops, and sound samples; and topliners, who create the melody on top of the premade track with a set of English or Korean lyrics. For EJAE’s session, Scott, the track producer, brought a list of full production tracks from which to choose. Cazzi Opeia chose a track, but one of SM’s A&R people who managed the camp and with whom EJAE was acquainted through Andrew Choi, a singer-songwriter and prolific hit producer who won third place in K-Pop Star season 2, came in knowing that EJAE was in the session, and selected the “Psycho” track because she knew EJAE’s preference for R&B and pop. On top of Scott’s track, EJAE and Cazzi Opeia began to form melodic verses. EJAE’s relationship with her boyfriend was tumultuous at the time and she was left with conflicting emotions of love, hatred, and despair that made her want to focus on relationships and mental health. The concept and chorus started to flow naturally. “Psycho” was a common English word in the Korean vernacular and easy to pronounce. Scott and Cazzi Opeia liked the concept, and Cazzi Opeia came up with the strong pre-chorus. Scott then sang a melody for the verse, which was later replaced with EJAE’s, and EJAE wrote the hook (chorus) in a minute. EJAE observed, “For some reason I kept on saying ‘Nyquil,’ how I feel like a patient, and how your love makes me feel like I’m a sick person to your love and addicted to it.” When the main hook was fixed, Scott selected additional melodic lines EJAE had composed and “Frankensteined” it together to form the chorus. EJAE also wrote the second hook at the end, “Hey now I’ll be okay,” and they inserted a rap section, which is mandatory for a K-pop idol group. A lot of the topline melodies selected were EJAE’s ideas, such as the chorus, the post hook, and most of the second verse, and the process was a collaboration of the artists’ creative choices. Interestingly, the demo was produced without Red Velvet in mind; during the listening session, the team thought about sending the demo to a pop artist such as Ariana Grande, and EJAE honestly did not think it would get cut for SM.
The concept and English lyrics for “Psycho” stem from personal experience. EJAE started as an SM trainee when she was eleven. She depicts the K-pop industry as “toxic” and reveals that the cultivation process was so traumatic that she still undergoes therapy for it. Each week, before she went on camera to show her progress in singing, dancing, and speaking Chinese, EJAE had to weigh herself in front of everyone. The staff would call out her weight in front of staff members and trainees. She was never good enough for SM’s standards; they always gave her negative evaluations and told her that she was overweight. EJAE weighed 123 pounds at the time; SM asked her to lose 13 pounds – she stood 5’7” in middle school. A hardworking trainee who came to work before everyone else and was last to leave, she starved herself by eating only two sweet potatoes a day to maintain a 110-pound weight. “Honestly, the English lyrics have something to do with mental health,” EJAE explains. “I wished the song could express that it’s okay to be mentally ill. I hoped the Korean lyricist could express that. Everyone is at some point a psycho; being a psycho is part of being human.” EJAE was set to debut her freshman year in college, but she chose to study at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, and most of all she wanted to be a solo artist. EJAE still participated in training every summer at SM, but by the time she returned to Korea after graduation, she was twenty-three, which was considered too old by SM standards. Even so, artists such as Andrew Choi believed in her work and inspired EJAE to become who she is.
Because the recording process requires the performance of real-time physical instruments and sessions in expensive recording studios, nonidol artists, such as K-pop balladeers and singer-songwriters, usually have advance demos produced only once tracks are confirmed for placement on albums. K-pop idol groups follow a different trajectory. First-generation demo production from the 1990s to mid-2000s for idol groups such as S.E.S. and TTma was similar to that of nonidol singers, and live guitar sessions and orchestration proceeded once the demo was selected. But with the advent of electroacoustic music and digital instruments that had become more accessible and cost-efficient by the late 2000s, full-production demos became possible. Producers and songwriters could easily purchase a plenitude of reasonably priced analog emulation plug-ins and manipulate the sounds on their personal computers without having to learn how to play the instruments. Nowadays, the electroacoustic sound sources are of such high quality that the demos don’t necessarily need full orchestration or real-time instruments such as guitars. For both demos and final recordings, technology enables producers freely to replace all digital sound passages, but altering real-time song arrangements requires re-recording acoustic instruments and string orchestration in recording studios, a process most record companies eschew to save money. In multiple contexts, digital instruments can replace acoustic instruments for dance music; but for balladeers and singer-songwriters, digital assemblage can never produce the ambience of real-time orchestration. I would have thought that the demo version of “Psycho” was the final English version if I hadn’t known it was a leak. Yet EJAE notes that the “Psycho” demo is considered rough in the industry. To help me understand, she played the demo versions of her recent hits on Audiomovers from Virginia – Suzy’s “SObeR” and Taeyeon’s “Sorrow,” both of which EJAE coproduced and sang in English. After listening to the two versions in Seoul, I could grasp what she meant – the demos for “SObeR” were immaculate; they sounded like official releases.
Track 5. GOT7 “Not by the Moon” 03:23, Written by Park Jin-young, Isaac Han, Aaron Kim, Jay & Rudy, Lee Seu-ran, and OKIRO
Isaac Han, a Los Angeles native who studied at Berklee College of Music, majoring in music business, is a preeminent record producer and songwriter, and cofounder and chief producer of 8PEX Company and Tech Arts Group; he has worked extensively in the K-pop industry, producing title records and hits for GOT7, Suzy, Super Junior, Nine Muses, Myteen, Day6, and many more. He started in 2012 with SM, where he wrote and produced acts for Super Junior, Super Junior-D&E, and Henry. At the time, Han was the main songwriter and idea maker in his teamwork with Neil Nallas, a Filipino American songwriter and rapper. When developing demos, Han always would start with a melodic idea: “I focus on the melody, melodic ideas, and conceptual ideas first and then I expand the idea with chords using a guitar, or the piano. That’s how I build the skeleton of the song.” The team would decide whether to move forward with the skeleton and proceed with the lyrics and the “concept,” or theme of the song, to finalize the demo. But demo production for idol groups has undergone a radical transformation since 2012.
The process of recording studio demos for boy bands and girl groups is embedded in a network of power relations. When pitching records to A&R people and record executives, Han always chooses the lyrics and concepts, and produces full production demos to convey the concept of the song, meaning he executes a complete arrangement that includes sound mixing to get pristine quality. Even more than recording techniques, the contemporary production process resembles a factory line, where each role is compartmentalized. The record emerges within a scrupulously efficient system: the track maker constructs the track, usually on the standard pop song form: verse 1; pre-chorus; chorus (or hook); verse 2; pre-chorus; chorus; bridge; and back to chorus. The track is outsourced to topliners who create the melody and English lyrics (in rare cases Korean), and at times contribute to the vocal idea and concept. The track maker and/or the producer receives the topline and alters the production to fit the melody or vice versa; the producer then pitches the finalized demo to the record company A&R department; and, last, the demo is evaluated by the A&R board, in-house producers, and the owner of the company, who usually have the last say regardless of whether they are business-centric or musically inclined. Rarely is the demo cut if the company’s CEO disapproves, unless it is for a high-profile celebrity such as Suzy. When she received the “SObeR” demo, Park Jin-young rejected it, but Suzy strongly advocated for the song and included the record in her second EP, Faces of Love. A cut demo selected as the title song rarely is approved as is, and the in-house A&R executives, producers, and executive producers or CEOs make subtle to extensive alterations to “domesticate” the track, tailoring it to the singer or group and adhering to the company’s distinct style. Yet it can be inapt to compare K-pop production to that of a factory; a person must activate even digitized sound sources and physical devices (such as the interface), and the creative and personal choices of a network of competing agencies produce the sound object.
Although he works in diverse genres, Han’s songwriting philosophy is similar to that of Kang, songwriter and producer for K-pop ballads: They both allow the melody to be the focal point, which is supported by the song arrangement; however, to keep pace with the music trends that rapidly change within K-pop’s eclectic soundscape, Han converted to its compartmentalized music production system in 2015. With K-pop’s global reach, innumerable musicians with newer and fresher sounds are continually pitching thousands of songs. The demo process for Super Junior-M’s 2013 song “Go” was similar to that of a K-pop ballad or a new song by a singer-songwriter: Han would start with the track idea and then conceptualize melodic ideas. However, he explains, it has become impossible to do all the work himself: “I wouldn’t say that I’m old, but in music years, especially in K-pop, trends change within months. Even this year, our team went through like multiple changes in trend from girl crush to dark trap, and at a certain point, we switched almost instantly to a city pop retro vibe.”25 For instance, when he worked in 2019 on the demo of the title hit single “Not by the Moon” by the boy band GOT7, of JYP Entertainment (hereafter JYP), for their eleventh EP, Dye, Han and Aaron Kim, cofounder and producer of 8PEX, outsourced their track to the Danish duo topliners Jay & Rudy, whom Han met during SM’s songwriting camp in 2016. Similar to the way Cho used rough vocalization on demos for session musicians to embellish during live studio recordings, Han and Kim intentionally disbursed an unfinished preliminary track to give the topliners space to explore their melodic ideas. Afterward, the team would exchange comments by sending voice notes on Jay & Rudy’s topline, and once Han received all their vocal stems and ideas, they expanded the track to fit the melody more engagingly. Han attests that Jay & Rudy’s topline was perfect and explains how the postproduction of the mix and the process of infusing the track with the melody came after he picked up ideas from the topliners. With full sound mixing and quality sound, they pitched their complete demo, which was produced in three days, to JYP’s A&R department. After JYP’s distinct blind review process, where the board of A&R, producers, and Park Jin-young himself vote for potential demos with all song credits concealed, Han received an acceptance within two weeks.
Facilitating alterations to the demo has become standard practice for title songs at K-pop’s major entertainment and record companies, such as SM, JYP, YG Entertainment, and Big Hit Music (Big Hit Entertainment in 2021 was restructured into HYBE Corporation, which manages many music labels including Big Hit Music). While productions such as “Psycho” and “Go” retained most of their found tracks, toplines, and concepts, including their English title, many songs, such as “Not by the Moon” by GOT7, were transposed substantially, allocating royalties to a long list of songwriters. That song’s demo, originally titled “Paranoid,” conceptualized a push-pull romance. However, because it was the title song for their EP, Park Jin-young (singer-songwriter, record producer, and founder of JYP) was heavily involved in the production, and the demo was revamped to “Not by the Moon.” When Han received a call back from A&R, JYP saw the potential and requested numerous alterations that Han’s team had to track out; they made twenty production changes to the demo. Once the track was finalized, Park Jin-young modified chords and bass lines, and thoroughly altered the concept. Han candidly remarks:
I’m gonna say this in a way that’s not negative at all, but ultimately, as Mr. JYP [Park Jin-young] came in and made changes to the song, I felt like the song was no longer ours anymore. The way he infused his color felt like I was being robbed, not in a bad way, though; it was more out of appreciation. He didn’t even take that long, and [the changes] at first didn’t feel like a big change, but over time, it came to the point where I was like, I don’t think this song is ours anymore. He really laced the song together to make it come to life, and I have a lot of respect for that. He is one of the greatest K-pop producers of all time, and I could see why.
Best understanding each GOT7 member’s vocal skills and talent, Park Jin-young presented an alternate narrative for Han, Kim, and Jay & Rudy’s demo and applied a theatrical, Shakespearean approach to the song’s storytelling. Moreover, Park Jin-young was involved in the sound-mixing process and outsourced the track to Manny Maroquin, an eight-time Grammy Award–winning mixing engineer based in Los Angeles.
Nonetheless, collaboration in K-pop’s song production still occurs in a contested space of encounter. Most songwriters are comfortable with slight alterations to their work, but the intervention of revamping demos might be perceived as disrespectful. Yet, as is the case with SM, JYP, YG Entertainment, and Big Hit Music, in-house producers, group members, and owners “domesticate” all demos selected as title songs to fit the company’s distinct timbre. Because the melody of a song is divided among the multiple members of a group, in-house producers and A&R agents find alterations essential, as their recording artists are trainees under their auspices. Although such instances are rare, the A&R agent and Park Jin-young can refrain from intervening in the recording process. In the production of “Before the Rain,” Bernard Park’s debut title song, written, produced, and vocal directed by Cho Kyu Chan, JYP was flexible and remitted full control to Cho as a gesture of respect, but also to imbue Park with Cho’s aesthetic and songwriting artistry.
Although controversial, the domestication of the demos is comprehensible when we glimpse the recording process of idol groups who have numerous members in the studio. For Super Junior-M’s “Go,” the A&R executives scheduled each member’s recording session and isolated different phrases, words, and lines of the lyrics, allocating some to each member. When Han and Kim orchestrated the vocals of GOT7’s “Not by the Moon,” the session went smoothly because each member’s sessions had been scheduled beforehand. During the 1990s and early 2000s, all members of the first-generation idol groups, such as S.E.S. and TTma, had to stay in the recording studios. Eugene, a member of the first K-pop girl group, S.E.S., who is now a celebrated actor, recalled the recording process of her debut album: “Shoo, Bada, and I stayed in the recording studio even during other members’ recording sessions for our debut album and its title, ‘I’m Your Girl.’” Soy Kim, an actor, director, and singer-songwriter from the disbanded girl group TTMa, affirmed Eugene’s statement: “It was mandatory and a way of showing each other support as a team.”26 Today, each member comes into the studio during their allotted time frame, and the vocal recording of the song takes about three “pros”; each singer is well prepared and professional but remains independent. Han tries to give each a two-hour slot to avoid wasting the company’s and member’s time. An extra session is mandatory for editing the vocal stems, and Han takes an extra session to Frankenstein and premix parts before delivering the multitrack to the mixing engineer.
Mastering
Mastering is the final edit in the postproduction process for a final mixed recording, from which the “master” (data storage device) is created to replicate manufactured copies for sales. The process involves devices such as an equalizer, dynamic range compressor, and amplifier to optimize the final sound. New forms of technology have contributed to and shaped K-pop’s evolution, leaving distinctive marks on its soundscape. The complex layering and networking that occurs in the recording studios, where recording artists, musicians, producers, songwriters, A&R agents, and owners of record companies translate their creative choices into binary numbers or “bits,” produce K-pop’s sound object after a long process of production. The sedimentation of the arduous labor and multiple personal but creative choices by a network of agencies in record production is attached to a specific time and space in creating K-pop’s sound objects as material forms. When I listened to Red Velvet’s “Psycho” before I had access to the English demo, the Korean lyrics, written by SM’s in-house producer and songwriter Kensie, emphasized a couple’s relationship, which diverged from EJAE’s initial concept; but I could hear what had been left unsaid in the final Korean lyrics. That is, I somehow traced the collective or “underwritten” remains of EJAE’s English lyrics in the newly translated Korean lyrics. For instance, Kensie retained the word “psycho” in the English lyrics for the hook – “You got me feeling like a psycho, psycho,” “I don’t play the game” – and “I’m original visual,” and modified “Hey now I’ll be OK” to “Hey now we’ll be OK.” The initial concept was lost in translation, yet remained audible to me in the final Korean record. I could hear the unsaid words in the way the “Psycho” demo focused on mental illness.
K-pop’s transformation of time and space altered the soundscape in a myriad of ways. Advances in technology and the conversion to full-digitized recording studios facilitated a method of collaboration that extends into cyberspace, allowing up to seven songwriters to collaborate on GOT7’s “Not by the Moon.” However, collaboration over the internet is nothing new: Cho met McKnight when he visited Korea after the recording of their duet “Thank You for Saving My Life”; they sang their parts separately and exchanged sound files via email. Even when M. Lee collaborated with Zion-T on “Snow” in 2017, they communicated through Kakaotalk messages and email and met in person only after the single was released.
I confront the presumption of the ideological construct of ocular-centrism associated with Western culture in K-pop’s extreme emphasis on visual aesthetics, where the choreography and performance of boy bands and girl groups are the dominant narrative. This emphasis on the visual is closely associated with the marginalization of K-pop’s soundscape. The devisualization of sound demonstrates the epistemology of K-pop’s changing soundscape and presents opportunities to analyze the attending sounds in themselves as sonic phenomena. Technology has allowed us to capture nature’s waves and make music mobile/portable, but K-pop as an object of sound cannot be ahistorical as it encapsulates multiple agencies involved in its production, where the distinctiveness of the temporal and spatial nature of sound is acknowledged. Rather than aiming to present fixed answers, I hope to have revealed a dimension of the process of recording this soundscape to broaden the discourse on K-pop within sound studies.
