Wednesday, November 17, 2010

A controversy about Korean idol singers

Since 2009, young Korean idol singers and groups have been flooding the Korean music industry.
When people first listen to some of their songs before seeing their actual performance on stage, they think like 'Is this a song? Can this kind of 'stuff' be called a song?' and they also conclude that they will fail this time.
Surprisingly, however, with their gripping dancing, cute and pretty faces and dizzing stage manners, the song that was called 'terrible' before, ranks first after only one week of their come-back stage or even on that day of their come-back stage thanks to a great number of their existing fans.

This phenomenon is causing a serious problem that it's good to WATCH them, but not LISTEN to them. I am not saying all idol singers are like this, so please don't get me wrong. Of course they are great and well-trained idol singers, but generally most of idol singers have some issues with their skills and I think they should face up to the reality and must do something.

The current Korean music industry is obviously in a crisis that people don't open their wallets to spend money on low quality albums which have only clonish songs that make you bored after 20times of listening or 10times(some might say they are not worth listening at all without watching their performing). Many music makers complain that people don't buy albums and just download them, so sales have been seriously down.  It's true that as MP3 players has been popular and the economy has been still down, people prefer to download music, but this is not the only reason I guess. It's also because they are just not good enough. Doesn't it sound true? If songs are great, we will buy them.  Young would-be singers are increasing, so to earn money, people in the music industry make them debut as soon as possible with low quality songs. This is why people don't buy their music. But because of a previous failure or low income, they again make low quality songs trying to spend less money. It's a vicious cycle!!

A current fashion among normal people like us is listening idol singer's live performance without the background instrumental music so that we can hear their pure singing. Some are more hilarious than comic sitcoms! Some people doubt the truth of thier shocking singing skills and some people just sigh and say 'Whatever, they are dancers' or some take the idols side and cry 'You anti-fans try to sing and dance at the same time and see if you can do as good as them!!' But the last one doesn't make any sense to me. We are just normal people and they are singers which means that we don't need to be good at singing, but they have to, cause it's their job.

I am unhappy to see where the Korean music industry is going now, and frustrated by the reality that there are not many songs that touch me, inspire me or excite me and most of boring love songs are dominating our ears and eyes.

Here is one more problem I want to point out.
I am a type of person who enjoy a melody of a song and especially enjoy lyrics. But the recent music seems to be made in less than no time. Most of the latest songs are very catchy and easy to learn, but if you only read the lyrics, you will find some that are just nonsense.  If I am allowed to exagggerate a little bit, I will say that I can write better than them.. :'(

The debut age of idol singers is getting younger and younger.  Only sixteen or seventeen years old girls wear gaudy clothes and shake their hips and they are just too busy to sing, so they can't help but lip-sync. Is dancing or showing a flashy performance putting less effort on their singing what singers are supposed to to? I hope to hear your opinions!