Written by Claire 2022 Cohort
During the reading week, I visited the Vancouver expo, which contains comics, sci-fi, anime and game events to attract people. During the cosplay competition event, there had 20 minutes of K-pop dancing during the intermission. I was surprised that I could recognize most of the names of the songs. I am not a big fan of K-pop, but I listen to K-pop songs occasionally. I used to have some stereotypes about K-pop songs, which are no rhythm throughout the whole song; it turns out I can’t remember anything after listening. To my surprise, I started listening to some K-pop songs, which have become trendy recently. I want to talk about several reasons for K-pop’s popularity.
Energetic performance
Strict singing, dancing and performing training leads the artists to put high energy into visuals and music to attract the audience. Furthermore, the performance also requires to interaction with the audience, which creates a sense of connection and engagement between K-pop artists and the audience.
Narrative in the music video
Many K-pop artists started to produce their own stories, which made them more relatable to the audience. Besides, the intense market turns out to increase competition among K-pop groups. K-pop has become increasingly popular outside of Korea in recent years, and many K-pop companies are now targeting a global audience and making video more narrative to connect with them deeply.
Charming personalities
Many Korean companies arrange debuting around four to nine people as a group, and each group member has their advantage. Companies usually have their preference member, and putting them in front of the public first to lead the whole group becomes trendy. They have their social account to share their personal life or backstage to be more relatable.
To sum up, K-Pop has become trendy due to its high-energy performances, strong narratives in music videos, and unique relatable personalities. K-pop breaks out of the stereotype and creates a unique music style, which is impressive.