To already measure the extent of the phenomenon of K-pop, the catchy abbreviation of Korean pop, we must stop at a passage from the Ellen DeGeneres show, each of the episodes of which is in itself a machine for mapping the era through its prominent figures. In November 2017, the television host received on the illustrious chair of her show the Korean pop group BTS while visiting Los Angeles. That evening, with wide-eyed pupils, she could not prevent herself, like that, from the outset, from pointing out to viewers that “when they landed in LA, it was exactly the same madness as when the Beatles arrived in a city, or even more! “.
Seventeen, a 13-member K-pop group. DR
Taking advantage of this observation, Ellen DeGeneres not only summed up in a few words the apotheosis of the K-pop movement, but she explained above all, and rightly so, to what extent these pop formations from South Korea are in the process of impact the global musical landscape and, more generally, the history of music. Moreover, a week ago, well aware of its phenomenal influence, the group (whose album Proof will be released tomorrow, June 10) seized the opportunity of an invitation by US President Joe Biden to denounce the racism aimed at Asian people, while causing a certain excitement in the White House.
Cover of the album “Fancy” by the group Twice. DR
A “cultural product”
You should know that for a very long time, and even after the assassination of dictator Park Chung-hee in 1979, the South Korean regime extended its authority to the smallest corners of culture. One need only rummage through the pre-1990 television archives to realize that the majority of South Korean pop stars of the era had built their musical repertoires in the form of the nation’s dithyramb. Coated in sweet pop flights, the cult hits of this era, such as Ah! Republic of Korea (by singer Chung Soo-ra) that TV and radio bludgeoned in the 80s, were in fact only propaganda tools in the hands of the government.
Blackpink, South Korea’s most famous girl group. AFP
The seismic shock in the music department did not occur until 1992, with the discovery of Seo Tai-ji and Boys, the first boys band whose proposal broke, both in form and in substance, with everything that the musical landscape South Korean had known before. On the strength of their hits mixing dance, hip-hop, rap and hard-rock, their very distinctive dress codes and their way of normalizing pop, they alone embodied the cultural shift, but also the societal progress that announced at that time. Constantly censored and criticized, in particular on the grounds of its appearances and its dances considered “effeminate”, the group announced its dissolution in 1996 with a compilation entitled Goodbye Best Album. That said, Lee Soo-man, a former musician who had founded the company SM Entertainment in 1989 (which has become the biggest music label today), takes the measure of the tidal wave caused by the Seo Tai-ji and Boys and is determined to make music a “cultural product”. His label then introduced, in 1996, the group HOT, a sort of cross between Seo Tai-ji and Boys and the American boys band which were a hit at the time. The immediate success was such that the ski gloves, emblem of the HOT look, were snapped up and swarmed the streets of Seoul and the country. Their emblematic choreographies are learned by heart and taken up everywhere and by all South Korean youth. So much so that a year later, in 1997, while a financial crisis shook Asia, the South Korean government took inspiration from Lee Soo-man’s idea and decided to transform the local culture into the new and most important export industry. Immediately, a law stipulates that 1% of the annual state budget should be devoted to culture in all its forms, and in particular the music industry where the government detects a real gold mine. From then on, “entertainment” companies, similar to SM Entertainment, flourished and made up the secret recipe of K-pop. Because, behind the triumphs of K-pop groups that one might think were a work of chance, there is a real laboratory where everything is thought out, studied, tied up down to the smallest detail.
“Boys Be” by Seventeen. DR
The excesses of a phenomenon
It all starts with the method of forming these idol groups, similar to how a puzzle is put together, with each piece having its particular function in a harmonious whole. To do this, agencies comparable to headhunters go in search of potential candidates. Subsequently, this mass of suitors goes through auditions, intensive courses in singing, dancing and theater after which they are selected for a specific role in the group to be formed. There is the headliner, the singer, the rapper, the dancer, the one called The Visual whose role is to be a kind of aesthetic showcase, and the Maknae, that is to say the youngest member of the formation and who occupies a special place there. It’s a whole strategy that is implemented, almost like forming a football team or an army, with the only difference that all members of these K-pop groups must share traits in common. : a certain friendliness, gentleness and “politeness”; in other words, an intolerance for drugs, alcohol and scandals. These processes, orchestrated to the millimeter and which can sometimes take years (six years to form Blackpink, South Korea’s most famous girl group), have therefore given rise to now legendary groups, such as, on the female side, Blackpink (47.3 million Instagram followers) and Twice (nearly 26 million Instagram followers); and, on the male side, BTS (64.7 million Instagram followers), NCT (which has 23 members and 14.2 million Instagram followers) and Seventeen (9.4 million Instagram followers). If several consecutive suicides of members of K-pop groups provoked an outcry from the press and other activist organizations who denounced an industry close to slavery, the sounds of these idol groups are, however, at the other extreme. Hits that are eternally optimistic, light, candid, addictive and most often celebrating love, where several languages and several musical genres (from tangy pop to dark hard rock) can come together on the same track. But although all the cogs that underlie the making of these musical formations have now been elucidated, their triumph remains a mystery. For example, the BTS group, the most famous inductee in the world in 2019, was listed in October 2020 (via its parent company Big Hit Entertainment) on the Seoul Stock Exchange. Its valuation, of 4.5 billion dollars at the introduction, rose for its first day of trading to nearly 7.4 billion. And their hit single Dynamite, released the same year, reached one billion views on YouTube in just a few months (101 million views in just 24 hours) and injected, in the same record time, nearly 2 billion dollars into the South Korean economy. This shows how the strike force of these groups goes beyond the limits of music and the borders of their country. Endowed with a gender fluidity well in the time, the figures of K-pop also occupy, and more and more, the landscape of fashion. If Louis Vuitton suddenly signed with the seven singers of BTS, the four stars of Blackpink (who broke all the records for the most viewed videos in 24 hours on YouTube), they are so powerful in the media that they have become the muses of competing brands: Lisa from Celine, Rosé from Saint Laurent and Tiffany, Jennie from Chanel and Jisoo from Dior. Their arrivals during Paris Fashion Week parades each time cause riots throughout the city. In politics too, K-pop fans have succeeded in stemming, through their immense presence on social networks, the wave of support for Donald Trump in 2020, but also in amplifying the visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement. One theory even suggests that Gabriel Boric (the current president of Chile) was elected thanks to a Twitter campaign organized by K-pop fans, after the latter appeared at an election rally brandishing the photo. from a member of the Twice group.
It is to wonder, in view of all this, if K-pop will have finally marked the history of music or history itself.
To already measure the extent of the phenomenon of K-pop, the catchy abbreviation of Korean pop, we must stop at a passage from the Ellen DeGeneres show, each of the episodes of which is in itself a machine for mapping the era through its prominent figures. In November 2017, the television host received on the illustrious armchair of her show the pop group…