Music: No Longer a Product in a Box

By Chaeri Park

Whenever we pass a store nearby or go to a trendy cafe, dozens of speakers greet us with blaring sounds of the most recent K-pop songs. Although some people might like their modern rhythms and melodies, it’s not hard to find others lamenting about what music used to be like in the 1990s with every song having its own identity. Although this might seem like an old man’s woe, actually deep under the surface we could capture the problem of mass production of music.

Before Blackpink, BTS and other famous idols, there were Super Junior, Girl’s Generation, Miss A and even before that, groups like HOT used to dominate the K-pop industry. When we listen to songs from the 1990s, we can easily notice that those songs were able to be differentiated by their own individual characteristics. However, as idol music became the trend in the 2000s, songs also began to put themselves in a certain characterized box. For example, Super Junior’s iconic Sorry Sorry, Mr. Simple and Bonamana are all very similar to one another, and Girl’s Generation began presenting songs that had no meaningful lyrics (take Oh!, for example, which literally repeats the words ‘I love him very much’ and that ‘he mustn't laugh because I’m so shy’). Now we can easily see that a small number of composers are composing a majority of hits in the charts and that the lyrics are making no sense even more.

This is not only limited to the songs themselves, but also the artists as well. Everyone has the same concepts; for a much understandable explanation, let’s do a quick “build your girl group” demonstration. First, find your ideal members; they must be unhealthily thin, have white skin, a lot of ‘aegyo’ and look like a rabbit, dog, cat, or a fox. It would be most convenient to just go to three or so major ‘hagwons’ that prepare girls to be trainees and grab some of the students there. Second, choose your concept between cute, innocent, or ‘girl-crush’--no, you mustn’t choose another one because it’s too risky. Third, ‘buy’ a song for your girl group from the most popular composer there is. Try to make sure that it has enough electronic sounds and that it’s a little bit dreamlike. Fourth, write the lyrics for the song, but remember: it should be about love (and it’s best if it’s one-sided or if it’s about someone growing stronger after a breakup) or be about loving yourself. Oh I almost forgot: make sure that there’s some catchy phrase to it like ‘Watch out baila baila baila’ or ‘Pangpang, parapara, pangpangpang’; no one cares about the meanings anyway.

That demonstration above is a perfect example of how the music industry is working nowadays. Trainees come from big academies or get trained by the same vocal trainers, so they have similar vocal styles. They even look similar to each other because there’s a certain facial identity this industry looks for. The songs that these ‘artists’ (which they really aren’t) release are usually tailored to the dance (even to the point that some people are doubting whether the choreography or the song comes first), so the overall quality of the songs are really low. Even the songs are similar to one another because they all come from the same four repeated codes, and also because some famous producers are making all the music.

After many people came to notice these problems, they turned to ballad music, which became their new haven. However what they overlooked was the fact that ballad music was also being mass produced. They all have the same structure; they start from a low note, there’s a catchy but sad part in the middle, and in the climax comes the high note (take 윤종신’s 좋니, for example; it’s calm at first but starts to become harder and harder to sing as it reaches its hook). They also have similar lyrics related to heartbreaking experiences, like breaking up or a never-ending one-sided love or a love that could simply not be. People who sing ballads have similar vocal styles too; they all have the same on-the-verge-of-crying voices that almost sound moist with tears and have the same bittersweetness added to them. Ballad music also seems to have high notes as its requisite; almost every famous ballad song has a difficult-to-sing-along section.

Because of these characteristics, three problems took place in the case of ballad music. First, the overall quality of songs decreased because people created a desirable form of music and tried to fit any song inside that structure. (This structure, as mentioned earlier, consists of high notes, catchy melodies, heartbreaking lyrics…etc.) Second, good singers became defined as people who could hit high notes well, which isn’t exactly true and people who really did sing well became underestimated as their unique characteristics were disregarded. Third, in sum, the music industry and its quality fell in total as everything became the same and the individuality of singers was taken no notice of.

With these phenomena taking place, we need some thinking on what real music is. Music is an expression of human emotions and thoughts that take the shape of sound, and because they portray how we feel, music is also said to help heal people. This is also precisely why more unique and sincere music is needed. People want to listen to old songs not just because of the melancholy they feel about the past but because they were unique and had value. Thus, for music to serve its original purpose, we have to think about what it was like in the past and try to focus more on its individuality and originality instead of focusing on the money it can make. True music can only exist when people are ready to accept music as it is, so we also must be prepared to listen to songs that are slightly different from our expectations. I hope that the time when we will be able to listen to music that moves our minds, not irritates our ears will come soon.