Though this hasn't necessarily stopped K-Pop from at least attempting to delve into this genre. While I'm ashamed to say that my knowledge of K-Pop isn't extensive enough to know every folk-related release ever produced, the only notable attempt was a recent attempt by the 4Minute subunit 2Yoon and their mini-album "24/7". But I personally thought their attempt at recreating the "old West of American yore" was both feeble, overly stereotypical, and childish. Surely it was something that proved not worthwhile to dabble in for fellow K-Poppers, and something for which I'm glad for.
Unfortunately this absence of dabbling didn't last all too long. Sunny Hill's most recent release, 'Young Folk', is an unabashed tribute to the genre, one that lasts throughout most of its entirety of the release as opposed to slightly flavouring one of the tracks. Despite the aforementioned reasons causing a sense of apprehension regarding the style, on a whole the album is executed on an unbelievably high standard, and turned out to be without question one—if not the—of my favorite K-Pop albums released so far in 2013.
Romantic Comics
Sunny Hill definitely wasn't messing around when they said this was a folk album. The first track, "Romantic Comics", is a light, quick diddy featuring a surprisingly convincing folk chamber ensemble. Usually I'm not used to K-Pop songs being at this quick paced of a tempo, but its definitely is a formidable performance. While it forces the performers to take a step back from showing off their usual strong vocal techniques, and rather demonstrate a light and breathy singing style which meshes well with the backing instrumentals. Then again, their vocal delivery meshes well with the lyrical content of a cute love story about the moments prior to a love confession. This is certainly an interesting way to start off the album, and certainly not something I would have expected from a Korean "folk" album, but it's well produced and well performed, so color me surprised.
Darling of All Hearts
Perhaps the best way to describe the headlining track "Darling of All Hearts" is as a broadway musical number. In some ways being slightly reminisced to the musical "Oklahoma", this overly peppy, twang-filled number builds itself in such a manner that the more successful theatrical scenes have had. From the inclusion of a dedicated dance-only section having major sections build ontop of one another, this songs rompously keeps the listener's attention until the showstopping end. This subsequent sense of completeness helps distinguish the piece from much of K-Pop, which helps in its nearly infinite replay value.
Yet to think this is supposed to be a fun song would be an innapropriate thought, and perhaps an ingenious technique used by Sunny Hill. For this following point, I find the music video a great compliment to the composition of the song, as is generally common with Sunny Hill music videos. Despite the upbeat, theatrical feel-good musicality of the piece, the lyrics are borderline psychotic. The song depicts a protagonist who consistently finds herself in and out of love, questioning their potential of ever being in a long-term relationship. But despite these worries, they seemingly force themselves to be happy with life, artificially securing their internal pain from the general public—which is likely represented by the inherent upbeat nature of the music. The performers in the music video are obviously stressed and putting on an over-exaggerated face to hide their obvious woes. In addition to the psychadelic glasses twirl dance and deranged smile of Hareem, the fake botox-esque smiles in the chorus tired eyes, the dropping of the cupcakes and multiple cups of coffee drunk, the music video aids in understanding the true mentality the protagonist of the song is going through. It's definitely one of the most tastefully created music videos produced this year, lending this to being easily one of the best K-Pop songs of 2013.
Sitcom
This is the final folk track on this mini-album, and I honestly wish it wasn't so. So far I've been impressed with Sunny Hill's convincing appropriation of the genre and this song is no different. Perhaps on a vocal level, "Sitcom" is the group's most convincing channeling of the essence of the style, particularly the efforts by Kota and Jubee. While musically this song is an absolute joy to listen to, what is perhaps most satisfying is this song's adherence the story-telling technique that is inherent in most folk songs. This is obviously and notably evident by the song's refusal to copy-and-paste the same chorus throughout the song which has been done in...well, just about never K-Pop songs that I can think of off the top of my head.
This song appears to be a consoling effort towards a love lust friend of the protagonist, comparing life to that of a sitcom and the main character. The friend is obviously stressing out about never being able to find love before they grow old—a major taboo in Korean society. Yet the protagonist tries to put life in perspective, telling her to live in the now. Ultimately, life is compared to that of a sitcom character: they laugh, get hurt, but continue on with life as is with them. But this is coming from my poor translation skills (I'm going to come back to this later). Regardless, juxtaposing the strong allegoric content of the story on how to live life, in the way cleverly compared to a modern sitcom, with the strongly produced musical folk elements not only makes this an enjoyable track to listen to multiple times, but makes this arguably the most folk-like element of this entire track, making the mini-album title more than worthy of its name.
Anything You Want
"Anything You Want" starts the non-folk portion of the mini-album. A juxtaposition of a mellow ambience and a moderate, bass-heavy homage to traditional Motown, this twisted seductive love song depicts the female protagonist as the lead of this relationship. Despite the consistent acknowledgements of letting the male the choice in telling female to do whatever he wants in order to pleasure himself, this songs shows that the female not only already knows what he wants but is sinisterly giving the male a false sense of power in this relationship. This seems to both uphold and critique the notion of male patriarchy in the family and society: while the female lets the male be the powerful one, in having a choice and control over the woman, this is in face value only. Rather, it is the female who is the more cunning, all-knowing parter of the relationship; she holds the underground power.
But let's not get too far on the argument of power politics. This song is nonetheless a sensual one, and the performers demonstrate this ambience well over the aforementioned appropriate instrumental backings. Each performer is strong as can be, and their confident, strong performances through a variety of vocal ranges and styles allows this to be a song that can easily outshine the title tracks of most other K-Pop groups. My only gripe with this track is that I could live without the key change towards the end, yet the producers place it in such a manner that allows it to seem like a natural and necessary part of the track.
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