Manufactured Western Pop Music Discovers You Reap What You Sow

[Greg McCoy]

This is fucking glorious.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrolli/2021/06/04/bts-arent-ruining-the-billboard-charts-they-were-already-broken/?sh=7a7918211bf4

I actually have no idea who these guys are, but you see their name everywhere, they have fucking signature McDonalds meals.

To the best of my understanding they are a manufactured Korean Pop group.

Now, I tried listening to their music for the first time ten minutes ago. It's shit. There are some redeeming qualities, but not that many, I say that very loosely, I guess some of the basslines are cool when they feature actual electric bass and they are doing the "aping the mid 80s New Jack swing thing, which itself was aping 70s funk".

No word on whether they are talented or not. Not for me to judge. There is a lot of production there, but who knows, maybe they are actually good underneath all that.

They are absolutely a manufactured pop group. It's unequivocally, "People like this because the record labels tell them to like it" paint by the numbers bullshit.

But to the best of my knowledge, there was no push to get them big in the West. The vast majority of the time, the east is the bigger consumer of stuff from the west, it rarely goes the other way.

Now don't get me wrong, their music absolutely sucks. I would rather get a tracheotomy with a fucking sharpened tree branch than listen to it.

But watching the outrage from the terrible manufactured shit music of the US because the system they set up to perpetuate the unchallenged dominance of their own shit music people only like because they are told to like it and dripfed the exact same saccharine shit ad infinitum got turned against them and now these Asian dudes are mopping the fucking floor with the Justin Biebers and Ariannna Grandes and The Weakened or however the fuck you spell it of the world is definitely something I am a fan of.

[jacksonplayer]

Quote from the article:

“The Hot 100 is the best historic marker we have for what’s big at any specific time,” Breihan continues. “In gaming the system, BTS are f***ing that whole thing up.”

The Billboard chart was gamed for decades. I read a very entertaining history of Casablanca Records, and apparently label head Neil Bogart got better chart placement for Donna Summer, KISS, etc. by flat-out bribing Billboard. Better chart placements led to more stations adding the singles, leading to more sales. It was a total con job.

In the end, unless you're running a record label why would you give a shit about the charts? This crap brings back all the comical memories of what I saw in L.A. with the big music industry at its apex in the early Nineties. You have to see it up close to understand just how tacky, mercenary and sleazy it really is.

[Greg McCoy]

In the end, unless you're running a record label why would you give a shit about the charts?

All the dudes on the production end, at least the dudes on the production end who make the big bucks, most definitely care.

If you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on outboard gear confident that all you have to do is deliver a polished commercial mix and the machinery that has been in place for decades will do the rest, yeah, you are going to be pissed.

That's not even getting into the hilarity on the songwriting end of things. They bring in huge teams of highly paid people to do lyrics to make things a surefire #1, and the dominant stuff on the charts right now is in a language very few people in the US even understand with some occasional incredibly nonsensical broken english thrown in.

They pay people like Max Martin and the other ten or so names that dominate the charts big bucks to do like, super homogenuous risque "Sex sells" lyrics. And now they are figuring out they could have just saved money this whole time and just fed a bunch of shit into google translate because the group ripping up the charts right now has lyrics like,

"She looks like a blue parrot
Would you come fly to me?
I want some good day, good day, good day
Good day, good day
Looks like a winter bear
You sleep so happily
I wish you good night, good night, good night
Good night, good night

Imagine your face
Say hello to me
Then all the bad days
They're nothing to me
With you
Ooh, ooh, ooh

Winter bear
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Sleep like a winter bear
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Sleep like a winter bear"



WAP is out. The people want songs about sleeping like a winter bear.

[DonBot]

I was wondering who the fuck those guys were in the McDonald's commercial. For a second I thought I had stopped on one of the asian tv channels we get out here.

[Greg McCoy]

I was wondering who the fuck those guys were in the McDonald's commercial. For a second I thought I had stopped on one of the asian tv channels we get out here.

I went and looked up their lyrics to see what kind of subjects the kids these days are connecting with, and this is kind of heartwarming.

These are some of the most wholesome lyrics to top the charts in decades.

Roger Thinke is out there singing about "Blurry Lines" and these guys just show up and declare

"NOTHING CAN DEVOUR ME, I SHOUT WITH FEROCITY"



Lets be honest, is there anyone here who doesn't secretly wish they wrote a line that wholesomely inspiring yet fucking metal as fuck at the same time?

[Naren]

K-pop in general has way better English pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary (even if what they're singing sounds silly) than J-pop, so I've always thought "Yeah, I could see them getting popular in the West." But that might be a low bar since most J-pop, if they ARE singing in English, you might not know it unless you're familiar with the way the Japanese phonetic system works since it's oftentimes just "katakana English" and pretty nonsensical. I don't speak or read Korean, but I can understand the English they're singing pretty well.

It took way longer than I expected for a K-pop group to really take off in the states, though. I remember 20 years ago when there were K-pop groups insanely popular in Asia that no one had ever heard of in the states. While most K-pop is, as Garrett points out, mass-manufactured pop. K-pop is extremely popular in Japan, so they'll oftentimes release a Korean version of an album and a Japanese version of an album. I know that some groups focus more on the West and divide into a Korean version of an album and an English version of an album.

I remember 10 years ago when this was super popular in Japan. Very catchy with a pretty sexy dance (that in Japan they called "Kara's hip dance," but it's more like a "butt dance"). The main reason I'm posting the Japanese music video and not the Korean music video is because, even though the music is the same (with the lyrics being different), the music videos are nothing remotely alike, and the Japanese one is just sexy, while the Korean one (if I remember correctly) had them in more "cute" than "sexy" outfits. Now, BTS does the same thing, except for girls to think "Damn, those boys are hot!"

I remember this song being played in convenience stores and malls all the time and they played it live on TV too.

EDIT: And I can't find the Korean music video on YouTube anymore for some reason. A lot of their fans just put the Korean audio on the Japanese music video on there. Maybe they themselves were like "the music video for the Japanese language version is better. Let's just delete the Korean PV." (Either that or the title is written in Korean?)

[Greg McCoy]

...super popular in Japan.

The stuff that comes out of Japan that gets the most international recognition/popularity isn't actually their best IMO. It's a shame. There are some amazing Japanese metal bands who are way underrated.

As far as Japanese music goes, there is a ton of Japanese metal that doesn't get the recognition it should. Ritual Carnage, Coffins, and Sigh are all fucking amazing.

[Naren]

The conversation suddenly shifts from mass-manufactured mainstream pop to niche underground metal. I think you could make that same statement about metal from any country really, not just Japan. Extreme metal in particular is pretty niche.

[jacksonplayer]

They pay people like Max Martin and the other ten or so names that dominate the charts big bucks to do like, super homogenuous risque "Sex sells" lyrics. And now they are figuring out they could have just saved money this whole time and just fed a bunch of shit into google translate because the group ripping up the charts right now has lyrics like,

Mainstream pop is all about the look and glossy production, and that's been true for many years. From the perspective of getting your song placed in, say, a McDonald's ad, you're better off having nonsensical songs about winter bears than having something risque that might upset the easily upsettable.

I don't even get worked up about it. This type of music is entirely about getting the cash registers to ring, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's audible wallpaper as a product, and why not?

[Greg McCoy]

Mainstream pop is all about the look and glossy production, and that's been true for many years. From the perspective of getting your song placed in, say, a McDonald's ad, you're better off having nonsensical songs about winter bears than having something risque that might upset the easily upsettable.

I don't even get worked up about it. This type of music is entirely about getting the cash registers to ring, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's audible wallpaper as a product, and why not?

Clearly you have never been in Lynyrd Skynyrd. Behold, the saltiest song about billboard chart placement ever written.

Lynrd Skynrd are lucky that half their fans are illiterate, because that song definitely isn't about firearms or the Second Ammendment like a lot of people think.

Guns and black powder aren't even mentioned once, it's less "Don't Tread On Me" and more "(*sobbing noises*) why aren't we higher on the charts". It's not polite to spoil the fun for fans who think it is a powerful anthem about gun rights by telling them it is actually about wanting to be the poppiest music possible though.



I know quite a few badass metal dudes who will tell you they don't give a shit about billboard who watch the charts. Especially on mid level metal specific labels like Nuclear Blast and Metal Blade. There's a lot of posturing about not caring on, but I know quite a few "extreme grimy metal" guys who definitely check.

[jacksonplayer]

I know quite a few badass metal dudes who will tell you they don't give a shit about billboard who watch the charts. Especially on mid level metal specific labels like Nuclear Blast and Metal Blade. There's a lot of posturing about not caring on, but I know quite a few "extreme grimy metal" guys who definitely check.

Sure. I just don't understand why any music fan would care.