A Metalhead writing about music that is not metal, Vol. I: How I discovered (and became a fan of) kpop.
Yes, i’m a big Heavy Metal and Hardcore Punk fan, but no, i’m not here to write bad things about different music, like others metalheads love to do. I hate that, I hate the elitism of the metal subculture that leads fellow metalheads to insult others’ vision of music. I understand why for some people we are a toxic fanbase and i’m really ashamed about it .
I’m really self-critical about that topic, because i was one of the many immature teens that liked to mess with other music, such as Reggaeton, Rap, Trap, Punk and, of course, kpop. This was between 2010 and 2014 and i was a big Death Metal fan (still I am) back then, but in 2013 I met my best friend, who was a big otaku girl and a diehard EXO-L.
At first, i didn’t get why all that hype about korean music. To me, Kpop was a very weird plastic and superficial product only created for money. Of course this was only a personal biased conception of music because yeah, i was a VeRy vERy MEroL bOi and i LiKe nOIsE *Unga unga sounds*.
This changed when my best friend showed me a Girl Group that she was listening to at that time, called Ace of Angels (AOA, with her cancelled leader lol). The song was “Heart Attack” and stuck over my head for like two months. The song is so catchy that it became a guilty pleasure, because i was so insecure about it because i felt less metalhead that normal, then a mature and i realized that it was very stupid.
AOA - Heart Attack: https://youtu.be/1pBgMBBsv4k
I quickly got a little bored with AOA’s music and wanted to explore Kpop a bit more. I left the prejudice I had about kpop and wanted to find more groups that could satisfy me musically. That search led me to discover Red Velvet, the first kpop group that I considered myself a fan of. I was attracted by their performance on stage, the concepts of their comebacks and their personalities on camera (they are a disaster, in a good sense lol) but what caught my attention the most is the variety of styles they explore in their music. For example: One of these nights is too different a song from Russian Roulette.
I like the variety they try to show in their music because I never get tired of listening to them. A few weeks ago they came back after almost two years of inactivity as a group, with a new LP called Queendom, which has a great song that got stuck in my head, called “Pose” (which is obviously inspired by Madonna’s Vogue).
My Favourite Red Velvet Songs:
Russian Roulette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QslJYDX3o8s&ab_channel=SMTOWN
Umpah Umpah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHS9E6JFja8&ab_channel=SMTOWN
Psycho: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR8Mrt1IpXg&ab_channel=SMTOWN
Pose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xryh6KT9Cpg&ab_channel=RedVelvet
The other group that I discovered most recently (like a year ago) but immediately started to stan is Loona. I can describe in one expression what I think of them: THEY ARE QUEENS.
Loona is a very different group to what we are used to in k-pop: they didn’t debut as a group first, they did the opposite, each member debuted as a soloist first, then the sub units debuted and only after two years did they debut as a group. The variety of concepts of each member, sub-units and the complete group builds a big music library in which you can see the enormous talent that the 12 members have.
My Favourite Loona songs:
So What: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEo5bmUKFvI&ab_channel=loonatheworld
Butterfly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEOCbFJjRw0&ab_channel=loonatheworld
Let me in (Haseul’s Solo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a4BWpBJppI&ab_channel=loonatheworld
New (Yves Solo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIDe-yTxda0&ab_channel=loonatheworld
Thanks to Kpop i no longer have the prejudices that I had about other musical styles, and it pushed me to leave my comfort zone, both musical and subcultural, which encouraged me to be more open-minded and discover other music that i really like right now, like Disco, 80’s pop, eurodance, Old School Rap, Britpop, etc.
My musical taste has changed a lot thanks to kpop: I’m still a big fan of metal and hardcore, but I can’t tolerate listening to the same thing anymore, i get tired of it. Now I can go from listening to Napalm Death to listening to Dua Lipa at the same time.
The musical spectrum is too wide to waste it and always stay with the same things.
FUN FACT: Seo Taiji, one of the pioneers of kpop in the late 90’s, also played Nu Metal in the 2000’s. His music was like listening to Korn but in Korean lol.
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